Black Temporality

Futurity, progress, futurism, and history have become contested ideas within the valence of Black life. This course examines both the speculative imagination and the aspirational and pessimistic stakes of temporality within the Black diaspora. While Afrofuturism often privileges outer space and science fiction as its premier site and grammar, this course seeks to magnify other articulations of Blackness and time that may fall out of its purview. In so doing, this course considers how past and current socio-political movements (e.g., Haitian Revolution and Black Lives Matter), memory, reparations, and geography have informed critical race theory, philosophy, and Black expressive arts.