African American Gothic in the Era of Black Lives Matter

by Maisha Wester

This Element explores twenty-first century Black Gothic literature and film as it responds to American anti-Blackness and as they illustrate a mode of Black Gothic fiction termed Black Lives Matter (BLM) Gothic. The various texts express frustration, rage, and sorrow over the failures of previous civil rights fights. Intended as an introduction to a complex mode, this Element explores the three central themes in BLM Gothic texts and defines the mode's pattern of tropes. The first section reviews the depictions of American anti-Blackness, and defines the mode's pattern of tropes reveal the necropolitical mechanisms at play in US systemic racism. The second section explores the ways the fictions 'make whiteness strange' in order to destabilize white normativity and shatter the power arising from such claims. The final section examines the costs of waging war against racial oppression and the power of embracing 'monstrosity'.

82 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2025

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was temporarily free to read at cambridge .org /core/elements/african-american-gothic-in-the-era-of-black-lives-matter

I found it quite comprehensible despite not having watched a film in several years.
[the only media discussed that I've read are [book:The Ballad of Black Tom|26883558] and Victor LaValle's Destroyer. And I've read The Girl with All the Gifts and American Gods but the author is referring to the screen adaptations, so I don't know how similar they are.]

This is written in an unusually accessible style compared to the average academic text, and I think the author did a great job of both introducing the theoretic framework and showing why the subject is important. You can definitely read this without a PhD in the subject, so if you're interested do not be intimidated.

Violent and violating anti-Blackness haunts because of its consistent return across different eras and generations.

Section 1 provides an overview of racist necropolitics as they appear and function in reality and in the fiction. The section considers BLM Gothic’s depiction of Blacks as necropolitical objects and their consequent exile from citizenship; Blacks in the texts are metaphorical zombies, living but socio-politically dead.

Section 2 focuses on how the texts attempt to destabilize whiteness to ‘make it strange’. The section considers how BLM Gothic takes up Richard Dyer’s contention that the only way to end white supremacy is by de-normalizing it, thereby making whiteness and its power mechanisms visible. In doing so, BLM Gothic also reveals how whiteness corrupts and infects non-white spaces and populations, rendering intracommunal spaces and populations nightmarish. Yet even so, the texts insist that such created nightmares are still far less terrifying and alienating than predominantly white locations. As such, the texts destabilize the idea of white normativity, depicting it as a mask for cannibalistic grotesquery.

Section 3 considers the problem of self-defence and survival in BLM Gothic texts. The mode is marked by unhappy (un)endings in part because the protagonists must accede to a level of monstrosity in defending their lives.... what does it mean or matter if you’re called a monster by a horrifying society in the business of making people monstrous?

A couple major theoretical influences on this study:
Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963)
Mbembe, Achille, Necropolitics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019)

[Sunni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much looking forward to this.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick read that explores how the African American Gothic appears to undertake a distinct shift in form during the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement.