Afrofuturism 2.

0
 Afrofuturism 2.0

The Rise of Astro-Blackness

Edited by Reynaldo Anderson and

Charles E. Jones

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 Contents

Introduction: The Rise of Astro-Blackness vii

Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones

Part I: Quantum Visions of Futuristic Blackness 1

1 Cyborg Grammar?: Reading Wangechi Mutu’s Non je ne
regrette rien through Kindred 3
Tiffany E. Barber
2 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0: Vernacular Cartography and
Augmented Space 27
Nettrice R. Gaskins
3 The Real Ghosts in the Machine: Afrofuturism and the Haunting
of Racial Space in I, Robot and DETROPIA 45
Ricardo Guthrie

Part II: Planetary Vibes, Digital Ciphers, and Hip Hop Sonic Remix 61
4 The Armageddon Effect: Afrofuturism and the Chronopolitics
of Alien Nation 63
tobias c. van Veen
5 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe: Psychedelic
Soul Message Music Infused with a Sci-Fi Twist 91
Grace D. Gipson
6 Hip Hop Holograms: Tupac Shakur, Technological Immortality,
and Time Travel 109
Ken McLeod

v
vi Contents

Part III: Forecasting Dark Bodies, Africology, and the Narrative

Imagination 125
7 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion: The Black Church in
Post-Modernity 127
Andrew Rollins
8 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism: Where
Am I in This Future, Stewart Brand? 149
Lonny Avi Brooks
9 Rewriting the Narrative: Communicology and the Speculative
Discourse of Afrofuturism 167
David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr
10 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine:
Difference, Ethics, and Empathy 185
Esther Jones
11 “To Be African Is to Merge Technology and Magic”: An
Interview with Nnedi Okorafor 207
Qiana Whitted

Index 215
About the Editors and Contributors 219
 Introduction
The Rise of Astro-Blackness

Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones

Since the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the
twenty-first century, following 9/11 and the crash of the 90s digital boom,
the World Wide Web has transitioned significantly. From a 1.0 static read
only search for content web-based driven usage, in the middle of its first
decade it began to evolve into a social media driven environment character-
ized by entities such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Wikipedia
(Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila 2001). Correspondingly, the 1.0 era of
the web was delineated as a race and gender neutral zone with the utopian
potential to transform society. Alondra Nelson noted: “race and gender dis-
tinctions would be eliminated with technology was perhaps the founding
fiction of the digital age.” However, scholars like Alondra Nelson (2002),
Alex Weheliye (2002), Kali Tal (1996), Anna Everett (2002), Ron Eglash
(2002), and others pointed out the inequities inherent in what was then re-
ferred to as the digital divide, with regard to the conventional narrative that
race was a liability in the new century.
The purpose of this book is to identify the applicability of contemporary
expressions of Afrofuturism to the field of Africana Studies, to connect these
phenomena to other fields of academic inquiry, and to expand it to include
what we refer to as Astro-Blackness. Astro-Blackness is an Afrofuturistic
concept in which a person’s black state of consciousness, released from the
confining and crippling slave or colonial mentality, becomes aware of the
multitude and varied possibilities and probabilities within the universe (Rol-
lins 2015, 1). More precisely, Astro-Blackness represents the emergence of a
black identity framework within emerging global technocultural assem-
blages, migration, human reproduction, algorithms, digital networks, soft-
vii
viii Introduction

ware platforms, bio-technical augmentation and are constitutive of racialized

identities that are increasingly materialized vis-à-vis contemporary techno-
logical advances or “technogenesis, the idea that humans and technics have
co-evolved together” (Hayles 2012). Furthermore, this notion of Astro-
Blackness suggests a shift from the modern era or nation-state bound analog
notion of blackness transitioning through a digitized era toward and in ten-
sion with post-digital perspectives as a global response to the planetary and
near planetary challenges facing black life in the early twenty-first century.
What is presently called Afrofuturism was originally a techno-cultural per-
spective accompanying engagement in a form of cultural production, origi-
nating in practices of black urban dwellers in North America after World
War II and popular examples emerged in the works of Jazz musician Sun Ra
and artists of the Black Arts Movement like Ishmael Reed or Amiri Baraka
(Anderson and Jennings 2014).
Although the practices that form the black artistic matrix and practice of
what we call Afrofuturism can be traced back over 100 years; its current
trajectory can be connected to literary engagement between writers Greg
Tate and Mark Sinker in 1992 surrounding the relationship between science
fiction and Black music. The recently popularized term “Afrofuturism” was
coined in the early 1990s by writers like Mark Dery in an interview, with
Samuel Delaney, Greg Tate and Tricia Rose and defines it as “Speculative
fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American
concerns in the context of twentieth-century techno-culture—and, more gen-
erally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technolo-
gy and a prosthetically enhanced future—might, for want of a better term, be
called Afrofuturism” (Dery 1994, 180). In eighties and nineties England, the
Black Audio Film Collective with members like John Akomfrah, and in
Germany, organizations like AFROTAK also represented early impulses of
late twentieth century Afrofuturism. However, their early articulation of the
phenomenon was limited largely to music, art, the digital divide, the public
sphere and speculative literature. Kali Tal articulated the notion of a race-less
cyberspace vis-a-vis an Afrodiasporic culture analyis of W. E. B. Du Bois’s
notion of “Double Consciousness” as a sophisticated cyber culture critique
on the tension between identity, multiplicity and postmodernity (1996).
Alondra Nelson noted: “Afrofuturism can be broadly defined as ‘African
American voices with other stories to tell about culture, technology and
things to come.’” (Nelson 2002, 9). More recently, Kodwo Eshun asserts:
“Afrofuturism may be characterized as a program for recovering the histories
of counter-futures created in a century hostile to Afrodiasporic projection and
as a space within which the critical work of manufacturing tools capable of
intervention within the current political dispensation may be undertaken”
(2007).
 Introduction ix

An important distinction between concepts such as futurism and Afrofu-

turism is that the former began as an avant-garde movement among European
intellectuals and artists, and during and after WWII in the ideas and work of
Isaac Asimov, Claude Shannon, Philip K. Dick, Bertrand de Jouvenel, The
Rand Corporation and others; leading to a current situation where “The pow-
erful employ futurists and draw power from the futures they endorse” (Eshun
2007, 289), whereas the latter, Afrofuturism, has its contemporary begin-
nings in the North American Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s
among various literary figures, modern jazz musicians, R&B and pioneering
hip hop performers. Recently, cultural critics like Martine Syms (2014) have
asserted in “The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto” that Afrofuturism focuses
too much on unexamined tropes, references to Egyptology, figures in popular
culture, and needs to develop a new focus on black humanity and a critique
on “true, vernacular reality.” This is not a new argument as scholars like Ron
Eglash (2002) previously made the case that Afrofuturists were ignoring the
scientific sphere. Furthermore, critics like Tegan Bristow have asserted that
“Afrofuturism has nothing to do with Africa, and everything to do with
cyber-culture in the West”. This assertion is misplaced due to the fact that 1)
Africa and its diaspora are connected via cyber-culture and have exchanged
ideas, art, politics and more recently remittances since the nineteenth centu-
ry; and 2) the African diaspora has been institutionally designated the sixth
zone of the African Union and similar to early developments of Pan African-
ism starting in the African Diaspora, Afrofuturism is now a Pan African
project. Moreover, this concern may reflect more of a Post-Cold War/ Post-
Apartheid existential crisis of some White South Africans and some of their
former “clients” living in the midst of a predominantly Black African society
than the “Africanity” of an emerging global Afrofuturism. Therefore, con-
temporary twenty-first century Afrofuturism, or what is now called Afrofu-
turism 2.0, a term initially discussed at the Alien Bodies conference at Emory
University in 2013, is moving in the direction of a more applied, theoretical,
critical, and transdisciplinary approach in regards to the future of African
peoples.

AFROFUTURISM 2.0

A goal of this volume is to build upon the previous definition and identify the
twenty-first century contemporary expressions of Afrofuturism emerging in
the areas of metaphysics, speculative philosophy, religion, visual studies,
performance, art, and philosophy of science or technology that are described
as “2.0,” in response to the emergence of social media and other technologi-
cal advances since the middle of the last decade. Whereas Afrofuturism was
primarily concerned with twentieth century techno-culture, the digital divide,
x Introduction

technology, music and literature in the West; Afrofuturism 2.0 is the early
twenty-first century technogenesis of Black identity reflecting counter histo-
ries, hacking and or appropriating the influence of network software, data-
base logic, cultural analytics, deep remixabililty, neurosciences, enhance-
ment and augmentation, gender fluidity, posthuman possibility, the specula-
tive sphere, with transdisciplinary applications and has grown into an impor-
tant Diasporic techno-cultural “Pan-African” movement (Samatar 2015).
Moreover, within this Pan-African Afrofuturist movement there will be re-
gional differences such as, and not limited to, Caribbean Futurism, African
Futurism and Black futurism. Contemporary Afrofuturism 2.0 is now charac-
terized by five dimensions, to include: metaphysics; aesthetics; theoretical
and applied science; social sciences; and programmatic spaces. The first
Afrofuturist dimension of metaphysics includes and engages ontology or the
meaning of existence, relations between the ontological and epistemological
or the truth-functional aspects of knowledge, cosmogony or origin of the
universe, cosmology or structure of the universe, an example of this are
naturalistic Afro-Diaspora traditions, Rational Panpsychism (or Animism)
and indigenous African spiritual practices such as Okuyi or Dogon cosmolo-
gy in West Africa and or Ifa in Nigeria to name a few; and the works of W. E.
B. Du Bois, John Mbiti, Kamau Brathwaite, Kwasi Wiredu, Yvonne P. Chi-
reau, Dwight Hopkins, and Albert Raboteau represent some of the scholars
within this dimension. The second Afrofuturist dimension of aesthetics in-
cludes anthropomorphic art, music, literature, and performance; examples in
this sphere include the performers or artists like Sylvia Wynter, Sanford
Biggers, Sun Ra, Henry Dumas, John Akomfrah, Afrika Bambatta, Juan
Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Jimi Hendrix, Janelle Monae and
others. The third dimension of Afrofuturism is in the areas of theoretical and
applied science; for example, archaeology, math, physics, chemistry, biolo-
gy, astronomy; and applied areas such as computer science, architecture,
engineering, medicine, and agriculture“; the creations of architect Kiluanji
Kia Henda, the work of ethno-astronomer Jarita Holbrook or physicist James
Gates and his work with West African Adinkra Symbols, and Ron Eglash
and his work in ethno-mathematics and African fractals is instructive in this
area. A fourth dimension of Afrofuturism is in the social science disciplines
to include: sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, history,
and are represented by scholars such as Kwame Nkrumah, Molefe Asante,
James Stewart, Dorothy Roberts, C.T. Keto, Marimba Ani, Anna Everett,
Alex Weheliye, Kali Tal and others. A fifth and final dimension of Afrofu-
turism is in the programmatic arena such as exhibitions, community organ-
izations, online forums, and specialized salons or labs; the community work
of Philadelphia Afrofuturist Affair founder Rasheedah Phillips along with the
recently organized Afrofutures_UK (2015) salon organized at Mad Labs in
Manchester, England, the Afrofuture festival (2015) organized by WORM in
 Introduction xi

Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the Afrofuturist series (2015) organized by The

Goethe Institute in Accra, Ghana, Johannesburg, South Africa and Nairobi,
Kenya are especially noteworthy in this area.

SCHOLARSHIP

There have been several books or journals dedicated to the topic of Afrofu-
turism; however, most of the contributions have been outside of the Africana
Studies discipline. First, one of the most prominent books on the topic was
written by Kodwo Eshun in 1998, and the most prominent among journals on
Afrofuturism (self-titled Afrofuturism) was published by Social Text and ed-
ited by Alondra Nelson in 2002. Eshun’s book, More Brilliant Than the Sun:
Adventures In Sonic Fiction, developed in the late 90s, was the first book-
length treatment on the topic of Afrofuturism. However, its focus on music
and visual culture excluded other technocultural philosophical dimensions of
Afrofuturism.
Alondra Nelson’s special issue on Afrofuturism that was published in the
journal Social Text began to expand on previous work done by Eshun and
others. However, its primary focus was in the technocultural aspects of
Afrofuturism, in light of issues and concepts such as the digital divide, late
twentieth century online black activism, and speculative fiction, sound, mu-
sic, or visual art. However, when Alex Weheliye authored the book, Phonog-
raphies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (2005), it was awarded The Mod-
ern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize for Out-
standing Scholarly Study of Black American Literature or Culture. This work
became among the first published book length treatments of work done on
Afrofuturist-related work in an Africana Studies department. Finally, Mar-
lene Barr’s Afrofuture Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s New-
est New-Wave Trajectory (2008), Sandra Jackson and Julie Moody- Free-
man’s The Black Imagination: Science Fiction, Futurism and The Specula-
tive (2011), and more recently Ytasha Womack’s popular representation of
the concept in her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Culture (2013) and Rasheedah Phillip’s book Black Quantum Futurism: The-
ory and Practice Vol. 1 (2015) have continued to introduce the concept to the
broader public.

SYMPOSIA

The last several years have seen an explosion of interest in the techno-culture
sphere and Afrofuturism within the Africana Studies field. In the United
States, one of the first important meetings, the eBlack Studies conference,
emerged out the initiative sponsored by the National Council for Black Stud-
xii Introduction

ies with support from the Ford Foundation. The workshop was hosted in July
24–27, 2008, by the Department of African American Studies at the Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Other black studies departments hosted or co-hosted conferences, such as:
the AfroGEEKS conference (2005) at the University of California Santa
Barbara; “Double-Consciousness and the Digital Individual: Reflections on
Black Thought 2.0” (2012) at Duke University; “Alien Bodies: Race, Space,
and Sex in the African Diaspora Logo” (2013) at Emory University; Duke
University’s Race in Space conference (2014); the Black Studies in the Digi-
tal Age seminar at Northwestern University; “Afrofuturism in Black Theolo-
gy” (2014) at Vanderbilt University; and the AstroBlackness conferences at
Loyola-Marymount University (2014–15).
These are just a few of the symposiums or conferences the Africana
Studies field has organized recently to study the growing Afrofuturism
movement. However, in the interest of brevity, it is important to note and
articulate previous Africana formations around the concept of Afrofuturism.

AFRICANA STUDIES AND TECHNOLOGY

During the discipline’s formative stage (1968–1972), minimal attention was

devoted to the relationship between scientific and technological issues and
Africana Studies. By and large, black studies practically made only a passing
reference to the role of science and technology in the scholarly investigation
of people of African descent. However, in 1970, a year before Sun Ra’s
historic lecture series “The Black Man in The Cosmos” at the University of
California Berkley, Nathan Hare, chair of the Black Studies department at
San Francisco State University introduced a “Black Science” course that
would contrast Ra’s metaphysical approach and introduce science in relation
to the Black studies curriculum.
For instance, in a discussion of the nation’s first comprehensive black
studies curriculum, Nathan Hare, the founding chair of the Department of
Black Studies at San Francisco State University, sole mention of the topic
was a black science course identified as an example of the pragmatic phase
of the curriculum which consisted of courses producing socio-economic
skills” (Hare 1970). The three credit hours course “Black Science” intro-
duced students to “scientific development stressing the contributions of black
scientists. Emphasis on the application of fundamental concepts and methods
of science to the environment of black Americans” (Hare 1970).
The subsequent, albeit, limited scholarship on the discipline’s scientific
and technological dimension has tended to focus on curricular (Stewart 1976;
Little, Leonard, and Crosby 1980; King 1992; Stewart 2004), pedagogical
(Hendrix, Bracy, and Davis 1985; Herron 1984; Stewart 1985; 2003), re-
 Introduction xiii

search (Hendrix, Bracy, Davis, and Herron 1984; Stewart 2004; Conyers and
McKnight 2005), and community empowerment (Anderson 1974; Stewart
1976; Johnson 1980; Jenkins and Om-Ra Seti 1997; Alkalimat 2001; Ander-
son and Stewart 2007, 277–303) issues.
James Stewart, the long-time black studies scholar and arguably the disci-
pline’s leading authority on the integration of science and technology in
Africana Studies, has produced an impressive body of work (1976; 1985;
1988; 2003; 2004; Anderson and Stewart 2007, 277–303) spanning over
thirty years (1976–2007) which proves useful in elucidating the aforemen-
tioned extant literature.
In his initial 1976 essay appearing in Black Books Bulletin, Stewart iden-
tified several critical future developments in black studies among which were
scientific and technological concerns. Stewart’s prescient essay addressed
several of the salient themes which would become the focus of the subse-
quent scholarship on the integration of scientific and technological issues
into the discipline of black studies. He contended that “the integration of
instructive and research applications using modern technology is critical to
the amelioration of adverse material conditions facing Black people” (1976,
24). His contention raised critical instructional, research, and liberational
implications for the discipline that undergirded its future attention to scientif-
ic and technological concerns.
The discipline’s attention to the importance of the relationship between
black studies and scientific and technological issues underscored in Stewart’s
provocative essay was evident in the early effort of the National Council for
Black Studies (NCBS) to develop a standardized curriculum for the disci-
pline. In 1980, the organization’s curriculum committee under the leadership
of William Little included science and technology among the eight subfields
of its recommended curriculum model (Little, Leonard, and Crosby 1980).
Specifically, the committee’s contention was that the science and techno-
logical development subfield “examines and analyzes the development of
mathematics, metallurgy and mineralogy, architecture, agronomy, etc. This
area also examines the relationship of science and the application of technol-
ogy in various African societies (e.g.) medicine, agriculture, architecture,
education, and nutrition” (1980, 16). The curricular focus was further echoed
by William H. King, the second president of NCBS. King proposed a trans-
disciplinary approach to explore several facets of science and technology
from an Afrocentric perspective wherein the world view, normative assump-
tions, and frames of reference grow out of the experiences and folk wisdom
of black people (1992, 25). King proclaimed that “Black Studies can play a
most important role in examining the ‘values and expectations’ that guide
science” (1992, 30).
In 2004, Stewart revisited the curricular inclusion of science and technol-
ogy in Africana Studies when he proposed “a strategy to integrate the study
xiv Introduction

of science and technology into Black/Africana studies and instruction”

(Stewart 2004, 277). Stewart introduced a framework for developing relevant
instructional and research activities,” which consists of a “synthesis of Black/
Africana Studies and Science, Technology and Society (STS) perspectives”
(Stewart 2004, 277).
In this landmark essay, Stewart offered several “examples of curricular
strategies designed to familiarize students with the interface between black/
Africana studies and STS” (2004, 294). Examples of the curricular treat-
ments included a comparison of ancient and/or pre-industrial African and
“modern” western scientific/technological approaches; impacts of technolog-
ical innovations on the lives of African Americans; medical research, health-
care policy, and quality of life of African Americans; and environmental
degradation/enhancement and the quality of life of African Americans (Stew-
art 2004, 297–302).
Notwithstanding the efforts of NCBS and the exhortation of King (1992)
and Stewart (1976; 2004), the discipline has failed to make significant in-
roads in incorporating scientific and technological perspectives in the curric-
ulum of black studies academic units. Black science courses still remain a
rarity in the discipline and more importantly minimal attention has been
devoted to the systematic integration of science and technology in the educa-
tional orientations of black studies programs. Fortunately, the discipline has
made considerable more pedagogical progress with respect to the application
of scientific and technological innovations.
Furthermore, King highlighted the pedagogical applications of technolog-
ical innovations, such as the computer, as a promising alternative mode of
instruction in the discipline. Stewart insightfully observed that the mode of
instruction “would emphasize to students that modern technological develop-
ments and concerns of black people were interwoven” (Stewart 1975, 24). He
proposed that black studies scholars collaborate with those with technical
expertise to address the myriad problems plaguing the black community.
Finally, Stewart insightfully observed: “An expected early development will
be the use of modern technology to bring Black Studies to the black commu-
nity at large” (Stewart 1975, 24). He insightfully observed that the mode of
instruction “would emphasize to students that modern technological develop-
ments and concerns of Black people were interwoven” (Stewart 1975, 24).
Stewart’s computer software package was entitled Liberation 2000? The
Black Experience in America (Stewart 1985).
As principal investigator of a grant funded by the United States Depart-
ment of Education that was designed to improve the quality of science and
technology instruction for secondary urban minority students, Stewart intro-
duces the concept of “Science, Technology and Society (STS) to enhance the
instructional quality of science education” (Stewart 1988). Stewart continues
his explorations of pedagogical technological application in the essay “Will
 Introduction xv

the Revolution Be Digitized?: Using Digitized Resources in Undergraduate

Africana Studies Courses”—in which he identifies web-based resources and
Internet-based documents for use in Africana Studies coursework (Stewart
2003).
In his seminal essay which addresses both scientific and technological
curriculum and application in Africana Studies, Stewart “proposes a strategy
to integrate the study of science and technology into Black/Africana studies
and instruction” (Stewart 2004, 277). He maintains: “There can be little
doubt that the serious scrutiny of science and technology is a legitimate and
logical extension of the quest by Black/Africana Studies scholar/activists to
fashion a body of knowledge that can provide a foundation for developing a
viable liberation strategy” (Stewart 2004, 277).
His landmark essay, A Synthesis of Black/Africana Studies and Sciences,
Technology and Society (STS) Perspectives, describes his proposed frame-
work for developing relevant instructional and research activities (Stewart
2004, 277). Finally Stewart’s most recent contribution to this topic is the
inclusion of a chapter devoted to science and technology in Introduction to
African American Studies: Transdisciplinary Approaches and Implications
(Anderson and Stewart 2007, 277–303). A chapter entitled “Science, Tech-
nology, and the Future of African Americans” examines a host of critical
scientific and technological issues impacting the material conditions of
African Americans including integrating science and technology studies in
Africana Studies, the “Digital Divide,” future studies, the scientific and tech-
nological oppression of people of African descent, and liberational uses of
science and technology (Anderson and Stewart 2007, 277–303).
Many of the essays of this volume grew out the relationships formed at
Astroblackness conferences and personal relationships developed within
Africana Studies and what the visual artist John Jennings refers to as the
Black Speculative Art Movement. Furthermore, the writers were interested in
continuing the debate about the transition of Afrofuturism into other dimen-
sions of interest or research and approach their themes from various theoreti-
cal or analytical perspectives.
Tiffany Barber explores Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu’s Non je ne
regrett rien (2007) in the frame of Octavia Butler’s part-science fiction, part-
neo-slave narrative Kindred (1979), raising the question: what about black
female subjectivity requires a futurist context? What are the agential possibil-
ities for black female bodies historically represented as quintessentially oth-
er, abject, and alien? This chapter uses Dana’s dismemberment in Kindred
and Afrofuturist theorizations on blackness, technology, and female human-
ity to illustrate how Mutu’s above mentioned collage enacts a strategy for
deconstructing and reconstructing how difference becomes inscribed on
black female bodies. As such, this chapter also examines how Mutu’s tech-
nique of exquisite corpse—or subjecting the human body to grotesque juxta-
xvi Introduction

positions and distortions—operates as transgressive disfigurement, disman-

tling normative constructions of black female subjectivity and freedom and
literally recrafting black female bodies and new futures.
In chapter 2, Nettrice Gaskins discusses Afrofuturism as Web 3.0: “Ver-
nacular Cartography and Augmented Space.” Furthermore, the chapter cri-
tiques the use of how geometric charts or maps, virtual and real-world geo-
graphic locations of avatars, or objects such as mobile smartphones reflect
movement and migration, and how black/African artists share and exchange
cultural data. These contemporary forms do not exhaust the possibilities of
augmented space at the interaction of art, media, and vernacular cartography.
Moreover, the chapter asks whether the traditional or ancient African forms
become irrelevant and “invisible,” or if artists end up creating new experi-
ences in which the spatial and information layers are equally important. The
chapter also explores the relationship between cultural data and information
and how this might function differently in today’s digital culture. Throughout
the chapter, the term augmented (space or reality) is re-conceptualized as a
concept, or a cultural and aesthetic practice rather than as new technology.
Ricardo Guthrie examines the confluence among Afrofuturism, the envi-
ronment, and cyborg manifestations of twenty-first century cinema. In this
chapter, two films offer compelling opportunities for utilizing Afrofuturist
analytics to re-center the racial urban imaginary: In DETROPIA, filmmakers
Ewing and Grady explore the devolution of Detroit from a thriving 1.8 mil-
lion-person metropolis founded on a unionized auto industry and a thriving
black professional class, to today’s de-industrialized city of 700,000. DE-
TROPIA’s dystopic present anticipates tomorrow’s urban crises, while illu-
minating black change agents and environmentalists who envision a new city
beyond existing racial paradigms. In I-Robot, the character Dell Spooner
(Will Smith) represents a type of Afro-Pessimist whose cynicism gradually
reflects a turn towards Afrofuturism’s merger of black cultural ethos and
commitment to struggle. Correspondingly, this chapter examines racialized
urban geographies and develops Afrofuturist analysis to explain conflicted
racial imaginaries in dystopic Detroit and in a seemingly utopian Chicago of
2035.
In chapter 4, tobias c. van Veen takes up Paul Gilroy’s call to develop an
adequate and conceptual language for Afrofuturism by undertaking a “specu-
lative exegesis” of Mark Sinker’s early meditations on black Atlantic arts
and music in The Wire. By focusing on what Public Enemy calls “Armaged-
don been in effect,” and by reading their mediatised performances as articu-
lating Sinker’s concept of Alien Nation, van Veen explicates how both con-
cepts address the temporal rupture of the Middle Passage and its “obliteration
of a normalized past.” Germane to Africology and Africanist Studies, van
Veen argues that both Afrofuturism and Afrocentrism are differentiated, as
well as constitutively entwined, by how they utilise historical revisionism—
 Introduction xvii

or what Kodwo Eshun calls their “chronopolitics”—to address the “void of

origin.” Emphasising how Afrofuturism focuses on open-ended temporalities
rather than foreclosed pasts, van Veen turns to the transgressive music and
poetry of Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, and Gil Scott-Heron to devel-
op a typology of Afrofuturist becomings, arguing for the ontological and
political force of radical black performance in overcoming “slavery’s dehu-
manization program.”
In chapter 5, Grace Gipson explores the relationship between female an-
droid character Cindi Mayweather (aka Janelle Monáe) and her encounter
with a musical market world filled with severe social stratification. Since
2007, Monáe has reenergized the Afrofuturism movement with her epic vo-
cals, immaculate clothing style, and magical lyrics. Gipson asserts, much like
her Afrofuturistic predecessors Sun Ra and George Clinton, Monáe presents
a persona that can be likened to a polyvalent afrofuturistic aesthetic that
embodies the desires of black feminism mixed with a futuristic sonic groove.
This chapter shows how Monae strategically mixes space with racial and
sexual politics, black feminism, historical narratives, and class conflicts all in
a “radical visionary Afrofuturistic” perspective.
Ken McLeod explores the impact of hip hop icon Tupac Shakur in rela-
tion to technology, arguing that hip hop often refutes notions of “real time.”
Focusing on Tupac and drawing on concepts from Auslander, Baudrillard,
Eshun, Hayles, and Weheliye, among others, this chapter analyzes the place
of time-travel and immortality in Afrofuturist music. Furthermore, McLeod
asserts that, rather than signaling a loss of human agency, post-human, cy-
borg, and/or holographic performances reinforce a collective human con-
sciousness and therefore underline Afrofuturist ideals surrounding utopian
migration and freedom.
In chapter 7, Andrew Rollins explores how Afrofuturism intersects with
the historical mission of the black church in America. Although intellectuals,
artists, and scholars in a broad range of fields have already generated creative
or scholarly production on Afrofuturism, the black church has been silent on
the subject. Rollins argues the black church is at a crossroads in its develop-
ment in American society and must adapt to the challenges of the current age
to remain relevant. Rollins asserts for the black church to serve the “present
age” it must successfully transition, and to fulfill its calling, it must incorpo-
rate an Afrofuturist view as a guide for praxis in contemporary postmodern
society.
Lonny Avi Brooks critiques his personal experience as a minority fore-
caster conducting ethnographies of new media and futurist think tanks in
Silicon Valley from 1998 to 2011. Based on field research, Brooks devel-
oped a set of Foresight Frames. First, examining how future texts become
normalized sets of expectations. Brooks collected sets of future visions pro-
duced at these elite sites in the form of future scenarios, visual trend maps,
xviii Introduction

and interviews of forecasters. Second, these contemporary future visions

project racial, segregated, and elite future landscapes by reinforcing notions
of racial segregation and discrimination. Therefore, these Foresight processes
avoid issues of latent racism that pervade the history of Futures studies, its
assumptions, and future scenarios.
In chapter 9, David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr propose communicology as a
framework for understanding Afrofuturism as speculative discourse. Com-
municology’s method of explicating “human consciousness and behavioral
embodiment as discourse within global culture” allows for the study of
Afrofuturism as not only “the speculative fiction of the African diaspora,”
but also the diasporic communication of the experience of blackness. The
chapter initially frames the intellectual origins of communicology as a way to
engage Afrofuturist discourse. Second, it reviews the recent literature on
Afrofuturism as a critical method and liberating hermeneutic that, with com-
municology as a theoretical and methodological framework, can rewrite the
narrative of human experience through mainstream academic discourse.
In chapter 10, Esther Jones utilizes an Africana Womanist approach to
examine how black women’s science fiction contributes to medical human-
ities discourse, particularly as it relates to the practice of empathy in medi-
cine. Jones argues that black women’s science fiction enables us to analyze
the shifts that may need to take place in order to transform the current uneven
medical paradigm to establish a culture of health parity. Moreover, Jones
argues that science fiction writings by Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and
Nnedi Okorafor enable people to examine how human beings may be able to
communicate more ethically and empathetically across differences.
Finally, in chapter 11, scholar Quiana Whitted conducts an interview with
prominent Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor. Okorafor’s approach
to speculative fiction draws upon elements of fantasy, magic realism, hard
science fiction, and dystopian horror. Okorafor values the notion of Afrofu-
turism as a way of being for the female protagonists of her novels. Okorafor
is the first Nigerian American to win the World Fantasy Award for her
critically acclaimed novel, Who Fears Death (2010). She also received the
Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa for the young adult novel, Zah-
rah the Windseeker (2005) and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award for
best speculative fiction by a person of color for The Shadow Speaker (2007).
In this interview, the writer and professor talks about the role of Afrofuturism
in her work, including the cultural fusion of technology and magic.
 Part I

Quantum Visions of
Futuristic Blackness
 Chapter One

Cyborg Grammar?
Reading Wangechi Mutu’s
Non je ne regrette rien through Kindred

Tiffany E. Barber

A maimed figure—part human, part animal, part machine—is suspended in

the middle of a gray and brown, cloud-like background. Severed from its
upper half and projected into a cumulous abyss, only the lower limbs of the
figure remain, separated like scissors. The bottom leg extends and the top leg
bends at the knee, reaching upward like a scorpion’s tail or a morbidly
elegant arabesque. Instead of a knee joint, the top leg is equipped with a
motorcycle wheel that connects to spinal tubing. Green and gray-scaled ten-
tacles cover its pelvic region. The right half of the picture plane is bisected by
the figure’s bottom leg. Instead of a foot, the end of the leg is fitted with an
amalgam of animal hoof, stiletto, and blooming flower. The left half of the
picture plane is dominated by a coiling serpent whose skin is imbued with
violet, red, and other earthen hues. 1
The center of the image is the most visually arresting. Occupied by black
root-like structures emerging from the figure’s lower excised torso, the gray
background is spattered with colliding color fields of ochre, green, and pink
spewing from the figure’s top leg from which its foot appears to have been
violently amputated. The composition is arranged in such a way that it is hard
to tell whether the coiling serpent is responsible for the figure’s ruptured
state, or if the plant parts have caused the body to breach internally. The
collage, Non je ne regrette rien (2007) by artist Wangechi Mutu, confronts
the viewer with a complex scene that is repulsive yet seductively compelling,
and the arrangement of human, animal, plant, and mechanical parts suggests
a type of mutualism that results in a dismembered body. Known for her

3
4 Tiffany E. Barber

grotesque representations of black female bodies that exist between the cy-
borgian and the Afrofuturistic, Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien offers a unique
approach to black female subjecthood, what I call transgressive disfigure-
ment. 2 It pictures ways of being that are not predicated on wholeness but
which instead incorporate alternate, at times violent or “undesirable” forms
of transformation that serve to produce dismembered black female bodies.
In 2000, just before graduating with an MFA in sculpture from Yale
University, Mutu began exploring relations between black women’s bodies,
female victimhood, resistance, and transformation. Pin-Up, two grids of
twelve 13x10 and 14x10 images, was her first series of collaged female
figures. It consists of images culled from pornography and health and beauty
magazines mixed with ink and watercolor on paper. Mutu’s collage practice
has since evolved to include images extracted from automobile and motorcy-
cle magazines as well as dated anthropology and anatomy pamphlets and
textbooks. A primary component of Mutu’s subject matter, the female cyborg
body, brings her work into conversation with the liberatory presuppositions
of posthumanism as feminist critique first theorized by Donna J. Haraway in
1985. 3
The incorporation of various modes of technology and mechanical parts
as proxies for human limbs situates Mutu’s work within a posthumanist
discourse of the cyborg. In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway writes, “A

Wangechi Mutu, Non je ne regrette rien, mixed media on Mylar, 138.4 x 233.7 cm,
2007.
 Cyborg Grammar? 5

cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek
unitary identity and generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the
world ends); it takes irony for granted. . . . Intense pleasure in skill, machine
skill, ceases to be a sin, but an aspect of embodiment” (Haraway 1991, 180).
Haraway embraces technology as a way of moving away from a humanism
built on normative binaries and dualisms in order to create a regenerated
world without gender. For Haraway, humanism’s binary system is crippling
and requires a welcome incorporation of technology to negate this system:
“We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitu-
tion include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without
gender. . . . Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in
which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves” (Haraway
1991, 181).
Following Haraway, Mutu’s figures revel in boundary confusion. As
such, they dispel the utopian ideal of a whole, self-possessed body. This ideal
is frequently associated with a modern Cartesian humanism centered on
wholeness that underscores science fiction, a genre with which Afrofuturism
finds kinship and comes to play in Mutu’s work. 4 But where Haraway’s
theorizations of the cyborg neglect an explicit examination of race, the fig-
ures in Mutu’s collages assail racialized dimensions of female humanity by
critically emphasizing how black female bodies are seen and acquire mean-
ing. And rather than a hopeful dream, Non je ne regrette rien excises the
black female body as a privileged signifier or site of identification for black
female subjectivity; Mutu’s black cyborgian female figures are perpetually
uneasy, undone.
In addition to posthumanism, because of the joining of racialized and
gendered bodies with techno-mechanical parts Mutu’s work has repeatedly
been considered Afrofuturistic. Since its coining, Afrofuturism has been con-
sidered a revisionist discourse in which racialized and gendered bodies in the
past, present, and future use technology to new reparative ends. Bringing the
discourses of posthumanism and Afrofuturism into direct engagement to ana-
lyze Mutu’s collages posits new conceptions of subjecthood relative to race,
gender, and sexuality. Other than mentions of race as a system of domination
and a call for intersectional feminist scholarship that contends that race,
gender, sexuality, and class are not mutually exclusive, Haraway stops short
of directly dealing with the implications of race in relation to the cyborg in
her manifesto. 5 As a result, Tricia Rose questions the usefulness of the cy-
borg as both an imaginary and a political formation for black women in the
portion of her interview with Mark Dery included in Flame Wars: The Dis-
course of Cyberculture (1994). Rose notes, “I’m not troubled by the cyborg
as an imaginary, but by the fact that it’s almost impossible for the average
young woman to see herself as a person who could take up that much social
space” (Tricia Rose qtd. in Dery 1994, 216).
6 Tiffany E. Barber

According to Rose, the cyborg’s possibilities are too fantastical to func-

tion in actuality; the average (black) woman, presumably unmotivated by or
unaware of such possibilities, cannot imagine herself as such a transgressive
figure. Here, Rose dismisses the potential for ‘the average young woman’ to
possess agency in radically new ways, and in doing so, she refuses to ac-
knowledge the transformative power of the cyborg. Furthermore, Rose wor-
ries that Haraway’s theorizations of the cyborg reinforce gendered dynamics
of technology in which machines are signifiers of an “impregnable masculin-
ity,” while flesh is coded as feminine (Tricia Rose qtd. in Dery 1994, 217).
Finally, Rose contends that previous conceptualizations of femininity do not
allow for racialized and gendered subjects—namely black women (Rose in
fact posits herself as an example)—to exhibit power and aggression without
being perceived as masculine.
Mutu herself regards her visually disturbing and disruptive collages,
which picture complex, fragmented, and exaggerated black female bodies, as
a way to “question the relationship between resilience and compliance,”
between agency and victimization (Wangechi Mutu qtd. in Murray 2005, 8).
Indeed, much of the critical response to Mutu’s collage practice situates her
work within a redemptive paradigm. Within this paradigm, agency and resis-
tance are linked with transcendence and transgression, despite the overt ref-
erences to deviance, disease, and disfigurement that populate her collages.
As such, Mutu’s work is often summarily praised for what critics consider to
be its staging of hybridity and multiplicity as modes of resistance; her figures
are understood as adaptors and adaptations that tack back and forth between
danger and reclamation, mutations of normalized ideals of femininity, beau-
ty, and sexuality. I propose, however, that Mutu’s collage practice results in
something more alarming, more disturbing than this drive toward reparative
resistance. Rather than claiming that Mutu’s images picture repaired or reas-
sembled bodies, I locate Mutu’s work within discourses of posthumanism
and Afrofuturism to depart from them. What other ways can we read Mutu’s
collage practice? Can the feminist theorizations that shore up discourses such
as posthumanism and Afrofuturism allow us to think of Mutu’s collages as
repetitions of fragmentation, and further as representations of anti-healing
rather than of redemption?
In this chapter, I offer a close reading of Non je ne regrette rien against
the grain of how her work is typically theorized to claim that Mutu’s project
is actually to produce dismembered black female bodies. Within this frame-
work, Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien dismantles normative constructions of
black female subjectivity and freedom by crafting maimed black female
bodies. Additionally, my analysis of Mutu’s use of collage moves away from
readings of the artist’s own African origins and fragmentation as a feature of
postcolonialism. 6 My study of Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien instead rejects
notions of “the body” itself as a locus for identity formation. 7
 Cyborg Grammar? 7

