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.

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.