Tuning in to Ellison, Whitehead, and Butler

Abstract

Octavia Butler’s affection for radio inspired an aesthetic approach she called “radio imagination,” or the kind of imagination “that hears.” Ralph Ellison famously expressed similar thoughts about the democratic potentials of radio throughout his body of work. The enduring allure of radio for Black writers and visionaries, including but not limited to Butler and Ellison, hints at the lessons that can still be learned from this technology. Radio had a unique cultural history, informed in part by popular ideas about science and technology and in part by the fact that people could create their own senders and receivers. To better understand the social meanings of this important technology, this chapter analyzes radios in literature and literature on the radio. It pays particular attention to the notions of liberation and progress associated with this technology. Ultimately, this paper argues that radio—and the narrative forms it afforded and inspired—are particularly urgent to investigate in a moment where media is less often broadcast than it is algorithmically sorted into echo chambers.