To set up this approach to Mutu’s work, I read the figure at the center of
Non je ne regrette rien alongside the protagonist in Octavia Butler’s 1979
novel Kindred to bring new considerations to a relation between historical
and discursive violence and black female bodies. Kindred is one of Butler’s
many novels considered to be a work of Afrofuturism in addition to its
generic status as a neo-slave narrative. Neo-slave narratives are modern and
postmodern fictional works by contemporary authors who use existing slave
narratives, imagination (or what author Toni Morrison terms re-memory),
oral histories, and archival research to address and often reconstruct the
experiences and alienating, traumatic effects of enslavement in the “New
World” (Reed 1976; Butler 1979; Morrison 1987; Rushdy 1999). Using spe-
cific instances from neo-slave narratives and how they represent dismem-
bered black female bodies underscores a relation between physical, bodily
fragmentation and a fragmented racial and gendered self that I attest Mutu
explores through collage. One such instance is the self-amputation scene in
Kindred. In this pivotal scene, Dana becomes lodged between the world of
her time and the world of her ancestors. A fatal skirmish ensues, resulting in
Dana’s dismemberment. Her body literally becomes a battlefield on which
issues of possession, ownership, and agency are played out. Dana’s amputa-
tion serves as a point of entry into Mutu’s collage and a way of thinking
through the values and limits of fragmentation relative to race, gender, and
sexuality at issue in both works. These two texts—one visual and one liter-
ary—share cyborg thematics and generic traits rooted in science fiction and
fantasy as methods for imagining pasts, presents and, most importantly, alter-
native though not necessarily redemptive futures.
What about black female subjectivity requires a futurist context? What
are the generative possibilities for black female bodies historically represent-
ed as quintessentially other, abject, and alien? What is at stake in privileging
a project that ultimately produces dismembered black female bodies? Liter-
ary scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin’s definitive essay (1996) on what she terms
“textual healing” is an important point of reference for contemporary studies
of neo-slave narratives and for my writing on transgressive disfigurement.
Griffin’s essay is a significant contribution to a body of literature that ad-
dresses the place of black women writers within the American literary canon
and the recuperative efforts of black women’s literature as a response to the
legacies of slavery. In “Textual Healing: Claiming Black Women’s Bodies,
the Erotic and Resistance in Contemporary Novels of Slavery,” Griffin dis-
cusses how contemporary black women authors rewrite dominant discourses
of black bodies as ugly, inferior, and inhuman into sites of “healing, pleasure,
and resistance” (Griffin 1996, 521). Griffin continues,

I am using the term healing to suggest the way in which the body, literally and
discursively scarred, ripped, and mutilated, has to learn to love itself, to func-
8 Tiffany E. Barber

tion in the world with other bodies and often in opposition to those persons and
things that seek to destroy it. Of course, the body never can return to a pre-
scarred state. It is not a matter of getting back to a “truer” self, but instead of
claiming the body, scars and all—in a narrative of love and care. As such,
healing does not deny the construction of bodies, but instead suggests that they
can be constructed differently, for different ends. (1996, 521)

In this passage, crucial to the definition of textual healing, Griffin advises

literally and discursively mangled black bodies to love themselves in order to
“get along” and to guard against destruction from outside forces. Textual
healing, then, is a project of reclamation as resistance. Griffin’s rhetoric is
grounded in a hope for rehabilitation and reconciliation, a return to a restored
black self through love and care in literature and in the world at large.
By contrast, Non je ne regrette rien centers on rupture and trauma repre-
sented by a dislocated body violently separated from its other half. How
might we begin to think of the construction and contemporary representa-
tions of black female bodies in postmodern collage and fiction apart from a
binary of slavery and freedom, trauma and reconciliation, not as sites of
reclamation but as something else altogether? This analysis of Non je ne
regrette rien situates fragmentation and disfigurement as epistemologies for
“reading” black female bodies that defy reparative constructions of black
female subjectivity. Departing from Griffin’s notions of textual healing, I
argue that Dana’s self-dismemberment in Kindred and Non je ne regrette
rien picture the repulsive effects of how difference becomes inscribed on
black female bodies. In their negation, both texts undermine Griffin’s argu-
ment and demand a reconsideration of conceptions of healing, freedom, re-
sistance, and agency.
In addition to the texts’ shared themes, reading Mutu’s collage through
Butler’s novel also serves as a heuristic tool in considering the implications
of Mutu’s work within a uniquely American imaginary in which racial dis-
course plays a central role. Although Mutu is originally from Kenya, much of
her work addresses articulations of blackness and black womanhood within
an American context. To this end, Mutu’s practice draws equally from
African vernacular forms, modernist European collage styles, and American
mass culture, but it also follows conventions of the neo-slave narrative.
Mutu certainly distinguishes her African origins and a relation to black-
ness from an American black experience born out of slavery; however,
Mutu’s reference to a forced creation story vis-à-vis colonialism and her
imaginative interventions into this story rhyme with the neo-slave narrative
genre. For example, in an interview with curator and critic Okwui Enwezor,
Mutu states, “[B]roaching the idea of race is very complicated because
Africans have a different historical experience to those who were abducted
and brought here to the USA. They’re equal senses of alienation and exile but
 Cyborg Grammar? 9

the myth that’s loudest is the slave narrative, which doesn’t apply to a huge
amount of Africans, myself included. I always say that I was racialised [sic]
in America. . . . My work relates to the forced creation story that the colonial-
ists invented us.” 8 Despite Mutu’s attempt to maintain a certain distance
between her own blackness and the processes of racialization that form part
of an American understanding of blackness, I contend that Mutu’s work is
informed by and reflects a politics of race and racial identification particular
to the U.S. Furthermore, several of Mutu’s collages and video works approx-
imate the genre of the neo-slave narrative, a notably American literary form. 9
For example, a number of Mutu’s collages distort female reproductive
organs, recurring motifs that resonate with the process, economy, and culture
of production that justified and regulated sexual violence enacted toward
black female bodies under conditions of slavery. One Hundred Lavish
Months of Bushwhack (2004) features a nude female figure whose upper and
lower torso is masked by a serpentine entanglement that doubles as both a
labyrinthine web and an unruly pubic bush covering the figure’s exposed
mid-section. Mutu’s Sprout (2010) pictures an inverted figure rendered in a
pose similar to a birthing position, its feet replaced with budding branches.
The figure’s pubic region is soiled—stained with splotches of brown paint as
well as soil as organic matter itself—and sprouting a blossoming, plant-like
nest. Mutu’s representations of female reproductive organs in these works
recall a particular history of black female subjugation, a history rooted in
black women’s labor as production and reproduction in U.S. antebellum
slavery. On this score, Mutu’s collages share some of the imaginative and
imaginary impulses of the neo-slave narrative genre in that they reimagine
the forms, contours, and facilities of black female bodies. But rather than
capitulate to redress, reading Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien through Octavia
Butler’s Kindred posits new, albeit counterintuitive and impossibly dark in-
sights into the construction of black female bodies in Mutu’s work.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF “BLACK ART”

Before continuing with my comparative analysis, it is important to situate

Mutu’s artistic output within a history of black radical aesthetics in the Unit-
ed States more broadly. Mutu’s collage practice participates in a genealogy
of black artistic production in the U.S. and abroad that challenges how prob-
lematic notions of race and gender—from the Harlem Renaissance to 1990s-
era identity politics—have been historically sutured to black bodies. During
the Harlem Renaissance, African American artists such as Aaron Douglas
were concerned with defining and representing blackness as humane, dig-
nified, and intellectually robust—oscillating between W. E. B. Du Bois’s
notions of integrationism and Booker T. Washington’s nationalist ideas em-
10 Tiffany E. Barber

bedded in accommodation. 10 Thirty years later, the Black Arts Movement, in

conversation with the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, established
blackness as beautiful, radical, and revolutionary. Proponents of the Harlem
Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, though distinct, promoted and
attempted to recover racial blackness and black bodies as powerful and
worthy—dignified and tactful on one side, radical and dangerous on the
other. In doing so, these movements fixed blackness—racial, corporeal, and
aesthetic—as the very foundation of identity. Beginning in the late nine-
teenth century and into the late twentieth century, the notion of black art was
nearly inseparable from a rhetoric of racial solidarity; following Du Bois,
Alain Locke, and others, black art was all but required to be a project of
uplift, legibility, and legitimacy. 11
In the 1980s and 1990s, identity politics came to bear on contemporary art
in such a way as to deconstruct oppressive social forces and to bring, among
others, artists of color that were historically relegated to the margins to the
center of the art world. A landmark example of this is the Whitney Museum
of American Art’s 1993 Biennial Exhibition. Fitted with a newly hired direc-
tor, a fresh team of curators, and a politically correct agenda, the exhibition
sought to showcase the Whitney Museum’s efforts toward inclusion and
diversity as a reflection of the current political climate. Instead, hitherto
marginal artists such as Daniel J. Martinez, Jimmie Durham, Lorna Simpson,
and others included in the 1993 Biennial Exhibition were pigeonholed and all
but expected to produce work that exclusively addressed their racial, gender,
sexual, cultural, or ethnic heritage. However well intentioned, the Biennial
essentialized the groups it wished to celebrate: “black artists [were made to]
speak only for blacks, women [were made to] speak only for women, and
gays only for gays, bound by a constrained notion of community [and rele-
gating] artists to cultural essences” (Wright 2012, 268).
In 2001, as part of her new post at the Studio Museum in Harlem, curator
Thelma Golden, a member of the Whitney’s 1993 Biennial team, introduced
what has become the familiar definition of post-black art. The cheeky phrase
describes work by artists included in Golden’s blockbuster exhibition, Free-
style, “who were adamant about not being labeled as ‘black’ artists, though
their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex
notions of blackness.” 12 This definition, which emerged out of Golden’s
conversations with artist Glenn Ligon, is a response to the categorization of
“black art” in the United States, a widely adopted and narrow “interpretive
paradigm . . . that sees its defining task as that of establishing or indicating a
proper relation between black artists and black art” (English 2007, 2). Instead
of a coterminous relationship between artists’ racial identities, artistic pro-
duction, and a political project of racial uplift, Golden’s post-blackness de-
links this formulation, creating new space for artists who identify as black to
make work unbound by racial responsibility and racialized looking practices
 Cyborg Grammar? 11

if they so choose. According to Golden and Ligon, post-black artists react to

a history of identity politics in the U.S. that originated in the 1960s alongside
a host of liberation movements. 13 In her Freestyle exhibition catalog essay,
Golden asks, “How could black artists make work after the vital political
activism of the 1960s, the focused, often essentialist, Black Arts Movement,
the theory-driven multiculturalism of the 1980s, and the late globalist expan-
sion of the late 90s?” (Golden 2001, 14).
By the 1980s, identity politics had become pervasive and a preferred lens
through which to view contemporary art produced by artists of so-called
marginalized identities. Major art museums in the U.S. embraced identity
politics as an exercise of inclusion, one that also spurred a series of critiques
of identity as a theoretical and curatorial framework. These subsequent cri-
tiques in the 1990s became a hallmark of institutional exhibitions and art-
making practices in the United States to which post-blackness responds.
Within this climate of change, black artists working in the 1990s and subse-
quent generations invert racial stereotypes as well as assumptions about work
made by black artists. In the wake of identity politics, Golden and Ligon’s
post-black “speaks to an individual freedom that is a result of the transitional
moment in the quest to define ongoing changes in the evolution of African-
American art and ultimately to ongoing redefinition of blackness in contem-
porary culture” (Golden 2001, 15). This version of post-blackness, therefore,
celebrates individual freedom as a reaction to various iterations of identity
discourse and liberation movements between 1960 and 1990 during which
“black art” as a mode of racial and political solidarity was conceived.
Current manifestations of Afrofuturism share similar impulses with the
expressive modes of post-blackness. Afrofuturism has become an umbrella
term for considering how science fiction, fantasy, and technology can be
used to imagine and reimagine lost pasts and new futures for alienated, black
“others.” While earlier expressions of Afrofuturism may have left notions of
black identity formulated in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s undisturbed, current
expressions of Afrofuturism center on reimagining and resignifying black-
ness and black identities. 14 But where instantiations of post-blackness seek to
disrupt a relation between blackness and a history of racialization, particular-
ly with regard to stringent categorizations of visual work made by black
artists, Afrofuturism holds onto this history of racialization and troubles it by
working within it. To this point, many Afrofuturist works relate blackness to
tropes of science and speculative fiction to comment on histories of racial
oppression and to propose new possibilities for engaging blackness and racial
difference in the past, present, and future.
Within Afrofuturism, the realities of captive slavery and forced diaspora
are likened to instances of bodily transformation and alien invasion that
appear in science and speculative fiction novels and films. Robots, cyborgs,
and androids such as contemporary psychedelic soul singer Janelle Monáe’s
12 Tiffany E. Barber

alter ego Cindi Mayweather as well as interstellar adventures and time travel
all feature prominently in the otherworldly, intergalactic narratives at the
core of Afrofuturist visual, literary, and sonic texts. Afrofuturist works also
aim to subvert science fiction tropes in order to highlight and complicate
issues of racial difference and representations of blackness that are often left
out of generic plots or altogether eclipsed in science fiction texts. These
issues and representations include the structured absence and token presence
of black characters and actors, themes of racial contamination and racial
paranoia as constitutive of a post-apocalyptic future, and the traumatized
black body as the ultimate signifier of difference, alien-ness, and otherness
(Kilgore 2003; Nama 2008; Rieder 2008; Lavender 2011).
Linking blackness with experiences of alienation and dislocation, Afrofu-
turism has gained considerable currency in academic and popular discourse
since the late 1990s and early 2000s. It has also served as a thematic frame-
work for a number of recent museum exhibitions, including The Museum of
Contemporary African Diasporan Arts’ Feed Your Head: The African Ori-
gins of the Scientific Aesthetic (2011) and Pixelating: Black in New Dimen-
sions (2011), The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Approximately
Infinite Universe (2013) and The Studio Museum in Harlem’s The Shadows
Took Shape (2013). Musician Sun Ra, writers Samuel R. Delany and Octavia
Butler, scholars Alondra Nelson and Kodwo Eshun, and contemporary visual
artists Wangechi Mutu, Sanford Biggers, and others are frequently associated
with Afrofuturism.

LOCATING THE CYBORG

Mutu’s work incorporates the tenets of Afrofuturism, but with a difference;

the ruptured, dismembered bodies in her collages call into question both the
reparative potential of the prosthetic devices therein and the relation between
the cyborg and black womanhood. Building on notions of the cyborg, Har-
away’s “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others:
the Human in a Posthumanist Landscape” (1992) acts as a postscript to her
manifesto. In “Ecce Homo,” Haraway seems to challenge or even correct her
own cyborg provocations by adding considerations of historical intersections
between gender, race, class, and sex. If a cyborg is post-gender and without
history, is it also post-sex? Post-nation? Post-race? I consider Haraway’s
emphasis on “the body” and language, and her inclusion of Hazel Carby’s
description of black womanhood under conditions of slavery in “Ecce
Homo” as an expanded view of the cyborg as an imaginary. 15 Referring to
Carby’s discussion of how a cult of true womanhood positioned black wom-
en as abject counterparts to white women, Haraway asserts, “[I]n the New
World, and specifically in the U.S., black women were not constituted as
 Cyborg Grammar? 13

‘woman,’ as white women were. Instead, black women were constituted

simultaneously racially and sexually—as marked female (animal, sexualized,
and without rights), but not as woman (human, potential wife, conduit for the
name of the Father)—in a specific institution, slavery, that excluded them
from ‘culture’ defined as the circulation of signs through the system of mar-
riage.” 16 Thus, black women (as slaves) bear and produce property; they do
not own or possess it. 17 As a result, the cultural practice of naming and
valuation as it relates to legacy, inheritance, and origination bears no mean-
ing for black women because, for them, names are merely empty signifiers
granted according to a dominant discourse of the Master. 18 In other words,
intelligible bodies presuppose and are contingent upon materiality, self-pos-
session, and origination. Thus, black women, within a discourse of slavery,
are alienable property as well as unintelligible and ungrammatical. 19 They
are objects to be circulated and used that exist outside of a classical configu-
ration of how matter and bodies as matter come to mean, originate, and
generate. 20 Essentially and historically, then, black women’s bodies are the
stuff of un-matter.
Black female subjectivity is provocative here precisely because it is “in-
appropriate/d.” 21 By focusing on conditions of black female slavery and
Sojourner Truth’s iconic transformation and speech “Ain’t I a Woman?,”
black female subjectivity represents a site of figuration for Haraway. This
figuration—a performative image—is about apprehending and escaping en-
trapment to “[reset] the stage for possible pasts and futures” (Haraway 1992,
36). Nameless, fugitive and mobile, sojourning black women, then, carry
with them a dangerous, uncolonizable, incomprehensible, and inherent other-
ness. 22 I position Dana and Mutu’s Afro future females in relation to and
against this history, spanning the speculative landscape between neo-slave
narrative and future text. 23 For if hybrid, boundary-crossing, post-gender
subjects are or can be simultaneously human and animal, plant and machine,
and black women in the U.S., following Carby, have been historically fig-
ured without origin, inheritance, or history, is black womanhood always
already cyborgian? That is, under these conditions, black women are both
neither and at once animal, human, and sexualized conduit. Therefore, black
female subjectivity—its historically unintelligible, ungrammatical, and
amorphous nature—is cyborgian in its conception.

BUTLER AND MUTU’S KINDRED CYBORGS

Mutu’s practice of extracting images from a collection of mass-produced

publications, from Vogue to National Geographic, mirrors the very extrac-
tions of racialized bodies from “natural” matters of subjectivity discussed
above and the dislocation of racial experience from Haraway’s posthuman
14 Tiffany E. Barber

critique of a false universalism. Her repurposing of found photographic im-

ages also speaks to discourses of representation informed by science, relig-
ion, ethnography, and other disciplines that historically contributed to a sys-
tematic oppression of otherness particular to black female bodies. 24 Indeed,
black female bodies were a central focus of nineteenth-century scientific
studies that often ended in perverse examinations and dissections—Saartje
Baartman, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus, among the most well-
known subjects of these experiments and displays. 25
Mutu’s work represents what Okwui Enwezor terms a “bold interrogation
of historicized forms of racial violence, misogyny, sexual perversion, and the
domination of black bodies.” 26 Her collages recall the colonial fetishism that
resulted in Baartman’s carnivalesque display and dissection, thus highlight-
ing the literal and figurative violence enacted on Baartman’s cadaver in
postmortem examinations. Curator David Moos observes, “By using collage
Mutu infuses her task with a certain violence, cutting and slicing with razor-
like precision. Her composite bodies become a merger of cultural significa-
tion, presenting a new hybrid of the female figure by blending distinctions
between parts and whole, face and limb, outside and inside, into writhing
emblems of excess and interpenetration” (Moos 2010, 17). Here, Mutu’s
exaggerated, grotesque female forms violate dominant discourses of black
female subjectivity as at once exotic, fetishistic, grotesque, unnatural, dis-
eased, and nonhuman, that is, black female subjectivity as a site of difference
par excellence. Following this claim, Mutu’s collage practice acts as a tactic
for rejecting how difference—through historical and discursive violence—is
inscribed on black female bodies.
In keeping with discourses of the body and black female subjectivity, I
turn to Octavia Butler’s Kindred to think through the image of the ruptured
body in Non je ne regrette rien. Kindred vividly depicts a contemporary
black woman’s fantastical yet transformative encounters with her ancestral
past. On her twenty-sixth birthday Dana, a struggling writer who works odd
jobs at a temporary labor agency that she likens to a slave market, has just
moved into a new house with her white husband Kevin when she begins a
series of time travels between 1976 suburban Los Angeles and antebellum-
era Maryland. During her second trip, Dana realizes she has been transported
to the 1800s to intervene in her own history, to ensure that her direct ancestor
Hagar is born. Essentially, Dana is made responsible for her own production,
her own lived history. Through time travel and encounters with her ances-
tors, Dana must secure her own existence, an imposed, forcible re-member-
ing that is uncertain, painful, and dangerous.
As Kindred unfolds, Dana transforms from passive observer to active
participant in constructing and reconstructing history. Dana comes to terms
with her responsibility to Rufus, heir to the Weylin plantation who will
eventually father Hagar, and acknowledges a resonant dialectic in their rela-
 Cyborg Grammar? 15

tionship that is animated by gendered power relations. She and Rufus are
constituted through each other, thus Dana is literally constituted through
encounters with her own, initially unknown history. Mutu’s figures, as cy-
borgs, are also constituted through an unknown history or origin, incorporat-
ing various image-species from animal to machine to construct new subjects
whose very beings are vested in alteration and never resolved. Both cases
refuse a synthetic reconciliation of difference, of the alienation produced in
the space between “others.” However, while Dana’s history and origin is
eventually known, or in some respects has been known from the outset of her
otherworldly journey, the ruptured figure in Non je ne regrette rien remains
without both origin and closure.
Near the end of Kindred, Dana’s motivations for her actions “in the past,”
repeatedly saving Rufus’s life and allowing her ancestor Alice to be sexually
violated in order to bear her future self by way of Hagar, are hard to parse
because of Dana’s tenuous relationship to consent. Throughout the novel,
Dana refuses to occupy a position of rape, which disjoins Dana’s personhood
from that of black female slaves as defined in bondage. 27 Moreover, Dana is
withheld from networks of kinship that were often considered anchors for
enslaved black females in bondage. 28 Twice orphaned, as a child and by her
aunt and uncle’s disavowal of her interracial marriage, Dana exists within a
paradigm of individualism. In many slave narratives and neo-slave narratives
informed by Emersonian and Jeffersonian principles of self-reliance and in-
dependence within the American literary canon, individualism is a male con-
struct and privilege. 29 With her refusal to occupy conditions of rape, her
subsequent removal from a quintessential black female slave experience, and
her constructed individualism, Dana elides normative gender constructions
of male and female. She is at once both and neither: a cyborg in a post-
gender world. 30
Here, her character confuses boundaries and defies essentialist or arche-
typal conventions of both masculinity and femininity. Kindred concludes
without a tangible resolution; Dana is not restored to wholeness. Like Mutu’s
collage, she is unresolved, undone. Instead, she is left fragmented yet literal-
ly formed by the intersubjective relationships and shared experiences that she
now carries with her. Dana’s dismembered black female body challenges
Western concepts of subjecthood vested in a rhetoric of wholeness by forging
not only a felt understanding of history but also an enriched self, born out of
fragmentation. Dana’s felt understanding of history privileges an embodied
particularity that reflects the black female slave experience in the United
States, an understanding and experience antithetical to an Enlightenment
humanism vested in universal rationality. In the cases of Dana and Non je ne
regrette rien, wholeness is the antinomy of brutalized black female bodies.
Griffin argues that “a discourse of black inferiority . . . stands on ‘evi-
dence’ derived from cranial measurements and genital mutilation. Through
16 Tiffany E. Barber

these discourses the black body came to bear specific cultural meanings:
These discourses constitute all black people as unsightly, deformed, dis-
eased” (Griffin 1996, 520). Her conclusions resonate in the formations of
both Dana’s body and Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien. Similar to Dana’s
painful yet improvisatory resourcefulness, Mutu is clearly interested in dis-
rupting normative associations, as evidenced in her image-form inversions,
ruptures, and abnormalities. But Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien also departs
from Dana’s reconstituted body. Whereas Dana’s “future” existence is
formed through her encounters with history—her body literally bears the
marks of her “past” experiences—Mutu’s figure negates a notion of subject-
hood constructed by and through history as well as a self and body con-
structed relationally or intersubjectively. From within Non je ne regrette
rien, Mutu’s figure contests the spatial logic of the frame that attempts to
contain it. The figure’s appendages spill over the edge of the work as the
figure appears to hurtle through the gray abyss, a space demarcated and
confined by the frame of the image.
Rather than a drive toward wholeness, healing, and a mastery of the self,
Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien defies Western concepts of wholeness and
subjecthood, formally and figuratively. Here, I emphasize that wholeness in
and of itself is not the issue; in the context of black women’s bodies marked
by histories of violence, notions of wholeness are simply untenable. Al-
though fragmentation can be seen as a sign of victimization, Non je ne
regrette rien upends discursive narratives of black women as ever and only
victims, injured and traumatized. For if fragmentation is always already
there, Mutu refuses to deny this condition by simultaneously refusing clo-
sure. Unlike Griffin’s notions of healing and rehabilitation that are focused in
and on the body, then, Mutu’s project is one of anti-healing; the goal is
actually to produce dismembered bodies. What Griffin calls textual healing
of psychic wounds, “the affirming nature of sensual touch” relative to proble-
matic constructions of black female subjectivity suggests an irreconcilable
binary between bodies in need of repair and whole bodies (Griffin 1996,
522). For Griffin, healing, though perpetually incomplete, is the operative or
ideal recourse for black female bodies in the texts she analyzes. However, for
Mutu fragmentation and rupture are both the given conditions and the ends.

NO, I HAVE NO REGRETS

Mutu’s practice brings the mediums of painting and collage, mediums histor-
ically dominated by the figurative, into collision, thereby literalizing the
symbolic ruptures she activates. In this way, Non je ne regrette rien is what
curator Hamza Walker describes as a resort to disfiguration in order “to deny
easy recourse to the body as the locus of an essentialized self” (Walker 2013,
 Cyborg Grammar? 17

12). Mutu’s choices in medium and materials attend to how race and racial-
ized notions of sex and gender have acquired epistemological value within a
Western, Eurocentric history of modernity. When looking at Non je ne re-
grette rien, viewers are forced to grapple with the amalgam of images present
by bouncing between fracture and reconciliation, dismemberment and reas-
sembly. But in the end, transgressive space in Non je ne regrette rien culti-
vates violation and repulsion, and the formal qualities of collage envelop
viewers into a process of deconstruction and disordering. Just as Kindred’s
narrative resists resolution, Mutu’s collages complicate the necessity for con-
clusion and reconciliation. Instead of a totalizing semblance of order and
resolve that is inevitably bound by a Cartesian rhetoric of subject-as-whole,
Mutu constructs environments and subjects that exist in systems of counter-
order, dis-order, and in-difference.
This chapter concludes with an elaboration on the shared generic traits
identified in the aforementioned analysis of Non je ne regrette rien and
Kindred. Cultural theorist Greg Tate claims that black science fiction texts
relate “the condition of being alien and alienated . . . to the way in which
being black in America is a science fiction experience” (Greg Tate qtd. in
Dery 1994, 2008). For Tate, black experience is alien experience. In this
way, Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien and Butler’s Dana animate what sociolo-
gist Alondra Nelson terms “an appraisal of identity that does not simply look
to what is seemingly new about the self . . . but looks backward and forward
in seeking to provide insights about . . . what was and what if” (Nelson 2002,
3–4). Non je ne regrette rien and Kindred enact a “dialectic between defining
oneself in light of ties to one’s history and experience and being defined from
without (be it in virtual or physical space, by stereotypes or the state)” specif-
ic to representations of black female subjectivity (Nelson 2002, 4). Neither
nature nor machine nor humanity solely comprise the exploded figure at the
center of Non je ne regrette rien. All of these elements are present and, at the
same time, none are mutually exclusive or constitutive. Therefore, the future
text at which we arrive in Non je ne regrette rien is one in which blackness,
femaleness, and bodily-ness are no longer coterminous, naturally accompa-
nying, or associated. While Non je ne regrette rien’s Mylar surface com-
mands our attention, the racialized and gendered corporeality that the work’s
figure inhabits no longer adheres as container or contained. The black female
cyborg body is pushed to its limits.
With her collaged figures, Mutu revises spaces of capital and commerce
that have historically figured black female subjects as objects for consump-
tion—from beauty magazines to science pamphlets to anatomy textbooks.
Her cyborg figures represent black female bodies constituted through mutu-
alism—uprooted plants, shiny motorcycle parts and all. However, the mutu-
alism visualized in Non je ne regrette rien is a parasitic one in which the host
body must be dismembered in order to exist. Thus, Non je ne regrette rien
18 Tiffany E. Barber

unhinges the black female body as a locus upon and within which normative
racial, gender, and sex codes materialize. Additionally, Non je ne regrette
rien negates a hegemonic system bolstered by a politics of looking that at
once celebrates and institutionally oppresses difference. In a time of digital
techno-optimism, techno–determinism, and post-identity discourses, Non je
ne regrette rien demands that we rethink what it means to be black, woman,
and human in the twenty-first century.
Non je ne regrette rien represents a key intervention, one that not only
undermines a system by which black female bodies in the U.S. have been
produced by and through a history of violence that created “natural” racial
divisions as well as gender and sex binaries through material means. Mutu’s
collage also disorders the ways in which black women have become a specif-
ic typology involving reservoirs of difference and deviance. The figure in
Non je ne regrette rien visually explodes and dispenses with the very matter
of its black female body. Here, where the question of wholeness comes into
even sharper focus. If a condition of corporeal and racialized blackness spe-
cific to U.S. black bodies has been one of disempowerment, fragmentation,
and dismemberment from the beginning, then what does fragmentation
yield? 31 Why not strive for wholeness and healing? Why submit to what
equates to a wound rather than a scar?
Non je ne regrette rien intervenes into historical and essentialist under-
standings of black female subjectivity, targeting the black female body as the
grounding of these understandings. Wholeness, then, with its foundations in
reason, possession, origination, and a pursuit to overcome an alienation that
follows from a separation between self and other as routes to full subject-
hood, actually becomes oppressive within this formulation. In the “classical”
view, the human body is positioned as an immutable foundation for identity
formation. But the black female body has been historically withheld from the
grammar of identity construction. Thus, in aggressively cracking open the
basis—the body—upon which the self and agency come to matter and mean,
particularly in the case of black female subjectivity, the ruptured body in Non
je ne regrette rien insists that we rethink relationality, healing, and becom-
ing.
To this point, rather than offering an escape from oppressive conditions,
technology and mechanical parts in Non je ne regrette rien fail to protect and
reassemble the ruptured black female body. In turn, the subject-object and
self-subject splits that anchor myriad humanisms—from Enlightenment to
anti to post—are fundamentally obliterated, and dismemberment engenders
an evocative epistemology. This is not to suggest that Mutu’s work repre-
sents a global black womanhood. 32 On the contrary, the individual, ruptured
figure in Non je ne regrette rien gains more momentum here as it hurtles
through space; for it is in the individual figures that proliferate within Mutu’s
collage practice that uneasy and undesirable expressions of black female
 Cyborg Grammar? 19

bodies emerge. And these expressions repeat and change, but most impor-
tantly, they remain in full view.

NOTES

1. Nicole R. Smith notes, “[M]uch of Mutu’s work[s] . . . often include a central female
creature. Sometimes such figures are flanked by smaller and even more fantastical creatures—
part fairy, puck, and insect. In some instances, they merely surround the main figure, while in
others they take on a more sinister appearance, acting out in devilish ways” (Smith, “Wangechi
Mutu: Feminist Collage and the Cyborg,” Art and Design Theses Paper 51 (2009), 13). A
portion of the left side of the female figure in Non je regrette rien is flanked by a serpent. For
the purposes of this chapter, I focus on the central female figure in Non je regrette rien in order
to underscore the intervention into representing black female bodies that my reading of Mutu’s
collage entails.
2. A portion of this chapter was presented at the 35th Anniversary Conference of the
Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in April 2013 in Montréal, Québec.
Special thanks to my colleague Rachel Zellars for the many conversations that helped me
clarify this notion of “transgressive disfigurement.”
3. Haraway first published “A Cyborg Manifesto” as “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science,
Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” in Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65–108.
4. Literary scholars Madhu Dubey and Sherryl Vint offer detailed discussions of how
conventions of the genre of science fiction center on a Cartesian subjecthood rooted in whole-
ness. See Dubey’s “Becoming Animal” in Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science
Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory, Ed. Marleen S. Barr (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State
University Press, 2008) and Vint’s Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science
Fiction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).
5. Janell Hobson is among a growing group of scholars who take Haraway’s conceptions
of the cyborg’s liberatory possibilities to task for their blind spots concerning the intersectional
and historical conditions of black female bodies. See Body as Evidence: Mediating Race,
Globalizing Gender (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012).
6. The title of Mutu’s collage instantly alerts the viewer to the artist’s interests in a politics
of armed resistance, particularly within Algeria’s postcolonial history. “Non, je ne regrette
rien,” meaning “No, I have no regrets,” is a French song composed by Charles Dumont in 1956
with lyrics by Michel Vaucaire. It was made famous by Édith Piaf who dedicated her 1960
recording of the song to the French Foreign Legion. At the time of the recording, France was
engaged in the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) and the 1st Foreign Parachute
Regiment—which was disbanded after backing a failed putsch by the French military against
the civilian leadership of Algeria in 1961—adopted the song when their resistance was broken.
The song is part of French Foreign Legion heritage and is sung when the Legion appear in
Camerone Day parades. The song’s title and Mutu’s appropriation of it to name her image of a
fragmented, dislocated figure marks multiple meanings: French colonial history in Africa,
decolonial and postcolonial conditions, the failure of the French Foreign Legion’s role in a
coup d’état, and the complex networks of alliance and dissent that eventually led to Algeria’s
independence from France. Historian Alexander Harrison offers a brief discussion of the signif-
icance of Piaf’s recording within French Foreign Legion history in Challenging de Gaulle: The
O.A.S. and the Counterrevolution in Algeria, 1954–1962 (New York, NY; London, UK: Praeg-
er Publishers, 1989). Harrison’s text outlines French colonization of Algeria and the roots of
the counter-revolution, with chapters on the three abortive efforts to grant native Algerians
their independence and the subsequent emergence of the Organisation de l’armée secrète
(O.A.S. or “Secret Armed Organization”).
7. Art historian Courtney J. Martin situates Mutu’s use of collage as a vehicle for theoriz-
ing the fragmented body as a metaphor for a postcolonial body politic. In “Fracture and Action:
Wangechi Mutu’s Collages, 1999–2010” she writes, “Analogous to collage, the composite
nature of the nation is always on display despite the insistence on fluid cohesion. The nation is
20 Tiffany E. Barber

always making itself as it is being remade” (50). While Martin’s reading of Mutu’s collage
technique is certainly compelling and points to larger conversations around postmodernism and
postcolonialism, I would like to interrogate the implications of Martin’s relation between actual
bodies and postcolonial nationhood. Mutu’s work challenges systems of representation by
which the black female body has become what performance artist and critic David Harradine
describes as “a locus for complex processes of ideological construction that materialise the
body itself in and through discourse, and that reveal the body as only the apparent base from
which notions of ‘identity’ (such as ‘race,’ ‘sex,’ ‘gender,’ ‘class,’ or ‘sexuality’) can be read”
(69). While Mutu’s practice of fragmentation can certainly be read as mirroring the postmodern
condition, instead of reflecting compositions of nations Mutu’s collages also offer an ontologi-
cal model of resistance vested in intersubjectivity. Instead of disabled bodies, her hybrid figures
are adaptors and adaptations, mutations of normalized ideals of femininity, beauty, and sexual-
ity. For Martin’s essay; rigorous contextualization of Mutu’s collage practice in relationship to
Hannah Höch, Romare Bearden, and other artists who have used collage to explore issues of
difference; and more on the formal qualities of Mutu’s work, see My Dirty Little Heaven, Exh.
Cat. (Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin; Ostfildern, DE: Hatje Cantz, 2010). See also David Harra-
dine’s “Abject Identities and Fluid Performances: Theorizing the Leaking Body” in Contempo-
rary Theatre Review 10, 3 (2000): 69–85.
8. Mutu quoted in Okwui Enwezor’s “Cut and Paste: Interview with Wangechi Mutu,”
Arise Magazine 11 (2011) http://www.ariselive.com/articles/cut-paste/87416/. Accessed 27
March 2014. Mutu’s emphasis on invention parallels Hortense Spillers’s opening lines in
“Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe.” Spillers opens her essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An
American Grammar Book,” first published in Diacritics 17, 2 (1987), with the following:
“Let’s face it. I am a marked woman, but not everybody knows my name. . . . I describe a locus
of confounded identities, a meeting ground of investments and privations in the national treas-
ury of rhetorical wealth. My country needs me, and if I were not here, I would have to be
invented” (Black, White, and in Color, 2003).
9. Amazing Grace, a 59-minute looped video work filmed in Miami, Florida, follows the
artist dressed in a flowing white dress as she walks slowly along the sandy shores of the
Atlantic Ocean singing “Amazing Grace” in Kikuyu with Mutu eventually disappearing into
the sea. Although sung in her native language, the intertextual reference of “Amazing Grace” as
both the work’s title and sonic framing device, a hymnal still sung today that became an
emblematic Negro spiritual in late-nineteenth century America, comments on the loss of life at
sea on slave ships traveling to “the New World.” It is significant that Mutu performs these
actions from the edges of the U.S.’s land mass. Mutu’s inclusion in the exhibition 30
Americans, a traveling group show of select works by African-American artists held by the
Rubell Family Collection, further situates Mutu and her work within a black American context.
10. See W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Criteria of Negro Art,” The Crisis 32 (October 1926), 290–97
in which Du Bois demands that all art, and in particular “black art,” be seen and understood as
propaganda that services a program of racial pride and uplift.
11. Margo Natalie Crawford and Lisa Gail Collins have recently published on deferred
readings of the Black Arts Movement. Additionally, Crawford’s ongoing research expands the
limits of how we think about the Black Arts Movement as a failed, finished, and narrow
project. See New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement, eds. Margo Natalie Crawford and Lisa
Gail Collins (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Crawford’s “Black Aesthetics
Unbound,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 29 (Fall 2011), 8-21; and Crawford’s
“Baraka’s Jam Session: On the Limits of Any Attempt to Collect Black Aesthetics Unbound,”
Callaloo 37, 3 (Summer 2014), 477–79.
12. Thelma Golden, “Post . . . ,” Freestyle, Exh. Cat. (New York: The Studio Museum of
Harlem, 2001), 14. Freestyle was presented at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001 and
featured work by 28 contemporary black artists. The first in an ongoing series of survey
exhibitions of contemporary black art at The Studio Museum under Golden’s direction, Free-
style has since been followed by Frequency (2005), Flow (2008), and Fore (2012). It is
important to note that there is at least one instance in which the term post-black enters art
historical and scholarly discourse prior to Golden’s proclamation. In “Afro Modernism,” a
September 1991 Artforum review of Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art, Robert Farris
 Cyborg Grammar? 21

