Postcategorical Utopia

Pekka Kilpeläinen, PhD, works as a university lecturer of English Language and Culture at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu. His research interests include African American literature and culture, ideology and utopia, Fredric Jameson's theory of the political unconscious, transculturation and postcolonialism, queer studies, cultural memory and spatiality. He has published articles on James Baldwin, Randall Kenan and other African American writers in journals such as Atlantic Studies, European Journal of American Studies and Amerikastudien/American Studies. His most recent project, funded by the Academy of Finland, examined the manifestation and negotiations of the traumatic cultural memory of slavery in contemporary African American writing.

«Kilpeläinen's engaging journey through Baldwin's postcategorical utopian thought shows how this writer's under-appreciated later works foresee today's heated ideological and philosophical debates. From political unconscious to Afrofuturism, this book maps Baldwin's Black queer wisdom: Labels and essentialized identities easily 'become instruments of power,' dividing and alienating societies, cultures, and individuals.»

(Magdalena J. Zaborowska, Professor of American Studies and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan)

«This study is an important and timely analysis of Baldwin's later novels. Kilpeläinen's writing is sophisticated and eloquent, and his critical framework is startlingly clear and illuminating. Seizing on Baldwin's 'incessant urgency,' he advances an authoritative, convincing argument that will add enduringly to our collective appreciation of America's prophetic witness.»

(D. Quentin Miller, Professor of English, Suffolk University, Boston)

This book examines the dialectic of ideology and utopia in three novels by James Baldwin. Taking Fredric Jameson's seminal theory of the political unconscious as its point of departure, Dr Pekka Kilpeläinen conceptualizes Baldwin's writing in terms of the impulse of postcategorical utopia, where the ideological categorizations based on race and sexuality, in particular, are challenged by the utopian impulse to imagine alternative futures. The readings of three of Baldwin's novels probe into the questions of ideological and utopian spatialities, transgressive interracial and same-sex relationships, and critiques of both Western modernity and its black counterculture. Baldwin's denouncement of the oppressive effects of identity categories penetrates his entire oeuvre, from his early, critically acclaimed work to his later, often ignored novels. Seen through the lens of postcategorical utopia, the urgency of Baldwin's vision gains a new sense of immediacy and relevance.

This book examines the dialectic of ideology and utopia in three novels by James Baldwin.

Contents: Introduction: James Baldwin and the Utopian Impulse - Reading Politically: Fredric Jameson, Ideology and Utopia - Geographies of Ideology and Utopia in Go Tell It on the Mountain - Black Christ(opher) and the Triangle of Postcategorical Love in Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone - Beyond Modernity and Its Black Counterculture: The Dialectic of Ideology and Utopia in Just Above My Head - Conclusion: Postcategorical Utopia and Messianic Time.