African American Fiction and Fictions of the Founding Fathers

在上个学年的大部分时间里，我都在致力于我的图书项目《黑色的希望/黑色的悲哀》，最终手稿将于2024年秋季完成。我写了大约21,000字的一章，讲述当代非裔美国学者弗兰克·B·威尔德森如何宣传非洲悲观主义的信条。本章着重论述了威尔德森对反黑人的定义，通过对葛兰西实践哲学的批判，对马克思主义的排斥，以及对科奈尔·韦斯特先知实用主义概念的草率借用。我还为我的下一章奠定了基础，即自封的非洲悲观主义者大卫·马里奥特、弗雷德·莫滕和贾里德·塞克斯顿如何在弗朗茨·法农的《地球的可怜虫》(1962)中挪用暴力和Tabula rasa的概念。去年11月，我参加了在洛杉矶新奥尔良举行的美国研究协会会议的一个小组讨论。在那个场合，我讨论了“横向普遍主义”的概念，这将是我这本书结论的一个中心问题。最后，我在科尔森·怀特黑德的《地下铁路》(2016)中写了一篇关于中介和财产的长篇文章。这篇论文呼应了我在书中提出的一些论点，并将出现在我与波兰华沙大学安娜·波奇马拉教授共同编辑的散文集《21世纪初的非裔美国人小说》(Brill 2024)中。

I have devoted most of the past academic year to my book project Black Hopes/Black Woes, which final manuscript is due in the Fall of 2024. I wrote a chapter of about 21,000 words about how contemporary African American scholar Frank B. Wilderson promotes the tenets of Afro-pessimism. The chapter focuses on Wilderson’s definition of antiblackness, rejection of Marxism through his criticism of Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, and slapdash borrowing of Cornel West’s concept of prophetic pragmatism. I have also laid the groundwork for my next chapter on how self-proclaimed Afro-pessimists David Marriott, Fred Moten, and Jared Sexton have appropriated the notions of violence and tabula rasa in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1962). Last November, I participated in a panel at the American Studies Association conference in New Orleans, LA. On that occasion, I discussed the concept of “lateral universalism,” which will be a central issue of the conclusion of my book. Finally, I wrote a lengthy essay on agency and property in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). That paper echoes some of the arguments I present in my book and will appear in The African American Novel in the Early Twenty-First Century (Brill 2024), a collection of essays I co-edit with Professor Anna Pochmara at the University of Warsaw, Poland.