Black Hopes/black Woes - Early African American Optimism and 21st Century Afro-Pessimism

Engaging with issues including black identity, agency and antiblackness, this book explores the positive ethos of early African American intellectuals and their confidence in national democratic institutions, in contrast to the emergence of a more negative 'Afro-Pessimism' among their present-day counterparts.

List of contents

Preface
Introduction
Part I. The Early Negro: A Repository of Freedom and Democracy
Chapter 1. Slave Songs and Their Legacy
Chapter 2. WEB Du Bois vs. Saidiya Hartman: Two Opposite Views of the Negro
Part II. Afro-Pessimism and Its Philosophical Issues
Chapter 3. Frank B. Wilderson's Afropessimism (2000)
Chapter 4. Blackness and Marxism
Part III. The Fanon Matrix
Chapter 5. Was Frantz Fanon an Afro-Pessimist?
Chapter 6. Hegelian Dialectics, Corpsing, and Stigma
Chapter 7. Fanon/Marriott: Is Wretchedness Blackness?
Chapter 8. Fanonian Sovereignty / Black Sovereignty
Coda. The Postcolonial Connection
Conclusion: Afro-pessimism Goes Mainstream
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Raphaël Lambert has lived in Japan for over 23 years. He resides in Kyoto and teaches African American literature and culture in the Department of American and British Cultural Studies at Kansai University in Osaka. His book, Narrating the Slave Trade, Theorizing Community (Brill), came out in January 2019. He also published essays in the Journal of Modern Literature, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and African American Review. He is coeditor of The African American Novel in the Early Twenty-First Century (Brill), a collection of essays published in December 2024.

Product details

• Authors: Raphaël Lambert, Raphael (Kansai University Lambert
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.04.2025
• EAN: 9781032473512
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3247351-2
• No. of pages: 230
• Series: Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Ethnology; USA, Ethnic Studies, Social Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, Politics & government, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, Regional Studies, United States of America, USA, Politics and government, Regional / International studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Race & Ethnic Relations, Relating to African American / Black American people