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Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama

Online ISBN:
9781496850607
Print ISBN:
9781496850553
Publisher:
University Press of Mississippi
Book

Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama

Derek C. Maus (ed.),
Derek C. Maus
(ed.)

Professor

SUNY Potsdam
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James J. Donahue (ed.)
James J. Donahue
(ed.)

Professor / Assistant Chair

SUNY Potsdam
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
23 April 2024
Online ISBN:
9781496850607
Print ISBN:
9781496850553
Publisher:
University Press of Mississippi

Abstract

Greater Atlanta focuses on an anxious and unresolved “moment” in American cultural history: the extended fading of the initial optimism surrounding Barack Obama’s election as president that Larry Wilmore named the “unblackening” of America in 2015. Although strongly identified with the rise of Donald Trump and his brand of ethnonationalist grievance politics, this period also witnesses a notable flourishing in satirical works produced by Black artists as well as a significant shift in the tenor of such works. Like its precursors, Black satire after Obama continues to engage in both intramural and extramural critiques of toxic cultural narratives, particularly those that profoundly affect African Americans’ lives. However, it also notably intensifies the degree of scorn directed toward those who claim to be dismantling anti-Black racism without forsaking the privileges afforded them by its continued existence. Thus, a third satirical vector aimed at hypocritical allies becomes prevalent in the mid-2010s, and the works that employ it largely eschew expectations of reform, instead offering a frustrated self-affirmation that echoes the forthright declaration that Black Lives do indeed Matter. The seventeen essays within this collection are all rooted in the groundbreaking television series, Atlanta, whose four pandemic-interrupted seasons (2016-2022) span nearly the length of the “post-Obama” years thus far. The collection radiates outwards from this core to examine more than a dozen other novels, films, and television shows that together reveal the ways in which contemporary Black satire has developed in response to the particular cultural dynamics of America’s “unblackening.”

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