Thompson writes, “A retelling of Modernism to show how it predicts the triumph of the current
sequences would reveal that ‘the Other’ is your neighbor—that black and Modernist cultures
were inseparable long ago. Why use the word ‘post-Modern’ when it may also mean ‘post-
black’?” (91). While Thompson’s review appears to be the first published use of the now
pervasive term, Thompson’s use of post-black differs from current iterations of the term.
13. The phrase “burdens of representation” refers to how black artists and their production
are enmeshed in a metonymic relation with black identity, contributing to essentialist under-
standings of blackness. That is, art made by black artists becomes representative of a totality of
black aesthetics and representative of larger understandings of black experience and black
identity. As a result of the burdens of representation, black artists can only be conceived of as
making “black art,” and only black artists can produce “black art.” See Kobena Mercer’s
“Black Art and the Burden of Representation,” Third Text 4, 10 (1990), 61–78.
14. See Cinqué Hicks’s “Circuit Jamming” in International Review of African American Art
23, 3 (June 2011, 2–8) for an overview of how monolithic and fraught understandings of
blackness between the 1960s and 1980s have shifted from Afrofuturism as a route to political
solidarity (that, with the development of funk and psychedelic soul emerged alongside the
Black Arts Movement) to the term’s current manifestations.
15. Janell Hobson is among a growing group of scholars who take Haraway’s conceptions
of the cyborg’s liberatory possibilities to task for their blind spots concerning the intersectional
and historical conditions of black female bodies. See Hobson’s Body as Evidence: Mediating
Race, Globalizing Gender (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012).
16. Haraway, “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: the
Human in a Posthumanist Landscape” in Feminists Theorize the Political, Eds. Joan Scott and
Judith Butler (New York, NY; London, UK: Routledge, 1992): 93–94. See also Hazel V.
Carby’s “Slave and Mistress: Ideologies of Womanhood under Slavery,” Reconstructing Black
Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York, NY; Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 1987): 20–39 and Hortense J. Spillers’s “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s
Maybe: An American Grammar Book” in Diacritics 17, 2 (1987).
17. To be clear, white women during the years of slavery did not legally own property,
except in the rare cases that they inherited it from a male relative or spouse. But, following
Carby, I draw a distinction between black and white women here in order to show how black
women’s persons and subjecthoods were in question given the fact that they existed outside of
the category of “woman.” Even more radically, black women existed outside of the category of
human. They were considered property, subjectless and without gender, even if over-sexual-
ized, a drastically different mode of existence compared to white women.
18. I would like to acknowledge the students in my Fall 2013 Afro Future Females course at
the University of Rochester, especially Quinlan Mitchell, for illuminating discussions and
responses that helped me finesse my thinking here around a certain lineage of black female
cyborg identities.
19. I use the terms ungrammatical here and grammar in the title of this essay to refer to
Hortense J. Spillers’s theorizations of black female subjectivity in relation to language and the
law. Like Spillers, I aim to propose a new semantic field in which to discuss and understand
black female subjectivity by theorizing rupture and fragmentation as productive epistemologies
in themselves. Haraway also invokes Spillers’s theorizations of the ungrammatical (“Ecce
Homo” 92). Spillers opens “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” first
published in Diacritics 17, 2 (1987), with the following: “Let’s face it. I am a marked woman,
but not everybody knows my name. . . . I describe a locus of confounded identities, a meeting
ground of investments and privations in the national treasury of rhetorical wealth. My country
needs me, and if I were not here, I would have to be invented” (203). See Spillers’s collection
of essays titled Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (Chica-
go, IL; London, UK: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
20. Judith Butler traces this classical relation of materiality and meaning to Greek and Latin
origins. She writes, “The classical configuration of matter as a site of generation or origination
becomes especially significant when the account of what an object is and means requires
recourse to its originating principle” (Bodies That Matter 31; emphasis in original). For Butler,
matter is either associated with reproduction or origination and causality. See Judith Butler’s
22 Tiffany E. Barber

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “sex” (New York, NY; London, UK: Rout-
ledge, 1993).
21. Haraway borrows theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha’s sign of an impossible figure, the inappro-
priate/d other, to describe “New World black womanhood” (“Ecce Homo” 91). See Trinh T.
Minh-ha’s “She, the lnappropriate/d Other,” Discourse 8 (1986/87).
22. Special thanks to Quinlan Mitchell for this beautiful articulation that helped me bridge
my thinking around the cyborg and black womanhood.
23. Alondra Nelson develops the phrase “future text” after author Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo
Jumbo character PaPa LaBas. Nelson writes, “LaBas believes that the next generation will be
successful in creating a text that can codify black culture: past, present, and future. Rather than
a ‘Western’ image of the future that is increasingly detached from the past or, equally proble-
matic, a future-primitive perspective that fantasizes an uncomplicated return to ancient culture,
LaBas foresees the distillation of African diasporic experience, rooted in the past but not
weighed down by it, contiguous yet continually transformed” (“Introduction: Future Texts” 8).
24. Social Darwinism as a theory of evolution formed a foundation for scientific examina-
tion of racial, gender, and sexual difference. Social Darwinism spawned such studies as phre-
nology, physiognomy, and racial eugenics among others, which informed pictorial representa-
tions of bodies in the United States—particularly in relation to a practice of photography at the
turn of the twentieth century. Through these modes of study, typologies of race, gender, and
class enter a broader discussion around a history of producing subjects and stereotypes in-
formed by photography in terms of idealized and de-idealized body types. See Elizabeth Ed-
wards’ Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1994) and John Tagg’s Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). For an in-depth comparative study of
how black subjectivity throughout the African diaspora was constructed and subjugated
through nineteenth century American and European intellectual thought as well as contempo-
rary counter-discourses, see Michelle M. Wright’s Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the
African Diaspora (Durham, NC; London, UK: Duke University Press, 2004).
25. For a comprehensive history of how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwin-
ism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of black bodies
with the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit, see Harriet A. Wash-
ington’s Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black
Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2008). Also
see Mara Gladstone and Janet Berlo’s “The Body in the (White) Box: Corporeal Ethics and
Museum Representation” in The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics: Redefining Ethics
for the Twenty-First Century Museum (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012) and Sadiah Qureshi’s
“Displaying Sara Baartman, the Hottentot Venus,” History of Science 42 (2004). On cultural
taxidermy see Fatimah Tobing Rony’s The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spec-
tacle (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996) and Tony Bennett’s “The Exhibitionary
Complex,” New Formations 4 (Spring 1988), 73–102.
26. Okwui Enwezor, “Weird Beauty: Ritual Violence and Archaeology of Mass Media in
Wangechi Mutu’s Work” in My Dirty Little Heaven, Exh. Cat. (Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin;
Ostfildern, DE: Hatje Cantz, 2010).
27. Farah Jasmine Griffin identifies sexual abuse and rape as primary reasons for textual
healing and Dana resists these conditions of the black female slave experience.
28. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Harriet Jacobs’s choice of a sexual
relationship with Mr. Sands and her decision to hide in bondage in order to stay close to her
children forces re-conceptualizations of agency, consent, freedom, and resistance. Though
Jacobs chooses to remain in conditions of bondage, Jacobs experiences instances of freedom
within this bondage and Jacob’s formulations of self are constructed intrasubjectively; that is,
through Jacobs’s social networks, relations, and attachments rather than through a master-slave
relation.
29. Individualism through mobility and flight as means of escape and freedom are figured as
gendered tropes in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), Narrative of William W.
Brown, a Fugitive Slave (1847), Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an
American Slave (1849), Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave from Kentucky
 Cyborg Grammar? 23

(1964), and other male-centered slave narratives. In these narratives, male slaves have liberties
to flee and visit other plantations that differ from female slaves who are obligated to mother-
hood. The pursuit of freedom through Emersonian self-reliance requires a rejection or negation
of family. See Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” in Essays: First Series (1847).
30. While Dana’s suspension between gendered identities in this scene could be read as
queer rather than post-gender, I assert that this suspension follows my arguments regarding the
significant, shifting, mutable relationship between technology and the body as sign, as well as
historical constructions of black female subjectivity in the U.S. as always already cyborgian.
While post-gender and queer identities share a politics of choice, I distinguish between the two
for the purposes of this essay by considering post-gender identities in relation to histories of
science and biological reproduction and, following scholars such as Judith Butler and others, I
consider queer identities in relation to performativity. In a 2008 essay, bioethicists George
Dvorsky and James Hughes extend Haraway’s theorizations of post-gender cyborgs. Dvorsky
and Hughes explain, “Postgenderism is an extrapolation of ways that technology is eroding the
biological, psychological and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of
binary gender will be liberatory. . . . Postgenderists contend that dyadic gender roles and sexual
dimorphisms are generally to the detriment of individuals and society. . . . Greater biological
fluidity and psychological androgyny will allow future persons to explore both masculine and
feminine aspects of personality. . . . Bodies and personalities in our postgender future will no
longer be constrained and circumscribed by gendered traits, but enriched by their use in the
palette of diverse self-expression” (2). See Dvorsky and Hughes’s “Postgenderism: Beyond the
Gender Binary” (Hartford, CT: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, March 2008):
1–18, http://ieet.org/archive/IEET-03-PostGender.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2013. On gender
theory and performativity, see Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity (New York, NY; London, UK: Routledge, 1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the
Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York, NY; London, UK: Routledge, 1993).
31. Similar to both Carby’s and Spillers’s theorizations of the relations between black wom-
anhood, language, and humanist thought, a protagonist in Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada
named Raven Quickskill describes literacy under conditions of slavery as “the most powerful
thing in the pre-technological pre-post-rational age” (35). Literary scholar Thomas Foster reads
Quickskill’s commentary as a summation of “the different historical relation of African slaves
[in the ‘New World’] to Enlightenment humanism and its investment in universal rationality as
opposed to embodied particularity” (The Souls of Cyberfolk xxv). Foster’s reading translates
the “pre-post-rational” into the “pre-post-human,” which “signifies a shortcircuiting of the
narrative teleology of the romantic subject, which exists first as an alienated and privatized—
that is pre-social—individual, and only subsequently comes into contact with either society or
nature as external to the self” (Ibid). Conversely in Non je ne regrette rien, the figure is already
connected with alien experience, society, nature, and machine all in one. See Foster’s The Souls
of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory (Minneapolis, MN; London, UK: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2005).
32. While this essay positions Mutu’s Non je ne regrette rien within an American context,
and uses it as a lens through which to view and understand black female subjectivity in the
U.S., Mutu’s work also bears relations to African mythology. For a brief discussion of African
mythology and African futurism as political methodologies and rhetorical strategies, see Pame-
la Phatsimo Sunstrum’s “Afro-mythology and African Futurism: The Politics of Imagining and
Methodologies for Contemporary Creative Research Practices” in Para-doxa: Studies in World
Literary Genres 25 (2013), 119–36. Born in Mochudi, Botswana, Phatsimo Sunstrum is also a
celebrated artist who, similar to Mutu, works in drawing, collage, animation, and performance
to imagine parallels between ancient mythologies and futuristic sciences. Phastimo Sunstrum
has an alter ego named Asme.

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24 Tiffany E. Barber

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 Chapter Two

Afrofuturism on Web 3.0

Vernacular Cartography and Augmented Space

Nettrice R. Gaskins

Afrofuturism fosters the artistic practice of navigating the past, present, and
future simultaneously (Dery 1994). The use of quilts as maps along the
Underground Railroad is one such example. Artist Sanford Biggers refers to
Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman as an astronaut who traverses “the south
to the north by navigating the stars.” 1 Biggers reconstructs eighteenth and
nineteenth century historical quilts as maps to new galaxies where passengers
chart new destinations in search of freedom. The idea of Tubman as an
astronaut is a good starting point for examining our relationship to the
boundless dimensions of space in which people, objects, and events have
relative position and direction. Tubman followed the North Star by night,
making her way from the South, to and from Pennsylvania and Canada while
guiding others to freedom. Passengers followed codes embedded in quilts
hanging in front of the safe houses with symbols telling them where to go
and when the next “train” would come. These quilt-based maps may be
viewed as cultural or vernacular space that emanate from the customs and
rituals of a given community.
Like many works in Afrofuturism, coded quilts are somewhere between
myth and fact. Quilt codes consisted of basic shapes arranged in specific
patterns to represent trails, the North Star, safe houses, and other landmarks.
As vernacular maps, these artifacts are reduced representations of the physi-
cal world. The codes are similar to the symbols displayed on a Global Posi-
tioning System (GPS) or on Google Earth, a virtual map and geographical
information program. Imagine that, in an alternate reality, Underground Rail-
road conductors and passengers used mobile phones with cameras that when

27
28 Nettrice R. Gaskins

pointed at coded quilts obtained information as augmented, digital overlay

images.
Augmented or layered space offers us new ways to map, view, encode, or
decode traditional cultural systems and symbols with dynamically changing
information, sometimes digital in form and closely linked with the develop-
ment of a techno-cultural network. This network is matched with vernacular
to illustrate spoken, aural, or visual languages in physical and virtual spaces
in this chapter. Geometric cultural maps, geographic locations, and digital
media on mobile devices chart the movement, migration, or dispersal of
people who share and exchange cultural data. These technologies do not
exhaust the possibilities of vernacular space as the interaction of modern
science, media and communication, and cultural art.
This chapter considers whether in the new media spaces, traditional or
ancient African symbols and forms become irrelevant and invisible or if
artists end up creating new experiences in which the cultural, spatial, and
information layers are equally important. It presents creative works that ex-
plore the general dynamic between cultural data and creative expression and
how this interaction might function differently in today’s digital culture.
Vernacular cartography and segmented space is reconceptualized as an idea,
or as a cultural and aesthetic practice rather than as emerging or new technol-
ogy. I make a distinction between augmented space as a new sensibility in
creative and cultural production and augmented reality, which is the overlay-
ing of digital objects onto the physical environment, viewed through camera-
enabled mobile devices. This chapter proposes a new platform to engage this
emerging sensibility and technology. Creative practices in mapping African
cosmography, physical and virtual installations, film/video, and twenty-first
century art are discussed in terms of their relation to Afrofuturism.

BLACK FUTURISM: RACE AS TECHNOLOGY

According to scholar Patrick Manning, black culture “renews itself repeated-

ly through new technology, new audiences, improvisation, and continued
borrowing” (Manning 2010, 34). Other scholars have explored the cultural
and historical underpinnings of black vernacular and creative expression,
especially as it relates to technology. Beth Coleman argues that technology’s
embedded function of self-extension may be exploited to liberate race from
an inherited position of abjection toward a greater expression of agency
(Coleman 2009). According to Coleman this function entails “the ability to
move freely as a being—and it is not restricted to individuals but also in-
cludes systems: it concerns how beings are subjected in systems of power,
ideology, and other networks (Coleman 2009, 70). She frames the work of
twentieth century Italian Futurists who attempted to destroy Western icons
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 29

and replace them with altered systems through sound, images, or text. In this
reconceptualization of technology, race becomes “denatured” from its histor-
ical roots and becomes a tool for creative expression.
James Snead differentiated European artistic practices such as Italian Fu-
turism from black cultural expression that he organized around two key
principles, repetition and the “cut”:

In black culture, the thing (the ritual, the dance, the beat) is “there for you to
pick it up when you come back to get it.” If there is a goal in such a culture, it
is always deferred; it continually “cuts” back to the start, in the musical mean-
ing of “cut” as an abrupt, seemingly unmotivated break (an accidental da capo)
with a series already in progress and a willed return to a prior series. (Snead
1984, 67)

Snead’s work supports evolving modes of black techno-vernacular produc-

tion—signs of change that are evident and cyclical in the art of the African
Diaspora. Repetition, through techniques such as collage, sampling, and re-
mixing, employ the “cut” as a tool to reuse portions of one or more sources
as instruments and images in new work.
Artists explore how what is cut away (as a subject) from dominant culture
finds its way back into the picture through layering and repetition—the trans-
formation through language and signification—and cutting that enable artists
of the African Diaspora to piece together fragments from their past of histori-
cal emigration (forced relocation), violence, and marginalization. The “cut”
of blackness and the silhouette that remain are mobile, able to be collaged or
layered with other things or repeated. For example, Kenyan-born artist Wan-
gechi Mutu pieces together magazine imagery with painted surfaces and
found materials to explore the split nature of cultural identity referencing
colonial history, fashion, and contemporary African politics. She uses the
term “augment” to describe her process of altering, disrupting, and layering
images. 2
Improvisation, call and response, hacking, and tinkering elicit the active
engagement and participation of the at-large community (audience). Call and
response is a form of spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between
speaker and listeners in which all statements (calls) are punctuated by expres-
sions (responses) from the audience. Riffs, vamps, thematic variations, and
call and response are endemic to jazz, blues music, and the visual arts. In a
Johns Hopkins University study, researchers who examined the neuroscience
of jazz and the power of improvisation found that the brains of jazz musi-
cians participating in spontaneous improvisation with other musicians
showed robust activation in the same areas of the brain traditionally associat-
ed with spoken language and syntax (Limb and Braun 2008). We hear these
syntactic and semantic exchanges in the music of John Coltrane and Sun Ra
(Rudolph 2010). In sum, combined with repetition and cutting, improvisation
30 Nettrice R. Gaskins

in music, art, and performance contributes to techno-cultural shifts that lead

to the technoscape of Afrofuturism.

AFROFUTURISM AND TECHNO-VERNACULAR CREATIVITY

Afrofuturism is not a black version of the early twentieth century Italian

futurism since it is not solely concerned with the future. Instead, Afrofutur-
ism navigates past, present, and future simultaneously. Afrofuturism is coun-
ter-hegemonic and not concerned with representing the mainstream or the
canon of Western art. Afrofuturism advocates for the revision of accepted,
long-standing views, theories, historical events, and movements. It retells
history, altering characters and/or the environment by re-using existing arti-
facts, themes, and concepts such as quilt-based signposts, star charts, and
even the heliocentric model of the universe. One such example of vernacular
mapping is found on the cover of Sun Ra’s 1965 album, The Heliocentric
Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One. The album cover references heliocentric
theory in which jazz musician and cosmic philosopher Sun Ra (Ra being the
Kemetic/ Egyptian god of the sun) positions himself at the center of other
known Western cosmic philosophers and scientists.
Sanford Biggers defines Afrofuturism as “a way of re-contextualizing and
assessing history and imagining the future of the African Diaspora via sci-
ence, science fiction, technology, sound, architecture, the visual and culinary
arts and other more nimble and interpretive modes of research and under-
standing” (Sanford Biggers quoted in Castro 2012, 124). Afrofuturism un-
leashes what theorist Arjun Appadurai identifies as the social imaginary,
specifically a “technoscape” that embraces the “semantic, cultural, and crea-
tive aspects of science and technology” (1996, 31). In Afrofuturism, the
technoscape is sustained through techno-vernacular creativity, and by exten-
sion, the cultural art and technology produced by African diaspora commu-
nities. Such work accepts that technological meaning is culturally and histor-
ically grounded and, as a result, becomes located within a larger social imag-
inary. Afrofuturism then, is an antecedent for techno-vernacular creative pro-
duction. such as do-it-yourself (DIY) techno culture and the merging of
cultural and religious traditions as in the case of syncretism, all of which
highlight the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate practices.
Techno-vernacular creativity consists of three methods. The first, reap-
propriation, describes how Afrofuturists reclaim cultural artifacts, often to
counter dominant social or political systems. Artists in the African Diaspora
reclaim and adapt traditional symbols and systems such as the cosmogram
that is a cultural map of the Universe. This universal cultural glyph repre-
sents the cycle of life, or a crossroad between the spiritual and material
worlds. The second method, improvisation, is the practice of performing,
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 31

creating, problem solving, or reacting in the moment and in response to one’s

environment and inner feelings. Improvisation results in the invention of new
practices, artwork, and/or new ways of acting. Reinvention (of the self) is the
third method. Identity refers to the self or essential being of a person. Artists
often question commonly held assumptions and stereotypes, self-awareness,
portraiture, and what it means to be an artist in their work. Sun Ra came up
with the term “myth science” to explain how to re-create oneself in a place of
oppression. 3 Sun Ra explored reinvention of identity through the creation of
an alternate personality or avatar. Afrofuturists often use digital and non-
digital avatars as tools for transcendence, reinvention, or for existing in and
moving between worlds or realities.
Rayvon Fouché, a cultural historian of technology, formulated the con-
cept of “black vernacular technological creativity,” otherwise referred to here
as techno-vernacular creativity (2006). Fouché references James Brown’s
1969 musical anthem “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” as representa-
tive of the African American desire to reclaim, recover, and articulate self-
claimed black identity and expression. Fouché references the late author and
critic Amiri Baraka’s prescient 1971 essay “Technology and Ethos” as in-
itiating the conversation about vernacular space. Baraka called for African
Americans to rethink their relationships with technology and take action to
make technology more representative of their culture. He further asserted
that through black technological utterances rooted within black cultures and
communities, technology would be more responsive to the realities of black
life in Western societies (Baraka 1971, 157). Artist and scholar Duane Deter-
ville further builds upon this contention by drawing on “continental African
cultural ethos, contemporary technology, and artistic actuation in a self-de-
termined, representational space” that he describes as the Afriscape. 4
Fouché describes black vernacular technological as re-deployment (reap-
propriation), re-conception (improvisation), and re-creation (reinvention) as
a basis for creativity and innovation. Re-deployment reinterprets technology
while maintaining its traditional use and form, such as using the Twitter
social networking platform, otherwise known as “Black Twitters,” to focus
on interests of African American communities. According to a 2013 Pew
Research Center report, twenty-six percent of African American Internet
users tweet compared to fourteen percent of non-Hispanic white American,
online users (Duggan and Brenner 2013). Reappropriation counters the hege-
monic practice of reabsorbing vernacular into mass culture through commod-
ification. Twitter hash tags #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen and #BlackPowe-
rIsForBlackMen encouraged many users to engage in conversations about
how ideologies such as feminism often omit the voices of women of color.
Through the reappropriation of online social networking, Black Twitterers
have redeployed the participatory Web 2.0 platform as a communication tool
more representative of black culture. Re-conception is the active redefinition
32 Nettrice R. Gaskins

of technology that transgresses its designed function and dominant meaning.

DIY techno culture and aesthetics reflect the myriad social and cultural fac-
tors that shape access to technological resources. In African American and
other historically marginalized communities, production reflects creativity
and innovation within settings of limited technological resources. Brenda
Dixon Gottschild asserts that “African American culture has always been
subversive and improvisatory, by force of circumstance” (Gottschild 1996,
117). Black speculative fiction writer Octavia Butler’s novels re-conceptual-
ize notions of utopia that hinge on the belief that the progress of technology
serves to advance society to a state absent of inequality. Afropunk is a multi-
genre platform for the African American experience and DIY technoculture
is a foundation. Artist Cyrus Kabiru crafts Afrofuturistic pieces—most fa-
mously his one-of-a-kind “C-STUNNERS” spectacles—from recycled waste
and objects he finds on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya. For “Blossom”—a life-
sized tree constructed with a piano emerging from it—Sanford Biggers re-
conceptualizes the piano and programs it using a MIDI controller to play his
improvisation of “Strange Fruit,” an anti-lynching protest song made popular
by the Blues singer Billie Holiday. Kabiru and Biggers utilize the DIY meth-
od of “making do” with found materials to create their artwork. Blossom and
other examples demonstrate Afrofuturistic re-conception of and DIY improv-
isation with technology in ways that mirror the past and present.
DIY improvisation within the African Diaspora through music and dance
is both culturally and historically significant. Yet, questions remain about
improvisation through other art forms such as visual and performance with
coding (programming). Many followers of Afrofuturism find the idea of
coding and the re-purposing, remixing, or sampling of existing content intri-
guing. Passengers on the Underground Railroad looked for keys embedded in
quilts to ascertain information to lead them to freedom. Artist and writer Judy
Bales views the Afro-traditional quilt as a type of vernacular map that qual-
ifies both as a contemporary art, as well as a functional object (Bales 2012).
Sanford Biggers re-purposes quilts using cultural, historical, astrological, and
musical visualizations. In conceiving the artworks that compromise his “Co-
dex” series, Biggers sees himself as an intervener hundreds of years after
historical quilts have been made who in the next phase, adds new layers of
coded meaning. 5 The encoding and confluence of visual elements in his
quilts ranging from cloud forms in Tibetan art, as a graphic device in early
graffiti, and according to Biggers are “nature’s own form of collectivity.” 6
Janet Goleas compares Biggers’ cloud formations to cloud-computing, a col-
loquial expression used to describe different types of computing concepts
that involve a large number of computers connected through a real-time
communication network. 7 It should also be noted that cloud computing re-
flects the development of the web from static to semantic. Today, codes are
programmable scripts embedded into virtual objects. In his 2013 work,
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 33

“Vex,” Biggers embeds a QR code that when scanned by a mobile device

launches “Moonrising,” an online music video.
Afrofuturism and the techno-vernacular are linked to the 1964–65 New
York World’s Fair, which depicted “The Space Age,” and symbolized
American culture and the coming technological age. Arguably, it also created
resonances of Afrofuturism. In the early 1950s, jazz musician Sun Ra, the
father of Afrofuturism, abandoned his birth name and in a process of re-
creation, developed a complex persona using cosmic philosophies and lyrical
poetry. Re-creation rejects traditional forms and create new ones. By one
account, Sun Ra was well aware of the New York World’s Fair (Sun Ra
“suggested they go” there in ’64) so it is highly likely that his life altering
“trip to Saturn” was meant to coincide with the space race (Lewis 2008, 161).
The Space Age with it heliocentric-themed Unisphere landmark heavily in-
fluenced such Afrofuturist pioneers as Sun Ra, George Clinton of Parlia-
ment-Funkadelic, and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force whose
works resonate with Hype Williams’s music video for Craig Mack’s “Flava
in Ya Ear.” Examples of other members of the Afrofuturist cohort include
Sanford Biggers, Cauleen Smith, Erykah Badu, and Janelle Monae. The Stu-
dio Museum in Harlem’s recent exhibition, “The Shadows Took Shape,”
borrows its title from a Sun Ra poem. Fittingly, this show chronicles the
movement’s ongoing relevance and its global reach from the United States to
Africa and Europe.
One of the more obvious examples of techno-vernacular creativity is
electronic music production. We can see re-creation and DIY improvisation
in the invention of new genres or subgenres as well as the creation of new
techniques and technologies. Rap music producers master techniques such as
sampling, which is the art of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound
recording and reusing it as instrument or a sound recording in a different
song. Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash played a key role in the technical
design of Race Corporation’s Empath mixer. Fouché notes that Grandmaster
Flash’s technological rhetoric shows an “understanding of re-creation based
on personal aesthetics and the use of scientific methods to develop his tech-
nique” (2006, 656). Afrika Bambaataa and others helped to invent turnta-
blism, which is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using
photograph turntables and DJ mixing consoles (mixers). Today, interactive,
augmented soundscapes combine pre-existing musical samples and whatever
the software can detect from a microphone on a mobile device creates an
entirely new listening experience. 8
Semantics denotes a range of ideas about the world, from the popular to
the highly technical, i.e., using devices to layer visual or aural rhythms and
effects to produce complicated patterns. The semantic web is part of Web 3.0
which inventor Tim Berners-Lee describes as a platform that supports dy-
namic graphical applications such as virtual 3D worlds with huge spaces of
34 Nettrice R. Gaskins

data. 9 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 is grounded in genres such as cyberpunk or

postmodern sci-fi, Afropunk DIY culture, electronic music, and virtual per-
formance. Web 3.0 combines specialized forms of representation such as
alphabets, visual images, music, choreographic notations based on geomet-
ric, linguistic, and scientific formulations, programming languages, hardware
(robotics or mobile devices), and software (game platforms). These forms
and representational, vernacular spaces produce cultural data such as heritage
artifacts, geometric motifs that depict nature and the universe, music, perfor-
mance, and games. The combination of cultural data—images, artifacts,
sounds, and spaces—and virtual worlds is what I refer to as Afrofuturism 3.0.

THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY:

VERNACULAR CARTOGRAPHY AND THE SEMANTIC WEB

Afrofuturism, an antecedent to a variety of emerging cultural frameworks,

comprises what social-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai refers to as a
social imaginary that directs viewers to critical and new aspects of artistic
and cultural production (1996). John B. Thompson explains that the social
imaginary “[is] the creative and symbolic dimension of the social world, the
dimension through which human beings create their ways of living together
and their ways of representing their collective life”(1984, 6). Jacques Lacan
presents the imaginary as one of the three intersecting orders that structure all
human existence, the others being the symbolic and the real (Macey 1994,
xxi). These strategies can be used to examine materials and virtual encoun-
ters in cultural art across the African Diaspora. Afrofuturists visualize the
social imaginary using vernacular cartography—the study and practice of
making maps—to combine techno-vernacular creativity and aesthetics to
build on the premise that cultural systems and data can be modeled to com-
municate spatial information in unique ways.
Vernacular cartography straddles the boundaries between culture, art, in-
formation, and representational space in both the physical and virtual worlds.
Mapmakers and artists share skills, materials, and techniques that have been
closely linked throughout history. Resonance can be found in a variety of
texts (art, media, and literature) about maps as a medium for transportation,
teleportation, re-invention, communication, and representational space for re-
invention. Art historian Steven Nelson describes Houston Conwill as a “care-
ful researcher of the hybrid mysteries of African influences on American
culture, from Middle Passage slave ships to plantation life, and to post-
slavery, African-influenced art forms.” 10 Conwill and his sister Estella Con-
will Majozo developed a metaphorical, vernacular cartography as inlaid floor
cosmograms. These floor maps are installed in lobby entrances of the
Schomburg Center in Harlem, New York, and the Harold Washington Li-
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 35

brary in Chicago, Illinois. In “The Cartographer’s Conundrum” exhibition

(2012), Sanford Biggers mapped artistic, cultural, and spiritual practices, as
well as other disciplines and fields, including Afrofuturism, music, and sa-
cred geometry. Vernacular maps, as cultural art forms and technologies,
straddle the boundary between art and information, and are appreciated for
aesthetic qualities as well as strategic navigational needs.
Ben Williams writes that the electronic music duo Drexciya (Gerald Don-
ald and the late James Stinson) are the water-born children of pregnant en-
slaved African women who were thrown or jumped overboard during the
Middle Passage. 11 These deep-sea dwellers are mutated beings, cyborgs, or
hybrids that now live among us, creating art in vernacular spaces. The inner
sleeve notes for Drexciya’s “The Quest” is a map of the African Diaspora.
Artists like Ellen Gallagher use the Drexciyan origin mythology as a basis
for their creative work, mapping pathways between the past, present, and
future. Gallagher’s “Watery Ecstatic” series (2000–2005) and “Osedax”
(2010) consist of layered, multiple projections with hybrid sea organisms.
Finally, Duane Deterville’s analysis of director Kahlil Joseph’s music video
for “Until the Quiet Comes” a song recorded by electronic musician Flying
Lotus underscores the image of water symbolizing the barrier between the
living and the ancestors. 12 The work can best be understood by navigating
the Kalunga (which is the Kikongalic word for “threshold between worlds”)
“aquazone” on the Kongo cosmogram. These examples help us to visualize
layered, intercultural, transnational networks through movement and migra-
tion, as well as the vernacular cartographies of the African Diaspora.
Advancements in “Web 3.0” have created a new, semantic type of online
space that includes software used to render digital images and objects used in
new media technologies, such as virtual 3D worlds. 13 Virtual worlds are
computer-based simulated environments through which users in the form of
three-dimensional avatars can interact with one another and other objects.
Avatars navigate the virtual 3D world of Second Life (SL) through search-
able maps. The basic unit of the SL world is the map region. The Main Grid,
which lays out all the map regions on one large map so that regions that are
side by side and users can see across and travel between them. Avatars can
also be teleported or transported around virtual 3D space using an interactive
or scripted map. To teleport is to instantly change locations based on specific
landmark locations that are similar to bookmarks or favorites in a web
browser. Conceptually, SL teleportation is similar to the fictional transporter
machine used in Star Trek that converts a person or object into an energy
pattern, and then beams the pattern to a target, where it is reconverted into
matter. In SL, avatars can be in many virtual locations in a short period of
time, thus time and space are compressed.
From 2006 until 2010, IBM was heavily invested in Second Life as a
possible platform to replace face-to-face telecommunications. Curated by
36 Nettrice R. Gaskins

Andrew Sempere, the IBM Exhibition Space granted me an artist residency

in Second Life to simulate Afrofuturist cultural production. “Alternate Fu-
tures: Afrofuturist Multiverses and Beyond” was the first of its kind and
presented several themes, such as altUtopia, an imaginary and ideal universe,
altDystopia, the anti-utopian futuristic reality, and the SkyWalk that provided
a cultural and historical timeline for Afrofuturism. AltDystopia was charac-
terized by a repressive social control system, with a lack or total absence of
individual freedoms and expressions. Visitors encountered static and scripted
objects such as a wall of virtual 3D eyes that followed the avatar to simulate
constant surveillance. AltUtopia contrasted against this in an open, transpar-
ent, blue-tinted world full of Afrofuturistic models such as a double helix
DNA tower and 3D objects linking visitors to online information about an-
cient Dogon mythology. SkyWalk spanned the length of the simulation and
presented a scepter that paid homage to Sun Ra. A golden silhouette of the
jazz musicians rose high above the scepter. At its center was a glowing,
spinning Eye of Horus.
“Alternative Futures” presented an interactive, virtual 3D cosmogram for
visitors to navigate the exhibition. Cosmograms or mandalas are flat geomet-
ric images depicting the universe and can be seen in cultures around the
world, including in the African Diaspora, such as in Haiti or Brazil as the
“Veve” or sacred ground drawings of Umbanda called “pontos riscados.”
Cosmograms traced in chalk, paint, or sand on floors become signs of spiritu-
al invocation and encounter. Cosmograms are found in the Americas, such as
the Medicine Wheel or the mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in the
hermetic system of the Tarot. According to Deterville, ideograms or symbols
contained in some of these drawings are based on Kongo and Yoruba cos-
mology, indicating a connection to and contiguity with spirituality of African
continental and representational space. 14 The cosmogram maps the crossroad
between worlds and realities. By layering and texturing digital images and
objects artists can create a new kind of vernacular space. In virtual 3D space
the cosmogram becomes a navigational and teleportation map. Visitors to
“Alternate Future” could click on scripted gold buttons embedded in a map
and be transported to different locations in the virtual 3D exhibition. In
addition to embedding symbolic codes in quilts, floor installations and other
artwork, artists can embed QR codes or computer programming in virtual
objects to navigate the virtual 3D environment.
Artists can assume any form and are limited only by their imaginations in
virtual 3D space. Embodied as avatars, artists can project and insert them-
selves in physical, virtual, or mixed realities. Artist Jacolby Satterwhite uses
Maya 3D modeling software to create virtual 3D environments as sites for
his performances. Satterwhite incorporates video, performance, 3D anima-
tion, fibers, drawing, and printmaking to explore a variety of themes. In a
series titled “Reifying Desire” Satterwhite takes on a performative role by
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 37

including himself in his videos interacting with objects within a fantastical

and natural landscape through experimental movement, modern dance, and
voguing. 15 Using a green screen, he captures his real-life performances and
computer-generated software to create multiples of himself that he inserts
into his artwork. In her virtual photomontage series entitled “Apparition,”
artist Camille Norment conjures up a projected, “oscillating dream space”
that exists in the social imaginary of Afrofuturism. 16 Norment’s notion of
virtual space includes mirrors, multiple projections, and overlays, as a mixed
reality collage and “sound-mind spaces.” These modes of experiencing art
can also be used to demonstrate how augmented reality works. Norment’s
apparition weaves in and out of her dreams and virtual reality. She compares
the oscillating dream space to Sun Ra’s music. Although this work is techni-
cally not augmented space, it addresses the conceptual and aesthetic issues of
creating layered and mixed realities.

