TY - BOOK ID - 78678803 TI - Black utopia : the history of an idea from Black nationalism to Afrofuturism PY - 2019 SN - 0231547250 9780231547253 9780231187404 0231187408 9780231187411 0231187416 PB - New York Columbia University Press DB - UniCat KW - African Americans KW - Utopias. KW - Ideal states KW - States, Ideal KW - Utopian literature KW - Political science KW - Socialism KW - Voyages, Imaginary KW - Dystopias KW - African American intellectuals KW - Politics and government. KW - Intellectual life. KW - Nationalisme noir KW - Noirs américains KW - Utopies KW - Utopies. KW - utopian literature. KW - utopias. KW - Politique et gouvernement. KW - Vie intellectuelle. KW - Utopias KW - Politics and government KW - Intellectual life UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78678803 AB - 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 that are 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. ER -