Publication Title

Contemporary Political Theory

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Politics

Publication Date

1-23-2026

Keywords

Fugitivity, Truancy, Octavia Butler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Slavery, Hope

Abstract

This article reads the historical practice of fugitive truancy alongside two fictional slave narratives, Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer, to argue that truancy is a political project of resistance that highlights the world-building potential of relational ties. Truancy was a form of fugitivity in which enslaved people fled temporarily and then returned. As truancy often took the form of covert visits to loved ones enslaved elsewhere or otherwise helped strengthen kinship bonds, it was a way to resist the system of family separation that was central to American slavery and that created conditions of social death. Because truancy allowed enslaved people, particularly women, to weave together the damaged social fabric of their networks of loved ones, it undermined the power that enslavers held over them. I argue that fugitive truancy is a type of political resistance that points toward a tentative, melancholy hope for the future. The relational and often gendered nature of truancy activates ideas of relationality, melancholy hope, and home as incomplete and constantly unfolding. As a form of resistance to enslavement borne out of a tenuous connection to ideas of home, I argue that truancy can activate fugitive hope.

Copyright Note

This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Bates College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.

Required Publisher's Statement

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-026-00791-2

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