Toward a Theory of Black Horror and the Fantastic Real: Ontological Violence in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s “The Finkelstein 5”

Abstract: This paper applies a theory of Black horror to an analysis of the presence of the Black body and the Fantastic in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s short story “The Finkelstein 5.” By “Black horror,” I refer to Robin Means Coleman’s distinction between “Black horror” and “Blacks in horror.” I extend and refine Coleman’s theory of Black horror to moments in literature and cinema in which the Black character appears as a fantastic narrative element in an ordinary setting. I focus a textual analysis of “The Finkelstein 5” on moments of narrative hesitation in Dunn’s testimony, the Naming group’s acts of violence, and Emmanuel’s death. From these moments, three themes of Black horror emerge: the menacing landscape, ontological violence, and the paradox of Black death. This paper employs these themes to anchor a discussion about how the presence of the Black character in these moments of narrative hesitation subverts the boundary between the real and the unreal for the Black implied reader. I draw on Black critical theory and literary theories of Black speculative fiction to argue that a theory of Black horror can provide insight into the existential implications of representations of Black existence in speculative fiction. Positioned at the intersection of narrative theories of the Fantastic and critical theories of Blackness, Black horror functions as a hermeneutic for speculative fictive texts to reimagine a reality that tends to erase Blackness in an anti-Black world.