Aerial Archives

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project examines the links between American aeriality and race to reveal how a shift in seeing, picturing, and thinking of the aerial, has caused corollary shifting grounds for race―and the human race―in the planetary imagination of American (in particular African American) literature. The aerial view has helped change archaeology, geology, town planning, and sociology, fields where its use has shown significant development. This project draws on and departs from recent studies on aeriality such as Jason Weems' Barnstorming the Prairies, Sonja Dumpelmann's Flights of Imagination, and Caren Kaplan's Aerial Aftermaths. My interest here is in asking how the turn to aeriality can lead to a shift in literature and literary studies. To put the question slightly differently: How can one theorize about aeriality as a literary and critical practice?During the second year of the project, I explored the black nuclear Pacific that was born with the aerial dropping of the atom bomb and its heuristic literary genealogy, by looking at the work of African American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who reviewed the imported Japanese film Hiroshima. I considered Hansberry’s portrait of the kitchenette planet, haunted by threats of bombing, where mothers, a fetus, and a plant struggle for survival (A Raisin in the Sun) and her post-nuclear holocaust play (What Use Are Flowers?).