Introduction -- Varieties of black historicism : issues of antimodernism and "presentism" -- From Superman to man : a history of decline -- Progress, providence, and civilization : Alexander Crummell, Frederick Douglass, and others -- W.E.B. Du Bois and antimodernism : Section 1: Arminianism, antinomianism, and Africanity in religion ; Section 2: Barbarism, civilization, and decadence -- Afrocentrism, cosmopolitanism, and cultural literacy in the American Negro Academy -- Caliban's utopia : modernism, relativism, and primitivism -- Barbarism grafted onto decadence -- Conclusion : Afrocentrism, antimodernism, and utopia.