Black Prometheus

In this meticulous treatment, the well-known story of Prometheus becomes the basis for an extensive allegorical and historical investigation into the transatlantic slave trade. Hickman (English, Johns Hopkins Univ.) shrewdly chooses the metaphor, which undergirds the self-referential mythology of European expansionism, subverting it to provide a surprisingly different outlook when moved from identification with the oppressors to identification with the oppressed. ... the idea itself is interesting and fresh ... He shines in matters of literary interpretation and cultural resonance ... The concluding part (of four), "A Literary History of Slave Rebellion", is inspired ... Of most value to scholars of literary theory. ... Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * D. E. Wigner, CHOICE *
Black Prometheus is an exhilarating account of modernity as neither secular nor religious but comprised of a series of competing, fragile, and often flawed experiments in being human. In tending to the globalizing and racializing effects of these cosmic wagers in history and in literature, Jared Hickman writes with joyous erudition across an impressive range of debates, texts, and events. In doing so, Hickman offers nothing less than a counter-myth to the 'bad feedback loop' of European Christianity and its momentous mélange of faith and reason, immanent frames and transcendental claims, enchained bodies and wills to cognitive autonomy. * John Modern, Franklin & Marshall College *
Setting a new standard for postsecular scholarship, Black Prometheus rewrites modernity's global cosmology by focusing on Atlantic slavery in the misnamed New World. Here, race-making is theological warfare and the myths that service it are as powerful as scripture. Part philosophy, part literary criticism, part anti-racist critique, Black Prometheus dismantles the secularization thesis of modernity to devastating effect. It is impossible to imagine how Jared Hickman could have written a better book. * Robyn Wiegman, Duke University *
Black Prometheus is an ambitious and learned study. Arcing from Aeschylus to the Shelleys, from Banneker to Byron and Douglass to DuBois, Jared Hickman discloses our finite globe as the theater of titanic — and fundamentally racial — struggle. Like a powerful magnet, the ancient figure of Prometheus draws to it over the centuries a dizzying array of metacosmic speculation. Projecting Blumenberg's insights onto a global scale, Hickman here offers an unusual look at what 'work on myth' can be today. * Jonathan Elmer, Indiana University — Bloomington *