André Carrington’s ‘Speculative Blackness’ is a novel approach to the consumption of race representation in media. Carrington explores how Blackness is manufactured, consumed, and transformed through the speculative fiction genre across multiple 20th and 21st century mediums. Traditional media of comic books and television shows reveal the marginalized status of Black figures however, these media do not exist in a vacuum. The consumption of speculative fiction is a transformative process for the original content, which consequentially produces amateur media due to a long-established history of fan interaction. Black representation is characterized as the exception, not the rule, in traditional production, but fan consumption reconfigures these notions. Ultimately, Carrington’s work is an innovative dialogue regarding a genre that creates worlds speculating on what could be. Speculative fiction breaks down preexisting notions of our reality and creates worlds with entirely new expectations and interactions. With the creative liberty of the genre, Carrington casts Black representation as a consumed media but also an imaginative effort.
Articles by Daniella Mascarenhas
Daniella Mascarenhas is an ABD doctoral candidate of political science at the University of Houston. Her dissertation examines the political theory of punishment, specifically looking at how American private prisons are incompatible with the prevailing justifications for punishment in a social contract. She has accrued teaching experience in political theory, federal government, and local government at Lone Star Community College and University of Houston. Other research interests include comparative political parties, political institutions, social contract theory, and American constitutionalism.