Salvaging Utopia: Lessons for (and from) the Left in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), The Deep (2019), and Sorrowland (2021)
Salvaging Utopia: Lessons for (and from) the Left in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), The Deep (2019), and Sorrowland (2021)
In response to this special issue’s question of whether mainstream science fiction has become stuck in presentism and apocalypticism, this article examines how utopia is expressed and salvaged in the work of Rivers Solomon. Using close reading of three of Solomon’s novels and the theoretical lenses of Black Utopia Studies and salvage-Marxism, I suggest that scholars and activists should approach this question from a different perspective. While Solomon’s novels may seem dystopian from the perspective of liberalism or whiteness, they can also clearly be placed within the long, if marginalized, history of leftist and black utopian thought. Likewise, where the ‘traditional’ utopia (a concept I interrogate) is often imagined as grounded in hope and futurity, black utopia and salvage-Marxism reject these concepts as counterproductive to the actual work of social justice and utopia-building. Despite their presentism and apocalypticism, then, I argue Solomon’s novels are very much utopian: they simply locate their utopian desire in radical kinship and salvage, rather than universalism or futurity.
salvage, salvage-Marxism, salvagepunk, black utopia, utopia and dystopia, science fiction, desire, Afrofuturism, radical kinship, universalism
de Bruin-Molé, Megen
50c0d19d-e9c9-4ad4-9b14-8645139e1ef9
8 October 2021
de Bruin-Molé, Megen
50c0d19d-e9c9-4ad4-9b14-8645139e1ef9
de Bruin-Molé, Megen
(2021)
Salvaging Utopia: Lessons for (and from) the Left in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), The Deep (2019), and Sorrowland (2021).
Humanities, 10 (4).
(doi:10.3390/h10040109).
Abstract
In response to this special issue’s question of whether mainstream science fiction has become stuck in presentism and apocalypticism, this article examines how utopia is expressed and salvaged in the work of Rivers Solomon. Using close reading of three of Solomon’s novels and the theoretical lenses of Black Utopia Studies and salvage-Marxism, I suggest that scholars and activists should approach this question from a different perspective. While Solomon’s novels may seem dystopian from the perspective of liberalism or whiteness, they can also clearly be placed within the long, if marginalized, history of leftist and black utopian thought. Likewise, where the ‘traditional’ utopia (a concept I interrogate) is often imagined as grounded in hope and futurity, black utopia and salvage-Marxism reject these concepts as counterproductive to the actual work of social justice and utopia-building. Despite their presentism and apocalypticism, then, I argue Solomon’s novels are very much utopian: they simply locate their utopian desire in radical kinship and salvage, rather than universalism or futurity.
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Salvaging Utopia (DE BRUIN-MOLÉ) revised manuscript v.23-09-21
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In preparation date: 10 January 2021
Submitted date: 8 June 2021
Accepted/In Press date: 16 August 2021
Published date: 8 October 2021
Keywords:
salvage, salvage-Marxism, salvagepunk, black utopia, utopia and dystopia, science fiction, desire, Afrofuturism, radical kinship, universalism
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 450509
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/450509
ISSN: 2076-0787
PURE UUID: ddadf033-c2b6-47ec-aa44-afd26e1bbe13
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Date deposited: 02 Aug 2021 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:49
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