Black Utopia

The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-231-18741-1
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 142 mm x 217 mm, Gewicht: 265 g

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible.

In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zamalin, Alex

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Alex Zamalin is assistant professor of political science and director of the African American Studies Program at University of Detroit Mercy. He is the author of African American Political Thought and American Culture: The Nation’s Struggle for Racial Justice (2015), Struggle on Their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance (Columbia, 2017), and Antiracism: An Introduction (2019).