No Hope?

Since their inceptions, black and queer studies have sought to articulate the positions of “black” and “queer” within American social life—often converging on the goal of liberation. This thesis examines the intersection of two “negative” theoretical frameworks—Afropessimism and anti-social queer theory (or “queer negativity”)—to interrogate both the limits and generative potential of radical negativity. Though emerging from distinct intellectual traditions, these frameworks conceptualize blackness and queerness as constitutive negations—gaps within the dominant social order that render those so marked inassimilable to normative notions of humanity. While the convergences of these theories can be illuminating, their shared pessimism risks obscuring alternative modes of life and hope that emerge in spite of this negation. To explore this tension, I analyze James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962) and Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn (1987)—texts frequently cited for their bleak portrayals of black life—focusing on their engagements with queerness and their complex articulations of hope. What emerges is a sort of oppositional hope: a rejection of the existing order that does not transcend negation but works within and through it, gesturing toward (if not quite reaching) black/queer futures that resist current logics of intelligibility and envision new possibilities for being.