The Dilemmas of Hope and History: Concrete Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred

Guha-Majumdar, Jishnu

doi:10.1353/pal.2017.0017

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These guiding principles are indicative of a project that is neither pessimistic nor overly optimistic; instead, a palimpsest approach rests in the in-between, resistant to binary oppositions. Furthermore, a palimpsest approach may “gesture toward somewhere that is not this place, this present where despair reigns, towards somewhere that, does not yet exist” (Guha-Majumdar, 2017, p. 131). As such, the next sections expound on possible palimpsest methodological techniques as interruptions of universal dispositions of time and space, positions of the body, and memory.…”

Section: Guiding Principles Of Palimpsest Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Here and There, Then and Now’: Envisioning a Palimpsest Methodology

Okello

Durán

2021

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Black feminisms challenge Western conceptions of linearity as an optic for understanding the experiences of Black folx in the United States social imaginary. As such, this article centers the understanding that for Black and minoritized folx, historical legacies carry the lingering effects of what may seem over and done with. These tensions converge on what M. Jacqui Alexander (2005) called the palimpsest, or “a parchment that has been inscribed two or three times, the previous text having been imperfectly erased” (Alexander, 2005, p. 190). A framing of time and realities as palimpsestic, or imperfect erasure, suggests that the past is visible and acting upon the present. The potential of a palimpsest methodology rests on the ethical entanglements of the body, memory, and space-time and afterlives with respect to existing tendencies and reliable possibilities. Methodologically, we propose that the palimpsest necessarily reads data and researcher positionalities as woven together, written over, and grappling with one another. In turn, this article intends to pursue embodied research by envisioning the notion of the palimpsest as a methodological tool. To accomplish this, we begin with a brief review of the literature and disciplinary grounds that root the notion of the palimpsest. From there, we discuss the guiding principles for this approach before offering methodological considerations. Against the violence of complicity, temporality, and objectivity, for researchers, a palimpsest approach argues for an assumed responsibility to the work they engage in, the lives they work with, and sites that ground their work.

show abstract

Section: Guiding Principles Of Palimpsest Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Here and There, Then and Now’: Envisioning a Palimpsest Methodology

Okello

Durán

2021

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…22The emphasis on the importance of vertigo in relation to the legacies of the Middle Passage takes inspiration from Guha‐Majumdar (2017), p. 131–138.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Arendt and Glissant on the politics of beginning

Kripp

2020

Constellations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The work of Hannah Arendt is situated around the abyssal aporia of beginning. By beginning, I mean the inaugural moment in which a community is established and remembered as something new. For Arendt the capacity to act and create something new is foundational to human freedom. In order to truly be a new beginning, it must be radically distinct from what came before the deed, but in order to act at all, we must somehow also be furnished with a ground on which to begin. The problem of beginning confronts the question of the "abyss of nothingness"; the paradoxical need to account for both the act of beginning that is distinct from the past, and the ground of the beginning that comes from the past and provides it with a lasting support (Arendt, 1978, p. 207). Arendt leads us to inquire into the foundation of what she calls the "world," the space of appearances grounded in common sense that ensuresnatality, the condition of possibility for beginning. While Arendt is read as perhaps the political theorist of beginnings, there are other resources that may help us think otherwise about this abyss. I turn to the Caribbean writer Édouard Glissant. To the extent that scholars engage with Glissant, it is primarily as a theorist of marronage (Roberts, 2015; Shilliam, 2011). Glissant's work is often divided into three periods: his early work, which includes Poetic Intention, his middle period, defined by his magnum opus, Caribbean Discourse, and his late period, which encompasses Poetics of Relation. For some, the political preoccupations of Glissant's early writings on self-determination give way to an apolitical poetics that prioritizes banal universality over anti-colonial difference (Hallward, 1998). I argue that this division is unsustainable and that Glissant's work is political through and through. But instead of focusing on marronage, I argue that the aporia of this article gives consistency to Glissant's thought. Glissant's spiral retelling is a working around the question of how to begin after a world is lost. In this space between past and future, Glissant confronts what John Drabinski calls the "abyssal beginning" (Drabinski, 2010, p. 301). Glissant dwells within this question, turning it over, reposing its terms, without ever resolving it. Framing Glissant's work in this way makes beginning a central concept for Glissant and places him into conversation with Arendt. 1 But despite their mutual commitments to interrogate this abyss persistently, Arendt and Glissant come to radically different conclusions. Arendt secures her world that ensures the capacity for beginning with the originary, nonviolent act of promising that is meant to keep the public life of the polis safe and sheltered from the suffering of pre-political life. Glissant, on the other hand, folds suffering into natality itself. For Glissant, to be born is to already be in relation to the original violence of the Middle Passage. I argue that these diametrically opposed confrontations with the abyss of beginning lead to two radically different politics:...

show abstract

Time Lapse and Time Capsules: The Chronopolitics of Octavia E. Butler’s Fiction

Terry

2019

Women's Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

show abstract

The Dilemmas of Hope and History: Concrete Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred

Cited by 3 publications

References 20 publications

‘Here and There, Then and Now’: Envisioning a Palimpsest Methodology

‘Here and There, Then and Now’: Envisioning a Palimpsest Methodology

Arendt and Glissant on the politics of beginning

Time Lapse and Time Capsules: The Chronopolitics of Octavia E. Butler’s Fiction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About