Theorizing Black Temporalities through Toni Morrison’s Novels

This article is interested in the ways in which Toni Morrison’s novels have provided a foundation for theorizations of Black time. Beginning with the debates surrounding conceptualizations of temporal collapse in Beloved, it outlines and expands interventions from Stephen Best’s reading of A Mercy and Aida Levy-Hussen’s reading of Jazz that offer additional forms of Black temporality. The article then suggests that Paradise conceptualizes a fugitive no-time that refuses the logic and grammar of knowable temporal structures. These gathered theorizations imagine multiple Black a/temporalities in a refusal of anti-Blackness.