Exploring HBO’s Lovecraft Country as a model resource for developing speculative civic literacies

Abstract

HBO’s Lovecraft Country is a model resource for developing speculative civic literacies, which are forms of meaning making aimed at helping students conceive of a more equitable democratic society. Speculative civic literacies and Lovecraft Country both center the tension between Afrofuturism and Afropessimism in the Afrocentric restorying of historic narratives to more accurately reflect the experiences of a wider range of people. By studying how Lovecraft Country portrays historic events, in particular the violent enforcement of the color line, students can gain an enriched understanding of how colonial knowledge production and necropower shapes their world. By engaging with subversive art, students learn to openly question dominant assumptions, including the sacred liberal assumption that democratic reform is sufficient to achieve genuine equity as a society. Finally, seeing how Lovecraft Country restories events with empowered Black protagonists, students can learn to engage in their own restorying, and thereby envision futures of equitable flourishing, while taking seriously the persistent challenges of social death in the present. By honing their narrative tools through engagement with rich speculative fiction, students learn to create spaces where the possible can permeate into our democratic reality.

Keywords:

• Lovecraft Country
• speculative civic literacies
• restorying
• Afrofuturism
• Afropessimism
• colonial knowledge production
• necropower

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Karishma Desai, Ben Justice, Jonathan Flowers, and Bevin Flynn for their comments on drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

The author has no known conflict of interest to disclose.