THE POETICS OF AUGMENTED DREAM SPACE

To augment something is to make it greater, in size, extent, or quantity. To

become augmented is to add to or multiply what already exists, whether it is
in physical or virtual form. Media theorist Lev Manovich asks, “How is our
experience of a spatial form affected when the form is filled in with dynamic
and rich multimedia information?” 17 Augmented space offers creators new
and different ways to overlay, view, encode, and decode cultural systems and
objects with dynamically changing information. The built environments and
objects of the real world are often covered with information such as signs,
flyers, and graffiti. Keiichi Matsuda writes, “Augmented Space refers to
group of emerging technologies that are unified by their ability to overlay
physical space with information.” 18 Augmented space, which succeeds virtu-
al reality, merges the physical (real) and virtual worlds to create a contigu-
ous, layered, and dynamic reality. In a hyper-networked world, Afrofuturists
and Afropunk DIY techno-utopists navigate in and out of realities, some-
times merging them. Their self- and computer-generated imagery and sounds
reflect their personal and cultural mythologies, as well as the creative and
symbolic dimensions of their social worlds. This production explores how,
conceptually and technically, built environments become augmented with
cultural information and how creators replicate this information through
techno-vernacular creativity.
Duane Deterville notes how the use of the Internet expands the area of
ritual space to include virtual reality along with metaphysical, African Conti-
nental, and African Diasporic spaces to form the Afriscape. 19 Using the
Afriscape and Afrofuturism as lenses, we can understand the augmented
vernacular in new ways. Afrofuturism 3.0 is a utopic vision, as a web of
38 Nettrice R. Gaskins

cultural art and data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in the creative
practices of the African Diaspora on the Web. Afrofuturism is the “Space
Age,” ancient African iconography, cosmology and metaphysics, psychedel-
ic artwork, cultural heritage artifacts, and electronic soundscapes that reflect
the techno-vernacular creative practices of an idiosyncratic, visionary, and
creative community of makers. In theory, the practice of augmenting space
can also refer to the layering of quilts with embedded codes at safe houses,
using multiple projections on multiple surfaces as part of an installation,
using multiple projected avatars, or combining music samples with other
sounds to immerse listeners.
Sun Ra believed that sound was from the future. This was before the
invention of web-based technologies that mix, layer, or combine sound and
imagery. Camille Norment writes that (twenty years) after Sun Ra’s passing
we are now ready to teleport into simultaneously outer and inner realms of
reality. Artworks by Xenobia Bailey and Saya Woolfalk explore augmented
dream spaces by creating layers of digital and non-digital materials. Bailey is
an American artist and designer best known for her large-scale crochet pieces
and mandalas, consisting of colorful concentric circles and repeating pat-
terns. Bailey created a sound visualization and device inspired by jazz musi-
cian John Coltrane. At one end is a “mouthpiece” where the breath goes in
and at the other end is a constellation of layered two-dimensional mandalas
where the “magic comes out.” 20 In “The Shadows Took Shape” exhibition at
the Studio Museum in Harlem, Woolfalk directed an “inspired video (with
music by D.J. Spooky) that seems to capture the color-splashed rituals of
outer-planetary mystics who have landed on Earth.” 21 These mystics are
hybridized avatars, often covered in layers of materials such as fabric, felt
objects, and paint. These works represent artists’ collective participation in
the fabrication of alternate realities that is at the core of Afrofuturism. Aug-
menting space with multiple projected images, objects and personalities ex-
tend the concept of vernacular cartography.
Although he does not describe himself as an Afrofuturist, Yung Jake, like
Jacolby Satterwhite, walks among us as virtual personality, the very incarna-
tion of an avatar. Yung Jake re-conceptualizes 1960s Happenings as mixed
reality performances for the Information Age (i.e., smartphones, tablet PCs).
Yung Jake has been described as a “datamoshing, glitch-creating, meta-rap-
ping artist who employs cross-genre collaborations, GIFS, and the sweet new
app he and his buddies created for Sundance.” 22 Augmented Real is a mobile
augmented reality (AR) application and rap music video featuring a virtual
3D Yung Jake that pops out of postcards, magazines, and computer screens.
The app can be downloaded on mobile devices like smartphones and iPads.
Yung Jake also stars in E.m-bed.de/d, another online performance that pops
up on laptops and is triggered by sitting down in front of the device. Jacolby
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 39

Satterwhite and Yung Jake represent the next generation of artists that tele-
port into new realms of virtual reality to perform in augmented space.
Afrofuturism, in its many forms, directly engages audiences and subtly
influences us, through the layering of text, images, and sound. Filmmaker
Kahlil Joseph augments his music videos with text and cultural heritage
artifacts such as African masks as a way to establish and sustain a relation-
ship between the past and the present. In his “Belhaven Meridian” music
video for Shabazz Palaces (2011), a hero played by actor Ernest Wadell of
HBO’s television drama “The Wire” appears to be on a journey. He is walk-
ing, with some ominous figures waiting on the road ahead of him, but then an
African mask appears to come down upon him from above. He eventually
turns around and grabs the mask just as it begins to float away. He then runs
forward, mask in hand, towards his adversaries. This is the key point in the
allegory. Only when you set out on the journey, leaving behind the status
quo, will you open yourself to the helping hand of the universe. 23 Joseph’s
films and videos reveal a sensibility of vernacular mapping, augmented
space, as well as Afrofuturistic storytelling.
In “Belhaven Meridian” another scene presents a text overlay “Sheep
Killer, est. 1977” that refers to Charles Burnett’s film “Killer of Sheep.”
Kahlil Joseph uses Burnett’s film as a stylistic inspiration in the blocking and
shot choices in his video. A live action “Afrofuturist comic” that artist/
author/comic book creator John Jennings worked on with rapper/producer/
actor David Banner is another example of augmented space. Jennings pro-
vided artwork to the story, acting as a graphic artist on the film. His work is
used to tell the tragic and epic story of Aket Heru played by Banner. “Walk-
ing With Gods” is the story of an ancient West African prince (Heru) who is
being pursued and murdered over and over again by an evil spirit throughout
time. 24 Like Grandmaster Flash and Yung Jake, John Jennings samples and
remixes content as part of the techno-vernacular mode of production. Jen-
nings’s images are seen in flashback sequences and as video overlays. “Bel-
haven Meridian,” “Augmented Real,” “Walking With Gods,” and other ex-
amples overlay and embed symbols, text, and graphics in cultural systems
with dynamic content, sometimes digital in form and closely linked with the
development of Afrofuturism as a semantic, cultural arts network.
Vernacular cartography can be applied to contemporary art forms that
employ symbols derived from cultural diagrams and from their own collec-
tion of images, objects, performances, and sounds. Xenobia Bailey uses fiber
materials to create her crocheted mandalas. Houston Conwill and Sanford
Biggers also work with mandalas and materials that also serve as maps,
chalk-line, or cake walks from the nineteenth century American South and
break dancing surfaces. These artists demonstrate a sense of augmented
space, overlaid with dynamically changing information. The use of geomet-
ric charts maps, virtual and real-world geographic locations of objects such
40 Nettrice R. Gaskins

as performers/avatars, and mobile smartphones reflects Diasporic movement,

migration, and the scattering of people who often share and exchange cultu-
ral data. These examples do not exhaust the possibilities of augmented space
and new technology at the intersection of contemporary art and new media.
Creators of new media applications and interfaces should consider whether
cultural art forms become irrelevant and invisible or if designers end up
creating new experiences in which the spatial and information layers are
equally important. Artists and designers can interrogate the dynamic between
creative expression and information as well as how these aspects might func-
tion differently in today’s digital culture.
To further explore this development artists are using open source, web-
based software to design Web 3.0 applications and interfaces that draw on
cultural, visual systems to design applications that trigger digital objects,
patterns, and other objects. A creative collaboration between The Heavy
Projects (Los Angeles) and Public Ad Campaign (New York City),
Re+Public “uses emerging technologies to alter the current expectations of
urban media and accomplish our core mission of re+imagining public
space.” 25 Instead of embedding visual codes in quilts or symbols in floor
plans Re+Public uses several basic shapes that are embedded in painted
murals. The Re+Public app unlocks dozens of digital variations of these
basic shapes and allows users to view and randomly re-compose murals into
hundreds of variations. If Underground Railroad conductors and passengers
had their own mobile devices and technological skills, they could have creat-
ed dynamically changing artwork and displays to represent geographical lo-
cations, constellations in the sky, or even the North Star. By applying Afrofu-
turism to the creation of games, art, and other cultural forms, artists and
designers can engage people in diverse interactive technology experiences.

CONCLUSION

Vernacular cartography and augmented space, as an extension of techno-

vernacular creative production, challenges artists and makers with new ways
to sample, remix, or re-purpose cultural artifacts or data and author Afrofu-
turistic narratives via science, science fiction, technology, sound, architec-
ture, the arts, and other cultural and interpretive modes of analysis. The
purpose of this essay was to explore how Web 3.0 and other technologies
continue to push the boundaries of digital culture and encourage Afrofutur-
ists to navigate these new vernacular spaces. Proto-Afrofuturists and conduc-
tors of the Underground Railroad devised clever techniques that helped make
their forays successful, including quilt-based maps embedded with visual
codes to guide their passengers to freedom. Today, codes are embedded in art
and crafts, in virtual 3D objects through programming languages, and pre-
 Afrofuturism on Web 3.0 41

sented as digital overlays in videos and on camera-enabled mobile devices.

Artists across the Diaspora augment images and sound to disrupt syntax and
alter systems. Inspired by scientific theories and mathematical equations,
artists explore the connection between cultural heritage artifacts and contem-
porary ideas about the structure of time, space, and the universe. Sun Ra
experimented with electronic instruments to create soundscapes from the
future. Mobile applications create augmented soundscapes that make us re-
ceptive to multiple dimensions of reality. Artists, makers, and designers who
use the Afrofuturism aesthetic can tap into these technologies and sensibil-
ities in their work. They are part of an evolving, global movement to sustain
this aesthetic through creativity, innovation, and culture.

NOTES

1. Tom Butter, “Interview with Sanford Biggers,” Whitehot Magazine: http://whitehotmag-

azine.com/articles/2010-interview-with-sanford-biggers/2054 (Accessed November 20, 2013).
2. Robert Enright. “Resonant Surgeries: The Collaged World of Wangechi Mutu,” Border
Crossings: http://bordercrossingmag.com/article /resonant-surgeries-the-collaged-world-of-
wangechi-mutu (Accessed March 13, 2014).
3. Dan Busheikin, “Sun Ra: Man, Myth, Alien, Angel”: http://www.chartattack.com/fea-
tures/2012/06/08/sun-ra-man-myth-alien-angel (Accessed December 1, 2013).
4. Duane Deterville, “Defining the Afriscape through Ground Drawings and Street Altars”:
http://viscrit.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/09deterville.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2013).
5. Laura Hutson, “Coded Quilt Drawings: Notes From Sanford Biggers’ Art Talk”: http://
www.nashvillescene.com/countrylife/archives/2013/11/25/coded-quilt-drawings-notes-from-
sanford-biggers-art-talk (Accessed December 1, 2013).
6. Janet Goleas, “July 2013: Sanford Biggers @ Eric Firestone Gallery”: http://whitehot-
magazine.com/articles/sanford-biggers-eric-firestone-gallery/2817 (Accessed November 30,
2013).
7. Ibid.
8. Eliot Van Buskirk, “RjDj’s Inception App Creates Personal Movie Soundtracks with
iPhone Mic”: http://evolver.fm/2010/12/09/rjdj-inception-app-personal-movie-soundtrack-
iphone-mic (Accessed December 1, 2013).
9. Victoria Shannon (June 26, 2006). “A ‘more revolutionary’ Web,” International Herald
Tribune. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
10. Steven Nelson. “Circumnavigating the Atlantic: Houston Conwill’s Choreographed Di-
aspora” (lecture): http://gallery400.uic.edu/events/steven-nelson#sthash.33kbdNll.dpuf (Ac-
cessed November 30, 2013).
11. Ben Williams. “Black Secret Technology: Detroit Techno and the Information Age”:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic500286.files/Black_Secret_Technology_by
_Williams.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2013).
12. Duane Deterville. “Kahlil Joseph’s ‘Until the Quiet Comes’: The Afriscape Ghost
Dance on Film”: http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/03/kahlil-josephs-until-the-quiet-comes-the-
afriscape-ghost-dance-on-film (Accessed November 30, 2013).
13. Victoria Shannon (June 26, 2006). “A ‘more revolutionary’ Web,” International Herald
Tribune. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
14. Duane Deterville, “Defining the Afriscape through Ground Drawings and Street Altars”:
http://viscrit.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/09deterville.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2013).
15. Monya Rowe Gallery, “Jacolby Satterwhite: The Matriarch’s Rhapsody (press release)”:
http://monyarowegallery.com/files/Satterwhite_2012_Press_Release.pdf.
42 Nettrice R. Gaskins

16. Camille Norment. “Notes from the Oscillating Dream Space”: http://www.norment.net/
studio/art/oscillationDreamSpace/index.htm (Accessed November 30, 2013).
17. Lev Manovich, “The Poetics of Augmented Space”: http://www.alice.id.tue.nl/refer-
ences/manovich-2006.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2013).
18. Keiichi Matsuda, “Domesti/City: The Dislocated Home in Augmented Space”: http://
www.keiichimatsuda.com/kmatsuda_domesti-city.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2013).
19. Duane Deterville, Defining the Afriscape through Ground Drawings and Street Altars:
http://viscrit.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/09deterville.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2013).
20. Xenobia Bailey, “Xenobia Bailey’s Amazing Art and John Coltrane”: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzOa4ce5DJ8#t=16 (Accessed December 1, 2013).
21. New Yorker magazine, “Goings on About Town: The Shadows Took Shape”: http://
www.newyorker.com/arts/events/art/the-shadows-took-shape-studio-museum-in-harlem (Ac-
cessed November 30, 2013).
22. Skylovestoeat, Tumblr editorial: http://editorial.tumblr.com/post/41324110814/enjoyed-
sitting-down-with-datamoshing (Accessed November 30, 2013).
23. Ishmaelites, “Meditations on Belhaven Meridian”: http://ishmaelites.blogspot.com/
2011/09/meditations-on-belhaven-meridian.html (Accessed November 30, 2013).
24. Robert Jeffrey II, “John Jennings provides his artistic talent to David Banner’s ‘Walking
With Gods’”: http://www.blacksci-fi.com/features/article/walking-with-gods/#.UptkwWRgZ
b4 (Accessed November 30, 2013).
25. Re+Public: “Re+Imagining Public Space”: http://www.republiclab.com/about (Ac-
cessed November 30, 2013).

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 Chapter Three

The Real Ghosts in the Machine

Afrofuturism and the Haunting of Racial Space in
I, Robot and DETROPIA

Ricardo Guthrie

In many documentary and sci-fi films of the last twenty-five years, urban
America is depicted as a site of decay, degradation, and disease—overrun by
savage hordes who destroy civilization or worse: persisting as the hapless
inheritors of urban jungles in which no “white” citizen can survive. Heroic
reconquests by whites yield semblances of hope for the future, but only if
savages, robotic droids, or miscreant machines can be subdued, repro-
grammed, or destroyed. Future urban life is clearly a white projection of
racial fears and hopes of conquests to come, but Afrofuturists (Dery 1995)
might offer a different take on these racialized geographies. In fact, Dery
defines Afrofuturism as:

Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses

African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture . . .
and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images
of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future. (Dery 1995)

I extend this discursive line of inquiry by examining the presence of Afro-

diasporic peoples within the space/time continuum generally described as the
“future.” The persistence of “race” as a haunting feature of modern and
postmodern societies—yes, even extended into future space or science fic-
tion imaginaries—is interrogated (Gordon 1997). Thus, my comparison of
thematic racial hauntings within a Hollywood sci-fi drama and an indepen-
dent documentary film of the early twenty-first century is based on funda-
mental antagonisms described by Afro-Pessimists (Jules-Rosette 2002; Sex-
45
46 Ricardo Guthrie

ton 2010; Wilderson 2008; 2010) which are also addressed by Afrofuturists
such as Dery (1995; 2007), Nelson (2002), Bould (2007), Everett and Wal-
lace et al. (2007)—but with far more optimism, or at least the possibility of
emancipation through an embrace of technology and the elevation of an
Afrofuturist awakening.
The two films which offer compelling opportunities for utilizing Afrofu-
turist analytics to re-center racial urban imaginary are I, Robot (2004) and
DETROPIA. In I, Robot, director Alex Proyas creates a futuristic “thriller” in
which black detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) challenges the logic of
creating a new class of robot/slaves to liberate humankind from mundane
lives, while investigating the death of a robotics scientist in 2035 Chicago.
Spooner represents a type of Afro-Pessimist (Wilderson 2008) whose cyni-
cism is gradually replaced by a soulful, Afrofuturist merger of black cultural
ethos and commitment to struggle. In DETROPIA (2012), independent film-
makers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady explore the devolution of Detroit
from a thriving 1.8 million-person metropolis founded on a unionized auto
industry and a strong black professional class, to today’s de-industrialized
city of 700,000 residents with a shrinking tax base. In this bleak environ-
ment, black residents are under siege, while white professionals do battle to
resuscitate the city. DETROPIA’s dystopic present anticipates tomorrow’s
urban crises, while illuminating black change agents and environmentalists
who envision a new city beyond existing racial paradigms. This chapter
examines racialized urban geographies and develops Afrofuturist analytics to
explain conflicted racial imaginaries in dystopic Detroit and in a seemingly
utopic Chicago of 2035. If, as Gilbert Ryle (1949) asserted, “there have
always been ‘ghosts’ in the machine,” can technological progress really elim-
inate the haunting of race in the future? What cultural and political aesthetics
can help us imagine racial and urban geographies of the future?

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY FUTURE/PAST

Black culture, as reflected in the white eye, is about gritty reality, not virtual
reality; jacking your body, not jacking your mind into the mediasphere.
Blacks, like Latinos, are mythologized as living links to the lost world of
unmediated spontaneity, deeply felt physicality, and social connectedness—
the rapidly receding Real, for which the white digerati feel a Baudrillardian
nostalgia as they spend more and more of their lives working and playing in
cyberspace. (Dery 2007, 34)

American science fiction (sci-fi) has traditionally been accepted as a valid

imaginary zone for conceiving possible futures and performing thought ex-
periments to solve social, environmental, and/or technological problems that
continually vex “modern” society (Sobchack 1997). Sci-fi films, in particu-
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 47

lar, have provided a compelling arena for visualizing solutions—and contin-

uing problems—that make the human experience “legible” to viewers of the
current age. The problem with sci-fi, as expressed extensively by numerous
writers, pop cultural and cinematic critics, is that the future seemingly ex-
punges race—and in particular, African-diasporic peoples—from the equa-
tion (Bould 2007, 177). More problematically, American sci-fi futures in-
clude racialized beings who have not really solved the problem of racial
hierarchy and white dominance. Even as the writers, directors, and producers
of a theorized, futurist liberal society in which all men, women, animals, and
plants live in post-racial, feminist, or anti-classist societies in the cosmos,
they, nonetheless, unwittingly replicate existing hierarchies and subsume ra-
cial problematics through technological and/or biological assimilation under
white humanitarian regimes. 1 The converse is also true: problematic racial
underclasses, robots, androids, and/or rebellious beings of color exist as
problems to be solved; felons, terrorists, or monsters to be subdued; or intel-
ligent but emotionally unstable martyrs to be admired beyond the grave.
In many ways, race fills the future space as yet another “ghost” in the
machine, haunting the paradigmatic ethos, revealing a problematic core in
fantasies which reveal themselves as extensions of today’s dominant white
imaginary in society and culture. These technological machinations prove yet
again unable or unsuitable to put to rest the haunting of racism that shapes
modern and seemingly post-modern worlds. Modernity, however, requires
abject peoples and beings to compare to our future heroes and heroines.
Afrofuturist writers and critics, however, provide an antidote to these white
imaginaries. Their Afro-diasporic heroes and sheroes move from the “pit” to
the “tip” of racial intervention—providing skepticism, cyncism, or homeboy/
girl cosmopolitan intellectualism to resurrect the ghosts, and foreground race
as a place for solving social ills and persistent inequities over time and space
(Bould 2007). Problematics continue, of course, within even these Afrofutur-
ist realms: feminist sheroes are in limited numbers—often taking a backseat
to male heroes who are sensitive “roughnecks” ready to do the job, sacrifice
themselves for family and progeny, or elevate sexual tension between black
men and white females—yet again the object for the male gaze.

THE CLEAN MACHINE VS. THE MEAN MACHINE:

DEL SPOONER, CHICAGO FUTURIST

Unwilling Afrofuturist Del Spooner—skeptical of robotic utopianism in

2035 Chicago—displays a knowing cynicism of future logics that will sup-
posedly emancipate all urban denizens. Detective Spooner, assigned to inves-
tigate the death of robotics scientist Dr. Alfred Lanning, who was also his
mentor, fears the rampant commodification and distribution of robot servants
48 Ricardo Guthrie

will not only create a new class of slaves, but will forever enslave humans as
well. Deeply committed to keeping it “real,” Spooner is outfitted with retro-
cultural accoutrements of the 1970s (his JVC player pulses out Stevie Won-
der’s Superstition as well as Fontella Bass’s 1965 R&B hit, Rescue Me). In
the opening scenes, Spooner dresses in black leather trenchcoat and gazes
lovingly at his black hightopped “Chuck Taylor All-Stars” basketball shoes
before taking to the gritty streets of futurist Chicago.
Spooner displays distrust and prejudicial anger against robots—who are
lauded as modernity’s greatest innovation. He distrusts robots because they
have no “soul”: “They are just clockwork and gears to me!” he declares early
in the film. He also questions the programming laws that control the robot
machines: 1) A robot may not injure a human, or through inaction, allow a
human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given to it by
human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;
and 3) A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection
does not conflict with the First or Second Law (Asimov 1950). Inspired by
the 1950s sci-fi short stories by Isaac Asimov, I, Robot the film is an interest-
ing exploration of the themes of humanity vs. mechanization, utopian vs.
dystopian cities, and the future vs. the past—while employing a noted black
film star (Will Smith) to interrogate quandaries about race and technology in
the near future.
Spooner is perhaps an unwilling Afrofuturist because of his cynicism and
reservations about imposed technology; however, he is not nostalgic about
the past. Rather, Spooner is concerned with the present because of the way
robots (and corporate marketers) have taken over society. He uses music and
commodities from the twentieth century to recenter his body and mind in the
midst of rampant consumerism. Recalling Gilbert Ryle’s philosophical cri-
tique of the Cartesian split between body and mind, Spooner wrestles with
the possibility that there has always been a “ghost in the machine”—his
ghostly soul echoes a dual consciousness that harks back to an era in which
disaster capitalism was exposed and under siege by liberation struggles of the
1960s and 1970s. Such movements were derailed, destroyed, or co-opted by
COINTELPRO tactics, the logic of advanced consumerism and the seeming-
ly universal freedoms offered through electronics and the Internet. Neverthe-
less, the essence of those social movements lives on in music and cultural
artifacts of the future. In Spooner’s world, they are echoes, ghosts of the past,
residing in a twenty-first century society that uses technology to improve
human potential (Wilderson 2010).
Spooner’s pessimism (cynicism) is well-deserved. He survived a devas-
tating car crash and near-drowning only because a robot chose to rescue him
rather than an injured 12-year-old girl, who was also trapped in her car. The
robot made the wrong decision, according to Spooner, because it had no
empathy for rescuing a young girl, whose odds of survival were less than
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 49

Spooner’s—the robot calculated that Spooner would survive, thus it pulled

him from the wreckage, and left the girl to die. Spooner also encountered a
sentient computer and a robot programmed to experience emotions; both
prove to be unpredictable and unstable—leading to the death of Spooner’s
mentor and the near-death of Spooner himself. The ironic relationship of
Spooner to sentient, non-human beings (robots) is revealed early on (the
robotics scientist heals the badly injured Spooner by surgically providing him
a prosthetic arm, shoulder, and ribs that make him part-robot); however, the
detective still harbors prejudicial hate (or fear?) of robots in general, refer-
ring to them as “canners,” and degrading them at every opportunity. He
exists as a “prosthetically enhanced” futurist, but fails to note the irony until
very late in the film.
The utopian logic of future cities like Chicago remains a central feature of
the film, while still reifying white domination and confirming black degrada-
tion. The ghetto remains, even in the face of technological advances which
are designed to improve life for the masses. The urban residents are unwit-
ting consumers, trapped into a multicultural future in which racial enclaves
and class divisions remain solidly in place. Stigmatized urban blacks are still
information “have-nots” (Everett and Wallace 2007, 3) who stand to benefit
from techno-consumption. At one point, Spooner tackles a robot whom he
mistakenly believes had stolen a purse; he learns that the robot was running
the purse out to a large, asthmatic black woman who had left her inhaler at
home; she insults and derides Spooner for his mistaken assumption that the
robot had committed a crime—an interesting displacement of the presump-
tion that young black males running through the streets might encounter
today.
In the “space where the future takes place” (Rose 1994, 215), Spooner
lives a double life: he detests the abjection imposed by commodified technol-
ogy, but his life and career are dependent upon that technology—both to
survive and to work as a police detective committed to protecting life and
property. Although he remains deeply skeptical about the corporate motives
behind mass robot production and distribution, he is pledged to defend their
right to continue selling robots, even as they prove to be unstable and/or
dangerous.
The haunting of race remains, and is sustained, as Spooner attempts to
solve the murder of Dr. Lanning, the robotics scientist, and is perceived by
others as an “angry Black man.” Spooner is also viewed as a bigoted techno-
phobe. In this film the discursive embodiment of blackness (or Afro-diaspor-
ic consciousness) comes at a risk. Spooner can attest to his soulful authentic-
ity (cynical or pessimistic about the benefits of commerce-driven technolo-
gy) in the face of mechanized progress and alienation. His sleep is inter-
rupted by repeated nightmares of his near-death drowning, while his robotic
counterpart—a blue-eyed, plastic-skinned robot nicknamed “Sonny” by the
50 Ricardo Guthrie

scientist-mentor—dreams of man/machine mass unification, under the guid-

ance of an unnamed hero, who could be a robot, or another human. He first
says the hero figure is Spooner, but by the end of the film, it is revealed to be
Sonny himself—an uncomfortable transposition between Spooner and his
robot “peer” whose future is yet unclear. These two threads problematize the
film’s attempt to portray Spooner as an out-of-control, angry black man who
is paranoid and phobic about technology, but there’s more. Can urban envi-
ronments of the future be sustained by massive investments in labor-saving
technology? What is technology’s price to society, and how do we avoid
mass alienation and/or disruption of human relations? Are human beings
(blacks and others) similar to robot machines—invested with “souls” and
emotions to guide and protect human “masters”?
Spooner reflects an overwhelmingly cynical outlook throughout the film,
and—because he remains constrained by his ironic relationship to property,
technology, and policing the future—remains an ambivalent hero. Perhaps
there’s truth to the prophetic words of The Last Poets (1971), that “automat-
ic, push-button, remote-control; Synthetic, Genetics [will] Command your
Soul!” This outlook is very similar to what Wilderson (2008) and others have
described as “Afro-Pessimism,” in that he continually seeks a pathway to
legibility—striving to be heard and understood, first, and then to possibly
correct society’s errant ways. According to Wilderson:

Afro-Pessimists are framed as such . . . because they theorize an antagonism,

rather than a conflict—i.e., they perform a kind of ‘work of understanding’
rather than that of liberation, refusing to posit seemingly untenable solutions to
the problems they raise. (Wilderson 2008)

The antagonism in Wilderson’s theorization is the continued “natal aliena-

tion” (social death through enslavement) of African-descendant peoples in
modern society. Wilderson, drawing on Orlando Patterson’s study of slavery,
and Frantz Fanon’s psychoanalytic assessment of black nonsubjectivity de-
scribes the hypocrisy of democratic societies which were founded on the
subjugation of people of African descent through slavery and its afterlife
(Fanon 1967; Patterson 1982; Sexton 2010; Wilderson 2008; 2010). In this
framework, the “ontological” dimensions of blackness within modern (and
future) societies remain antagonistic because black life and labor are structu-
rally positioned “outside of humanity and civil society” (Wilderson 2010, 1).
Black life/labor remain subordinate to whites, and available for capital accu-
mulation—in other words, the very idea of what it means to be free, and
human, is predicated on what it means to be unfree, and black.
Afro-Pessimists would go so far as to say that black people are sentient
but dead to the dominant society—available for labor but constrained
through gratuitous violence within civil society. Within the logic and politi-
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 51

cal economy of the American cinema, black characters are similarly con-
strained—existing mainly to advance plot and dramatic consequences for
whites, their emotions, conditions, and dilemmas. Even today’s movie stars
and producers such as Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, and Forest Whi-
taker find it difficult to evade the entrapment of natal alienation that provides
mythic entertainment for audiences concerned with the “trauma drama” of
slavery, abject black behavior, and the persistence of racial animus. Even in
historical dramas brought to the screen by Winfrey, Washington, and Whi-
taker to remind Americans of the impact of slavery and its afterlife, there is a
recurrent sense that “we can feel good about feeling bad about what has
happened in the past”—as if the racial antagonisms are no longer present or
significant (Guthrie 2012; 2013).
Detective Spooner addresses the antagonism within a society which is
dependent upon robot/slave labor for the creation of wealth and consumer
progress in the midst of racial subjugation, economic division, and impend-
ing insurrection of subordinate beings. Spooner believes nothing good can
come from slave/robots serving humankind, and falls victim to the prejudice
against sentient “beings who have no soul.” It is an ironic, disturbing aware-
ness that he develops over time. Still, Spooner is not a revolutionary, and he
offers no solutions to the technological challenges of future society; but he
does take action to seek justice on behalf of the murdered scientist. It is his
action in the face of an “irreconcilable encounter” with the collapse of “civil
society” that is key to his transformation, and—by extension—the possibility
of emancipation for Afro-descendant peoples.
According to Wilderson, however, such actions may be inadequate to
arrest racial oppression because they merely expose limitations within civil
society, rather than eliminating racial division:

a revolution that would destroy civil society, as we know it, would be a more
adequate response. Afro-Pessimists [Hartman, Spillers, Marriott . . .] would
argue there is no place for blacks, only prosthetics, techniques which give the
illusion of a relationality in the world. (Wilderson 2008)

Afrofuturists, however, would stop short of destroying civil society; they

would settle for “legibility,” and attempt to halt the erasure of black contribu-
tions to society. They act, not because they are trying to “save” society, but
because they have nothing to lose (Wilderson 2010). Spooner, for instance,
was selected by Dr. Lanning to solve his “suicide/murder” because Lanning
realized that Spooner was a black man who yet remained skeptical of the
allure of technology and capital accumulation. Lanning understood that
Spooner was prepared to make visible his belief that mass production of
robot/slaves would lead to disaster, and that the “Tip of white, posthuman,
posthistorical” transcendence was an illusion (Bould 2007, 183) that could be
52 Ricardo Guthrie

challenged by the “Pit of black, material, human, and historical being”—

represented by the “real” agent of change, Del Spooner.
This is the main lesson of the film: Spooner’s Afro-Pessimism, which
provides an optic for visualizing the irreconcilable antagonism of race, is
gradually transformed through action into a type of Afrofuturism. Spooner
reveals the problematics of blacks, art, and technology in a future that echoes
racial hierarchies of “the past.” He does not have “the answer,” but he,
nevertheless, reckons with the “ghosts in the machine”—black people, and
their racialized past/present as well as the persistence of racism that can
never be fully erased. Spooner helps put down the mass robot insurrection,
which ironically parallels fears of slave uprisings during America’s antebel-
lum period—but he remains unable to resolve antagonisms between his own
role as a police agent and stand-in for sentient robot servants.
I, Robot provides a rich visual terrain of 2035 Chicago that curiously
reflects key antagonisms and conflicts of today. Three features of the film’s
cinematic and literary design might be summarized by the following:

a. Racial Ethnoscapes are structural features of urban life and American

civil society. (Despite the presence of improved robotics, the basic
racial hierarchy and function of civil society remains the same in the
future: blacks are still marginalized and made “invisible” by their
“otherness,” or violently suppressed should they assert their “real” or
authentic selves. This is both a theme within Hollywood films and a
crisis of modern society.)
b. The Relationship of Disaster Capitalism to urban social decay is a
persistent feature of modernity, post-modernity, and future civiliza-
tions. (The “logic” of rampant consumerism is presented as the chief
component of “emancipation” for oppressed communities of color—
everyone can enjoy the benefits of robot servants, it seems, even as
class and social stratifications, and the profit logic of capitalism, lead
once again to social disruption, violence, and further chaos.)
c. The Remnants of these irreconcilable antagonisms remain as “ghosts”
in the machine (modern society—which cannot function without sig-
nificant presence of “real” black, or robotic, Others!); Del Spooner’s
heroic actions help save civil society, but his skepticism is not recog-
nized for its valuable critique. He does not fit the role of liberator, but
his Afrofuturist vision provides unique insights and a “re-centering”
through black music and cultural artifacts emanating from the Civil
Rights/Black Power eras.

At the end of the film, after a violent robot insurrection, the troublesome
sentient computer is destroyed, and the Nexus-5 robot/slaves are decommis-
sioned. The future role of robots is unclear, but the prosthetically enhanced
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 53

Detective Spooner is vindicated for his skepticism. He becomes a mentor for

Sonny, the remaining sentient robot, and develops a possible romantic part-
nership with Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan)—the AWF (attractive
white female) who is in awe of his surgically reconstructed physique. How
can this fictional sci-fi film about future Chicago help us comprehend the
reality faced by other cities today? The tribulations evoked in DETROPIA
(2012) provide ample opportunities to examine Afrofuturist visions that
might offset the tremendously pessimistic depictions of a rapidly declining
American metropolis—felled by disaster capitalism at its worst.

