Matthew Omelsky theorizes the embodied experience of time in twentieth- and twenty-first-century black art to outline the distinct utopian desire directed at the moment when pain vanishes from the body and mind, bringing with it a form of being that is free of the violence that has consumed blackness.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Black Beyondness  1
1. Toni Morrison’s Anachronic Ease  33
2. Aimé Césaire, Wifredo Lam, and the Aesthetics of Surging Life  62
3. Black Audio’s Archival Flight  99
4. Sun Ra, Issa Samb, and the Drapetomaniacal Avant-Garde  132
5. Yvonne Vera, NoViolet Bulawayo, and the Imminence of Dreaming Air  172
Coda. Fugitive Ether  205
Notes  209
Bibliography  239
Index  259

Matthew Omelsky is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rochester.