{"id":11509,"date":"2024-07-09T14:12:26","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T14:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/?p=11509"},"modified":"2025-04-09T17:26:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T17:26:29","slug":"why-black-philosophy-needs-afrosurrealism-and-black-speculative-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/why-black-philosophy-needs-afrosurrealism-and-black-speculative-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Black Philosophy Needs Afrosurrealism and Black Speculative Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>James Haile III, Philosophy Department\/English Department<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2vQVx7fh1JI?si=zWc0fbe0c5cafsyH\">Watch a recording of the talk on Youtube<\/a>.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Much of Black philosophy, in particular, social and political philosophy, is concerned with what Haile calls a utopian vision. Haile argues that this vision is dependent on a speculative fiction about subjectivity and freedom borrowed largely from the Euro Modern liberal tradition. His talk argues that Euromodern tradition, while speculative in nature, is not sufficient to think or enact Black freedom and Black subjectivity. Instead, Haile argues what is needed is Afrosurrealism and Black speculative fiction. This presentation argues that the aesthetics of Afrosurrealism is the vehicle through which Black speculative fiction navigates and animates these critical concepts.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Haile&#8217;s talk utilizes philosophy, literary studies, film studies, and Black studies, to analyze W.E.B. Du Bois\u2019 \u201cThe Comet,\u201d Frederick Douglass\u2019 \u201cHeroic Slave,\u201d James Baldwin\u2019s \u201cLetter to my Nephew,\u201d and Saidiya Hartman\u2019s &#8220;The End of White Supremacy: An American Romance&#8221;. Finally, Haile analyzes Boots Riley\u2019s film <em>Sorry to Bother You<\/em> and Lena Waithe\u2019s <em>Queen &amp; Slim <\/em>as cinematic encapsulations of these literary and philosophical arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>James Haile, III, Philosophy\/English<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4099,"featured_media":11513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[289,284],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2425-past","category-bb-2024-past"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4099"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11509"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11616,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11509\/revisions\/11616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}