Publisher Description

Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies

A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time
Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center Black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. In doing so, Keeling offers a sustained meditation on contemporary investments in futurity, speculation, and technology, paying particular attention to their significance to queer and Black freedom.
Keeling reads selected works, such as Sun Ra's 1972 film Space is the Place and the 2005 film The Aggressives, to juxtapose the Afrofuturist tradition of speculative imagination with the similar "speculations" of corporate and financial institutions. In connecting a queer, cinematic reordering of time with the new possibilities technology offers, Keeling thinks with and through a vibrant conception of the imagination as a gateway to queer times and Black futures, and the previously unimagined spaces that they can conjure.

Author Biography

Kara Keeling is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Keeling is the author of The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (2007) and the co-editor (with Josh Kun) of a selection of writings about sound and American Studies entitled Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies, and (with Colin MacCabe and Cornel West) of European Pedigrees/African Contagions: Racist Traces and Other Writing, a selection of writings by the late James A. Snead.

Review

"Just when the world seems to be collapsing, Queer Times, Black Futures guides us towards an anti-fragile future that exists here and now. The key? Embracing and holding in tension: Afro-futurist freedom dreams, the queer temporalities that animate Black Swans, and the radical refusal and opacity of Herman Melville's Bartleby and Eduoard Glissant's philosophy. If we haven't realized the possibilities that lie waiting in the present, its because the frame of black experience has not yet registered. Moving seamlessly from James Snead to Sun Ra, from Gilbert Simondon to Beth Coleman, Audre Lorde to Gilles Deleuze, Keeling helps us imagine the (im)possible. Stop reading this blurb and start reading this book. Now." -- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Updating to Remain the Same
"For its contributions to queer constructions of temporality and futurity, in particular in the context of Black media and existence, the text is valuable for queer of color theorists. Professors and students of media, cultural, and/or communication studies would also find the text useful as it provides analyses of various Black and queer media—transnational films, avantgarde music, and digital technologies." * QED *
"Not satisfied to leave readers in the abyss of endless critique, Keeling is concerned with alternative futures and the ethical imagination of 'the time after the future.' Queer Times, Black Futures is masterful--deeply engaging, wide ranging, carefully researched, and creative in its use of allegory to demonstrate the potential and effect of opacity for black futures and possibilities." -- Herman Gray, Emeritus Professor, UC Santa Cruz
"...an incredible, (im)possible work that is invested in worlds to come with the necessary caveat that its readers divest from a critical project that is measured in immediate returns." -- Courtney R. Baker * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *

Long Description

Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. In doing so, Keeling offers a sustained meditation on contemporary investments in futurity, speculation, and technology, paying particular attention to their significance to queer and black freedom. Keeling reads selected works, such as Sun Ra's 1972 film Space is the Place and the 2005 film The Aggressives, to juxtapose the Afrofuturist tradition of speculative imagination with the similar "speculations" of corporate and financial institutions. In connecting a queer, cinematic reordering of time with the new possibilities technology offers, Keeling thinks with and through a vibrant conception of the imagination as a gateway to queer times and black futures, and the previously unimagined spaces that they can conjure.

Review Quote

"Not satisfied to leave readers in the abyss of endlesscritique, Keeling is concerned with alternative futures and the ethicalimagination of 'the time after the future.' Queer Times, Black Futures ismasterful--deeply engaging, wide ranging, carefully researched, and creative inits use of allegory to demonstrate the potential and effect of opacity forblack futures and possibilities."-Herman Gray,Emeritus Professor, UC Santa Cruz

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