Avery F. Gordon: The Hawthorn Archive: Letters from the Utopian Margins (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · abolitionism, anarchism, archive, black people, capitalism, colonialism, friendship, politics, race, racism, slavery, utopia
“The Hawthorn Archive, named after the richly fabled tree, has long welcomed the participants in the various Euro-American social struggles against slavery, racial capitalism, imperialism, and authoritarian forms of order. The Archive is not a library or a research collection in the conventional sense but rather a disorganized and fugitive space for the development of a political consciousness of being indifferent to the deadly forms of power that characterize our society. Housed by the Archive are autonomous radicals, runaways, abolitionists, commoners, and dreamers who no longer live as obedient or merely resistant subjects.
In this innovative, genre- and format-bending publication, Avery F. Gordon, the “keeper” of the Archive, presents a selection of its documents—original and compelling essays, letters, cultural analyses, images, photographs, conversations, friendship exchanges, and collaborations with various artists. Gordon creatively uses the imaginary of the Archive to explore the utopian elements found in a variety of resistive and defiant activity in the past and in the present, zeroing in on Marxist critical theory and the black radical tradition. Fusing critical theory with creative writing in a historical context, The Hawthorn Archive represents voices from the utopian margins, where fact, fiction, theory, and image converge.
Reminiscent of the later fictions of Italo Calvino or Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, The Hawthorn Archive is a groundbreaking work that defies strict disciplinary, methodological, and aesthetic boundaries. And like Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, which established Gordon as one of the most influential interdisciplinary scholars of the humanities and social sciences in recent years, it provides a kaleidoscopic analysis of power and effect. The Hawthorn Archive’s experimental format and inventive synthesis of critical theory and creative writing make way for a powerful reconception of what counts as social change and political action, offering creative inspiration and critical tools to artists, activists, scholars across various disciplines, and general readers alike.”
Publisher Fordham University Press, 2018
ISBN 0823276325, 9780823276325
xii+472 pages
Interview with author: Krystian Woznicki (transversal, 2019).
Review: Eddie Bruce-Jones (Race & Class, 2019).
PDF (46 MB)
Comment (0)Alex Zamalin: Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (2019)
Filed under book | Tags: · afrofuturism, black people, blackness, fiction, freedom, gender, human rights, literary criticism, race, science fiction, utopia
“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.”
Publisher Columbia University Press, New York, 2019
ISBN 9780231187404, 0231187408
x+182 pages
Reviews: Smaran Dayal (Social Text, 2020), David A. Lemke (Utopian Studies, 2020), Francis Shor (J American History, 2020), Ladee Hubbard (TLS, 2019).
Comment (0)Adam Pendleton: Black Dada: What Can Black Dada Do for Me Do for Me Black Dada, a Reader (2017)
Filed under artist publishing | Tags: · art history, black people, conceptual art, dada, race
“Black Dada Reader is a collection of texts and documents that elucidates “Black Dada,” a term that acclaimed New York–based artist Adam Pendleton (born 1984) uses to define his artistic output. The Reader brings a diverse range of cultural figures into a shared conceptual space, including Hugo Ball, W.E.B. Du Bois, Stokely Carmichael, LeRoi Jones, Sun Ra, Adrian Piper, Joan Retallack, Harryette Mullen, Ron Silliman and Gertrude Stein, as well as artists from different generations such as Ad Reinhardt, Joan Jonas, William Pope.L, Thomas Hirschhorn and Stan Douglas. The Reader also includes essays on the concept of Black Dada and its historical implications from curators and critics including Adrienne Edwards (Walker Arts Center / Performa), Laura Hoptman (MoMA), Tom McDonough (Binghamton), Jenny Schlenzka (PS122) and Susan Thompson (Guggenheim).”
Edited by Stephen Squibb
Publisher Koenig Books, London, 2017
ISBN 9783960981053, 3960981058
331 pages
via tilda
Interviews with author: Jess Wilcox (Art in America, 2009), Karlynne Ejercito (Artforum, 2016), Awa Konaté (Third Text, 2020).
Reviews: Yaniya Lee (Flash Art, 2017), Terence Trouillot (ArtNet, 2017), Robin Pogrebin (New York Times, 2018).
PDF (64 MB)
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