Black Prometheus

Race and Radicalism in the Age of Atlantic Slavery

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Discrimination & Race Relations, Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
Cover of the book Black Prometheus by Jared Hickman, Oxford University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jared Hickman ISBN: 9780190628666
Publisher: Oxford University Press Publication: September 28, 2016
Imprint: Oxford University Press Language: English
Author: Jared Hickman
ISBN: 9780190628666
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication: September 28, 2016
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Language: English

How did an ancient mythological figure who stole fire from the gods become a face of the modern, lending his name to trailblazing spaceships and radical publishing outfits alike? How did Prometheus come to represent a notion of civilizational progress through revolution--scientific, political, and spiritual--and thereby to center nothing less than a myth of modernity itself ? The answer Black Prometheus gives is that certain features of the myth--its geographical associations, iconography of bodily suffering, and function as a limit case in a long tradition of absolutist political theology--made it ripe for revival and reinvention in a historical moment in which freedom itself was racialized, in what was the Age both of Atlantic revolution and Atlantic slavery. Contained in the various incarnations of the modern Prometheus--whether in Mary Shelley's esoteric novel, Frankenstein, Denmark Vesey's real-world recruitment of slave rebels, or popular travelogues representing Muslim jihadists against the Russian empire in the Caucasus-- is a profound debate about the means and ends of liberation in our globalized world. Tracing the titan's rehabilitation and unprecedented exaltation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across a range of genres and geographies turns out to provide a way to rethink the relationship between race, religion, and modernity and to interrogate the Eurocentric and secularist assumptions of our deepest intellectual traditions of critique.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

How did an ancient mythological figure who stole fire from the gods become a face of the modern, lending his name to trailblazing spaceships and radical publishing outfits alike? How did Prometheus come to represent a notion of civilizational progress through revolution--scientific, political, and spiritual--and thereby to center nothing less than a myth of modernity itself ? The answer Black Prometheus gives is that certain features of the myth--its geographical associations, iconography of bodily suffering, and function as a limit case in a long tradition of absolutist political theology--made it ripe for revival and reinvention in a historical moment in which freedom itself was racialized, in what was the Age both of Atlantic revolution and Atlantic slavery. Contained in the various incarnations of the modern Prometheus--whether in Mary Shelley's esoteric novel, Frankenstein, Denmark Vesey's real-world recruitment of slave rebels, or popular travelogues representing Muslim jihadists against the Russian empire in the Caucasus-- is a profound debate about the means and ends of liberation in our globalized world. Tracing the titan's rehabilitation and unprecedented exaltation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across a range of genres and geographies turns out to provide a way to rethink the relationship between race, religion, and modernity and to interrogate the Eurocentric and secularist assumptions of our deepest intellectual traditions of critique.

More books from Oxford University Press

Cover of the book More Money, More Crime by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Human Social Evolution by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book The Icon Project by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Brigham Intensive Review of Internal Medicine by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Deadly Justice by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Kant's Theory of Knowledge by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Rene Blum and The Ballets Russes by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Rethinking Reich by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book The Age of New Waves by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book The Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics, Volume 2 by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Twice Exceptional by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book The Lees Of Virginia : Seven Generations Of An American Family by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book Nietzsche's System by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book John Birch by Jared Hickman
Cover of the book China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths by Jared Hickman
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy