"Speculating Beyond Racial Equality: Derrick Bell's Science Fiction"

GLAM (Guest Lectures in American studies Münster)

Prof. Mark Jerng, University of California, Davis

Derrick Bell was best known as law school professor and founder of Critical Race Theory, but far from writing law review analyses, the majority of his work is best characterized as a blend of legal argumentation and speculative fiction. The range of speculative tropes that Bell utilized was extensive, including sudden, unexplained disappearances of people, world-altering mists, alien encounter, terra incognita, and time travel, among others. Far from being just an imaginative vehicle for legal analyses, these stories rethink the speculative imagination of law. This talk argues that Bell uses science fiction to illuminate the racialization of legal space-times and to critique the adequacy of racial equality as a horizon for change and struggle.

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