Black Apocalypse

Afrofuturism at the End of the World
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-520-38846-8
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 16, 136 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 318 g

Reihe: American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present

Juxtaposing the world-building of afrofuturism and the world-negating of afropessimism to show how both movements have offered us critical resources of hope.

Science fiction imagines aliens and global crises as world-unifying events, both a threat and promise for the future. Black Apocalypse is an introduction to the past and present of black engagement with speculative futures. From Octavia Butler to W.E.B. Du Bois to Sun Ra, Tavia Nyong’o shows that the end of the world is crucial to afrofuturism and reframes the binary of afropessimism and afrofuturism to explore their similarities.

Interweaving black trans, queer, and feminist theories, Nyong'o examines the social, technological, and existential threats facing our species and reflects on shifting anxieties and hopes for the future. Exploring the apocalypse in movies, art, literature, and music, this book considers the endless afterlives of slavery and inequality and revives the radical black imagination to envision the future of blackness. Black Apocalypse argues that black aesthetics take us to the edge of this world and into the next.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nyong'O, Tavia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Sozialprognosen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Futurologie (Interdisziplinär)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Overview

Introduction
1. The Virus Is the Alien
2. The Changing Same
3. A Reenchanted Cosmos?

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Tavia Nyong’o is the author of The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory and Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. He is a professor of performance studies at Yale University and a curator at the Park Avenue Armory.