My dissertation examines four Black speculative novels from the turn of the twentieth century, published between 1892-1904. Texts from this tradition tend to be grouped under an umbrella of “proto-Afrofuturism” or “proto-science fiction” and considered as early, surprising instances of a speculative mode that would only fully emerge several decades later. This categorization, while accurate in some respects, flattens out the diversity of the Black speculative imagination at the turn of the century. Therefore, I prioritize demonstrating the uniqueness of each author’s vision. At the same time, I argue that these texts share a fundamental similarity in their approach: they anticipate Arthur Schomburg’s famous injunction that the “Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.” They use the affordances of the speculative mode to experiment with a shared Black history and explore the possibilities and limitations of that history for a viable and desirable Black future. The authors that I examine challenge the conclusions of racial science that were used to justify a racially stratified society. In doing so, these authors speculate about the imminent future of Black Americans. But even though the perspective of these texts is the imminent future, their central preoccupation is actually Black history. Each of these texts experiment with a different possible shared history with which Black Americans can anchor a collective political identity. This approach is in distinct contrast to the typical approach of turn of the century utopian texts. If we can say axiomatically that white utopian texts, though they often extrapolate and project a distant future, actually function to estrange the present moment; then we can say, in contrast, that Black utopian texts from this era, although they are concerned about an imminent future, more fundamentally estrange the past. / English
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/10197 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Miller, Brandon Ricks |
| Contributors | Salazar, James, Henry, Katherine, Williams, Roland, Melzer, Patricia |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 236 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/10159, Theses and Dissertations |
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