
Black Prometheus
Race and Radicalism in the Age of Atlantic Slavery
Jared Hickman(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 24. November 2016
Book
Hardback
544 pages
978-0-19-027258-6 (ISBN)
Description
Black Prometheus addresses the specific conditions under and the pointed implications with which an ancient story about different orders of gods dueling over the fate of humanity became such a prominent fixture of Atlantic modernity. The Prometheus myth, for several reasons--its fortuitous geographical associations with both Africa and the Caucasus; its resonant iconography of bodily suffering; and its longue duree function as a limit case for a Platonic-cum-Christian political theology of the Absolute, became a crucial site for conceptualizing human liberation in the immanent space of a finite globe structured by white domination and black slavery. The titan's defiant theft of fire from the regnant gods was translated through a high-stakes racial coding either as an "African" revolt against the cosmic status quo that augured a pure autonomy, a black revolutionary immanence against which idealist philosophers like Hegel defined their projects and slaveholders defended their lives and positions. Or as a "Caucasian" reflection of the divine power evidently working in favor of Euro-Christian civilization that transmuted the naked egoism of conquest into a righteous heteronomy-Euro-Christian civilization's mobilization by the Absolute or its internalization of a transcendent principle of universal Reason. The Prometheus myth was available and attractive to its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalists and reinventors-from canonical figures like Voltaire, Percy Shelley, Frederick Douglass, and Karl Marx to anonymous contributors of ephemera to abolitionist periodicals-not so much as a handy emblem of an abstract humanism but as the potential linchpin of a racialist philosophy of history.
Reviews / Votes
In this meticulous treatment, the well-known story of Prometheus becomes the basis for an extensive allegorical and historical investigation into the transatlantic slave trade. Hickman (English, Johns Hopkins Univ.) shrewdly chooses the metaphor, which undergirds the self-referential mythology of European expansionism, subverting it to provide a surprisingly different outlook when moved from identification with the oppressors to identification with the oppressed. ... the idea itself is interesting and fresh ... He shines in matters of literary interpretation and cultural resonance ... The concluding part (of four), "A Literary History of Slave Rebellion", is inspired ... Of most value to scholars of literary theory. ... Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * D. E. Wigner, CHOICE * Black Prometheus is an exhilarating account of modernity as neither secular nor religious but comprised of a series of competing, fragile, and often flawed experiments in being human. In tending to the globalizing and racializing effects of these cosmic wagers in history and in literature, Jared Hickman writes with joyous erudition across an impressive range of debates, texts, and events. In doing so, Hickman offers nothing less than a counter-myth to the 'bad feedback loop' of European Christianity and its momentous melange of faith and reason, immanent frames and transcendental claims, enchained bodies and wills to cognitive autonomy. * John Modern, Franklin & Marshall College * Setting a new standard for postsecular scholarship, Black Prometheus rewrites modernity's global cosmology by focusing on Atlantic slavery in the misnamed New World. Here, race-making is theological warfare and the myths that service it are as powerful as scripture. Part philosophy, part literary criticism, part anti-racist critique, Black Prometheus dismantles the secularization thesis of modernity to devastating effect. It is impossible to imagine how Jared Hickman could have written a better book. * Robyn Wiegman, Duke University * Black Prometheus is an ambitious and learned study. Arcing from Aeschylus to the Shelleys, from Banneker to Byron and Douglass to DuBois, Jared Hickman discloses our finite globe as the theater of titanic - and fundamentally racial - struggle. Like a powerful magnet, the ancient figure of Prometheus draws to it over the centuries a dizzying array of metacosmic speculation. Projecting Blumenberg's insights onto a global scale, Hickman here offers an unusual look at what 'work on myth' can be today. * Jonathan Elmer, Indiana University - Bloomington *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
1071 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-027258-6 (9780190272586)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2016
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€19.99
Available for download

E-Book
09/2016
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€62.99
Available for download
Person
Jared Hickman is Assistant Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University.
Author
Assistant Professor of EnglishAssistant Professor of English, Johns Hopkins University
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction Black Prometheus: Race and Radicalism in the Age of Atlantic Slavery
Chapter 1 Globalization and the Gods: A Theory of Race and--or as--Modernity
Chapter 2 The Terms of Prometheus's Liberation: Romanticism, Slavery, and the Titan's Triumph
Chapter 3 Africa versus the Absolute Idealism and Its Others
Chapter 4 The Afro-Promethean "Science of the Stars"
Chapter 5 Re-binding Prometheus to the Caucasus: Idealism's Other Solution
Chapter 6 Imam Shamil or, the Modern Prometheus of Caucasus
Chapter 7 Rebellious Fictions: Black Prometheus and the Undoing of the Novelistic Form
Chapter 8 Byronic Abolitionism
Index
Introduction Black Prometheus: Race and Radicalism in the Age of Atlantic Slavery
Chapter 1 Globalization and the Gods: A Theory of Race and--or as--Modernity
Chapter 2 The Terms of Prometheus's Liberation: Romanticism, Slavery, and the Titan's Triumph
Chapter 3 Africa versus the Absolute Idealism and Its Others
Chapter 4 The Afro-Promethean "Science of the Stars"
Chapter 5 Re-binding Prometheus to the Caucasus: Idealism's Other Solution
Chapter 6 Imam Shamil or, the Modern Prometheus of Caucasus
Chapter 7 Rebellious Fictions: Black Prometheus and the Undoing of the Novelistic Form
Chapter 8 Byronic Abolitionism
Index