In stories of unexpected death, rural African Americans investigate signs of premonition and personal destiny in the predeath behavior, biographical attributes, and conversations of deceased relatives. Premonition is clouded in misdirection; stories explore the conundrum that the future is known and actively communicated by those who will die, but the information only becomes accessible to the living after the person's death. Latent predictive powers exist in the universe, but they must be discovered and ratified. Drawing on epistemologies of surprise and the exotic, I argue that premonition is an individual and communal knowledge inquiry process through which the living test fate's edges, respond to its possibilities, and seek to predict its influence. I challenge scholarly interpretations of fatalism as a passive, ultimately defeatist worldview. [death communication, premonition knowledge, family stories, fatalism, surprise and intentionality, African American]

中文翻译：

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非裔美国人死亡预感家庭故事中的宿命论知识与探究

在意外死亡的故事中，农村非裔美国人调查了死前行为、传记特征和已故亲属的谈话中的预感和个人命运的迹象。预感因误导而蒙上阴影；故事探索了一个难题，即那些将死的人知道未来并积极交流，但这些信息只有在人死后才能为生者提供。宇宙中存在潜在的预测能力，但它们必须被发现和认可。借鉴惊奇和异国情调的认识论，我认为预感是一个个体和公共知识探究过程，通过它，活生生的考验命运的边缘，回应它的可能性，并寻求预测它的影响。我挑战将宿命论视为被动的学术解释，最终失败主义的世界观。[死亡交流，预感知识，家庭故事，宿命论，意外和故意，非裔美国人]