THE ARREST OF DEVELOPMENT:

DETROIT AND THE ANTI-UTOPIAN MOVEMENT

In this documentary film, the moribund city of Detroit stands on the verge of
destruction as urban planners, politicians, labor leaders, business entrepren-
eurs, artists, and residents attempt to “re-purpose the city” for the future. The
sustainable city can only be preserved if black populations are divested of
control, made invisible or obsolete by financial restructuring of jobs, hous-
ing, city services, and redefining what it means to be a resident of Detroit. A
young black videographer creates digital blogs for the Internet—capturing
images of Detroit’s decaying splendor: a concert hall that has fallen into
disrepair; empty luxury apartments and overgrown vacant lots, as well as
dilapidated former worksites are all extensively photographed and forlornly
depicted, while she traverses the city. Other Detroit pioneers attempt to arrest
the destruction around them, acting as squatters, performance artists, union
organizers, and activists seeking to restore Detroit to its former prominence.
However, it is all, seemingly, for not.
These “techno-change” agents (Dery 2007) confront the “techno-determi-
nism” that seemingly condemns the city to destruction. Since the auto indus-
try began laying off thousands of workers in the late-twentieth century—
replacing them with machines, and relocating production facilities to other
countries and to non-union shops down South—Detroit has become an
anachronism, unable to finance city services through a greatly reduced tax
base, and unable to invest in new businesses and industries that might replace
the one-time great auto industry. Yet, in 2009–2010 the automakers were
bailed out by President Obama and Congress, who restructured and then
encouraged them to make unprecedented profits over the last few years.
Although American automakers still maintain a growing market share of the
global industry, the jobs and financial benefits have not returned to Detroit
workers and residents, who largely remain unemployed.
DETROPIA is the answer to the question posed by “disaster” capitalism:
Is black labor anachronistic in the post-industrialized urban core? DETRO-
54 Ricardo Guthrie

PIA is a documentary that feels like a disaster sci-fi film—only its reality is
“mythic”—based on the “real,” the authentic re-working and re-wiring of
economic and technological relations between past and present. Is it the
“Future” within our grasp? The filmmakers create a running sequence of
stories featuring a labor leader, a retired educator turned bar owner and
entrepreneur, a video blogger, and white performance artists—all depicted
without voice-over narration. The filmmakers’ presence is revealed in short
captions and intertitles that provide shocking statistics and historical back-
ground, while the cinematography moves about the city. The respondents
provide a type of chorus of archetypal dimensions: Labor, Entrepreneurship,
Youth, and White Urban Pioneers to address the various aspects of Detroit’s
mythic rise and fall. The “extras” in the film are city residents who express
their hopes and dreams for the future. There are several confrontational
scenes between residents and a beleaguered Mayor Dave Bing, who appears
helpless to stop the flight of businesses and taxpayers from the city.
DETROPIA portrays the nightmare existence of urban residents who have
been abandoned by businesses and city politicians. The title of the film
comes from a reworking of a sign above an abandoned autoparts store—
combining “Detroit” and “Utopia” into a filmic symbol. The film itself repre-
sents a “shock” to the system—the logical end-result of white flight/white
fright from a city that was once a “Utopia” for scores of people. According to
the filmmakers, a combination of two major riots (1943 and 1967) and en-
demic government corruption, spurred the exodus of white as well as black
professionals. The subsequent downsizing of the auto industry in the 1980s
sealed the city’s fate. Presently, Detroit is perceived as an “interesting Petri
dish”—an ongoing experiment in social engineering (Ewing 2012). Notwith-
standing the city’s dismal outlook, there are respondents in the documentary
who echoed the possibilities of resurrecting black cultural capital to restore
the city to its former greatness. They desired to attract new residents who
could build nimble alternatives of cooperative farming, reduce carbon im-
print of businesses, and restructure arts, sports, and cultural industries within
the region.
DETROPIA examines the very real possibility that business and political
leaders might resurrect the city by purging it of black residents—under the
guise of eliminating abandoned housing and combating crime. Since Detroit
has such a rich history and holds a key position in the Midwest, city elites
hope to create a gleaming, white metropolis dispersed of abject blackness.
This trope fits most of Hollywood’s futurist imaginations. Moreover, it em-
bodies the fears and concerns of Afrofuturists that black people will be
divested of their future role in urban America, and reduced to abject, symbol-
ic representatives of a post-Apocalyptic present. Afrofuturists would applaud
the innovative spirit of those who have been abandoned in the urban core, yet
remain as essential features of the ethnoscape.
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 55

For the “Afrofuturist,” the apocalypse has already happened (Bould 2007,
181). In the words of Public Enemy: “Armageddon been in effect!” Those
who remain behind, goes the popular sentiment, are the detritus of a failed
social, political, and economic system that collapsed because of corrupt black
politicians. Despite the ahistorical logic of this sentiment (the city was al-
ready in decline by the time Mayor Coleman Young came to office in the
1970s, and white flight had been steadily increasing since the 1950s), the
film replicates the view that black nostalgia (music, sports, arts, and labor)
are features of the past—the “new” Detroit, it seems, can display black
culture in museums, but “real” black people have got to go because they have
failed to embrace the future. As Alondra Nelson notes: “Western culture
generally constructs Blackness . . . as always oppositional to technologically
driven chronicles of progress” (Nelson 2002, 1).
Labor leader George McGregor, president of United Auto Workers Local
22, argues persuasively on behalf of his union members for a living wage,
but in so doing, fails to prevent one of the key businesses, American Axle,
from leaving town. McGregor explains his dilemma: “I asked . . . ‘How do I
sit down with one of my members, who is already scuffling and making
$14.35, sit at the table with their family and got to tell them that my Union
and I agree to take a $3.35 pay cut?” Ultimately, the UAW did agree to take a
50 percent wage cut for all new hires, and the incoming wage went from $28
per hour to $14. The union has grown leaner as jobs have fled overseas and
have been replaced by mechanization. McGregor remains diligent about pro-
viding benefits, support, and counseling to fellow workers; however, it is
clear that he no longer has any bargaining power while passing blocks of
abandoned auto factories and empty lots of buildings being stripped of cop-
per and other metal fittings.
Although Detroit’s “ethnoscape” is being transformed into dreamscapes
for white fantasy, white visionaries, and for pioneers of profit, black entre-
preneurs still remain. One such example is retired schoolteacher Tommy
Stevens, who owns a bar, The Raven Lounge that sponsors local bands and
offers good food and music. Stevens recognizes the economic inequalities
yet persists in running his business. He explains “Capitalism is a great sys-
tem. I love it. But it exploits the weak. It always does. It always does,
unfortunately” (Ewing and Grady 2012). Later in the film, he challenges
automakers to develop better cars to compete with foreign automakers, and
then decries the growing income disparity between middle and lower-income
residents. Cognizant of the steady disappearance of his middle-class clien-
tele, Stevens is determined to make the Raven Lounge a successful business
venture. Heidi Ewing, one of the films two directors, observes:

Tommy Stevens is the heart and soul of DETROPIA. . . . He is a Black middle

class man who could leave Detroit but doesn’t. He owns the last Black-owned
56 Ricardo Guthrie

blues bar . . . on the eastside of Detroit. . . . He ends up saying that if there is no

buffer between the rich and the poor the only thing left is revolution. That is
his big line in the film. He’s not calling for revolution or riots. The man is
observing that at some point this is going to break . . . . He said this a year
before Occupy Wall Street. (Ewing 2012)

Stevens’s dogged perseverance stands in sharp contrast with that of two

young white urban transplants—Steven and Dorota Coy—who settled in
Detroit because of the cheap and plentiful housing and warehouse lofts. The
couple reflected upon their decision to relocate to Detroit in search of an
exciting urban setting to perform their art installations:

We had a project that we wanted to do like street art, public installation, and so
we just started evaluating, we looked at Baltimore, we were looking into New
York City, and Detroit came up. I would never be able to afford to own a home
as an artist. And here I am with a studio and an apartment in, a major city you
know, functioning for like $700 or less a month. We can . . . experiment here
because if we fail, we haven’t really fallen anywhere. (Steve Coy qtd. in
Ewing 2012)

As performance artists, the Coys appear throughout the film in various cos-
tumes—wearing gold-colored masks, luxurious suits, and fur coats—to lam-
poon the disruption of the natural environment and the corporate abandoned
cityscape of overgrown lots and uninhabited housing. While they share a
powerful message, Ewing is not sure the influx of young white transplants
represents a sustainable trend:

what we’re seeing is young college-educated, mostly Caucasian kids who

would’ve moved to Chicago or New York or Philadelphia or Los Angeles, but
can’t afford it because they’re not finding employment. But a place like De-
troit is a place that needs them. They can sort of make a mark . . . I just don’t
know if it’s a trend that’s going to be long term. (Ewing 2012)

Nevertheless, Detroit remains an attractive destination for young migrants—

black and white—in that an estimated 50,000 people have relocated to the
“Motor City” during the past five years.
However, Detroit residents refuse to give up. One survivor, Crystal Starr,
is a young black woman employed as a barista at a coffee shop, who creates
videoblogs of the city’s splendor gone to pot. Like Stevens and McGregor,
she recognizes that while something is broken in Detroit, black people are
not the problem:

History is just one of my things, even since grade school. That’s a passion.
What was there? Who was there? Wow, it’s amazing where you see where
they just ripped out a wall because there is copper piping right there . . .
Motown right up the street. Hmm. Can’t fucking leave. I feel like I was maybe
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 57

here a little while back. Or I’m older than I really am but I just have like this
young, this young body and spirit and mind but I have the memory of this
place when it was banging. That’s how I feel. (Crystal Starr, in Ewing 2012)

In her sentimental yearning to resurrect the lost glory of Detroit’s history—

its greatness—Starr reflects an Afrofuturist sensibility on a declining urban
landscape. She refuses to yield her place in “Zion,” even as the “Sentinels
prepare for a final onslaught” (Bould 2007). Similar to the underground
residents of Zion in The Matrix, Detroit’s underclass has retained its spirit of
resistance while the rest of the population has already yielded to the machine.
The acknowledgement that the “Apocalypse already happened” does not
absolve residents like Starr from relinquishing their place in the space that
once created one of the largest black professional classes in America. The
cultural contributions of Motown and the mythic symbolism of the auto
industry, remain hallmarks of Detroit’s historiography. Indeed, Crystal Starr
vehemently adheres to the central fact of the persistence of black existence in
any future of Detroit.
Sadly most observers—including filmmaker Heidi Ewing—do not be-
lieve that Detroit can be restored to its former prominence. This is where the
archetypal chorus comes together in a final poetic summation of DETRO-
PIA’s significance: “culture is embodied—and history is bodies. And maybe
that color-blind future can still be told so long as it is motley, mottled without
hierarchy, rather than blanketed in whiteness” (Bould 2007, 184). The sci-fi
future of Detroit has yet to be fully described, but as the city re-works itself
by purging the “ethnoscape” of black residents, key threads from both sci-
ence fiction and the documentary film converge. Namely, modern life is
contingent upon black, subservient others. The error of most sci-fi futurists is
that black people are not conceived as part of the solution to disaster capital-
ism, except as elements of the commodified ethnoscape—surplus labor/ sur-
plus flesh that can always be erased or re-purposed. African Americans who
migrated from the Jim Crow south during the twentieth century created a
black utopia in Detroit, but are now part of the nightmare of abandonment.
They are residents who might rebel and create insurrections against the ma-
chine, but if their bodies are displaced, what remains? Borrowing from Zube-
ri (2007), I suggest that black bodies in these declining urban spaces appear
to others as haunting specters—ghosts in the imagination of Detroit’s aging
greatness; remaining behind, to disrupt the technology that does not yield
progress:

The ghost exists now, a shadow or trace of a body that once existed. But it is
not the same thing as that once live body or its dead remains. Because its
uncanny interruption complicates a linear sense of time and therefore histori-
cism, the ghost is a suggestive figure for Sci-Fi. (Zuberi 2007, 284)
58 Ricardo Guthrie

CONCLUSION

No return to normal is possible: what “normal” is there to return to? Part of the
story . . . has always been this—that losing everything except basic dignity and
decency is potentially a survivable disaster. (Sinker 2007/1992, 33)

Hollywood sci-fi thrillers such as I, Robot and disaster capitalism documen-

taries like DETROPIA provide extended dialogues between Afro-Pessimism
(black people are ontologically “dead” to Western society) and Afrofuturism
(Afro-diasporic presence in the future will be predicated on a positivist ap-
propriation and mastery of technoculture—with good and bad outcomes).
This chapter outlines the seeming contradiction between sci-fi’s post-racial
future and the nagging persistence of racial themes, hierarchies, and displace-
ments that foreground a black presence—perhaps as “ghosts” in the machine,
or as hapless residents of declining urban ethnoscapes. In both scenarios,
however, it is suggested that “race is a place” in cinematic imaginings—both
fictional and documentary—that allows blacks to stake a claim. Not as com-
modified denizens for capitalist accumulation (Afro-Pessimism), or capitalist
exploitation (Afrofuturism), but as techno-change agents whose actions will
transform and disrupt the space/time continuum. Black people what ya’ll
gon’ do?, as the Last Poets demanded in the 1970s.
Yet unclear, however, is whether Afro-diasporic Others can escape the
poverty of imagination that renders them illegible characters trapped within
the cinematic gaze, while subconsciously projecting white emancipatory
dreamscapes—both now and in the future (Guthrie 2012). Theorists have
pondered the utility of black rebellion, while positing the benefits of action
(highlighting the crises of capital accumulation and exploitation in the midst
of technological progress), compared to the very real dilemma of simply
describing that which has heretofore been “invisible.” Most notably, the
novelist Ralph Ellison effectively described the uncanny prescience of a
previously abject black hero who developed a techno-mastery of sound, mu-
sic, and machinery. As Dery stated, Ellison’s protagonist is the “proto-cyber-
punk . . . a techno-bricoleur,” who understands that racial space exists/per-
sists outside of linear time, and that race, technology, and space are inter-
twined. By using music, electronics, turntables and lights, Ellison’s Invisible
Man predicted the sonic apparatuses of the post-industrial 1970s created by
other New Yorkers who proclaimed their techno-wizardry and new musical
styles that have since been adopted, and appropriated, by pop cultural consu-
mers (Dery 2007, 30; Yaszek 2005).
As a masterful cyberpunk, however, Ellison’s invisible man never moves
beyond his “hole” beneath New York City. He proclaims his desire to take
action, but remains trapped, as he attempts to rewire the relations between
past and present, and between art, music, and technology (Yaszek 2005). He
 The Real Ghosts in the Machine 59

doesn’t take action—unlike fictional Detective Del Spooner, and Detroit

videoblogger Crystal Starr, who provide descriptive analyses that something
is seriously wrong within the urban technoscape, but all is not lost, if we heed
the warning signs and express ourselves beyond the “grammar of suffering”
and illegibility (Wilderson 2010). Sci-fi’s colorblind future remains a fictive
imaginary, as both films demonstrate. Neither cinematic artifact provides a
fully enabled strategy for success; however, to survive as techno-bricoleurs is
a viable first step out of the “pit” of black invisibility, and cinematic abjec-
tion. Embracing the “real” does not necessarily mean succumbing to nostal-
gic reifications of black culture, but it may suggest a way to elevate “techno-
logical interactions inherited from jazz and now rap avant garde” that can
“reintegrate humanity with the runaway machine age” (Bould 2007, 181).
And that, one might say, would be a first step towards escaping invisibility
and the ghostly haunting of race.

NOTE

1. The examples are too numerous to cite here, but include Star Trek, Star Wars, and their
formulaic offspring that are earnest in their attempts to promote a multiculturalist, non-sexist,
anti-classist, pluralist universe—pristine, gleaming white prosthetics, clean-machine imagery
that typically replicates Anglos in leadership roles.

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———. 2012. Minstrelsy & mythic appetites: The Last King of Scotland’s heart of darkness in
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 Part II

Planetary Vibes, Digital Ciphers, and

Hip Hop Sonic Remix
 Chapter Four

The Armageddon Effect

Afrofuturism and the Chronopolitics of Alien Nation

tobias c. van Veen

It is not possible to become cultured in this culture, if you are naturally alien to
it.—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999,
12)

In 1992, all but the name of Afrofuturism had been elaborated in a detailed
and esoteric—if not philosophical and prescient—article in WIRE magazine
entitled “Loving the Alien in Advance of the Landing—Black Science Fic-
tion” (Sinker 1992). 1 Though it is Mark Dery who would coin “Afrofutur-
ism” in a roundtable with Tricia Rose, Samuel R. Delany, and Greg Tate in
1993 to name the themes and concerns of twentieth-century African-
American speculative fiction, music, comics, film and arts (1994a), 2 Sinker’s
essay is deserving of a speculative exegesis for its attention to the conceptual
dimensions of the Afrofuturist arts and culture of the black Atlantic. In this
chapter, I mobilize Sinker’s nascent concepts to explore Afrofuturist aesthet-
ic praxis, distinguishing at the same time their cultural deployment from—
but also entwinement with—Afrocentric usages.
Arguably building upon the earlier reflections of Amiri Baraka on futur-
ism and Sun Ra and John Coltrane’s interstellar jazz (1999), Samuel R.
Delany on black science fiction (2012), and Greg Tate’s music and cultural
criticism that traversed poststructural theory, semiotics and hip-hop (1992),
Sinker was one of the first cultural critics to identify an array of science
fictional tropes resonating throughout Afrodiasporic cultural production and
practices. 3 Sinker emphasized the latter’s reconceptualization of slavery
under the science fictional trope of alien abduction, and its decisive outlook:

63
64 tobias c. van Veen

that there is no “normal” to return to, no untainted origin but the “Alien
Nation” of post-abduction existence.

The ships landed long ago: they already laid waste whole societies, abducted
and genetically altered swathes of citizenry, imposed without surcease their
values. Africa and America—and so by extension Europe and Asia—are al-
ready in their various ways Alien Nation. No return to normal is possible: what
“normal” is there to return to? (Sinker 1992)

What is the meaning of “Alien Nation”? Sinker writes the split sign but
once; its meaning is inferred and all but hermetic. My intention below is to
tease out the resonances and ramifications of such fragmentary tropes and
descriptive signs and to construct a conceptual grammar forged from its
works.
In Between Camps, Paul Gilroy underscores the “absence of an adequate
conceptual and critical language” for addressing the “density of today’s
mixed and always impure forms” of Afrodiasporic—and Afrofuturist—be-
longing (2004, 251). Yet the positing of an absence betrays the “operational
concepts” at work in the thick of the Afrofuturist milieu. These concepts
inhabit practices that transform technologies in their mis-use, amplify indi-
viduated becomings through technique and affect, and reconstruct master
languages in the forging of idiom. There is a need, then, to turn to a number
of science fictional motifs and tropes and to transpose them from descrip-
tions into verbs: to read them not just as allegories for the traumas of oppres-
sion and slavery elsewhere and elsewhen, but as operational concepts articu-
lated through Afrodiasporic (and planetary) practices and becomings. As
well as developing an “adequately conceptual” and “critical” language, such
a lexicon needs to be able to address the imaginative, futurological and
speculative dimensions of Afrofuturism. It needs to undertake its conceptual
labors within discourses and practices however impure, however fantasti-
cal—precisely because such impurities challenge readymade futures and
whitewashed pasts that constrain the possibilities of the present (and which is
to say, police their impossibilities).
Sinker’s brief 2,415 word article contends with a complexity of thought
drawn from Afrofuturist media. My intention here is not to explicate Sinker’s
argument per se—for as a music journalist, it operates by way of inferences
and observations—but to unfold two of his Afrofuturist samples. The first is
from Public Enemy: “Armageddon been-in-effect.” The second is of his own
coinage: “Alien Nation.” Both concepts address the rupture of transatlantic
slavery in cultural memory, or rather, the way slavery has been reassembled,
reinterpreted, and historicized by Afrofuturology. While the Armageddon
effect signals the temporal rupture of black Atlantic slavery and its oblitera-
tion of a normalized past, positing a void of origin that is as enabling as it is a
 The Armageddon Effect 65

locus of trauma, the second rupture is coterminous in its uncanny unhomeli-

ness, or rather un-Earthliness. Since slavery’s dehumanization program, Af-
rodiasporic subjects live in Alien Nation.
Sinker amassed several concepts from what he called “Black Science
Fiction,” a naming that, like Dery’s usage, included multiple modes of Afro-
futurist cultural production. Writing for the Village Voice, Greg Tate had also
identified similar strains of black futurism. In fact, the two honed in on a
phrase from militant hip-hop outfit Public Enemy (PE), a phrase that in itself
is a temporal concept: Armageddon been in effect. In “Yo! Hermeneutics!,”
Tate had taken to task Henry Louis Gates, Houston Baker and David Toop
for neglecting what he saw as “futuristic black contemporary variants on the
blues and signifying tradition”—turning to the work of emcee, sculptor and
graffiti artist RAMM:∑LL:Z∑∑, among others, to exemplify the complex-
ities and intensities of Afrofuturological slanguage—writing at the very end
of his essay that “that the half ain’t yet been told” of what was to come (Tate
1992, 158). What wasn’t yet told was the full explication of the meaning of
PE’s phrase. In an essay on PE’s It Takes A Nations of Millions To Hold Us
Back (1988), Tate wrote that “Nation of Millions is a will-to-power party
record by bloods who believe (like Sun Ra) that for black folk, it’s after the
end of the world. Or, in PEspeak: ‘Armageddon has been in effect. Go get a
late pass” (1992, 123).
Like Sun Ra, after the end of the world. Both Tate and Sinker would draw
a connection between Public Enemy, whose visual and dancefloor aesthetics
took their cue from the Black Panther Party—embodied in the urban warfare
attire of the Security of the First World (S1W), PE’s bodyguard and break-
dance troupe headed by Professor Griff—and Sun Ra, the jazz composer and
musician, philosopher poet and self-proclaimed ancient alien deity from Sat-
urn who—in 1971 and while teaching a course on “The Black Man in the
Cosmos” at Berkeley (Szwed 1998, 294)—had stayed in an Oakland house
provided for by the Panthers (Kreiss 2008). 4
Public Enemy, “like Sun Ra,” says Tate, already examined the world
through a post-eschatological timeline: total cultural destruction and dehu-
manization under slavery had already happened. What comes after the End
Times? In the 1974 Sun Ra film Space Is the Place (SITP), Ra attempts to
save Earth’s inhabitants by offering them offworld employment with Outer
Spaceways Incorporated, but seeing that the position provides no pay and
requires giving up Earthly pleasures and vices, only a handful take him up on
the offer. 5 At the close to the film, planet Earth is destroyed, ambiguously
so. 6 But for Ra as for PE, Earth and its inhabitants are already dead: the End
Times had already taken place. Earth, according to Ra, was already out of
place as it was out of tune with the cosmos (2005b).
Sinker would call this state of perceiving a temporal extension beyond its
finitude—of a history-less history where “the ships landed long ago”—the
66 tobias c. van Veen

lived experience of Alien Nation. Tate connects the phrase “Armageddon

been in effect” to the conclusions of historian Eugene Genovese, who in Roll,
Jordan, Roll (1976) argues that enslaved Africans in North America did not
revolt because of a stillborn timeline:

Genovese offers that the failure of mainland blacks to sustain a revolutionary

tradition during slavery was due to a lack of faith in prophets of the apoca-
lypse. This lack, he says, derived from Africa’s stolen children having no
memories of a paradise lost that revolution might regain. (Tate 1992, 124)

Genovese’ assumption that enslaved Africans failed to revolt has since

been challenged (Higginson 1998; Hart 2002). Stephen Hahn has argued that
revolts were more widespread than previously thought, suggesting that Re-
construction-era accounts downplayed black insurrection to further concilia-
tory interests (2009). That the recounting of the past has been tampered with
reinforces the need to re-evaluate the conceptual trajectories of Afrofuturism
that reconceptualise the past—and what is to-come. From the beginning of a
lost history, then, “Armageddon been in effect” has affected historical re-
counting by erasing the records of revolt. In 1978, Samuel R. Delany noted
that there were very few black sf authors, prompting him to write that “We
need images of tomorrow; and our people need them more than most” (2012,
14). However, such images, shapes, narratives, rhythms are not just of tomor-
row, but draw from and redraw the past, a past that begins with its terminus
in armageddon, a terminus that is the origin of erasure.

BLACKSKINS: ROBOT RACE

Slavery is perhaps the most important sf theme of all time. . . . As an sf theme,

robot slavery—redundant, given the word’s root in forced labor—is usually
but not always transparently readable as race slavery. (LaBare 2014)

As Kodwo Eshun outlines in “Motion Capture,” the interview that book-

ends his evocative exploration of Afrofuturist sonicultures, More Brilliant
Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (1999), “Mark [Sinker] made the
correlation between Blade Runner and slavery, between the ideas of alien
abduction and the real events of slavery” (1999, A[175]). 7 Sinker’s reading
of “armageddon been in effect” emphasizes that the End Times occur in the
past tense: the slaveships beached upon the shores of the “dark continent,”
unloading an arsenal of cultural, economic, and epistemic destruction: what
Marx called the “primitive accumulation” of forced slavery.
As Marx writes in volume one of Capital, along with the conquering of
the Americas and India, including “the extirpation, enslavement, and en-
tombment in mines of the indigineous population [of the Americas] . . . the
 The Armageddon Effect 67

conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black-

skins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist
production” (1990, 915). Marx’s use of “blackskins”—as if Africans were
the trade equivalent of Canadian beaver pelts in the establishment of eco-
nomic and territorial dominion—signifies the ontological conversion already
in effect. 8 The blackskin is living monetary value. The blackskin marks not a
human, but a living product to be commercially hunted. 9
By raising the question of ontology, I wish to underscore how slavery
converted the “human being” to a strictly monetary sign: subject $. Viewed
from the vantage of human exceptionalism, slavery attempts to obliterate the
ontological capacity of human subjectivity: that the human being, exception-
al to all other species, is the unique entity irreducible to exchange value. Yet,
such absolute commodification is at the very core of slavery. Under such
logic (and law), slaves are not human: they are private property. 10 The la-
bouring body becomes absolute property, pure finance, what Ian Baucom
describes as the “suffering human body incessantly attended by an equal sign
and a monetary equivalent” (2005, 7). 11 This is not to say that the obliteration
of a subject’s “humanity” was complete. 12 Despite systemic violence, the
plasticity of “human” ontology—or rather, from an Afrofuturist perspective,
how becoming reveals the “human” as but one particular modality, what Sun
Ra called a Living Myth that attempts to usurp all others as the “master
race”—offers means of escape, exodus, and resistance. Uncovered histories
of Civil War-era slave rebellions, for example, attest to this capacity to revolt
even under the most dire circumstances (Higginson 1998; Hart 2002; Hahn
2009).
Nonetheless, slavery by its very nature strives to displace even the very
memory of “being human.” 13 Such is the de jure principle of instituting
slavery; that the slave is not a human subject. The violence of enslavement
sought to erase the past, its rituals, religions, and languages, so as to remake
living labour, what Baucom calls “the subject $,” without memory or attach-
ment. Public Enemy’s dystopian soundscapes strive to imagine these traumas
of the Middle Passage. Whether the individuated condition of slavery was a
result of war, kidnapping, or unfortunate birth, once unloaded in the New
World the “cargo” were accounted for, numbered, shackled and sold as com-
modities, their names and identities stripped, their cultures, histories and
languages (all but) banished. 14 With the genesis of the Atlantic slave trade in
the 16th century, what had yet to emerge as industrial capitalism had none-
theless already achieved the ultimate commodification of labor.
The long sixteenth to nineteenth centuries of the Atlantic slave trade
(Maafa, or “Great Disaster” in Swahili) cannot be comprehended without
taking into account the destruction wrought upon the ontological certitude of
being human. For it is with this erasure, itself an effect of prolonged dehu-
manization—an erasure that assumes the positive valence of humanism, of
68 tobias c. van Veen

an essential human “kernel,” as it were, to the dehumanized slave—that the

Afrofuturist undoing of slave consciousness commences: what worth is there
in what Eshun calls the “pointless and treacherous category” of the human
when the “real conditions of existential homelessness, alienation, dislocation,
and dehumanization” have forever rendered modernity and its Enlightenment
project suspect? (1999; 2003, 288). The stakes of this question are outlined
by Eshun as well as novelist Toni Morrison:

In an interview with critic Paul Gilroy in his anthology Small Acts, novelist
Toni Morrison argued that the African subjects that experienced capture, theft,
abduction, mutilation, and slavery were the first moderns. They underwent real
conditions of existential homelessness, alienation, dislocation, and dehuman-
ization that philosophers like Nietzsche would later define as quintessentially
modern. Instead of civilizing African subjects, the forced dislocation and com-
modification that constituted the Middle Passage meant that modernity was
rendered forever suspect. (Eshun 2003, 288)

What avenues of available existence are there if modernity is forever

rendered suspect? How does one respond when faced with one-size-fits-all
Enlightenment humanism that excludes those others—as dehumanized en-
laved Africans—to improve the conditions of some “real” humans? If there is
no “normal” to return to, what options are left? Where does one go, and what
does one become, if the subjectivities available all lead towards the very
ontology that instituted slavery?

ARMAGEDDON BEEN IN EFFECT

The central fact in Black Science Fiction—self-consciously so named or not—

is an acknowledgement that Apocalypse already happened: that (in Public
Enemy's phrase) Armageddon been in effect. (Sinker 1992)

In his link-up of black science fictions and Afrodiasporic sonicultures, 15

Sinker mapped the tropes of armageddon and alien abduction as they shaped
the shared imaginaries of the dispersed, yet connected cultures of what Paul
Gilroy would memorably theorize—in nearly the same year—as the black
Atlantic (1993). Sinker observed how a number of Afrodiasporic cultural
productions embraced alien, outerspace, and off world tropes. Central to
these science fictional tropes was an account of the Atlantic slave trade,
narrativized and reimagined as the armageddon of alien abduction: “The
central fact in Black Science Fiction—self-consciously so named or not,”
writes Sinker, “is an acknowledgement that Apocalypse already happened:
that (in Public Enemy’s phrase) Armageddon been in effect.” (1992). For
Sinker, the very genesis of Afrofuturism develops from the tension that “Ar-
mageddon been in effect.”
 The Armageddon Effect 69

Armageddon commences with Africans abducted by aliens to a strange

land; everything that follows is played out in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.
The phrase is taken from “Countdown to Armageddon,” the dystopic, shell-
shocked opening to It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988).
Recorded live at a London BBC Television concert with sirens screaming,
Professor Griff unleashes the flow: “Armageddon been in effect. Go get a
late pass. Step! / This time around, the revolution will not be televised.
Step!.” For Sinker as for Public Enemy, the alien ships had already landed.
In the opening to Public Enemy’s “Can’t Truss It” (1991), a collage of
samples bombards the listener in an audio flashback of dystopia. The Arma-
geddon effect is rendered audible through an atmosphere of what Steve
Goodman identifies as dread (2010), as the collage construction of the Bomb
Squad production is laden with low bass frequencies and rumbling reverb.
The Bomb Squad sampled from news broadcasts, Civil Rights-era speeches,
and field recordings to construct an ominous sound collage that collapsed the
traumas of the past into the acoustic environment of the present. The collage
begins with Terminator X scratching samples of Malcolm X: “It started in
slave ships . . . [record scratch] slave ships. There are more records of
slaveships than one would dream.” As the record is spun, the sound of a
helicopter buzzes overhead. Malcolm X continues: “It seems inconceivable
until you affect that for two hundred years ships sailed carrying cargos of
slaves.” The sounds of people screaming now startle the collage, as a final
and decisive record scratch reveals the now unobfuscated voice of Malcolm
X: “Be non– non– be nonviolent.” Malcolm X continues: “In the face of the
violence that we’ve been experiencing for the past four hundred years, it’s
actually not equal to a disservice, in fact it’s a crime—it’s a crime—.” Final-
ly, Chuck D from Public Enemy announces the sonic war machine of what
follows: “HERE COMES THE DRUMS!”
Armageddon—in the past tense. Professor Griff signifies that with the
event of slavery, armageddon has already taken place for Afrodiasporic pop-
ulations. The timeline is not as it should be. Something awry has taken place:
time is (to rephrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet) “out of joint.” The Apocalypse
has already happened: its effects have been, past tense. Everything else that
follows is but an effect of armageddon. We live in a post-apocalyptic future;
this future is but an Armageddon-effect. Consequently, everyone else, audi-
ence included, needs to go to school—in short: to get schooled. The rest of
us—those unschooled in the Afrodiasporic apocalyptic experience of the
armageddon-effect—are all late to the effects of armageddon, though we live
its effects (blindly). Catch up to the future that has been. Go get a late pass. 16
This time around, the revolution will not be televised. The 1960s protest
slogan was put to poetic use by Gil-Scott Heron of the Last Poets; it first
appeared on the 1970 album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. The Last Poets
presage the breaks of hip-hop, combining poetic flow with percussion and
70 tobias c. van Veen

rhythmic accompaniment (Baraka 1999). Griff’s citation links Public Enemy

to the Last Poets, hip-hop to the 1960s Black Arts Movement. 17 Scott-Her-
on’s flow underscores his use of repetition. In his live recordings, Heron
slows the tempo down, pausing for effect. In the break—an aesthetic of the
pause or caesura, that space in-between the drums, the circuit of the call-and-
response between audience, performers, remixers (Moten 2003)—the audi-
ence calls back. “The revolution will not be televised” is structured as a
series of negations: the revolution will not be televised, nor appear alongside
advertising, nor appear to be selling products of any kind (Moten 2000, 77).
The revolution will not be televised, says Scott-Heron, because there will be
no audience to watch television: you become the revolution.
The poem’s opening line affirms the revolutionary subject of history by
removing the audience from the Nielsen ratings: “You will not be able to stay
at home, brother. / You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop / out.”
“The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat”; “The revolution will be no
re-run, brothers. / The revolution will be LIVE” (2000, 79). In an interview
with PBS Television in the 1990s, Scott-Heron explains how the poem’s
catchphrase was meant to reinforce the transformative aspect of revolution-
ary subjectivity:

You have to change your mind before you change the way you livin’ and the
way you move. So when we said that “the revolution will not be televised,” we
were saying that the thing is going to change people. There’s something that
no one will ever be able to capture on film. It will be something that you see
and all of a sudden you realise, I’m on the wrong page. Or I’m on the right
page, but on the wrong note. And I’ve got to get in sync with everyone else to
understand what’s happening with this country. 18

Griff’s rephrasing implictly states, however, that the revolution was tele-
vised—the “first time around.” Griff underscores the poem’s paradox: that
once the subject acts—gets off the couch in protest—the subject is televised
regardless, caught up within the media apparatuses of representation, the
“subject” of the nightly newscast and it spectacle. Griff’s announcement that
“this time around it won’t be” is both threat and promise of an impossible act
of negation in the cyclicity of revolt. Black out the networks.
But just as the symbols of black nationalism are recontextualized by
Public Enemy in their lyrics, videos, and imagery—the raised fist of black
power, samples of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, phrases from the Nation
of Islam, the S1W breakdancers garbed as Black Panthers—Public Enemy
likewise reposition Nation Time within hip-hop, and hip-hop within a media-
tized environment, suggesting that the televisual apparatus negated by Scott-
Heron can be “revolutionised” by the force of content that depicts what a
future revolution might look like.
 The Armageddon Effect 71

The 1989 video for Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” appears to stage
the question: “what would revolt look like today?”—a question that mani-
fested itself in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles South Central riots, a six-
day uprising that exploded after a trial court acquited four police officers of
the beating of Rodney King. Commissioned by Spike Lee as the anthem for
his film Do The Right Thing (1989), the video for “Fight the Power” suggests
an alternate course of action, in which the Brooklyn-filmed block party—
held in Bed-Stuy, no less—blends dance party and street protest into a car-
nivalesque atmosphere of insurgent politics. 19 In a powerful essay for Sa-
lon.com, Laura K. Warrall argues that

“Fight the Power” pushed audiences to question authority, and said what we
were too afraid to say about American society. The song came at a time when
young people, who were being cast aside as gangstas or slackers, were hungry
for meaning and connection. Not since the idealized ’60s had there been such a
force in music toward action. Music fans were reminded of their political
strength and their right to defy the establishment. When Public Enemy called
us to battle, it revived the notion that it just might be possible to fight the
system. At the very least, we knew it was necessary. (Warrall 2002)

Yet the consumer cycle does not end here, and the process of capture by
which such edgy representations are again recycled into marketing and con-
sumer capitalism have become staples of the latter. 20 Beginning with the
Rodney King amateur video and CNN’s invention of the 24-hour news cycle
during the 1990 Gulf War, the advent of mobile recording, broadcast devices
and digital telecommunications have engendered an even more complex
interrelationship wherein advertisers and broadcast corporations alike profit
from the amateur production and consumption of revolt, violence, and mili-
tary operations. 21 Identifying modes of “resistance” to representation has
likewise revealed its inadequacy when facing the complexities of capitalist
appropriation. The moral panics over the explosion of “gangsta’” but also
militant “conscious” hip-hop in the late 1980s and early 1990s—with Public
Enemy, along with N.W.A., Wu-Tang Clan, Sunz of Man, Jeru the Damaja,
KRS-One and Eric B. and Rakim, at the forefront—have long since receded,
precisely because mainstream hip-hop has been codified into established
traits of misogyny, sexism, and black-on-black violence that remains com-
fortably ensconced within the narrative of consumer capitalism. 22 As Asante,
Jr. writes:

Although hip hop was founded on the principles of rebellion, over the past
decade [2000–] it has been lulled into being a conservative instrument, pro-
moting nothing new or remotely challenging to mainstream cultural ideology.
Even in the midst of an illegitimate war in Iraq, rap music remains a stationary
vehicle blaring redundant, glossy messages of violence without consequence,
72 tobias c. van Veen

misogyny, and conspicuous consumption. As a result, it has betrayed the very

people it is supposed to represent; it has betrayed itself. (Asante Jr. 2008, 10)

There are, of course, counterexamples to such betrayal, and Asante Jr.

focuses upon recovering and exploring these alternative avenues—as does
Afrofuturism, an oft-neglected component of hip-hop’s political and revolu-
tionary imaginary. But rather than pursuing the critique of appropriation,
authenticity, and representation—whose cycles are well worn—I wish to
return to Public Enemy’s focus on why the problematic of representation and
its circuit of commodification continue to undermine efforts of socio-politi-
cal and economic change (or, more militantly, revolutionary agency). By
juxtaposing “Armageddon been in effect” with a clarification of Scott-Her-
on’s phrase—this time the revolution will not be televised—Public Enemy
demonstrate how the former affects the conditions of the latter. The “Arma-
geddon effect” signifies the persistent effects of slavery in rendering contem-
porary conditions dystopic. But what re-cycles these persistent effects? The
“Armageddon effect” suggests a rather more pernicious re-cycling of slav-
ery: the commodification of black revolutionary cultures through the media
apparatus of representation. James Baldwin summarizes this condition:
“Now, as then, we find ourselves bound, first without, then within, by the
nature of our categorizations” (qtd. in Asante Jr. 2008, 1).
We may now summarize “Armageddon been in effect” as follows: where-
as Public Enemy’s flow depicts how absolute commodification began with
the slave ships—the enslaved African as the commodified “subject $”—
Scott-Heron’s rap describes the paradox of commodified televisual represen-
tation, underscoring how PE represent an escape effort that remains caught in
the very Armageddon effect they dramatize. The revolutionary content that
decries the very history of enslaved commodification, in short, is caught in
the very form of commodification that profits from the vending of resistance.
Public Enemy’s self-reflexive performance of the paradox of commod-
ified resistance suggests that it is only through spectacular dramatization—a
Sicilian embrace of televisualization and consumerized means of communi-
cation—that the Armageddon effect can be rendered visible.
The mediatised era that renders revolution as televisual spectatorship is
also but an effect of the system of absolute commodification that turns all
that is solid into spectacle and $. In Professor Griff’s brief two phrases,
Public Enemy connect slavery to the commodification of (black) revolution-
ary culture, while self-reflexively demonstrating, through the resampling of
Scott-Heron, how the Armageddon effect undermines, in advance, the place
of a non-mediatised outside to revolutionary activity. Public Enemy sug-
gest—or rather self-reflexively perform—that it will only be through televi-
sion, or rather through the Armageddon effect at large that the latter’s forces
can be countered.
 The Armageddon Effect 73

ENCOUNTERS WITH ALIEN NATION

. . . the planet, already turned Black, must embrace rather than resist this: that
back-to-nature pastoralism is intrinsically reactionary, that only ways of tech-
nological interaction inherited from the jazz and now the rap avant garde can
reintegrate humanity with the runaway machine age. (Sinker 1992)

