Making Destiny: Black Imaginaries in Colombia and the U.S.

Abstract

This thesis proposes that juxtaposing Octavia Butler’s Parable series and the theorizing of Colombia’s Proceso Communidades Negras (PCN) reveals a transnational Black imaginary in the Americas that challenged the reimposition of neoliberalism in the 1990s. I discuss the significance of the 1990s in shaping the PCN and Butler’s work through theoretical frameworks of decoloniality, transnational feminism, cultural studies, and Black diasporic studies. I consider how the characters and themes of the Parable series subvert the underlying assumptions of neoliberal subject formation. I then examine how the PCN reimagined identity and culture to propose an alternative modernity against the Colombian state and other proponents of extractive development. Finally, I consider what themes about power and resistance against neoliberalism are revealed from Black art and social movements as represented by the PCN and Butler. I suggest that despite their disparate relation, these Black experiences unearth forms of knowledge production that are ignored due to the ontological positioning of Blackness in Western thought across the political spectrum.