Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Political Science

Advisor

Susan Buck-Morss

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities | Political Theory

Keywords

Sun Ra, Rammellzee, Kodwo Eshun, epistemology, stories, imagination

Abstract

This study is a multifaceted attempt to complicate ideas about study, to think about the critical potential and social implications of certain kinds of stories, and how we might effectively disrupt and reinvent notions and techniques of critique and resistance in the names of hope and social transformation. It looks at the creative practices of Jazz musician and other-worldly being Sun Ra, the dual philosophies of “Ikonoklast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism” of an artist known as Rammellzee, and the concept-engineering of theorist and artist Kodwo Eshun, in an attempt to think through how radically unconventional forms of study might make knowledge claims and pose questions that can challenge and perhaps even disrupt dominant epistemological frameworks. At the most general level, this inquiry is animated by a concern with the lack of invention and creativity in theory-construction and study more broadly.

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