The figure of the alien is pivotal to Afrofuturism: it is the point at which

Afrofuturism articulates its imaginaries to an embodiment in a “subject” that
implicates itself within mediatisation only to undermine its certitude as hu-
man. The subject $ produces an alienating effect of its own absolute com-
modification by undermining the guarantees of its Earthly subjectivity. Rath-
er than struggling for (white) humanism, Afrofuturism rejects its supposed
necessity as the certitude of ontology. The Armageddon-effect produces Ali-
en Nation—not just as the effect of being estranged by foreign forces, but of
strategically mobilizing estrangement towards becoming.
In what follows, I will outline three alien embodiments, or figurations of
an Afrofuturist typology: the ancient alien deity (Sun Ra); the cosmic mes-
senger (John Coltrane); and the electric Afronaut (Jimi Hendrix). 23 There is
no better place to begin than with “Egyptian deity, cosmic explorer [and]
mystic messenger” Sun Ra, otherwise known as the bandleader of the “Myth-
Science Arkestra,” prolific jazz composer, avant-gardist keyboardist, pamph-
leteer, and philosopher poet. We encounter Ra as he is narrating his abduc-
tion by outer-space aliens—with red glowing eyes and antennas—to Mark
Sinker.
The ancient alien deity. “I went up at terrific speed to another dimension,
another planet,” says Ra to the British journalist, the latter self-describing his
1989 Philadelphia encounter with Ra as “a middle-class English kid, self-
defrocked punk rocker” meeting the “prophet of a space between worlds in
collision,” now “in his mid ’70s . . . his touchstones ’40s pulp SF, ’30s big
band music, ’20s conspiracy-theory pseudo-Egyptology” (2014). Replying
over the course of two hours to Sinker—who had asked him what the link
was between music and magic—Ra continues: “Anyway, they talked to me
about this planet, and the way it was headed and what was going to happen to
teenagers, and governments, and people. They said they wanted me to talk to
them. And I said I wasn’t interested” (Ra qtd. in Sinker 1992).
In his 1992 article, Sinker elicits little surprise at Ra’s disinterest—be-
cause Sun Ra is, after all, an alien Egyptian deity, it is entirely natural that he
turns down “the offer of Messiahship.” “They wanted me to be one of them,”
says Ra, addressing his alien captors (or colleagues?), “and I said no, it’s
natural for you to be like that, but it might hurt me if you gave me some” (qtd
in Sinker 1992). It is worth reflecting on the possible moral of Ra’s tale in
which he turns down the alien abduction: as he is already alien, he can no
74 tobias c. van Veen

longer be abducted. 24 Yet is not the double-meaning of this tale, told to

Sinker, that Ra cannot be abducted—which is to say, appropriated—by an
alien (white) journalist? For Ra is telling something else: that as an alien, he
occupies a critical position capable of countering the Armageddon-effect: he
is able to deflect abduction, precisely because he has abandoned the human,
including demands that he answer interview questions within the human
coordinates of planetary belief structures.
Reflecting upon this interview some twenty-odd years later, Sinker writes
of Ra: “He had stood on a soapbox on Chicago street-corners, in a fez, just
along from where Elijah Muhammad was fashioning the Nation of Islam,
creating a cosmology of his own, with himself at its centre—and he had
asked people to travel with him. And many had” (Sinker 2014). But was Ra
really at the centre of his own cosmology? This is a perception reinforced by
Kodwo Eshun, who characterised Ra as identifying “with the Pharoahs, the
despots, the ancient oppressors, by seceding from America” (1999, 09[154]).
Ra’s poetic philosophy, however, reveals a much more complex Afrofuturist
cosmology. He does not just secede from America, but from Earth. In addi-
tion, Ra does not identify with the Pharoahs, but transforms the figure of the
Pharoah just as he transforms himself into an ancient alien deity (Ra 2005b).
It is this esoteric yet powerful theo-cosmology, and not Ra’s prospects as a
despotic auto-theocentrist, that garnered him “followers.” One such fellow
traveller was Ra’s greatest jazz disciple, John Coltrane.
The Cosmic Messenger. In the recording of Coltrane’ final album, the
“interminable and maddening” Interstellar Space (1967/1974), ‘Trane
“warp-drives to the core of the galaxy and the core of the soul,” writes Sinker
(1992). 25 Both Sinker and Eshun work with metaphors of the cosmic and the
alien to imprint Coltrane’s music into language, stretching the capacities of
the text in its encounter with Coltrane’s “interstellar” jazz. Eshun writes that
“the merciless monotony” of Interstellar Space “reactivates the predestina-
tion of astrology. Energy Music becomes Universal Sound which makes
audible the cosmic order, fore hears the master plan in an act of clairaudi-
ence” (1999, 10[173]). In short, 26 Coltrane’s efforts to blast through jazz
notation with the sheer force of his instrument alone can be heard as an
attempt to escape from the Earthly conventions of jazz performance. “Energy
Music” is a term coined by avant-garde jazz saxophonist and Coltrane collab-
orator Albert Ayler, and is used to describe the forceful playing of multi-
phonic, free improvisation that emphasizes timbre over harmony and melo-
dy.
Eshun describes how Coltrane’s raw style of overblowing his saxophone
enters into a cosmic realm: that of Universal Sound, the sound of om, which
Coltrane had earlier explored with the spiritual chants of A Love Supreme
(1964). 27 It is the forceful style of Energy Music combined with the cosmic
spirituality of Universal Sound that leads to Eshun’s “clairaudience,” in
 The Armageddon Effect 75

which clairovoyance and audience merge into a spiritual-sonic feedback

loop. Coltrane carries the audience into this act of making “audible the cos-
mic order”; Coltrane’s music becomes an act of audible, astrological “pre-
destination” in the “forehear[ing]” of the cosmic “masterplan” of Universal
Sound. But this is the first stage of Eshun’s om: the second will be its
transformation by electricity to ohm, as the Universal Sound shifts from the
cosmic jazz player to the figure of the psychedelic Afronaut.
The Afronaut. Sinker writes that Coltrane cannot be thought without hear-
ing Afronaut Jimi Hendrix, for both pushed the limits of instrumentality and
music into cosmic realms: ”the utterly fluid space poet glided somewhere
beyond black and white, masculine and feminine, noise and grace,” writes
Sinker (2014). The lithe, manic, intense figure of Hendrix, thrusting into his
amplifiers and burning his guitar at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, or
savagely spraying the audience with sonic bullets during his rendition of
“Machine Gun” with the Band of Gypsy’s in 1969 at the Fillmore East in
New York, was not quite human. Hendrix was an in-between, near androgy-
nous figure that complicated notions of blackness as he transgressed race, his
subjectivity reflecting the in-betweeness of his music that combined blues
riffs and psychedelic noise, just as it mixed up his audience and Experience
band, black and white. He embodies the “Afronaut,” crafting a cosmic alter-
ego, undertaking a transformation of self in becoming the spacepoet of cos-
mic feedback. Sinker’s allusive point is that years before David Bowie’s
Ziggy Stardust persona, it was Hendrix who had landed on Earth as the
androgynous and shifting star child. This cosmic in-betweenness was no-
where more contentious than with Hendrix’s ambiguity toward race. Hendrix
transgressed the racialized expectations endemic to American culture—that
he remain a “black” performer. Cultural critics eager to defend traditions of
black authenticity have often seen Hendrix as an apostate to black culture;
critic Nelson George conservatively “expell[ed] the innovative guitarist from
his canonical reconstruction of the black musical idiom,” writes Gilroy
(1993, 94).
Nonetheless, this excommunication, notes Gilroy, made his “racial alien-
ation literal”—and it is precisely here that, using Sinker’s text, we are able to
read “alienation” as “Alien Nation.” Hendrix had embraced something other
than black nationalism in his move beyond the categories of gender and
color, just as he had pushed, like Coltrane and Ra, the boundaries of black
music into cosmic and alien realms. Had Hendrix embraced an unearthly ex-
nationalism, the figure of Alien Nation? This question is perhaps best ad-
dressed by a detractor: “Jimi’s music was, if not from another planet, defi-
nitely from another country,” writes George (qtd. in Gilroy 1993, 94). In-
deed, the thrust of George’s criticism is that because Hendrix developed his
sound in London, rather than the United States, and save for the Band of
Gypsys, played with white musicians as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, he
76 tobias c. van Veen

“whitened” his music, abandoning his blues (read: black) roots to psychedel-
ic (read: white) extravagance; in short, he was not an “authentic” black
performer. It is precisely this Alien Nation that Hendrix embraced, and that
posits Hendrix as an Afrofuturist Afronaut. Hendrix alienated himself from
the very categorical constraints, racial and otherwise, of American culture
that were constitutive of George’s attempt to construct an “authentic” black
canon.
By connecting Coltrane to Hendrix, forever two figures entwined with the
1960s, one can trace the movement of Eshun’s mantra, wherein the universal
chant of om becomes the Universal Sound of ohm. “Tomorrow every Afro-
naut and every hippie wakes up to a Universal Sound,” writes Eshun of
Hendrix (1999, 10[172–73]). With electrified, cosmic blues, the “Universal
Sound” of om becomes that of Electricity’s ohm. Hendrix calls home to the
heavens with his electrified, left-handed guitar, in explaining how the new
Church—its meaning here resounding with the black gospel tradition—is
that of Electric Religion:

Everything is electrified nowadays. That is why the name Electric Sky Church
flashes in and out. I am Electric Religion. We’re making music into a new kind
of Bible, a Bible that you can carry in your hearts. One that will give you a
physical feeling.—Jimi Hendrix. (qtd. in Eshun 1999, 01[11])

Hendrix the Afronaut embodies the Electric in-between of the outerspace.

Electricity reaches its most superb ohm-state of Universal Sound with his
abstract, yet affective outburst of cosmic psychedelia—that “physical feel-
ing”—”And The Gods Made Love” (on Electric Ladyland [1968]). Consis-
tinge of a wash of feedback that explodes into cosmic noise, Eshun writes
that it “psychedelicizes cybernetics by turning the guitar into a jet stream
engine: a 90-second painting of the heavens, a tone generator of sound spec-
tra” (1999, 01[11]). Eshun’s use of “cybernetics” is an apt descriptor. Hen-
drix’s use of feedback creates a “cybernetic system” between the guitar and
the soundsystem. Second-order cybernetics is the modelling of feedback sys-
tems, and with “And The Gods Made Love” Hendrix turns the “circular
causal” relationships of Norbert Wiener into a cosmic encounter with sound
by rendering audible cybernetic recursivity. 28 Hendrix cranks the pick-up on
his guitar until its microphones register the soundsystem’s speakers: what
Hendrix plays is not so much the guitar as the entire soundsystem as it feeds-
back into itself, a performance of electricity in a technicosmic feedback
system.
Outerspace Alien. The Afrofuturist alien invokes a multiplicity of figures,
yet almost all tend toward the black alien of outer space. 29 What I first wish
to underscore is the differentiated alien figuration of the Afrofuturist. Sun Ra
embodies the alien Pharoah, while his music transports the big band jazz
 The Armageddon Effect 77

tradition into outer space, his fellow jazz musicians an interplanetary “Arkes-
tra.” Coltrane embodies the cosmic mystic, his life a spiritual journey that
takes him off planet toward the stars, his instrument the means to overblow
Universal Sound, to undertake astrological journeys that reveal the cosmic
order (Maat). Hendrix embodies the Afronaut space poet, the space race that
floats in-between color and gender, just as he electrifies the Church of the
blues, transporting the sounds of black authenticity into a technicosmic futur-
ism. In each description above, a novel conceptual grammar is necessary to
signify why each of these figures is an Afrofuturist, why each figure has
undertaken a transformation of the self, in different ways and varying de-
grees, toward the figures of the interstellar, the cosmic, and the alien.
The second aspect of this alien figuration emphasizes its temporal inter-
vention. The very figure of the Afrofuturist alien is already an embodiment
of a historical anomaly: an interruption of something-other than the accept-
able paradigm of not only “authentic black existence”—as seen in Hendrix’s
expulsion from the “authentic” black canon—but something other to human
existence, that stretches or, at the limit, abandons the figure of the human.
This abandonment likewise transforms the inverse of the human in the en-
slaved subject $. This becoming-other-than-human, a becoming-alien, under-
takes a passage through the subject $, and suggests a temporality lived other-
wise: an impossible (alien) future revealed in the destabilising of the present
by revisioning the coordinates of the past.
Sun Ra is an ancient black alien deity: by entering from the Kemetian past
as an alien figure of the future, he is able to posit an alternate timeline in
which the fall of Egypt never happened, and in which, to sample Eshun, “the
West is just a side-effect” (1999, 09[156]). Coltrane seeks to blow into the
future of jazz, but does so by rewinding the past and time-travelling to before
the big band era, before Louis Armstrong, and embracing an alternate time-
line of jazz development in which free improvisation never gave way to
formal composition. 30 Hendrix appears to erase his immediate past; he aban-
dons the American order of “the Negro,” departs to London, and refashions a
future-self that eschews racialized baggage just as it founds a new Electric
Religion. My point here is that Afrofuturist transformations of the “subject”
are always temporal interventions: they necessarily break with, remodel, or
revise the timeline to remake a recursive future, one that rewrites its own
past, in the present. Unquestioned “tradition” is oft challenged, rewrit, or
discarded. As can be seen with the criticism of Hendrix (or the general
dismissal of Sun Ra by “traditional” jazz critics, the same who tend to dis-
miss the “later” Coltrane) such transformative strategies are seen as pro-
foundly impacting the boundaries of “authentic” black culture. But here we
must re-pose Sinker’s question: what “normal” is there to return to? By
abandoning the “normal” and embracing the alien, the figure of the Afrofu-
turist revisions the past—that “undiscovered country” all but erased during
78 tobias c. van Veen

the Middle Passage. Each alien becoming suggests an alternate timeline to

Western history, a recasting of temporal and cosmic possibilities. 31
Alondra Nelson writes that Afrofuturist “works simultaneously refer-
enced a past of abduction, displacement and alien-nation, and inspired tech-
nical and creative innovations in the work of such artists as Lee ‘Scratch’
Perry, George Clinton and Sun Ra” (2000, 2). Nelson articulates the prevail-
ing vision of the Afrofuturist refashioning of the past that I have been tracing
here: it is a temporality of “abduction, displacement, and alien-nation,” and
as such, it is entirely unnatural: there is no “normal” to return to. This has led
to two divergent, yet parallel strategies in combatting the Armageddon-ef-
fect, in particular the erasures of Afrodiasporic history and the inheritance of
cultural trauma. The first strategy emphasizes traditionalism, and the rebuild-
ing of an “authentic” black culture, a movement that finds its apex in black
nationalism (Nationtime) and Afrocentrism. The second utilizes many of the
same tools (a revisioning of the past, a radicalism of creative black produc-
tion), but tends toward exodus: it remakes black culture by pushing its boun-
daries, by questioning the value of “authentic” blackness, finding its most
extravagant expression in Afrofuturism, in which “Earth” and “human” are
abandoned apace. It is tempting to oppose these strains to each other—the
traditional against the futurist, the static against the dynamic, the conserva-
tive against the progressive—but this would conflate how each embrace the
invention of the other. Both strategies revise the past and construct alternate
futures through creative intervention in the timeline. Both are also historical-
ly entwined with each other.
Yet there is a distinction to be made in how each strategy encounters the
figure of the alien. Both view the events of slavery as abduction, as founding
the system of Alien Nation. Poet and critic LeRoi Jones, who in 1965
changed his name to Amiri Baraka after the assassination of Malcolm X, 32
straddled both strategies, adopting at various times beatnik, black nationalist,
and Marxist positions. 33 Baraka was also an ardent supporter of Sun Ra. 34
Writing of James Brown, Amiri Baraka identifies “a system governed by
‘aliens’” in which black cultural and spiritual expression “transcends the
physical-mental ‘material’, finally alien system-world it has to go through”
(1999, 190). Yet while Afrocentrism and black nationalism battle Alien Na-
tion with the “historical recovery” of cultural authenticity and tradition,
Afrofuturism embraces its science fictional production. Afrofuturism thus
operates by way of paradoxically embracing figures of the past while es-
chewing claims to authenticity or tradition. But with both strategies, ac-
knowledged or not, the past is but an archive for repurposing, a timeline to be
sampled, a chronology to be upset with intervention. Sinker underlines pre-
cisely this point:
 The Armageddon Effect 79

The triumph of black American culture is that, forcibly stripped by the Middle
Passage and Slavery Days of any direct connection with African mother cul-
ture, it has nonetheless survived by syncretism, by bricolage, by a day-to-day
programme of appropriation and adaptation as resourcefully broad-minded as
any in history. But still, the humane tradition—of warmth, community hope
and aspiration—central to the gospel roots soul of the southern black tradition
is, if treated as the principle that underlies all, a way of hiding from these facts
in plain sight: that this tradition is no more uniquely “African” than the Nation
of Islam is “Islamic,” that this culture is still—in its constituent parts—very
much a patchwork borrowing; necessary of course for physical and psychic
survival, but not an unarguable continuity. (1992)

For Sinker as for Gilroy, Afrodiasporic culture is but an invention, “very

much a patchwork borrowing,” cobbled together to fill a cultural and histori-
cal void left behind by the Middle Passage. Yet this constituent mixology—
its bricolage of sampled concepts and practices—reflects a shared project of
cultural re-construction, wrought through the criss-crossing of the black At-
lantic network by its cultural exports: radio and television transmissions,
sound recordings (from vinyl to digital formats), film, video, literature, and
the journeys of performers and participants, migrants and travellers them-
selves. 35 Black Atlantic cultures have evolved through the call-and-response
of aesthetic production, in the reimagining of contested yet shared historical
themes and ties, of which one of its most intriguing, challenging, and com-
plex assemblages is Afrofuturism. But what are the effects of Afrofuturism’s
temporal operations, in the invention of shared imaginaries? Pursing this vein
of thought further, how does Afrofuturism, with its parallel strategies that
refashion and inform the past, present, and future, engage with chronopoli-
tics, as the political structuration of time?

THE MANUFACTURED HISTORY:

CHRONOPOLITICS OF PAST AND FUTURE

The manufactured history . . . The manufactured history!

How came the manufactured history?
Because of the void . . . The manufactured history was
substituted for the void in order to keep man from feeling empty
And without foundation.
—Sun Ra, “The Invented Memory” [1968] (2005b, 218)

The Afrofuturist imaginary reaches into the past to reimagine a future other-
wise. It upsets what Greg Tate calls the “black reverence for the past [that] is
a reverence for paradise lost” with “a vein of philosophical inquiry and
technological speculation that begins with the Egyptians and their incredibly
detailed meditations on life after death” (in Dery 1994a, 210–11). Afrofutur-
80 tobias c. van Veen

ism recodes the past out of a contemporary urgency to deal with the historical
void left by the Middle Passage and the enforced erasures of slavery—and
thus to project a futurity otherwise. The past is barely known, “a past gleaned
from discussions,” argues Tate, and thus open to its revisioning (qtd. in Dery
1994a, 211). In this closing section, I turn to chronopolitics and its theoriza-
tion in Eshun’s 2003 essay, “Further Considerations of Afrofuturism.”
Eshun argues for the political efficacy of temporal strategies that not only
revision the past, but upset programmatic schemas for the future:

The field of Afrofuturism does not seek to deny the tradition of countermemo-
ry. Rather, it aims to extend that tradition by reorienting the intercultural
vectors of Black Atlantic temporality towards the proleptic as much as the
retrospective. It is clear that power now operates predictively as much as
retrospectively. Capital continues to function through the dissimulation of the
imperial archive, as it has done throughout the last century. Today, however,
power also functions through the envisioning, management, and delivery of
reliable futures. (Eshun 2003, 289)

It is my intention here to explicate the operational characteristics of

chronopolitics so that, as a concept descriptive of a set of temporal practices,
it can be put to effective use. Through chronopolitics can be found in the
work of Paul Virilio, my reading here is specifically oriented toward Eshun’s
deployment, keeping in mind how Eshun develops an “Afrofuturist herme-
neutics of (temporal) suspicion” that, in its recursive cyclicity, autonomizes
the concept from its theoretical antecedents. Nearly all of Afrofuturism’s
effects are “chronopolitical.” Afrofuturism is thoroughly invested in either
imagining alternate futures or rewriting the past so as to change the present
(from which futures are imagined).
At stake is a recovery of past cycles of futurity and the derailing of
whitewashed cycles currently in effect. These processes have been described,
to a limited extent, in the performative practices above that dramatise, but
also conceptualize, the Armageddon effect and Alien Nation. To wit,
(i) Chronopolitics intervenes in the production of collective memory—
institutional, pedagogical, epistemic and museological histories, oral tradi-
tions and myths—as well as in the schematic projections of the future. This
collective memory is inscribed in texts, cultural practices, and technological
objects.
(ii) Chronopolitics is the temporal production of countermemories and
counterrealities to combat corporate, whitewashed, or technocapitalist fu-
tures of dystopia. It is also a historical recovery operation, in which erasures
and evacuations of the unwanted, insurrectionary, or traumatic past are un-
covered and put to use, in the “responsibility . . . towards the not-yet” (Eshun
2003, 289). The emergent force of chronopolitics can be read in Ra’s words,
when he writes that: “If a man can be tempted to think, thereby a better
 The Armageddon Effect 81

memory can he / create than the one implanted in his mind from the / So-
called past” (2005b, 219).
In his 2003 essay, Eshun explores how chronopolitics extends the terrain
of political agency to the field of temporality. Eshun’s concept of “chrono-
politics” echoes similar strategies developed by utopianist texts and the
mechanisms of time-travel in science fiction (sf). 36 Fredric Jameson, in his
study of the “utopian desire” in sf, Archaeologies of the Future, discusses
how (modern) narratives of progress are “now seen as attempt[s] to colonize
the future, to draw the unforeseeable back into tangible realities, in which
one can invest and on which one can bank, very much in the spirit of stock
market ‘futures’” (Jameson 2005, 228). 37 Jameson concurs with Walter Ben-
jamin’s observation that “not even the past will be safe” from the “conquer-
ors” of history, adding that “the future is not safe either” from “the elimina-
tion of historicity, its neutralization by way of progress and technological
evolution”—the latter which he names “the future of globalization” (Jameson
2005, 228). Drawing closer to the notion of a synchronic historicity that
animates his study, Jameson argues that the “antinomies of cause and effect
are today exasperated by the emergence of the notion of system,” whereby he
traces a “gravitational shift from diachronic thinking (so-called linear histo-
ry) to synchronic or systemic modeling” (2005, 87).
Chronopolitics, as a conceptechnics, partakes of the latter synchrony,
amplified into a strategy. Jameson applies this strategy himself by rewriting
Asimov’s periodized history of sf into “so many possible dominants which
form different functional constellations” (Jameson 2005, 92). The latter sf
assemblages are developed and critiqued throughout the remainder of Jame-
son’s text. Jameson does not, then, read “utopias” as “in” the future, but
rather undertakes a chronopolitical revisioning of past utopian futurisms and
alternate-utopian timelines that reveal a plurality of elsewhere/elsewhens.
As if to acknowledge the precedents set elsewhere for chronopolitics,
Eshun’s text opens with a science fictional narrative describing Afrofuturist
time-travellers returning to our forgotten past:

Imagine a team of African archaeologists from the future—some silicon, some

carbon, some wet, some dry—excavating a site, a museum from their past: a
museum whose ruined documents and leaking discs are identifiable as belong-
ing to our present, the early twenty-first century. (Eshun 2003, 287)

Eshun’s concept of chronopolitics has a specificity, however, and that is

its articulation with Afrofuturism, or rather, its theorization through the lat-
ter. Eshun explains that the chronopolitical field has two interconnected vec-
tors: that of the past (retrospective) and that of the future (proleptic). The
stuff of the past is produced: it is interpreted from artifacts, institutionalized
in museums, scripted into technologies, and synthesized into what Ra calls
82 tobias c. van Veen

“the manufactured history” that shapes the collective memory of the subject
(and what Bernard Stiegler calls mnemotechnics (1998). The stuff of the
future is predicted: it is charted, mapped, and rendered numerical by algo-
rithms, based upon “the manufactured past” (to use Foucault’s term, it is
biopolitical, in the statistical analysis of population timelines [2003]). The
future is all but programmed into the subject through a pedagogy of the
past. 38 Thus, for Afrofuturism, the stakes of chronopolitics are entwined with
upsetting the Armageddon-effect. Chronopolitics are mobilized to revision
accounts of slavery and colonialism and to rewrite its trauma by seeding not
only alternate futures but recursive pasts for Afrodiasporic subjects who have
been overdetermined by “the manufactured past.”
The retrospective interventions of chronopolitics can produce as well as
disassemble manufactured histories that reinforce ethnocentrist narratives. In
a passage concerning “museological” interventions, Eshun writes that “for
contemporary African artists, understanding and intervening in the produc-
tion and distribution of this [temporal] dimension constitutes a chronopoliti-
cal act” (2003, 192). “Revisioning” the past is part of Afrocentrism’s arsenal
of historical reconstruction just as it is a strategy of Afrofuturism:

By creating temporal complications and anachronistic episodes that disturb the

linear time of progress, these [Afro]futurisms adjust the temporal logics that
condemned black subjects to prehistory. Chronopolitically speaking, these re-
visionist historicities may be understood as a series of powerful competing
futures that infiltrate the present at different rates. (Eshun 2003, 297)

Upsetting received narratives of the past constitutes not just an interven-

tion that deprograms the coordinates of the present, but reprograms the fu-
ture. Sometimes, the best way to reimagine the future is to alter the past. The
insertion of a counter-narrative into the constitution of the past releases the
trajectories of an unpredictable futurity. The same can be said in its inverse:
depicting an alternate futurity can lead to a questioning of received narratives
of the past. Science fictional futures that depict successful Afrodiasporic
subjects imply a rejection of contemporary raciology. 39 But, crucially, Afro-
futures repurpose, and do not reject, motifs of the past. The synthesis of past
revisionism and science fictional futurism can be seen in the Kemetian sym-
bols of Sun Ra. Ra is both a Pharoah and an alien, an ancient Kemetian deity
and a futurist space traveller. In comparison to futurisms that dismiss the past
as anachronistic, arcane, or unsophisticated, Afrofuturism repurposes the
past. Moreover, Afrofuturist chronopolitics draws from the past, making use
of its symbols and tropes, to reinvent futuria. Eshun’s chronopolitics, then,
acknowledges the debt it has to sf as a practice that, in its chronopolitics,
“was never concerned with the future, but rather with engineering feedback
between its preferred future and its becoming present” (Eshun 2003, 290).
 The Armageddon Effect 83

Stolen Legacies. Strategic use of chronopolitics is at work in both Afrofu-

turism and Afrocentrism, traversing the two cultural and political strategies.
The parallelism of Afrocentrist historical revisioning to Afrofuturist chrono-
politics is noted by Eshun:

Revisionist logic is shared by autodidact historians like Sun Ra and George G.

M. James of Stolen Legacy, and contemporary intellectuals such as Toni Mor-
rison, Greg Tate, and Paul D. Miller [a.k.a. DJ Spooky]. [Morrison’s] argu-
ment that the African slaves that experienced capture, theft, abduction, and
mutilation were the first moderns is important for positioning slavery at the
heart of modernity. The cognitive and attitudinal shift demanded by her state-
ment also yokes philosophy together with brutality, and binds cruelty to tem-
porality. The effect is to force together separated systems of knowledge, so as
to disabuse apparatuses of knowledge of their innocence. (Eshun 2003, 297)

Afrofuturism is as much a recovery project of a revisionist past as it is an

imaginary of a future otherwise. Afrofuturism seeks to displace temporality
from its whitewashed visions, the latter of which Mark Dery calls “the unreal
estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, stream-
liners, and set-designers—white to a man—who have engineered our collec-
tive fantasies” (1994a, 180). The figure of Sun Ra embodies this cross-wiring
of the futurist, technologically-advanced alien into the past mythos of Pha-
roahnic Kemet, treading a path that parallels—for historical, political, as well
as aesthetic reasons—the black nationalism of Afrocentrism. 40
One of the key MythSciences advanced by Afrocentrism is its historical
revisioning of a black Pharoahnic philosphical heritage stolen by Greek cul-
ture (for example, in James 2001), or what Eshun outlines as the “reactionary
Manichaenism of the Nation of Islam, the regressive compensation mecha-
nisms of Egyptology, Dogonesque cosmology, and the totalising reversals of
Stolen Legacy–style Afrocentricity” (Eshun 2003, 297). By contrast, Afrofu-
turism grasps the same symbols, but infuses them with science fiction. Afro-
centrism’s Kemetianism is transfigured by Afrofuturism into conceptual mat-
ter for new belief-systems, new MythSciences capable of upending and chal-
lenging the timeline. The mythos of Kemet replaces Greece and the Enlight-
enment project, but in place of Afrocentrism’s battle for truth, Afrofuturism
reimagines the Pharoahs as black aliens, the pyramids as black secret tech-
nologies. Whereas Afrocentrism seeks to prove the veracity of its historical
claims, Afrofuturism utilizes historical revisioning to reimagine alternatives
to the timeline in the production of counterrealities.
84 tobias c. van Veen

CONCLUSION

In closing, I return to Ra, who incants his distrust for the past in a text
entitled “The Invented Memory” (2005a, 60). What is intriguing about this
text is how it elaborates the impure origins of memory: that at first, in the
beginning, memory was never bare, never scrubbed clean, but already in-
vented, manufactured; for Sun Ra, these invented memories keep the hue-
man 41 “from looking / backward into a void . / . . Because of what has
happened” (2005b, 218).
The Afrofuturist genesis of invented memory begins with the trauma of
the Middle Passage and slavery: this is the “manufactured history!” of the
Afrodiasporic subject. But the Biblical invention of memory—a reading that
Ra develops at length—begins with the Genesis myth: Adam and Eve are
given “unschooled conceptions and beliefs” by the creator. These beliefs are
challenged, and revealed as the inventions that they are, when the couple
attain self-knowledge—in short, Eve was “schooled” when she bit into the
apple. 42 This self-knowledge, of course, results in the expulsion of Adam and
Eve from the Garden.
Ra continues, elaborating the symbolic emptiness and yet the potential of
the memory void: “The word man is but an / image-symbol / Thus man is
striving to be the idea of himself” (2005b, 218). The question is who/what
determines the meaning of the image-symbol of “man”? What mnemotechni-
cal systems manufactures the invented memories of the subject? This ques-
tion itself blurs the boundaries of the who to the what, the subject to cyborg,
system to memory flesh. For Eshun, as undoubtedly for Ra, this “idea” is but
implanted by what Eshun calls an “imperial racism [that] has denied black
subjects the right to belong to the enlightenment project” (Eshun 2003, 287).
Afrodiasporic subjects are forever unable to live up to such an “idea of Man,”
resulting in the perpetuation of what W.E.B. du Bois named “double-con-
sciousness” (1994). However, it is this very emptiness of “the idea of Man”
that opens upon the chronopolitics of Afrofuturism and its production of
MythSciences and their unhuman becomings.

NOTES

1. Sinker’s article was followed by Mark Dery’s edited volume Flame Wars: The Dis-
course of Cyberculture (1994b) and took place concurrently to Greg Tate’s investigations of
black sf and hip-hop in The Village Voice (collected in 1992).
2. An ethnonationalist containerisation that was to continue in Americocentric definitions.
Alondra Nelson, for example, re-cites Dery in her introduction to the 2002 issue of Social Text
on Afrofuturism—“Afrofuturism can be broadly defined as ‘African American voices’ with
‘other stories to tell about culture, technology and things to come’” (2002, 9). Even as Nelson
expands the definition’s coordinates to the diaspora, the uncritical deployment of the phrase has
erected checkpoints that contain the diasporic complexity of the concept.
 The Armageddon Effect 85

3. Nonetheless, it was Sinker who arguably crystallized a number of fragmented observa-

tions. Though the concept of “Afrodiaspora” is nowhere to be found in Sinker’s article, Gil-
roy’s elaboration of the black Atlantic cultural network accurately describes Sinker’s approach
to Afrofuturism. The Afrodiaspora traces “lines of affiliation and association which take the
idea of the diaspora beyond its symbolic status as the fragmentary opposite of some imputed
racial essence,” underlining the “rituals of performance that provide prima facie evidence of
linkage between black cultures” (Gilroy 1993, 95, 101).
4. At least until Ra and the Arkestra was expelled for what Szwed calls “an ideological
split within the Panthers . . . (‘we got kicked out by Eldridge Cleaver or somebody’)” (1998,
330). Taking the 1974 film Space Is the Place as a response to the split with the Panthers—the
narrative is situated in Oakland and includes Panther-like characters and community pro-
grams—Kreiss speculates that “Sun Ra ultimately finds limited value in terrestrial community
programs, an allusion to the Panthers, and posits that only the band’s use of technology and
music will liberate the people by changing consciousness” (2008, 75).
5. An offer not unlike that of joining the Arkestra itself.
6. For an analysis of the film in relation science fiction, technology, and the musical, see
Zuberi 2004.
7. It’s worth noting that nowhere does Sinker mentioned Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade
Runner; the connection is Eshun’s. However the underlying motif is clear: Sinker connected
the alien-android motifs of Afrofuturism, of creative explorations of nonhuman subjectivity, to
the historical dehumanisation produced by slavery.
8. In Akiva Schaffer’s film The Watch (2012), in which four men band together in a
neighbourhood watch only to fend off an alien invasion, the “blackskin” is literally embodied
in the character of Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade). Jamarcus is revealed to be an alien wearing the
skin of a deceased black man (and whose actual person/body is never dealt with). A running
gag in the film concerns the superficiality of Evan’s (Ben Stiller) “multicultural friendships”
with people of non-white ethnicities. The film’s brilliance lies in the self-reflexivity of this
searingly critical gag that comes to be embodied in Jamarcus (in this 99 percent-white town of
middle-America, even the black guy isn’t black, nor is he a black alien: he’s an alien wearing
blackskin: for this alone I refuse IMDB.com’s rating of 5.6 stars and give it a 9).
9. This (de)valuation also reflects upon the ways in which the animal is categorised as
nothing other than resource property in Marx’s analysis (even if cynically).
10. This argument also goes for the (ongoing) patriarchial violence that treats women as
private property. It also extends to the treatment of animals, and life as such, including the
Earth, as nothing but privatised property ripe for exploitation and profit.
11. In this respect, we can engage with a little Lacanian play: from subject to object, the
African subject S = $.
12. Gates, Jr. argues precisely for the transmission of various pan-African cultural narra-
tives, in song and ritual, down through slavery (see 1988).
13. Such programs were also instituted in Canada’s aboriginal Residential schools, for ex-
ample, where pupils were taken from their families, forbidden to speak their native languages,
and schooled in Eurocentric history that devalued their aboriginal culture. Many students were
physically and sexually abused. I note this, while reading Fanon on colonial pedagogy in the
Antilles (2008), because too often slavery is considered an event of American history. Its
mechanisms take many forms. They persist to this day. Hence the relevance of this work.
14. Which is not to say, as Sinker emphasizes, that humans forcibly thrown into slavery
were not struggling to retain all that was in the process of being erased: “part of the story of
black music (the affirmative, soul-gospel aspect) has always been this—that losing everything
except basic dignity and decency is potentially a survivable disaster” (1992).
15. I deploy the portmanteau of soniculture to signify all that falls under a “music culture”: a
combinatory of cultural practices grouped around an ever-modulating set of musical motifs that
nonetheless are headlined by an all-purpose descriptor such as jazz or hip-hop; soniculture
encompasses performance, composition, listening practices (including dancing), and codes of
critical appreciation (what constitutes “good” music). The term is inclusive of the music’s
production and recording techniques, its distribution networks, preferred avenues of transmis-
86 tobias c. van Veen

sion (digital, vinyl, CDs) and experience (concert halls, late-night smoke-filled clubs, raves, but
also headphones, etc.). See van Veen 2010.
16. In interpreting the flow of the hip-hop emcee, we are reminded of Tricia Rose’s analysis
that “rap music is, in many ways, a hidden transcript. Among other things, it uses cloaked
speech and disguised cultural codes to comment on and challenge aspects of current power
inequalities”; particularly in the case of Public Enemy, hip-hop is “engaged in symbolic and
ideological warfare with institutions and groups that symbolically, ideologically, and materially
oppress African Americans” (1994, 100–101). And in this case: with the timeline itself, with
history as a mutable object, including its past revolutions and insurgencies. (Rose is evidently
echoing aspects of Gate’s thesis of Signifyin’—see (Gates 1988).)
17. Scott-Heron has likewise been sampled in house music with the percussive, deep mini-
malist jam, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Lunar Disco Mix)” by the Soul Rebels
(Defected 067, 1999). The track samples from a live performance of the poem, including its
preamble and the audience’s cheering and clapping. Scott-Heron’s voice has been electronical-
ly processed, resulting in a transient pitching of its harmonic components, not quite roboticized,
but not quite human, either. What are the effects of rendering quasi-machinic a classic black
power poem? Weheliye argues that such electronic techniques “reconstruct the black voice in
relation to information technologies,” thereby historicizing the enunciation of “soul” through
technology (2002, 10, 33). I agree, but would extend Weheliye’s argument, that (a) “soul” is
transformed in the process, and that (b) “soul” is not just in the supposedly human, but an effect
of the machine. (This discussion will have to be further elaborated at another place and time.)
18. “Race and Racism—Red, White, and Black,” Episode 306 of The ’90s, PBS Television,
KBDI. Produced by Tom Weinberg and Joel Cohen, 4/19/91. Archived at: http://media-
burn.org/video/the-90s-episode-306-race-and-racism-red-white-and-black/. This episode is
well worth viewing as an incredible piece of independent television. It begins with a white
metalhead defining “a black person” vs. a “nigger.” Its subjects include the Klu Klux Klan
(during which the producers scroll a sickening list of KKK attacks across the bottom of the
screen), Mandela and apartheid in South Africa, the Mohawk Warriors of the Oka Crisis, the
Black Panthers and COINTELPRO, and the framing of Panther Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wa-
had. The producers also interview numerous scholars who discuss capitalism as the structural
cause of racism.
19. Apparently the filming of the video (directed by Spike Lee) nearly transformed into
what it sought to represent (see Chang 2005: 280; see Myrie 2009, 169). It is unclear whether
the police filing by at 5:15 are actors (by the look on Chuck D’s face), and the closing two
minutes of the video depict this undecideability between revolt / representation, from the call-
and-response crowd chants of “Don’t Believe The Hype” led by Flavor Flav to an increasingly
energetic street march. It is just this line that Public Enemy plays, as its S1W dancers bust
moves underneath portraits of Louis Farrakhan. This video also pre-dates the “carnival against
capitalism” and other such actions by Reclaim The Streets (RTS) in which soundsystems and
electronic music from hip-hop to techno combined to create a musicotechnico assemblage of
political agency that blended protest and occupation with circus, celebration, and electronic
dance music culture (EDMC).
20. In a way somewhat dismissive of efforts to revitalize hip-hop’s political force—such as
Dead Prez and Kanye West—as well as ignoring the fragmentation of nearly all “mainstream”
broadcast models, Warrall nonetheless convincingly writes that “we’re even more inundated
with commercialism and the market’s skewed view of what’s controversial. ‘Urban’ culture has
become a trend factory, and hip-hop’s dependence on faux shock has reduced the complexity of
the art form. Rebellion has been commodified, a fact that is perfectly illustrated by the prolife-
ration of rap stars’ clothing labels. Dissent itself has become unthreatening” (2002). But is
selling threads all that?
21. This point was highlighted during the Gulf War, during which CNN created the format
of the 24-hour news cycle and its streaming broadcast of “real time” television. These events
prompted Baudrillard to pen his infamously controversial series of three articles (published in
1991 before, during, and after the Gulf War), collected under the title The Gulf War Did Not
Take Place (1995). Baudrillard’s polemic was squarely aimed at demonstrating how actual
revolutionary events had fallen entirely into spectacle.
 The Armageddon Effect 87

