Uncertain times : contingency & Black temporal imaginations

This dissertation is concerned with rethinking spatial temporality through diasporic speculative practices. This dissertation will explore how Black diasporic artists use speculative arts practices to negotiate their relationship to the past. Instead of the past being behind us, these artists insist on reformulating how we think about time to address the lingering presence of past violence that is never gone. I look specifically at Blackness, queerness and non-normative gender formations in order complicate the notion of history and the past that appears in these speculative practices. These speculative practices include visual art, performances and novels from the late 20th to early 21st century to restructure how we think about diasporic place and time. This dissertation will focus on the various theorizations of time that appear in these speculative practices as I think these are essential to articulating how Black artists conceive of time against narratives of linear progression.