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By Matthew Omelsky Department of English Duke University Date FUGITIVE TIME: BLACK CULTURE AND UTOPIAN DESIRE by Matthew Omelsky Department of English Duke University Date: _______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Tsitsi Jaji, Supervisor ___________________________ Ian Baucom ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Ranjana Khanna Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 i v ABSTRACT FUGITIVE TIME: BLACK CULTURE AND UTOPIAN DESIRE by Matthew Omelsky Department of English Duke University Date: _______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Tsitsi Jaji, Supervisor ___________________________ Ian Baucom ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Ranjana Khanna An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 Copyright by Matthew Omelsky 2018 Abstract This project examines how African diasporic writers and filmmakers from Zimbabwe, Martinique, Britain, and the United States inscribe into their works a sense of anticipation of release from subjection, as if to experience in advance the feeling of unequivocal bodily relief. Charting its appearance in both descriptive content as well as aesthetic form—such as metaphor, narrative structure, and aspects of cinematic editing—“Fugitive Time” shows how this recurring form of utopian time-consciousness distinct to African diasporic cultural expression evolves from the 18th century slave narrative to the contemporary novel, and how it mutates across disparate global geographies. In epic poetry, autobiography, experimental film, and historical novels, the project isolates this fugitive anticipation of the outside of black subjection and the persistent memory of violence that engenders it. In these works, utopia, however elusive, lies in that moment when the body at last finds release. iv CONTENTS Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION Primal Flight ............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE Desire in the Wounded Flesh ................................................................................. 53 CHAPTER TWO Anachronic Ease .................................................................................................... 103 CHAPTER THREE Archival Flight .................................................................................................... 155 CHAPTER FOUR Deferred Dreams, Deferred Bodies ................................................................... 209 CONCLUSION Fugitive Ether ............................................................................................................ 276 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................ 284 Biography ................................................................................................................................................ 307 v Acknowledgements I want to thank my supervisor, Tsitsi Jaji, whose generosity, acuity, and sprawling knowledge brought this project to life. She is, for me, the definition of what it means to be a dedicated, engaged, and thoughtful intellectual. My deepest gratitude goes to my committee: to Ranjana Khanna, who stuck with me through the initial searching stages of this project, and whose early pressings and guidance proved pivotal to what it has become; to Fredric Jameson, who changed the course of my intellectual work when he introduced me to phenomenology and the thought of Husserl and Heidegger; and to Ian Baucom, who treated me as a collaborator from day one, and always seemed to find the most unexpected and incisive questions to make me look at my work anew. My thanks to Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, and Sarah Nuttall for providing spaces where my ideas could grow and evolve. I’m grateful to Ato Quayson and Tejumola Olaniyan for their mentorship over the years. Shout out to my good friends at the African Literature Association, Stephanie Bosch Santana, Matthew Brown, Esther de Bruijn, Lindsey Green-Simms, Anne Gulick, Laura Murphy, John Nimis, Bernard Oniwe, Kirk Sides, Maria Sinon, and Duncan Yoon, for showing me that it’s possible to do rigorous and innovative work while having fun. At Duke, I. Augustus Durham, Ainehi Edoro, Davide Carozza, Samuel Shearer, and Ellen Song have been my collaborators and my dear friends. George Blake, Rose Casey, and Andres Torres have been enduring friends, interlocutors, and sources of inspiration. I’m grateful to the Duke Graduate School, the Franklin Humanities Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies for their generous vi support over the last several years. Thanks to the staff at the British Film Institute and the Institute of International Visual Art for helping to make my research stay in London a productive one. Many thanks to the wonderful organizers and friends at the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, the University of Florida’s Summer Cooperative African Language Institute, and the Baobab Language Center in Dakar. It would be remiss of me not to give my heartfelt thanks to my Wolof tutors both at UF and in Dakar, Fabienne Ngone Diouf, Ismaila Massaly, Abdou Sarr, and Oumoul Sow—Jërëjëf ci sa muñal te sa ndimmal. Through it all, my closest ones. My parents, Connie and Paul Omelsky, have never wavered in their pride and support. They taught me what it means to work hard, what it means to pursue a dream. None of this would be possible without them. And finally, etched into every word of this project, into each moment I poured over it, is my partner, Amanda Richardson, who kept me grounded, who believed in me, who always gave me the very best thing. I can’t imagine this project without that very best thing. vii INTRODUCTION Primal Flight It’s hard to leave your body behind, especially when your body is always being thrown up in your face. But being heavy is a motherfucker. The question is: how to remove weight, how to move toward lightness. Glenn Ligon, “Black Light” I cannot hope to see you again on this earth; but I pray to God to unite us above, where pain will no more rack this feeble body of mine, where sorrow and parting from my children will be no more. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Olaudah Equiano’s 1789 autobiography, like many 18th and 19th century slave narratives, is a text of anticipation. It bespeaks a kind of excess, leaping out of itself in search of another self. In one particularly proleptic moment, Equiano recalls a supernatural event that had lifted his mind into the future. Shortly before arriving by ship in Philadelphia, he had dreamt of a “wise woman, a Mrs. Davis, who revealed secrets and foretold events.” Since he had only heard of her, seeing the woman in his dream “made such an impression” on him that he became “anxious to see her” while in the city. Initially skeptical of her foresight, he was soon convinced after she recounted past events in his life “with a correctness that astonished [him].” With this newfound credence, Equiano listened to Mrs. Davis with bated breath as she “finally told me I should not long be a slave”: “She said I should be twice in very great danger of my life within eighteen months, which, if I escaped, I should afterwards go on well” (94-95). Indeed, in the following months, Equiano nearly died at sea with the fever and was nearly beaten to death in Georgia. Shortly after recovering, he purchased his manumission from his owner. 1 I begin with Equiano’s encounter with Mrs. Davis to introduce the relationship between captivity and prolepsis—the fundamental dialectic that animates this dissertation. Seeing Davis in his dream impels Equiano toward his encounter with her, and Mrs. Davis further throws his imagination forward by claiming that he would “not long be a slave.” Astounded and elated, this pronouncement serves as a kind of speech act, enabling Equiano effectively to imagine the moment of his manumission. He comes to experience that moment of freedom affectively, as if he were already there and then. By prolepsis I mean the way in which Equiano imaginatively and affectively leaps outward toward another place, another time, and another mode of being- in-the-world.1 Proleptic thought allows him to be in advance of himself, to exceed himself. His proleptic thought occurs in the lived present, but the sediment of the outside bleeds into that lived moment, it resides in the present impelling Equiano forward and outward before that outside has been properly lived. Further augmenting this momentum is the author’s retrospective narrative position. Equiano activates a kind of “switchback” effect as he moves from memory to anticipation, such that the momentum of looking backward in time accelerates in the shift to looking forward, further propelling the narrative energy of his outward leap toward the yet-to-be-lived. 1 Throughout this dissertation, I make a fundamental distinction between “affect”
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