Azusa Reimagined: Political Agency in Apocalyptic Key

Dr. Day explores how Azusa’s apocalyptic agency was deeply political,  defying and resisting America’s mythical capitalist promises of progress  and prosperity associated with racial hierarchy. Azusa’s political  agency was shaped by an apocalyptic worldview and pre-millennial grammar  which were deeply political. This apocalyptic view refashioned how  Azusa enacted the political, how it embodied political agency, and to  what end the citizen was directed. Many scholars might categorically  reject the idea of the apocalyptic as sponsoring revolutionary forms of  political agency. Instead, they regard the apocalyptic as apolitical, as  an intentional withdrawal from and apathy toward this-worldly affairs.  But that is not necessarily so. Azusa’s apocalyptic imaginary exposed  the limits of American democracy under racial capitalism at the start of  the 20th century.