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Fugitive Time: Black Culture and Utopian Desire

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Date
2018
Author
Omelsky, Matthew
Advisor
Jaji, Tsitsi
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Abstract

This project examines how African diasporic writers and filmmakers from Zimbabwe, Martinique, Britain, and the United States inscribe into their works a sense of anticipation of release from subjection, as if to experience in advance the feeling of unequivocal bodily relief. Charting its appearance in both descriptive content as well as aesthetic form—such as metaphor, narrative structure, and aspects of cinematic editing—“Fugitive Time” shows how this recurring form of utopian time-consciousness distinct to African diasporic cultural expression evolves from the 18th century slave narrative to the contemporary novel, and how it mutates across disparate global geographies. In epic poetry, autobiography, experimental film, and historical novels, the project isolates this fugitive anticipation of the outside of black subjection and the persistent memory of violence that engenders it. In these works, utopia, however elusive, lies in that moment when the body at last finds release.

Type
Dissertation
Department
English
Subject
Black studies
Comparative literature
Film studies
African diaspora studies
African literature
Comparative literature
Film studies
Philosophy of time
Postcolonial studies
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16912
Citation
Omelsky, Matthew (2018). Fugitive Time: Black Culture and Utopian Desire. Dissertation, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16912.
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