Awards

• Winner of CHOICE, Outstanding Academic Title 2020

Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9780231187411

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Reviews

Alex Zamalin balances generosity and critique in a careful yet energetic and buoyant manner. -- Joseph Winters, author of <i>Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress</i> Alex Zamalin's focus in this engaging text is the underside of the more familiar modes of African American writing. From this hidden ground, he captures imaginative creations that have been fed by African American doubts, fears, and despair about democracy and racial equality in America. These creations have been both utopian and dystopian as opposed to strategic and reformist. Beginning with Martin Delany and concluding with Octavia Butler, Black Utopia is an exquisite introduction to this more hidden strain of African American thought. -- Paget Henry, author of <i>Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy</i> Crisply written and compellingly argued, Black Utopia traces a remarkable genealogy of black utopian and anti-utopian thought from Martin Delany in the early nineteenth century to Octavia Butler in the early twenty-first. A versatile cultural historian and political theorist, Alex Zamalin reveals that the democratic hope for racial equality and social justice has historically overcome dystopian conditions, ranging from slavery to present-day racism, while animating the African American intellectual imagination. -- Gene Andrew Jarrett, author of <i>Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature</i> Covering considerable ground with unusual eloquence and depth, Alex Zamalin brilliantly elucidates the contours of a black utopian tradition that poses a forceful challenge to our contemporary modes of political theorizing. Like the utopias and dystopias it delineates, Black Utopia both inspires and unsettles the reader in critically productive ways. This is first-rate scholarship. -- Simon Stow, John Marshall Professor of Government and American Studies, College of William and Mary An instructive guide for all those who are interested in deepening their knowledge of American history and thinking critically about American politics. . . Highly recommended. * Choice * For its recovery of utopian thinking as creatively and politically productive in African American literature, however, Zamalin earns high marks. -- Joel Wendland-Liu, Grand Valley State University * Journal of American Ethnic History *

Covering considerable ground with unusual eloquence and depth, Alex Zamalin brilliantly elucidates the contours of a Black utopian tradition that poses a forceful challenge to our contemporary modes of political theorizing. Like the utopias and dystopias it delineates, Black Utopia both inspires and unsettles the reader in critically productive ways. This is first-rate scholarship. -- Simon Stow, John Marshall Professor of Government and American Studies, The College of William and Mary Alex Zamalin balances generosity and critique in a careful yet energetic and buoyant manner. -- Joseph Winters, author of <i>Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress</i>

Alex Zamalin balances generosity and critique in a careful yet energetic and buoyant manner.--Joseph Winters, author of Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress

Crisply written and compellingly argued, Black Utopia traces a remarkable genealogy of black utopian and anti-utopian thought from Martin Delany in the early nineteenth century to Octavia Butler in the early twenty-first. A versatile cultural historian and political theorist, Alex Zamalin reveals that the democratic hope for racial equality and social justice has historically overcome dystopian conditions, ranging from slavery to present-day racism, while animating the African American intellectual imagination. -- Gene Andrew Jarrett, author of <i>Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature</i> Covering considerable ground with unusual eloquence and depth, Alex Zamalin brilliantly elucidates the contours of a Black utopian tradition that poses a forceful challenge to our contemporary modes of political theorizing. Like the utopias and dystopias it delineates, Black Utopia both inspires and unsettles the reader in critically productive ways. This is first-rate scholarship. -- Simon Stow, John Marshall Professor of Government and American Studies, The College of William and Mary Alex Zamalin balances generosity and critique in a careful yet energetic and buoyant manner. -- Joseph Winters, author of <i>Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress</i>

Author Information

Alex Zamalin is assistant professor of political science and director of the African American Studies Program at University of Detroit Mercy. He is the author of African American Political Thought and American Culture: The Nation’s Struggle for Racial Justice (2015); Struggle on Their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance (Columbia, 2017); and Antiracism: An Introduction (2019).

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