22. M.K. Asante, Jr.’s book It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop
Generation lays out this deadlock of politico-cultural representation, wherein “hip hop’s dive
into the mainstream was a win for the handful of corporations and artists who grew rich, but a
significant loss for those who it is supposed to represent” (2008, 3).
23. All of whom are male—which is not to neglect the likes of Grace Jones, Donna Sum-
mer, or Janelle Monáe, but rather to trace a particular line of sonic effects that is also reflective
of structural patriarchy. For a thorough meditation upon Monáe as android Cindi Mayweather
(and Detroit techno composer Jeff Mills), see van Veen 2013.
24. Ra is also not so much an abductee as a contactee: he is one of few reported cases to
have successfully resisted efforts of abduction.
25. Drawing a connection that few in conventional jazz have cared to note, Sinker writes
that “Coltrane is incomprehensible unless you see him as Ra’s greatest pupil, terminally impa-
tient with limits, with the trivial categories and opposites within Earthly language, and yet
inhumanly patient with the fact that such things won’t be transcended down here on this plane”
(1992). John Corbett notes that Coltrane distributed copies of Ra’s esoteric Afrofuturist pamph-
let, “Solaristic Precepts” (in Ra 2006, 6); Sinker writes that Ra “weaned [Coltrane] off his
addiction, or anyway rerouted it from chemistry to metaphysics.”
26. But in reality at length: we will need a paragraph to explicate Eshun’s single sentence.
27. Amiri Baraka writes of Coltrane that “The titles of Trane’s tunes, ‘A Love Supreme,’
‘Meditations,’ ‘Ascension,’ imply a strong religious will, conscious of the religious evolution
the pure mind seeks. The music is a way into God. The absolute open expression of everything”
(1999, 196). This evolution would lead Trane to Interstellar Space.
28. Norbert Wiener, 1894–1964, was an American mathematician who developed the prin-
ciples of system feedback known as cybernetics. His application to social systems is perhaps
emblematic of what Foucault would call biopolitics. See, in particular, The Human Use of
Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1988).
29. Such as in John Sayles’ 1984 film, The Brother From Another Planet, wherein the mute
Afro-alien communicates by way of hieroglyphic graffiti. The conceit of Sayles’ film is that
unlike his musical compatriots—Ra, George Clinton, Coltrane, Hendrix, etc.—the black alien
is mute; he communicates not through music but symbolic pictograms: alien hieroglyphs.
30. Amiri Baraka argues that “the solo . . . as first exemplified by Louis Armstrong, is very
plain indication of the changed sensibility the West enforced. The return to collective improv-
isations, which finally, the West-oriented, the whitened, says is chaos, is the all-force put
together, and is what is wanted. Rather than accompaniment and a solo voice, the miniature
‘thing’ securing its ‘greatness’. Which is where the West is” (1999, 197). This critique side-
steps two points: (1) that both the solo and collective free improvisation are inventions of “the
West” just as they are of “Black Music”; and that (2) resistance was not only to be found
among white listeners and critics to the “chaos” of free improvisation (or Ra’s eclectic, outer-
space composition, which are rarely improvised), but among black traditionalists. Baraka, who
himself inhabited multiple types of black culture, nonetheless distinguishes among them, cri-
tiquing those who adopt the “unswinging-ness” of “contemporary European and white Euro-
American music” (1999, 192).
31. As Rollefson writes in a similar vein, Afrofuturism is struck by a “tension between
fantasies of both ‘the past’ and ‘the future’” (2008, 90).
32. And whose passing on January 9th, 2014, I mark here.
33. For a critical overview of Baraka’s position-taking, as well as his anti-Semitism and
heterosexism, see Iton 2010, 81–100.
34. This particular incarnation of Baraka stands both inside and out of Afrofuturism.
Though a herald of jazz experimentation in Sun Ra, Ayler, Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman, his
position implicitly disavows what would follow with hip-hop, techno, and house, all of which
sampled or were in-part inspired by white European artists such as Kraftwerk. While the
Arkestra played the Black Arts Repertory Theater/School (BARTS) and led the opening parade
across 125th street in full outer space regalia, with Ra a prominent figure during the short-lived
heyday of BARTS (1965–66) that nonetheless politically radicalised his music, see Szwed
1998: 209–12, Ra played for all audiences, remained “downtown,” and collaborated with white
artists (such as Phill Niblock). By Szwed’s assessment, Baraka’s “nationalism was too earthly
88 tobias c. van Veen

and materialistic” for Ra (1998, 212). For his part, Baraka acknowledged that Ra sought to
expand both black and human consciousness (in Ra 2011: viii). As Baraka later reflected, “Sun
Ra had a larger agenda [than black nationalism]” in Szwed 1998, 211.
35. As I will return to elsewhere, Gilroy writes that “This reciprocal relationship [between
audience and performer] can serve as an ideal communicative situation even when the original
makers of the music and its eventual consumers are separated in space and time or divided by
the technologies of sound reproduction and the commodity form which their art has sought to
resist” (1993, 102–3). Of note, Gilroy echoes Derrida here, who argues that such reciprocity is
the very condition of the sign, including its technical networks of communicability, see Gilroy
1997.
36. This claim is novel neither to politics nor to science fiction in general. That history is
written by the victors is a worn but truthful cliché of history. It is part of Sun Tzu’s general
strategy: “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill” (1971, 77). Chronopolitics
is the Supreme in nonfighting strategy. Time-travelling to divert a conflict before it begins is
the acme of chronopolitics.
37. In a similar vein, Eshun writes: “Science fiction is now a research and development
department within a futures industry that dreams of the prediction and control of tomorrow.
Corporate business seeks to manage the unknown through decisions based on scenarios, while
civil society responds to future shock through habits formatted by science fiction. Science
fiction operates through the power of falsification, the drive to rewrite reality, and the will to
deny plausibility, while the scenario operates through the control and prediction of plausible
alternative tomorrows” (2003, 291).
38. A point made by Frantz Fanon (2008) (among many others) but also Paolo Freire, who
criticizes the “banking” approach to education, where “education thus becomes an act of
depositing” (1970, 58).
39. One such example noted by Samuel R. Delany is in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troop-
ers, where in the midst of this “boy’s book, a book about the way warfare can mature a young
man,” some 200 pages in, “our young hero . . . goes into the bathroom to put on his makeup—
for in this future world all men use makeup—[and] as he looks in the mirror, he makes a
passing mention of the nearly chocolate brown hue of his face” (2012, 9). Delany says that he
“did a strange double take.” The hero of the book was not white, but Filipino. As Delany
remarks, more to the point is that the “racial situation . . . had resolved itself to the point where
a young soldier might tell you of his adventures for 200 pages out of a 300-page novel and not
even have to mention his ethnic background—because it had, in his world, become that insig-
nificant!” (2012, 9). Unfortunately, the 1997 film, directed by Paul Verhoeven, eschews Hein-
lein’s Afrofuturist trajectory and presents an all-white leading cast.
40. Eshun writes that “Ra zooms this lost Africa into a lost Pharoahnic Egypt” (Eshun 1999,
09[156]).
41. The “hue-man” is Ra’s inscription (among others) for the construction of the human
through the raciological “colour line.” It signals the colour-line otherwise erased in the Enlight-
enment category of the (whitewashed) “human.”
42. In “The Tree is Wood” (Ra 2005a, 192), I here note the “wormwood” or “spiritwood/
would” implied by biting into the apple.

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 Chapter Five

Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess

Janelle Monáe
Psychedelic Soul Message Music
Infused with a Sci-Fi Twist

Grace D. Gipson

It’s the year 2719, female android Cindi Mayweather (aka Janelle Monáe)
has encountered a musical market world filled with severe social stratifica-
tion. Thus, it is no mystery how race, gender, and sexuality have found
themselves orbiting around each other overlooked until they reach this Afro-
futuristic realm. Imagine the literary genius of Octavia Butler fused with the
musical artistry of Prince and together they birthed the darling, psychedelic
soul that is Janelle Monáe. Since 2007, Monáe has reenergized the Afrofutur-
ism movement with her epic vocals, immaculate clothing style, and magical
lyrics. As a result, her musical talent is by no means generic or monotonous,
in fact no one definition can describe this musician activist. As a Grammy-
nominated hardcore genre-crossing diva artist, Janelle Monáe has reinvented
what it means to musically travel through space in order to capture her
freedom. Much like her Afrofuturistic predecessors Sun Ra and George Clin-
ton, Monáe presents a persona that can be likened to a polyvalent Afrofutur-
istic aesthetic that embodies the desires of black feminism mixed with a
futural sonic flare. She goes beyond the outer limits of storytelling providing
a signature sound, which critiques the monotone concept of punk, and clearly
addresses the complexities of race, gender, and sexuality at the same time.
Essentially, Monáe speaks to a subject that is transformed by law, yet does
not exist within it through each musical lyric and note, and nurtures re-
sponses to presumptions of racialized and sexualized criminality (Nyong’o
2005). Through songs like her first single “Many Moons” to the controversial
91
92 Grace D. Gipson

hit “Cold War” to her latest track with fellow soul sista Erykah Badu
“Q.U.E.E.N.,” this essay attempts to shows how Monae strategically inter-
mixes space with racial and sexual politics, black feminism, historical narra-
tives, and class conflicts all in a “radical visionary Afrofuturistic” kind of
way.
So what is Afrofuturism? Music critic and writer Mark Dery (1994)
coined the term “Afrofuturism” to describe the self-conscious appropriation
of technological themes in Black popular culture, particularly that of rap and
other hip-hop representations. The term is more than just being “weird,” “out
there,” or “high.” It is not an elitist movement. It’s not about having different
tastes or following different trends, but it is as sociologist and Afrofuturism
scholar Alondra Nelson says “to explore futurist themes in Black cultural
production and the ways in which technological innovation is changing the
face of Black art and culture” (Nelson and Miller 2006). The appropriation of
science and technology by marginalized groups has always been an essential
component of resistance, and its significance in the black diaspora all the
more so because of the extremes in brutality, subjugation, and geographic
scope (Eglash and Bleecker 2001). As a whole, Afrofuturism is a genre that
allows artists, such as Janelle Monáe, to present new and innovative perspec-
tives and pose questions that are not typically addressed in canonical works.
Afrofuturism is a free space that allows the option to explore, imagine, and
discover blackness and womanhood (in the case of Monáe) side by side.
Afrofuturism much like cyberfeminism uses science fiction and cyber culture
in a speculative manner to escape the traditional definitions of what it means
to be black or African (in exotic terms) within western culture (Bristow
2012). These stories of aliens and cyber beings that can be found in Afrofu-
turism literature, film, and music are essentially metaphors that speak to real
life experiences of blacks in the diaspora. Using these various avenues,
Afrofuturism continues to redefine black culture and notions of blackness for
today and the future. Musically, one could say that Afrofuturism had its start
in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s with the likes of jazz musicians such as
Lee “Scratch Perry” and Sun Ra who portrayed themselves as an extension
of all African Diasporic people as they would envision themselves as descen-
dants of intelligent life forms who came to Earth to prepare the human race
for its eventual destiny among the space realm. As a growing and popular
aesthetic movement, particularly in the music genre, Afrofuturism continues
to evolve technologically but also in terms of its political mission. Afrofutur-
ist artists like Janelle Monáe, seek to disrupt, challenge, and transform the
visions of tomorrow with fantastic stories that as Ruth Mayer (2000) puts it,
“move seamlessly back and forth through time and space, between cultural
traditions and geographic time zones” and thus between blackness as a dys-
topic relic of the past and as a harbinger of a new and more promising alien
future” (556). In some ways Afrofuturism exhibits this feminine aspect of
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 93

humanity, a level of intuition, as it constantly gives birth to a future that is in

need of reclaiming.
Interestingly enough there is this relationship between black feminism
and Afrofuturism in that both have connections (feminism, science-fiction,
technology) that were initially dominated by white patriarchal standards;
however both are now vehicles that are being used as liberating voices to
express public consciousness. This is one of the ways Janelle Monáe inter-
twines fantasy, her musical talents, and intellect to discuss this future reality.
Monáe’s work is quite compelling in that it highlights the past, present, and
future within the African American diaspora. In a sense, she is exemplifying
this musical resistance legacy that has been already laid out by other artists
such as Afrika Bambataa, Soul II Soul, George Clinton, Sun Ra, and Grace
Jones. Her music redefines essentialist notions of Black culture in music.
August Wilson speaks of this notion in how our leaders of the ’60s have set a
tone for today’s new leaders, “What blacks were doing in the ’60s is coming
to some fruition . . . we have the framework and the orientation to take things
further.” 1 And Monáe does just that as she picks up the torch to light the way
for the future generations. Through each album, song, lyric, and musical
note, Monáe gives freedom to that “other” (marginalized victims within the
world) or segregated minority that is often discussed in Afrofuturism. Instead
of them being minimalized, she maximizes their existence and breathes this
sort of life. It is as though she elevates this state of consciousness that
surpasses the misfortunes that one may visually perceive in today’s society.

AN AFROFUTURIST IS BORN . . . JANELLE MONÁE

Born to working class parents, her mother who worked as a janitor and her
father as a sanitary/garbage collector, in Kansas City, Kansas, Janelle Monáe
Robinson would learn at a very young age the value of hard work. Coming
from a stressful and painful background along with early experiences dealing
with perils of drug addiction, Monáe would use those factors as a source of
inspiration to succeed. As a result of their hard work and dedication to
survive, Monáe throughout her career has created her own niche not just
through her music, but in her appearance as well. She even goes as far as
creating a distinct and unique uniform. Monáe’s signature uniform of a
black-and-white tuxedo is her way of paying homage to her parents. Not only
is her uniform a tribute to her parents, but it is also a compliment to the
Gatsby-era as it simultaneously acknowledges this “post-human” androgy-
nous symbol of class and mobility.
From a black feminist perspective, artists like Janelle Monáe have been
able to use Afrofuturism to explore the boundaries of race, class, and gender
and begin offering some sort of solution. Monáe is very attentive to her
94 Grace D. Gipson

positionality in the musical marketplace, particularly as a black/African

American woman who comes from working-class roots, even as she manipu-
lates that marketplace in the name of future justice. Since coming to the
music scene she has been able to disrupt this notion that Ytasha Womack has
stated in that “fatalism is equated to blackness.” Monáe’s gift of song (via her
lyrics) provides a message of hope, empowerment, and femininity all through
an Afrofuturistic lens. Essentially, through song Monáe can travel through
time and space recapturing and reclaiming what was taken, and then present-
ing it back to future generations. Monáe has been very successful in writing
her own story and becoming a social change agent, much like her Afrofutur-
istic predecessors Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Octavia Butler. As Monáe
would tell in an interview to the Quietus, “I learned to embrace things that
make me unique even if they make me uncomfortable sometimes” (Calvert
2010). This lack of comfort would introduce us to Monáe being known for
appropriating historically “non-black” genres of rock, punk, electronica, or-
chestra, and folk music, which then allows her to surpass sociopolitical bor-
ders.
Furthermore, her music as a platform analyzes the dynamics of race,
gender, and culture at the same time incorporating them with other contro-
versial topics like class and spirituality. Through her musical lyrics and even
her music videos she offers an alternative critique regarding issues of race,
class, homophobia, and sexism. Her contribution to the music world, and
more importantly to the genre of Afrofuturism, is quite energetic and pur-
poseful. Monáe provides a brown-girl narrative that is scarce and unique in
today’s popular recording industry. She is not necessarily the sister-girl/
homegirl from the project stoop, or the high profile city girl, but more of a
cyber girl sent to shake up the present day musical landscape. All in all,
Monáe takes an active role, as a public image artist, in the cultivation of
black women centered spaces within mass and popular culture that serve to
address the concerns of not only black women but the larger black commu-
nity.

So Who Is Cindi Mayweather?

Since the inception of Monáe’s recording career, she has initiated the pos-
sibility of the human, particularly of the black female body all through this
narrative arc about an imagined android alter ego, Cindi Mayweather (Eng-
lish and Kim 2013).

Cindi is an android and I love speaking about the android because they are the
new “other.” 2 People are afraid of the other and I believe we’re going to live in
a world with androids because of technology and the way it advances. The first
album she was running because she had fallen in love with a human and she
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 95

was being disassembled for that. (according to Monáe as reported to MTV in

2010)

Monáe as an android highlights this idea of artistic freedom in that she

embraces this idea of celebrating femaleness, freedom, and otherness through
song. Cindi Mayweather as this android is much like Donna Haraway’s
“cyborg manifesto” (1991) in that it exhibits this speculative criticism that
has been manipulated by this onset of a global technology culture. Monáe
embraces this idea of stepping outside the box of what is considered normal
by further pushing the envelope and redefining what it means to be a minor-
ity or other. Thus, Cindi Mayweather and Janelle Monáe serve as a hybrid
between fantasy and human/alien boundaries. Furthermore, considering her-
self as an android is significant in that she reclaims this gender agency within
a male dominated musical culture, where she does not have to identify as
male or female.
Cindi Mayweather is the captain and the songs she sings are the ships that
travel and carry freedom song messages in and out of space. Monáe would
also explain how Cindi is like “the mediator between the mind and the
hand . . . haves and have-not’s, the oppressed and the oppressor. . . . She’s
like the Archangel in the Bible, and what Neo represents to the Matrix . . .
together Janelle Monáe and Cindi become a bridge for saving humanity”
(Andrews 2010). The versatility of her musical weapons and her alter-ego
allows her to step outside the box that places her into a specific genre.
According to Paste Magazine (2008) [as taken from a 2008 press release],
rap superstar and mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs would describe Monáe as “a
true visionary, with an original sound and a mesmerizing presence.” Thus
she does more than sing, dance, and perform; she tells a relatable story that
recovers that past and elevates us to the future. Cindi Mayweather serves as a
re-invention of who Janelle Monáe wants the world to know in hopes that
listeners will tap into their own super powers and embrace the voice of
change . . . within themselves and their own communities.

AFROFUTURISM AND JANELLE MONÁE

Future and space are no longer a foreign concept, but a way of life. Women
and little girls become empowered in their own skin not having to feel guilty
about being different and unique. Everyone has dreams, it is what you do
with them to make them a part of your reality. Thus, Monáe becomes a living
example of this and what it means to be human. Monáe demands your atten-
tion with her abstract and at times controversial lyrics and video images. Her
songs are meant to be taken at face value. She embodies what mentor Big Boi
of Outkast would call this “psychedelic dance punk troupe” type vibe in
which she confronts racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and a critique of
96 Grace D. Gipson

systems of oppression in the U.S. as well as conflict in the black and feminist
movements. Monáe deals with those “gray” areas such as black identity,
black sexuality, black family, and community that often get ignored or swept
under the political and media rug. Therefore, it is important to examine how
Monáe negotiates the intersections of race and gender, nationalism, sexual-
ity, and classism while extending a dialogue about Afrofuturism and its role
in social justice.
As Mark Dery (1994) points out, “African American voices have other
stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come” (184). Society
has evolved into this industrial revolution, in which music culture plays a
significant role. And with everything becoming digital, some musical artists
cannot keep up or cannot move fast enough. This is where Monáe shines
through. She is living proof that art is life and art is a medium and/or path-
way to self-actualization. Monáe truly captures what it means to be Afrofu-
turistic. She does not simply just address the what-ifs, but enthusiastically
tries to prepare us for what is to come. It is more than just being eclectic and
using digital technology, referring to yourself as an alien, droid, cyber-hu-
man, etc. As Monáe portrays through her personality and music, it is about
blending cutting edge, futuristic production machines (non-human) and the
observance to the likes of James Brown and Jimi Hendrix (human) linking
the future and the past in this “call and response” style all riding on the
“mothership.”
As many within the black community criticize the lack of positive images
in popular culture, the lack of power to influence the corporate capitalist
responsible for such imagery, Afrofuturism as a genre with the help of artists
like Janelle Monáe rearticulates this power by providing critical dialogues
and interventions to liberate black minds from these tropes and stereotypes.
One particular influence for Monáe becoming a transformative artist was the
novels by Octavia Butler, she explains:

Her work was first of all brilliantly written, and Wild Seed was the book that
inspired me. I loved the characters, and the morphing. [Anyanwu] was just
such a transformative character, and I look at myself as a transformative artist.
Just the fact that [Butler] defied race and gender . . . You appreciated her work
for being a human being. (as told in a 2010 interview to IO9-Andrews)

Monáe’s willingness to venture into another musical dimension is particular-

ly valuable as she allows her listeners and fans access to journey with her
into the present-future as she gives voice to those silenced. As an Afrofutur-
istic musical artist, Monáe uses her music and performance to theorize and
prescribe a revolutionary agenda that affirms the entire black community.
She achieves this through methods that target self-definition, female empow-
erment, embracing alternate black aesthetics, defending women’s sexual
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 97

agency, and confronting oppression on all levels. As you will see, Monáe’s
music speaks to this idea of transforming to another level. She disrupts this
notion that Afrofuturist artist and scholar, Ytasha Womack speaks to in her
2013 text Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture that
“fatalism is equated to blackness.” Her amazing talent of song (via her lyrics)
provides a message of hope, empowerment, and femininity through an Afro-
futuristic lens. As she tells us, “we believe songs are space ships. We believe
music is the weapon of the future. We believe books are stars” (Wondaland
Arts Society 2011). Additionally, Monáe through out her career always en-
courages and embraces this idea of “it’s ok if you don’t fit in.” She writes her
own story while simultaneously becoming a social change agent.
In these next few pages we will examine how three songs (“Many
Moons,” “Cold War,” and “Q.U.E.E.N.”) from three different albums (Me-
tropolis: Suite I [The Chase], The ArchAndroid, and The Electric Lady)
reflect the potent mixture of female empowerment, resistance, and self-iden-
tity struggles through this Afrofuturistic lens.

THE YEAR IS 2007 . . . WELCOME TO METROPOLIS . . .

Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) is the 2007 debut EP from Janelle Monáe
and would establish the first installment of Monae’s seven part Metropolis
conceptual series which follows this fictional tale of android Cindi May-
weather. The album would comprise a mixture of pop, funk, dance-punk, and
futuristic soul. Omar Burgess (2008) from Hip-Hop DX magazine would
describe the album “as having references and notions of forbidden robot love
and having a production style that takes its cues from something made in the
past, as well as the future. The drums hit hard, and when combined with the
synth keys, strings and the occasional electric guitar, they make for an oddly
enjoyable mix.” Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) is an album that can be
likened to having a Marxist metaphor as a narrative foundation. What is
unique about this album and the song is how Monáe makes a conscious effort
to bring restoration to an Afrofuturist cosmology and places it in the fore-
front of contemporary urban music. This album along with the second single
“Many Moons” (2008) offers a “therapy-by-fantasy” remedy into the world’s
issues and problems.
Immediately Monáe begins to focus on the situations at hand, which she
simply just wants to have peace of mind, feverishly dance above ground, and
ultimately be free. Despite operating underground, metaphorically they are
dancing with shackles on their feet. She goes on further to explain how even
though they can dance there still remain these notions of being held captive,
oppressed, marginalized, underrepresented, or worse made to be invisible.
Monáe also alludes to this longing for freedom from the matrix, or Metropo-
98 Grace D. Gipson

lis, 3 where everything they want to say is not erased as if it never existed. As
a result they live day to day in a state of confusion.
After she provides the listener with the lyrical lesson, she further breaks it
down for us in a cybernetic chantdown or spoken word catalog that address
various (damaging and harmful) stereotypes and tropes along with references
to sociopolitical ills. Immediately, Monáe addresses such terms as “weirdo,”
“stepchild,” and “freakshow” and how these terms, created by society, place
people into boxes just because they do not fit into a particular norm. She goes
on further to equate how being treated like a stepchild is the equivalent to
being a part of a freak show. Additionally, Monáe also brings attention to
specific phenotypes regarding black girls having “nappy hair” and broad,
wide-set noses making these features seem as though they are not accepted as
ideal beauty standards, thus only worthy of a “cold stare.”
As the cybernetic chantdown continues Monáe offers us an additional set
of choice words that address language such as “race songs,” hunger, social-
economic status (SES), and disease. Here one might pose the question, is
Monáe speaking to this idea of how mindless words are often used in race
songs; or could this be a play-on-words whereas “race songs” could be
viewed as “e-rased songs”? And if it is a race song, it holds the risk of being
an erased song, much like school boards and education committees are trying
to erase true history, hence the use of foolish words or the lack thereof.
Monáe also makes mention of this domino effect of such items attached to
hunger and SES status as spoiled milk and stale bread, which ultimately
refers to old unhealthy foods that are generally more affordable for people on
welfare. Since these foods are not sustainable enough to actually survive on,
people who are on welfare or in impoverished areas tend to die in large
numbers much like they did during the Bubonic plague.
By reminding us of all these various ongoing issues and diseases still
floating around in the universe/world, Monáe provides us with this warning
that this could easily happen to anyone even today and potentially in the
future. Thus, it is important to remain vigilant and quickly make moves for
an escape from evil forces, in the case of Monáe/Cindi Mayweather the
Android Monitoring Army/Police of Metropolis, while there is still a chance.
Furthermore, it is in one’s best interest to remedy these situations while there
is still a fighting chance. As the song comes to an end, Monáe lulls us into a
closing lullaby “Shan, shan shan shan-gri la” reminding listeners that after
society and the world have beaten you up mentally and physically to always
prepare to make your way back home. In those closing lines Monáe suggests
this idea of when the world is not being fair to you, there will come a time
when one can go to a better place. This is possibly another world, another
realm, a higher place where no luggage is needed. The final line is possibly
in reference to Shangri-La, a fictional, fantasy place described in the 1933
novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. 4 Monáe uses this because
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 99

Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, it is seen as a

permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. This is the utopian
refuge that Cindi Mayweather desires to escape from Metropolis.
In addition to the poignant lyrics the video is just as electric. The video,
which Monáe promoted as a short film, takes place at the Annual Android
Auction in the fictional city of Metropolis. Just picture it: a droid sale, part
fashion show, part slave auction, in which dozens of riding-gear-clad Cindi
Mayweather clones strut for an audience including fanged “tech dandy”
Chung Knox, Neon Valley crimelord Mousey, jealous Metropolis police
commander 6ix Savage, and “punk prophets” Deep Cotton (psychedelic
punk musicians from the present and Monáe’s collaborators). All this is
taking place while Monáe’s alter-ego Cindi Mayweather performs for the
crowd during the auction. At the close of the song Cindi (Monáe) is so
engulfed into her superhuman energized performance that she is elevated
from the stage and shorts out, and soon after she is taken away by the Master
of the ShowDroids (another alter-ego) and the Lady Maestra. As the video
comes to a close Cindi (Monáe) leaves us with this thought-provoking quote
that evokes a spirit of the Underground Railroad: “I imagined many moons in
the sky, lighting the way to freedom.”

THE YEAR IS 2010 . . . THE YEAR OF THE ARCHANDROID

The ArchAndroid is the second studio album from Janelle Monáe, which
would be released on Wondaland Arts Society and Bad Boy Records. The
album comprises the second and third parts to Monáe’s Metropolis concept
series. With clear conceptual elements of Afrofuturism and science fiction,
before we even listen to the album these elements are presented on the album
cover. The Egyptian headdress that she dons on the 2010 cover Archandroid
album can be viewed as her paying homage to free-thinking jazz pioneer
artist Sun Ra in his 1974 “Space is the Place” film cover. The ArchAndroid
resumes the series’ fictional tale of a messianic android and features lyrical
themes of love, identity, and self-realization. Monáe has stated in an inter-
view with the Chicago Tribune (2010) that the album signifies “breaking the
chains that enslave minorities of all types.” Each of the songs on this album
tells a musical story that fuses technology and traditional orchestra instru-
ments to create songs from the “Palace of Dogs.” 5 However one song in
particular that stands out is the second single from the album, “Cold War”
(2010). The Cold War (which actually takes place from 1945–1989) is used
as a metaphor and framework of contemporary conditions of existence and is
also a metaphor for the pervasive messages and power structures that tell
people/groups there is something wrong with them (class/culture/race con-
flicts that exist within the U.S.). Using “Cold War” as the title of the song
100 Grace D. Gipson

serves as a symbolic reference which is significant in that it generates a

discussion and even a relationship between the past and present. Monáe’s
lyrics also confront and remind us listeners of past and present colonial,
imperial, and oppressive forces.
The opening lines of the song are meant to speak with listeners and ask
them to engage in the idea of being alone; but, simultaneously maintaining a
level of sanity in today’s current society filled with oppression. This is a two-
fold situation that poses a question and makes a proclamation. The question
she asks “So you think I’m alone?” is meant to be rhetorical because in the
next line Monáe provides an answer. She clarifies that in our world there is
nothing wrong with being alone, because the question is not merely about
loneliness, but rather individuality. As a whole, the verse speaks of survival
when one has to choose between loneliness and sanity. Monáe goes on fur-
ther to explain how individuality is often criticized in society particularly
because of gender narratives, which create notions that one must accept
being alone because it is “the only way to be.” Overall being alone and
“underground” is a way to embrace differences and acceptance of oneself,
much like how Afrofuturism revises and re-examines historical events of the
past.
Next, the chorus is what gives the song clear purpose and destination
(life): “This is a cold war, You better know what you’re fighting for.” In this
brief line, Monáe directly references the stand off between the United States
and the former USSR. The Cold War was filled with conflicts between
people put in opposition with each other by the USSR and the U.S. These
proxy wars allowed the global powers to battle over the direction the world
would be heading in without ever putting their own people at risk. Further-
more with this song Monáe is proposing that those fighting (on any side of a
conflict) be certain that their own interests are really what they’re fighting
for. Otherwise, you might be subjected to being someone else’s pawn.
Finally, in the second verse Monáe is addressing further steps that must
be taken in order to gain some type of liberation: “If you want to be free,
Below the ground’s the only place to be.” Monáe portrays this emotional
vulnerability while addressing the underground artist. Essentially, she speaks
to this idea that underground artists have greater control of their music due to
the fact they do not have the label pressuring them to conform to popular
music standards in order to turn a profit. Now in the context of her alter ego
Cindi Mayweather story, her role as this Android savior, with Androids
representing an oppressed people, presents this idea where androids are
viewed as second class thus going underground, in essence a revolution even
if silent is where freedom lies.
The song is intensely personal and eclectic as she exudes this sense of
passion and honesty. In many ways, “Cold War” speaks, indirectly, to this
black woman’s resistance and the struggle to self-identify. “Cold War” dem-
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 101

onstrates how one can step outside the mainstream realm and allow for the
expression of one’s true creativity. Overall, this track emphasizes the impor-
tance of being true to one’s self and not compromising one’s vision or artistic
integrity, which is analogous to the Cold War—a war about standing firm to
one’s ideals. Essentially when you rebel against the “programmed schedule”
label as strange/rebel/dysfunctional you truly have to decide what side are
you fighting for? In 2011 she would perform this song at the Nobel Peace
Prize concert with a specific purpose to empower women and girls regardless
of race to be who you are . . . as she says “trying to find my peace.” Monáe
wants to make it very clear that as an individual one must protect their mind
from degradation, create new concepts, not allow anyone to oppress you, and
promote self-love. The overall message of the song is essentially to embrace
what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable.

THE YEAR IS 2013 . . . INTRODUCING THE ELECTRIC LADY

In the final song we are brought to the present year 2013 and the newest
album from Monáe, The Electric Lady. This album serves as the fourth and
fifth installments of her seven-part Metropolis concept series. The Electric
Lady, thematically, resumes the dystopic cyborg concepts of its predecessors,
while offering itself in a more plainspoken, personal territory in addition to
experimenting with other genres beyond conventional funk and soul music
genres such as jazz (“Dorothy Dandridge Eyes”), pop/punk (“Dance Apoca-
lyptic”), and gospel (“Victory”), as well as unsteady and sensual (“Prime-
time”) vocal ballads. In this album, as well as can be seen in the previous
two, Monáe seems to be following in the Afrofuturist, funkadelic footsteps of
George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and Sun-Ra in creating an allegory tale of
Cindi Mayweather (aka The Electric Lady) while highlighting her own per-
sonal struggle/the current struggle with self/societal-acceptance that she and
her brothers/sisters of the struggle face.
The groundbreaking first single would be “Q.U.E.E.N.” featuring
Monáe’s fellow Afrofuturistic sista Erykah Badu. Immediately after its re-
lease, the single quickly becomes a fan favorite and a black feminist anthem
particularly for black women. As cultural critic Joan Morgan (1999) states
there is a method to making sure black feminism is productive and effective,
it must “explore who we are as women-not victims” (56). Lyrically, both
Monáe and Badu explore that productivity by using this song as a way of
reclaiming agency and individuality as black women. It explores the inner
psyches and the intricacies of being a black woman in today’s society that
often frequently marginalizes and omits the perspectives of black women.
Both artists challenge the current identity politics while simultaneously nego-
tiating gender and sexual binaries.
102 Grace D. Gipson

From the first line, Monáe is instantly caught off-guard as she is trying to
comprehend the attacks from her critics. 6 She is trying to understand why
individuals have so much animosity and as a result call her names and accuse
her of wrong doing. Yet, despite the discomfort that others may get from her
she still holds fast to embracing her true self. Monáe also speaks to this brand
of breaking and creating their rules along with following their own script.
Thus she and the Wondaland crew march to the beat of their own drum, as
they identify as free-thinking, sex positive, independent women (and men),
which fundamentally breaks all the norms of “traditional” society.
Since Monáe refers to herself as an android, she makes a stance to address
her own sexual preference and its relationship to religion. Monáe speaks to
this idea of asking for the acceptance and equality of one’s sexuality and
personal religious choices. She directly asks very specific and straightfor-
ward questions regarding approval and what her potential fate in the after-life
may be. In her line of questions regarding whether or not she is “good
enough for your heaven, or whether she is a freak for admiring another
woman,” Monáe could be making the implication that everyone has a differ-
ent opinion, perception, and understanding of what God and Heaven is. Will
God accept her for who she is, using the “in my black and white” as a
metaphor for her personal character. Should she remain her own individual
and be different from society (a rogue droid) or should she reprogram herself
and have artificial happiness in the mainstream system and their beliefs?
In a brief hook, Monáe continues this idea of self-love despite how com-
fortable or uncomfortable others may be, enough that warrants her repeating
the thought to make sure listeners understand. Basically, Monáe is standing
firm on her beliefs and personality and will not change for anyone but her-
self . . . in essence she is saying , “Do you!”
The track takes an interesting detour with fellow futuristic sista Erykah
Badu’s interlude reaffirming the lessons and messages that Monáe has laid
out in the beginning of the song.
Instantly, Badu informs us to listen for the drums as this is a sign that
freedom is very much in sight. Furthermore she lets us know that these
Electric Ladies are too strong to let themselves be oppressed by those who
would try to destroy them and their movement. So when Badu lets us know
how the melody will show us another way, she is informing the listener, just
in case they were not already aware, how this particular track will introduce
you to a more enlightened way of thinking. Badu here also refers to herself in
the song as a droid (or android) and that as such we must continue to be true
to that identification. As she closes out her part Badu’s final testimony/
expression: “But you gotta testify because the booty don’t lie” is evocative of
the sentiment expressed in Parliament-Funkadelic’s classic album “Free
Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow.” Moreover, “the booty don’t lie” is a
reference to the idea that your body will move of its own volition when a
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 103

song is good, and that your body is therefore trustworthy even when your
mind is confused.
In the final moments of the song Monáe switches gears from being a
songstress to a “flipping it” on you android rap style to make sure you
understand what she is trying to convey. In typical battle rap style, Monáe
lyrically grabs her opponent and lets them know, “I don’t think they under-
stand what I’m trying to say . . .” this punch line is all to reminiscent of how
rappers start a typical battle rap. Then she jumps into what is meant to be a
rhetorical question in asking are the people part of a lost generation of our
people. The term “Lost Generation” refers to the group of artists who left
America in the 1920s and found success abroad; this included such artists as
F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Isadora Duncan, as well as others. 7 Likewise,
Monáe’s Wondaland team have felt exiled, but fortunately have found suc-
cess worldwide. This line could also be referring to this widespread percep-
tion of young African-Americans who are often referred to as being a “lost
generation” due to involvement in various social ills.
Not only does she reference the “lost generation” but she continues to
address the inequalities that continue to resurface from the past. Now, al-
though the slaves were supposed to legally be free after the Emancipation
Proclamation and the Civil Rights movement fought for the inclusion, accep-
tance, and respect of black people in America, it would be assumed that they
were added to the equation of the sociopolitical and economic American
playing field. However, this did not mean that they were made equal. Monáe
continues to throw musical jabs as she addresses figurative rights and proper-
ties, specifically with regards to intellectual property (such as a film). It is
without question that the royalties of the originator belong to that person, and
as a result of its use one is paid for that and the derivations of it (i.e.,
sequels), 8 however this does not always end that way. Furthermore in this
line of thinking, Monáe may also be referring to how we as individuals are
responsible for our own lives, hence owning the script (how their life plays
out) and the sequel (their future). This could also be a commentary on the
fight over women’s reproductive rights in the U.S. and around the world, and
just in general the patriarchy’s attempt to control women rather than women
controlling their own lives and receiving the same freedoms as men in every
facet of society.
Monáe’s rap also provides us with a brief history lesson, where she pays
personal homage to the “weight” of Queen Nefertiti’s crown, to demanding
reclamation of the Egyptian pyramids, to even acknowledging her hometown
of Kansas City. First she brings to the table Queen Nefertiti, who was an
Egyptian queen during the mid to late 1300 BC period, and was valued for
her beauty, and would adorn a large crown. This could possibly speak to why
Monáe makes this comparison to herself, as her hairstyles are often reminis-
cent of a beautiful crown. And with Nefertiti’s headdress/crown being con-
104 Grace D. Gipson

siderably great in size, there is no doubt it was very heavy to wear on top of
her head. The metaphor of the heavy physical burden of the crown represents
the enormous burden of responsibility that comes with being a queen. Much
like being an icon and role model within today’s culture and society. Leader-
ship has many consequences and responsibilities. Next she addresses one of
the great wonders of the world. As it is told the Great Pyramids of Egypt
were built by enslaved Africans; although recently many have called this into
question, Monáe is metaphorically demanding the “fruits of labor” be given
back to those who should rightfully possess it, which could also be likened to
her hometown of Kansas City. Monáe is reiterating this sentiment by essen-
tially trying to free her own community, further implying that the change
must start from the inside.
The rap lyrical history lesson continues as she acknowledges such mix
masterminds as Bernie Grundman and freedom trailblazers as Harriet Tub-
man. By directly referencing the influence of these two great giants, Bernie
Grundman who has mastered thirty-seven Grammy-award winning albums
and Harriet Tubman who would be known as freeing slaves through the
Underground Railroad, we see the musical freedom connection unfold. Now
Monáe serves as this generation’s mix master and conductor by using her
musical influence to free people’s minds from the political and social issues
of today and further leading them into a futuristic liberation. Monáe makes it
very clear that nothing can stop her from using music as a tool, and she will
continue to poke and prod in any way, which will help to promote her
message. And although she may be tired of trying to figure what is going on
with the world, much like Marvin Gaye and his song “What’s Going On” the
journey still continues. This allusion to the legendary singer-songwriter and
musician is not exclaiming how she is literally tired of Marvin asking the
question, but more so talking about the base message of “What’s Going On,”
which promotes awareness and resistance to social problems, and for Monáe
she even pushes this further with a more assertive approach of resistance.
Even still today, it remains nearly impossible to place Monáe in a box like
other mainstream artists. Despite being categorized and labeled, she refuses
to conform and subscribe to others’ standards of who she is as a musician and
artist. Although she is signed to Sean “Diddy” Combs Bad Boy Entertain-
ment (which is primarily an urban/rap label), her music is an amalgam of
funk, indie rock, RandB, dance-punk, techno, and much more . . . so how
does one categorize that? It is also worth mentioning how this line speaks to
how she defies expectations of femininity despite people questioning her
sexuality, and thus it is hard to categorize in terms of gender and sexuality.
This second part of these two lines has more of a racial overtone. Her mean-
ing is with all of the history of racism and suffering by African Americans in
the past, there will be some growing pains to suffer. Not discussing race has
been a short-term solution to the American problem of racism. Ironically, not
 Afrofuturism’s Musical Princess Janelle Monáe 105

dealing with race seems to be the same thing that has kept African-
Americans in a stagnant period of non-solution. Monáe also toys with this
idea by wondering if this will be her “final act” of if she will be censored.
Much like how “Many Moons” ends, Monáe leaves us with some deep,
penetrating questions: “Will you be electric sheep? Electric ladies, will you
sleep? Or will you preach?” These final lines make reference to Phillip K.
Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. 9 In addition this sentiment is
reminiscent of her earlier work where she asks the question, Are we really
living, or just walking dead now? So then the question is do you sit idly or
take action? Overall, Q.U.E.E.N. as a song presents itself as a brand of
activism that is not exclusive to any one group or individual.

