"Spooky action at a distance": chronotopic entanglement in the writing of Jay Bernard and Saidiya Hartman

Albert Einstein famously called the phenomenon quantum entanglement “spooky action at a distance”, referring to quantum particles’ ability to maintain connection despite being separated by vast distances across space and time. Michelle Wright posits that quantum entanglement is a useful paradigm for Black studies precisely because it allows for recognition of distance—dispersion—while simultaneously recognizing a persistent connection that defies linear time and space. Despite the growing number of scholars using quantum mechanics to describe Black reality and artistic creation, there have been precious few references to Black British writing. Further, there is an underutilization of the clearest theoretical bridge between physics and literary analysis: Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope.

Responding to these gaps in the field, I examine the literary spacetimes of Surge (2019) by Jay Bernard and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) by Saidiya Hartman. I consider how both works share a setting in the “theoretical archive of contemporary black existence” (Okoth para. 4, 1) while simultaneously inhabiting vastly different primary localities: New York City and New Cross. Combining Bakhtin’s chronotope with theories from physics of Blackness scholarship and Black cultural studies, I demonstrate how Black (archival) spacetime influences the voice, style, and form of the texts. My decision to use a comparative approach takes seriously the possibility of a narrative interconnection that exists across Black British and African American spacetime; the ways in which the authors converge and diverge with each other renders moments of temporal and spatial symmetry felt across the Black diaspora.