The Department of English welcomes Candice Jenkins from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Join via Zoom with the meeting ID 85326653647 and the passcode 289925.
Abstract
This project engages with the literary and cultural movement Afrofuturism, and Black speculative fiction more broadly, in conversation with tenets of Afro-Pessimism — which argue that the position of the Black subject in Western society is synonymous with that of the Slave, a condition of non-being, or absolute fungibility and subjection, based in the slave’s status not as worker, but as commodity. In this essay, I discuss an idea that I am calling "speculative pessimism" — thinking Afro-Pessimism and the Black speculative together, and considering how these two approaches might have both a similarly pessimistic and a similarly imaginative provenance.
Through brief readings of contemporary Black speculative literary and cultural production (including Misha Green's 2020 HBO series "Lovecraft Country," Colson Whitehead’s 2011 "zombie" novel "Zone One" and Jesmyn Ward's 2017 novel "Sing, Unburied, Sing!"). I work to unearth new understandings of both progress and community that are emerging within 21st century African American culture.