EACW research seminar: Dr. Kelechi Anucha (Manchester), 'Moten’s Fugitive Style: Literary Form and the (Necro)politics of Refusal'
| Dates: | 19 February 2025 |
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| Times: | 12:30 - 14:30 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| How much: | Free |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Current University students, General public, Post 16, Secondary schools |
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English, American Studies and Creative Writing Research Seminar:
Dr. Kelechi Anucha (Manchester), 'Moten’s Fugitive Style: Literary Form and the (Necro)politics of Refusal'
12.30pm: light lunch in the Grad School atrium, Ellen Wilkinson Building
1.00pm: talk in C1.18, Ellen Wilkinson Building
All welcome!
Notions of fugitivity emerging from a Black studies framework continue to enjoy sustained critical attention. Fugitivity is a particularly resonant critical paradigm to engage with representations of Black life, death and survival which resist the conventions of dominant narratives. Tracking the shifting articulations of the concept in Fred Moten’s work, this paper argues that it is as a stylist that Moten makes his most definitive statements about the nature of fugitivity. Idiosyncrastic and rhetorically dexterous, Moten’s prose draws on a poetic sensibility that illustrates the many paradoxes of fugitivity, moving the concept elusively ‘in an out of measure’, ‘in and out of the frame’ of the reader’s comprehension. His criticality – variously sly, joyful, gnomic and mournful – vivifies the stakes of avoiding capture not only in a literal or political sense, but also in a sense that anticipates the traps that accompany thinking and writing within the framework of academia. Identifying how Moten’s fugitive style interpolates a particular kind of reader and produces a characteristic process of reading, this paper concludes by reading Moten alongside examples of contemporary Black diasporic literature that engage with illness, death and disaster.
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C1.18 Ellen Wilkinson
Ellen Wilkinson Building
Manchester
