1478021233

9781478021230

9781478010548

1478010541

9781478011675

147801167X

Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified]: HathiTrust Digital Library. 2021.

Description based on print version record.

"In Black Utopias Jayna Brown looks to utopia as a way of exploring new states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Brown uses the lives and work of Black women mystics Sojourner Truth and Rebecca Cox Jackson, musicians Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and speculative fiction writers Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler to develop a concept of utopia that radically refuses the terms of liberal humanism. For Brown, utopia consists of those moments in the here and now when Black people-untethered from the hope of rights, recognition, or redress-celebrate themselves as elements in a cosmic effluvium. In such moments, musical, literary, and mystic practices become utopian enclaves in which Black people can take part in modes of alternative worldmaking. Brown demonstrates that engaging in such practices gives Black people the power to destabilize humanism and to create new genres of existence and models of collectivity"--Publisher's description.

"Engaging with the work of Black musicians, writers, and women mystics, Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as an occasion to explore new states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture."-- Provided by publisher.

Part I. Ecstasy. Along the Psychic Highway : Black Women Mystics and Utopias of the Ecstatic ; Lovely Sky Boat : Alice Coltrane and the Metaphysics of Sound

Part II. Evolution. Our Place is Among the Stars : Octavia E. Butler and the Preservation of Species ; Speculative Life : Utopia Without the Human

Part III. Sense and Matter. In the Realm of the Senses : Heterotopias of Subjectivity, Desire, and Discourse ; The Freedom Not to Be : Sun Ra's Alternative Ontology.

African Americans > Attitudes.

African Americans > Race identity.

African Americans > Attitudes.

African Americans > Race identity.