Abstract

This paper argues that linear progress narratives of human history, influenced by a Newtonian idea of absolute spacetime, fail to accommodate the ongoing racial traumas experienced by African Americans. Informed by Michelle Wright’s Physics of Blackness, as well as broader theories from hauntology and Afropessimism, I perform a spatio-temporal analysis of three texts by African American writers: Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman, and Kindred by Octavia Butler. These readings show how writing that foregrounds slavery’s afterlives reveals the ways in which linear time functions as a false promise specifically designed to permanently delay a true reckoning with slavery’s ghost in contemporary society.

Keywords: Kindred, Saidiya Hartman, hauntology, spacetime

How to Cite:

Crowder, K. M., (2026) “'Come on. Come on. Move on.’: Linear Time as False Promise in African American Literature”, Moveable Type 16(1): 3, 17–27. doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.1755-4527.2288