FUTURISTIC FREEDOM FIGHTER

All in all, contemporary work from artists such as Monáe have extended the
boundaries that plainly embrace Afrofuturism imagining different times and
places, in which they not only address issues of race, ethnicity, and color, but
also examining issues of gender, politics, and technology. Janelle Monáe is
one of the few current artists who use space and future as commentary to
speak about humanity, racial equality, and female/girl power. According to
Monáe’s Ten Droid Commandments (2010) 10 in Commandment #9:

By shows end you must transform. This includes, but is not limited to eye
colour, perspective, mood, or height. So one must not leave the way the came,
or else.

As we already know, Afrofuturism continues to serve as this intersection

between imagination, technology, the future, and liberation (Womack 2013).
As a genre it not only allows, but encourages individuals to unashamedly
experiment, reimagine identities, and activate this sense of liberation (La-
Fleur 2011). And Janelle Monáe has done just that by pressing the reset
button on music and busting through the musical seams.
She offers this alternative reality that does not follow a specific or as-
signed script; Monáe simply works off her own vision and destiny. Jez Col-
lins (2013) of PopMatters further acknowledges this vision and destiny as he
offer a positive review by adding, “Monáe is acutely aware of her history,
and it’s a history to be understood, respected, re-appropriated and re-pur-
posed.” But this is never merely pastiche, Monáe takes her history and up-
dates it, makes it relevant and vital for today. This is smart, thought-provok-
ing music. She continues to be an agent of change that imports her own
personal thoughts and experiences, and then infuses them into a way in
which they become life lessons. Her numerous messages are quite refreshing
in that she is one of the few artists who strategically uses space and the future
106 Grace D. Gipson

as commentary to speak about humanity, racial equality, and female power.

An artist cannot go wrong when he/she combines a grassroots, feminist ap-
proach with a futuristic flair. Janelle Monáe with the help of android Cindi
Mayweather, aka Alpha Platinum 9000, is more than just a one-trick pony,
her rare gender-bending, genre-bending, Afrofuturist, cyber vibe is sure to
keep you thinking, reflecting, and dancing all wrapped in one. Power Up . . .
Power Up!

NOTES

1. As quoted in Trey Ellis’s 1989 article in Callaloo, “The New Black Aesthetic,” pg. 238.
2. A droid/android in some cyber circles is defined as robots who look like humans. Robots
are often regarded as “lifeless” or “mechanical” with no soul, much like how African
Americans and those of the diaspora have been and continue to be treated as less than human.
3. The Metropolis concept draws inspiration from a wide range of musical, cinematic, and
other sources, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock to Debussy to Phillip K. Dick.
4. Hilton describes Shangri-La as this mystical, harmonious valley.
5. A possible reference to the House of Annubis the jackal-headed god that is associated
with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion.
6. This could also be a nod to musical godfather Prince as he starts out his song “Contro-
versy” the same way, “I just can’t believe / all the things people say.”
7. The Lost Generation was considered the generation that came of age during World War
I, but specifically a group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their
literary reputations in the 1920s. They would critique American culture by incorporating
themes of self-exile, indulgence, and spiritual alienation. These individuals would also reject
American post WWI values and oftentimes leave/escape the U.S. in hopes of a care-free
lifestyle.
8. This could also be a reference to Sophia Stewart and the copyright lawsuit regarding The
Matrix series.
9. A science fiction novel that Monáe has mentioned before on her EP Metropolis: Suite I
(The Chase).
10. A statement that is often handed out at her concerts, which encourages her audience
members to embrace the idea of individuality.

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rhythm-and-blues-into-science-fiction.
Bristow, Tegan. 2012. We want the funk: What is Afrofuturism to the situation of digital arts in
Africa? Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 10 (1), 25–32.
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Calvert, John. 2010, September 2. The Quietus | Opinion | Black Sky Thinking | Janelle Monáe:
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04889-janelle-mon-e-the-archandroid-afrofuturism.
Collins, Jez. 2013, September 9. “Janelle Monáe: The Electric Lady” | PopMatters. Retrieved
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Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books.
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 Chapter Six

Hip Hop Holograms

Tupac Shakur, Technological
Immortality, and Time Travel

Ken McLeod

Whether it is the synthetic upgrading of voices with vocoders, autotune or in

a proclivity for sampling and repurposing outdated technology juxtaposed
against the latest digital recording and playback technologies, hip hop often
refuses notions of “real time.” In hip hop, time is always something provi-
sional, something constructed in order to disappear again and thus enable a
form of technological immortality. Over the past decade numerous scholars
have discussed the general topic of Afrofuturism in popular music (Eshun
1998; Weheliye 2002; David 2007; Zuberi 2007; Rollefson 2008; Lewis
2008). Time travel and related notions of immortality, in particular, are re-
curring themes in the music of Sun Ra (We Travel the Spaceways, 1961; The
Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, 1961), George Clinton (Mothership Connec-
tion, 1975), Outkast (ATLiens, 1996), and Janelle Monáe (Metropolis Suite
[The Chase], 2007; The ArchAndroid, 2010), among many other artists
evincing Afrofuturistic ideals. While overt themes of time travel and/or fu-
turism are not expressly present in the music and lyrics of Tupac Shakur,
notions of immortality and future co-presence are nonetheless prominent in
his posthumous legacy.
Our experience of music, and of the world in general, is increasingly
becoming a hybridized mixed reality experience, a complex blend of the
physical “real” and the digital. Whether through iPods, cell phones, automo-
biles, television, or online communities, machines increasingly mediate and/
or facilitate our musical experiences. Essentially, digital culture has wit-
nessed a shift from a virtual reality paradigm to a mixed reality paradigm.

109
110 Ken McLeod

Virtual reality, a paradigm highly promoted in and associated with the 1990s,
existed as a world parallel to the real world in which practitioners could lose
themselves in a variety of exotic experiences. In the twenty-first century,
while virtual reality still maintains a significant place in the popular imagi-
nary, the separation between virtual environments and the physical world has
been significantly eroded. This erosion is most pronounced in the advent of a
number of “live” holographic performances by artists such as Gorillaz, Mari-
ah Carey, Beyoncé, and by Japanese vocaloids such as Hatsune Miku. No
holographic performance has engendered more comment and attention than
Tupac Shakur’s three-dimensional resurrection at the 2012 Coachella Valley
Music and Arts Festival. This chapter will address how these types of such
performances challenge our assumptions of reality and physical transcen-
dence that often evoke forms of technological spirituality and immortality. 1
Undoubtedly, the mere act of committing one’s voice or performance to a
recording already ensures a form of technological immortality. Furthermore,
there are many examples of posthumous releases; Jimi Hendrix, for example,
has “released” numerous posthumous albums. As a result of the untimely
deaths and accompanying professional rivalry between The Notorious B.I.G.
and Tupac, posthumous releases have been particularly prevalent in the
world of hip hop. As manifest in the titles of The Notorious B.I.G.’s top
selling posthumous albums Life After Death (1997) and Born Again (1999),
the concepts of immortality and spiritual, if not physical, resurrection form a
strong undercurrent in hip hop.

HOLOGRAPHIC TUPAC: THE RESURRECTION

The holographic Tupac performance, sponsored by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg
at the 2012 Coachella Festival seems to take the notion of technological
immortality to a different level. Characteristic of more recent holographic
performances the appearance was underscored by a sense of spiritual co-
presence that mediated the reality of the moment with the virtual presence of
the late rapper. Indeed, since his death in 1996 Tupac has become a sort of
ethereal, digitally preserved, Jedi-god in the rap realm, where his virtual
vocal “presence” is used to lend weight to innumerable posthumous releases.
His resurrection in holographic form at the Coachella festival, however,
stunned audiences who both reveled in Tupac’s “presence” and simultane-
ously marveled at the technology that made his “presence” possible. When
the vision of Tupac evaporated, witnesses described it as a “ghostly,” “unbe-
lievable,” and a “mind blowing vision” that “left the crowd sighing” (Oste-
rhout 2012).
Underscoring this quasi-religious ethereal “second coming,” the holo-
graphic displaying Tupac’s first song was appropriately his 1996 hit “Hail
 Hip Hop Holograms 111

Mary.” Replete with a church bell ominously intoning throughout, the song
is rife with religious imagery. Topically the work is in itself a reflection on
reincarnation and revenge. Sung in the voice of Tupac’s alter ego Makaveli,
a reincarnated gangsta soldier, the lyrics directly evoke the notion of an
afterlife as Makaveli proclaims “When they turn out the lights, I’ll be down
in the dark Thuggin eternal through my heart.” Released just months before
he was shot, some fans have even read the song as Tupac’s pre-sentiment of
his death. From the very beginning of the spoken introduction, Tupac
presents himself as a Jesus figure, complete with biblical allusions to the
Book of John and its message of eternal life. The allusion reads, “Whoever
eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at
the last day”; Tupac’s introduction to “Hail Mary” reads:
And God said he should send his one begotten son
to lead the wild into the ways of the man
Follow me; eat my flesh, flesh of my flesh
The “flesh of my flesh” lyric from “Hail Mary” takes on a particular
irony, of course, when sung by a hologram. Perhaps even more unnervingly,
the ghostly holographic Tupac started his mini-set, which included a duet
with the live Snoop Dogg, by shouting and evoking the name of the festival
that only began in 1999, some three years after the rapper’s death in 1996. It
is important to emphasize that this was not recycled concert footage but a
new vocal and visual performance that was entirely the result of both a vocal
and visual digital computer simulation of the late artist.
The performance became a global media sensation with over twenty-two
million YouTube views and thousands of print, online, and broadcast reports.
Perhaps as expected—the commercial benefits were substantial. In the fol-
lowing weeks, Tupac’s album sales increased over five hundred percent. His
1998 Greatest Hits album regained the Billboard top 200 after a twelve-year
absence and weekly downloads of “Hail Mary” increased by one thousand
percent. The benefits also extended to the various technology companies
involved in creating the event. The stock price of Digital Domain, the com-
pany responsible for generating the image of Tupac, for example, rose over
sixty-percent. 2 While it is not the primary focus of this chapter, such finan-
cial returns raise questions about the ethics of profiting from the dead. In this
instance Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, gave her blessing to the event after
Dr. Dre requested permission to use her son’s image and made a donation to
one of Shakur’s charities. 3 The questionable ethics of profiting from the dead
aside, amongst other issues, the holographically digitized Tupac ties into
Afrofuturist ideals. Freed from the shackles of his mortal body, the holo-
graphic Tupac essentially represents a utopian manifestation, or at least a
vision, of eternal freedom and technological immortality. The performance
also reflected on Dr. Dre’s ability, both financially and through his creative
112 Ken McLeod

control of advanced technology, to essentially play God and virtually resur-

rect his late friend.
The presence of and fascination with holographic performers, whether
alive, dead, or animated, may for some conjure up fears of a dystopic posthu-
man future where human corporality has, literally and figuratively, ceased to
matter. Of course notions of posthumanism in music have been used by
various scholars in the construction of alternative representation and con-
structions of gender and race (Loza 2001; Dickenson 2001; Weheliye 2002;
David 2007). As some would have it, in a post-human universe, governed by
binary code, the body ceases to matter, thereby fracturing and ultimately
dissolving ties to racialized, gendered, and locational subjectivity, positional-
ity, and “self.” The disembodied holographic representation of Tupac does
little to challenge cultural stereotypes. Holographic Tupac was presented
with a naked upper torso revealing his intimidating “Thug Life” tattoos and
muscular abs. This in combination with the aggressive and profane “Coach-
ella” shout out can be read as a continuation of ongoing stereotypes of
threatening black hyper-masculinity.

OTHER AFRICAN-AMERICAN HOLOGRAPHIC PERFORMERS

The Tupac hologram, it turns out, has inspired the creation of several other
holographic performances by deceased rappers. In September 2013 the Rock
the Bells hip hop music festival, employing the same technology company
responsible for the Tupac performance, also used holographic technology to
resurrect two more deceased rap giants. The founding member of the Wu-
Tang Clan, Old Dirty Bastard, who died in 2004 of a drug overdose, and
Eazy-E founder of N.W.A., who died in 1995 from AIDS complications,
were reunited with surviving members of their respective groups to open and
close the festival. The performances introduced these revered artists to a new
generation of rap fans as younger concertgoers stood next to the older broth-
ers and fathers who introduced them to the genre.
As the lights dimmed midway through Cleveland rap posse Bone Thugs-
N-Harmony’s set, a lighting rig lowered onto the stage and, to the tune of
1988’s “We Want Eazy,” the rap legend was beamed onto a well-hidden
screen set up on an elevated platform in the middle of the stage. Clad in his
signature Dickies and Compton hat, Eazy shuffled through his hits “Straight
Outta Compton” and “Boyz in Da Hood” and was joined by Bone Thugs for
“Foe Tha Love of $.” “What’s up, my thugs,” Eazy asked, albeit much more
profanely, as the audience was aglow with thousands of smart phones docu-
menting the moment. 4 Similar to the reaction to the Tupac Coachella perfor-
mance, as the L.A. Times reported, many people appeared awestruck at the
 Hip Hop Holograms 113

“ghost” that sauntered slowly across stage, often stopping to address the
audience with prerecorded banter. 5
While Tupac’s Coachella appearance remains the most high profile in-
stance of the employment of holographic performance technology to date,
other living African American artists have also used the technology. Beyon-
cé’s recent 2013 Superbowl Halftime show, for example, featured a holo-
graphic performance. Following a sultry, horn-inflected “End of Time,” from
her most recent album, 4 (2013), Beyoncé stood before an electronic screen
projecting multiple holographic images of herself as she sang her 2003 hit
“Baby Boy.” In similar fashion to Tupac, the holographic images of the 2003
version of Beyoncé, and underscoring the “End of Time” theme, seemingly
brought to life in 2013, again suggested a notion of time travel or at least
created a hyper-aware sense of time shifting.
Mariah Carey has also engaged in holographic performance. Predating
Tupac’s Coachella hologram by some five months, on November 17, 2011,
Carey simultaneously appeared before audiences in Germany, Croatia, Mac-
edonia, Montenegro, and Poland in the form of a hologram—interacting with
real dancers and live audiences in each location. The performance was,
somewhat ironically, in service of creating a “life is for sharing moment”
promotion for the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom
advertising campaign. 6 Appearing to the audience as if she was live in con-
cert for the first ten minutes of the show, her holographic form then disinte-
grated into thousands of video fragments which burst into the sky, revealing
the surprise to the live audience—many of whom (as manifest in reactions in
the television commercial that was made from the event), had thought it was
a “live” appearance. Her image subsequently reformed as it led all the coun-
tries in a moving rendition of the traditional carol “Silent Night,” before
finishing with “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The multi-media spectacu-
lar was witnessed in person by thousands of people around Europe and was
streamed live globally through the lifeisforsharing.tv channel. Again the hol-
ographic technology facilitated a seeming distortion of time and place. While
in this instance, unlike Tupac or Beyoncé, there was no attempt to reference
or resurrect an artist’s past, Carey was, nonetheless, given the appearance of
being omnipotently “present” in multiple locations at the same time. 7

HIP HOP IMMORTALITY AND TIME TRAVEL

Holographic performances are by no means the only way by which hip hop
artists engage in notions of time travel. As mentioned at the beginning of this
chapter, the use of technology in hip hop often refuses notions of real time,
place, and space. Both sampling and multi-tracking allow for a type of aural
time travel through the simultaneous representation and experience of past
114 Ken McLeod

and present. With sampling technology artists are able to juxtapose decades
old speeches by Martin Luther King or loops from James Brown against
contemporary hip hop tracks. Thus, such technology allowed artists to inter-
textually signify a collective notion of African American historical memory.
In a somewhat similar fashion the ingestion of drugs, often thought of as
merely another form of technology brought to bear on popular music (Gilbert
and Pearson 1999), also promotes a form of dislocation of time and space.
Such effects are, of course, often amplified and/or complemented through the
sensory overload associated with extreme dynamic levels and often flashing
lights in concerts, nightclubs, cars, and other places of consumption.
The Afro-futuristic notion of flight and literal escape from earth can be
understood as reaching as far back as nineteenth-century Negro spirituals.
Many spirituals reflect a desire to reject Earth and the hardship and suffering
it contains. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,”
and “This World Is Not My Home” are all thematically based on rejecting
and taking flight from the material world. Equating these spiritual journeys to
extraterrestrial travel and analogous themes of escaping Earth through super-
human flight is not difficult. Indeed, the parallels can be glimpsed in films
such as Hancock (2008), starring Will Smith, in which an African American
is endowed with superhuman powers including supersonic flight, invulner-
ability, and immortality. To some extent we might even look to the hip hop’s
association with basketball as a metaphoric parallel of the desire to achieve
immortality and metaphorically fly through superhuman strength. In films
such as Above the Rim (1994), which featured Tupac Shakur, or the cartoon
gangsta-alien fantasy of Space Jam (1996) basketball is explicitly linked to
rap music as a co-signifier of transcendence through struggle, creativity, and
extraordinary ability for both the African American and white communities.
As such hip hop and basketball combine to produce utopian visions of im-
mortality and freedom in contemporary urban society. In their visual reincar-
nations we may look on the presence of holographic rappers as, ironically,
reinforcing a form of exceptionalist black hyper-humanity promoted in the
body-centered politics of sports and entertainment.
In many ways the hyper-humanity of the Tupac hologram has many his-
torical precedents in the history of music. To be sure we can understand the
virtualization of the human body to have occurred at least since the advent of
recording technologies. As noted earlier, the recorded voices of Notorious
B.I.G. or Tupac heard in posthumous releases already project a sense of an
uncanny ephemeral haunting. This disavowal of the embodied body is prob-
ably an effect of a hegemonic phonographic (and media) history that empha-
sizes the disembodiment that has accompanied recording and mediation of
music performances ever since the late nineteenth century. However, sound
amplification technology in concerts or on the dance floor, or indeed in
personal listening devices, simultaneously remind us that music is also felt in
 Hip Hop Holograms 115

the body as much as it is “heard” in the mind. Through powerful sound

systems and headphones music becomes an experience that is literally felt by
the body—a transference of vibration and energy from the machine to the
body. The use of holographic technology to project at least the visual image
of a body, ironically, goes some way to reverse the de-emphasis on human
corporeal presence common in recent popular music. 8

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND HIP HOP SPIRITUALITY

Hip hop is thus commonly linked with notions of escape and related concepts
of fame and immortality. However, rap and hip hop can also be understood in
terms of Afrocentric concepts such as nommo—essentially a manifestation
of the mystical power of words. As playwright and theorist Paul Carter
Harrison describes it in relation to African American cultural life, nommo is
a “force which manipulates all forms of raw life and conjures images that not
only represent his biological place in Time and Space, but his spiritual exis-
tence as well” (1972, xiv). We might see the holographic rapper as represent-
ing a new form of digital nommo, one which underlines a form of what
Ronald Jackson has discussed as an Afro-circular flow between the tangible
words and spirituality (in opposition to a “Eurolinear perspective”), between
the material and immaterial, between mortality and immortality, between
liberation and enslavement (Jackson 2003, 122).
Hip hop has also often evinced more overt religious or spiritual associa-
tions. Distinct from the overt proselytizing associated with church based
genres such as Holy hip hop or Gospel Rap, mainstream hip hop, as with
many African American based music, has commonly revealed an element of
spirituality. Indeed, the perceived commonalities between the rhetoric (typi-
cally revolving around notions of “spitting truth” or “tellin’ it like it is”) and
the dramatic oratorical style employed by black preachers and rappers, and
the participatory responses from their respective audiences have often been
observed. Cornel West (2004) identified the importance of encouraging what
he considers the more desirable “prophetic” hip hop, characterized by politi-
cal overtones and a culture of protest and social commentary. Artists that
have been identified with the prophetic hip hop movement include Lauryn
Hill, Nas, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Common, and Dead Prez (Lauricella and
Alexander 2012).
While politics and culture play a part in prophetic hip hop, another defin-
ing element in this genre is spirituality. Sorett (2010) traces the trajectory of
spirituality in rap back to MC Hammer’s gospel track “Son of the King” on
his 1987 debut album Let’s Get it Started. In 1996 Nas paid homage to the
divine by titling his 1996 album It Is Written and his 2001 release God’s Son.
References to God have even been made by 50 Cent in his tracks “Many
116 Ken McLeod

Men” and “Gotta Make It to Heaven.” Perhaps most overtly, in 2004, Kanye
West released “Jesus Walks,” the third single from his debut album The
College Dropout. Despite its nonconformity with typical mainstream hip hop
at the time in its open embrace of religion and spirituality, “Jesus Walks”
reached #11 on the Billboard 100.
Holographic performances, however, manifest a new form of disembod-
ied yet physically present pop star. Tupac has essentially become an immor-
tal, hyper-real pop star—his image is forever frozen in an idealized form. He
will never age or cause any new controversies due to personal opinions or
actions. His voice will never falter. In that sense he is even better than his
real life contemporaries. Nonetheless, as with real pop stars—his resurrected
fame will likely rise and fall, not with the novelty of his sound and style but
rather as the novelty (and/or refinement) of his holographic and digital tech-
nology on which he is dependent, waxes and wanes. 9
Understanding the recent popularity of holographic performers is at least
in part to understand them as entities that can evoke quasi-spiritual experi-
ences. They present an ethereal three-dimensional vision that often, particu-
larly in the case of Tupac’s Coachella appearance, represents a transcendence
of death and that inspires utter beatitude on behalf of the witnesses. They are
human memes that through a process of hyperstition are essentially bringing
about their own reality. As evident in his album sales following his Coachella
appearance the holographic Tupac is now as “real” as any other traditionally
constructed pop star (indeed, how real is Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga?). Both
religion and capitalist economics often work in a hyperstitional mode. As
Cybernetic philosopher Nick Land explains: “capitalism incarnates hypersti-
tional dynamics . . . turning mundane economic ‘speculation’ into an effec-
tive world-historical force” (Carstens 2009). .Similarly the (fictional) idea of
Cyberspace contributed to the influx of investment that rapidly converted it
into a techno-social reality. Hyperstition is able to transmute immaterial be-
liefs into truths. Tupac’s hologram has essentially become a “real” pop star
with a “real” base of followers who continue to create its reality. Indeed,
further blurring the line between the virtual and the real, the Tupac hologram
has its own Twitter account with over 23,000 followers.
While fans perhaps intellectually understand holograms to be nothing
more than a soul-less optical illusion, to some extent we can and do under-
stand holographic performers and performances as, nonetheless, being in-
vested with some form of actual human co-presence. Their ethereal existence
and actions, human in form and behavior, are typically the result of a collec-
tion of creative human programmers responsible for the illusion of a physical
presence. Thus, rather than decrying a loss of human agency, holographic
performances can be viewed as serving to reflect the agency of collective
human consciousness. As Katherine Hayles has observed: “our bodies are no
 Hip Hop Holograms 117

less actively involved in the construction of virtuality than in the construction

of real life” (Hayles 1996, 1).
There is, however, also a sense in which these essentially machinic, hu-
man creations take on a life of their own. For Karl Marx machines “are
organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowl-
edge, objectified” (Marx 1857, 602). Philosopher Gerald Raunig, channeling
Marx, has even claimed that machines and technology take on a virtuosic
component separate from the human content that creates it. According to
Raunig, “the machine emerges as a virtuoso, having a soul of their own
(taken from workers), whose virtuosic handling of their implements and
whose labour on and in machines merges into an activity that is a mere
abstraction that is determined and regulated by the movement and parts of
the very machine itself. The machine appears as a virtuoso, the activity of the
worker is abstract” (Raunig 2010, 113—italics mine). In this manner, holo-
graphic performers can be said to transcend the limitations of their apparent
inanimate construction and actively inherit the “souls” or spirits of their
creators.
In some ways holographic performers represent a modern triumph of the
Deus ex machina. The Deus ex machina in Greek theatre combined both
notions of a theatrical artistic plot device, the intervention of the gods, and
the physical device that allowed the effect to take place on stage. In some
sense this represents both a conflation of the man-machine binary and an
extension of it, as in any interpretation the plot is resolved by an immortal
God—essentially an alien machine-God. The obvious artificiality of the plot
device is mirrored in the seeming artificiality of the machine, aided by more
machines that essentially speed up and smooth scenery and plot transitions,
creating an illusion of seamlessness. The holographic Tupac fundamentally
creates a similar seamless illusion between reality and the virtual, between
the human and the machine.
Holographic musical performers epitomize a twenty-first-century fascina-
tion with the techno sublime—a techno spiritualism for lack of a better
expression, which celebrates and fetishizes advances in technological magic.
They also represent an increased emphasis on mediating performance and a
related tendency to grant machines and technology a greater role in con-
structing human subjectivity. Both music and holograms exist in liminal
ethereal states—neither is able to be physically touched but both evoke a
powerful form of felt co-presence in audiences that is only enhanced when
they are brought together. As evident in the viral reaction to the Tupac
hologram, holographic performers are often worshipped as literal spirits—
manifesting a virtual co-presence with and a visual and aural trace of a larger
creative power. It is precisely in this that the quality of the machine beyond
humanist, mechanistic, and cybernetic interpretations exists. To quote Rau-
nig, it is “in the insistence of a dissonant power, a monstrous potency and
118 Ken McLeod

enjoyment . . . an a-harmonious composition without a composer” (Raunig

2010, 119). Blurring the line between the real and the virtual holographic
performers ironically embodies and inspires a variety of spiritual characteris-
tics and ultimately forces us to ask what it means to be human.
In Simulacra and Simulations Baudrillard opines that holograms are “in
some sense the end of the aesthetic and the triumph of the medium . . . which,
at its most sophisticated limits, neatly puts an end to the charm and the
intelligence of music” (Baudrillard 2007, 106). Baudrillard suggests that the
hologram is merely an extension of the hyper-real experience of music that
has been the result of electronic recording and music reproduction practices
over the past century. Holographic musical performances, as such, are simply
one more extension of the abstraction of the human self: “The hologram, [is
a] perfect image and an end of the imaginary . . . an abstract light of simula-
tion . . . the hologram is now part of this ‘subliminal comfort’ that is our
destiny . . . (The social . . . is now nothing but a special effect, obtained by
the design of participating networks converging in emptiness under the spec-
tral image of collective happiness.)” (Baudrillard 2007, 107).
In many ways the search for cultural and personal meaning central to
Afrocentrism can be linked to Baudrillard’s ecstasy of the sign that obscures
distinctions between the real and unreal, the simulated and the dissimulated.
The ideal Africa articulated in Afrocentric signs is one in which, to para-
phrase Baudrillard, nostalgia is energized, in which “there is a proliferation
of myths of origin and signs of reality” (Baudrillard 1983, 14). In Afrocen-
trism, African values and ideas have their origin in both the distant past and
recent living history. The digitized Tupac then can be viewed as a manifesta-
tion of both recent nostalgia and of mythic origin.
To be sure the ecstatically enthusiastic audience participation, typically
using cell phone video capture to record the moment of resurrection, at
holographic hip hop concerts seems to reinforce and underscore the concept
of collective or communal happiness. We, perhaps ironically, find ourselves
celebrating our collective humanity through the seemingly artificial—an
ephemeral, intangible, and ultimately mechanical image of ourselves. In
some ways it entails and represents a pataphysical understanding of the real-
ity of existence. In a pataphysical conception, holographic performers are
another empty illusion, a false transcendence that don’t have to exist to exist.
The archiving of 1000s of Tupac’s return could all in the words of Baudril-
lard’s essay on Pataphysics signify that we “have arrived at the end of . . .
live historical time, and that one needs to arm oneself with all forms of
artificial memory, with all the signs of the past in order to confront the
absence of the future . . . ?” (Baudrillard 2007).
While I would argue that the absence of a future seems untenable for all
practical purposes, it is certainly a future that is being impacted and shaped
by contemporary dislocations of time and space of holographic performances
 Hip Hop Holograms 119

and their archiving on social media sites. Pataphysical reality in theories

concerning the potential multiple dimensionality of the universe is increas-
ingly being recognized in the sciences. Indeed, though it is outside the pur-
view of the current inquiry, recent influential work on String Theory and
Quantum Mechanics such as Michael Talbot’s Holographic Universe (1991)
and Leonard Susskind’s influential 1994 essay “The World as a Hologram”
have looked to holographic theory, specifically the “holographic principle”
(essentially the concept that what we experience as three-dimensional reality
actually takes place on a very thin plane) to explain the possibility of hidden
physical dimensions in the universe—questioning our perception of reality
itself.

HAUNTOLOGY AND HOLOGRAPHIC PERFORMANCES

Derrida’s concept of hauntology is instructive to understand the recent fasci-

nation with holographic performances by African American artists. For Der-
rida, hauntology was a challenge to ontology that conceives of being as a
self-identical presence (Fischer 2012, 19). Ghosts and holograms are ephem-
eral entities that play with and distort distinctions between past and present.
They both essentially disrupt and problematize the concept of linear or “real”
time. Both the ghost and the holographic (human) performer exist as spectral
traces of a body that once was materially present. Derrida writes that funda-
mentally “the specter is the future, it is always to come, it presents itself only
as that which could come, or come back” (as quoted in Zuberi 2007, 284). In
this sense concepts surrounding hauntology can usefully be applied to Afrof-
uturism and its associations with ancient Egypt and the dislocations of time
and space associated with the ghosts of slavery and the African diaspora. For
example, the racial slur “spook,” though its precise origins are unclear, was
applied to black people by whites because their dark skin was thought to
blend into the night, thus giving them a ghost-like quality. 10 Pursuing this
line of thought we might think of enslaved Africans in North America as
always having been regarded as holographic specters—though their material
physical bodies were valued as commodities for labor, slave owners regarded
them as essentially immaterial beings.
Hauntology in music is often tied to notions of retrofuturism or techno-
nostalgia whereby artists evoke the past typically by employing the spectral
sounds of old music technologies. In the words of Jamie Sexton, writing
about the Ghost Box record label, hauntology refers to “a number of contem-
porary music artists [where] there is a marked tendency to reflect on how
contemporary music culture is saturated by artifacts from previous eras”
(Sexton 2012, 562). Sexton identifies a sense in which current digital tech-
nologies can be considered as being haunted by their analogue counterparts.
120 Ken McLeod

Haunted in the sense that there exist a number of hidden uncanny sonic traces
whose presence is felt but often unacknowledged. Hip hop often employs a
similar aesthetic in their deliberate muddying of contemporary sounds by the
use of old or outdated technology and by incorporating old samples and
recordings. In essence we might look on the grainy sound from needles
playing old LPs, the leaks from drum tracks, the squelches of old Roland 808
dram machines as evoking the sonic ghosts of past performances. As Simon
Reynolds describes, the very practice of sampling involves recycling other-
wise dead energy to create a form of undead zombie, taking the once “em-
bodied energy of drummers, horn players or singers,” looping and thus
“transform[ing] these vivisected portions of human passion into treadmills of
posthumous productivity” (Reynolds 2006, 31).
Derridian hauntology associated with recordings can also be linked to an
Afrocentric connectedness to ancestral spirits. It might be likened to a form
of nommo—a digitally created form of the spiritual power of the word. To
some extent we might look on the hauntological reincarnation of Tupac as a
technological appropriation and posthumous exploitation of the labor pro-
duced by the living black body. Essentially, it becomes a representation of
techno liberation, a disruption of the racialized “digital divide” (Hobson
2012, 109) on the one hand but also potentially a form of digital enslavement
on the other. As Mark Dery suggests, white masculine technology has al-
ready “engineered our collective fantasies [and they] already have a lock on
that unreal estate” (Dery 1994, 109). In the midst of the proliferation of
recent digital culture, the presence of holographic rappers could merely rein-
force the opinion, voiced by cultural theorist Janell Hobson that “the black
male subject has been refigured and realigned with white masculine techno-
logical power” (Hobson 2012, 93). Such a view is mitigated, of course, by
the fact that it is in turn largely black male subjects (in the form of Dr. Dre
and others) who are primarily responsible for funding and initiating the con-
struction of these appearances.

CONCLUSION

In relationship to the recent prevalence of holographic performances by

African American artists, whether living or dead, it seems there is a clear
continuation and extension of sonic explorations of a technological future.
Nabeel Zuberi observes: “Black music culture seems an appropriate portal
through which to examine the emerging media architecture of remembrance
and to investigate perceptions of (technological) change. Musicians have
been at the forefront of the interface between the analog and digital in the last
twenty years, excavating the audio rubble of the past as they sound the future
into being” (Zuberi 2007, 286). As such holographic performances by both
 Hip Hop Holograms 121

dead and living African American artists ties into the notion of the construc-
tion of the future based on a reference to the past—an image, albeit ephemer-
al and intangible, of a past future.
The future is always experienced as a form of haunting: as a virtuality that
already impinges on the present, conditioning expectations and motivating
cultural production. The virtual or simulated revivication of dead celebrities
has become common in both corporate advertising campaigns (i.e., Fred
Astaire dancing with a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner) and popular music (i.e.,
Natalie Cole’s duet “Unforgettable” with her deceased father from 1991). 11
To a large degree the newly emerging use of holographic performances
merely builds on this tradition though with the notable difference of extend-
ing the simulation into returning the deceased for “live” performances. In
referring to posthumous duets, primarily that of “Unforgettable,” Jason Stan-
yek and Benjamin Piekut opine that “[posthumous] Collaborations . . . are
built upon the restricted, yet still effective, motile emplacements of dead and
living humans within mundanities teeming with all kinds of active non-
humans”(Stanyek and Piekut 2010, 33).
Similarly, the holographic Tupac is the product of multiple past-recorded
performances (which go into the synthesis of his voice), and associated labor
and technologies associated with recording and producing those perfor-
mances. It is simultaneously the product of contemporary labor and technolo-
gies responsible for the digital programming and construction of the holo-
gram itself. The Tupac hologram underscores the hauntological unseen pres-
ence of sounds, voices, labor of past producers, performers, and technolo-
gies. Furthermore, in the plethora of video and sound recordings of the “live”
holographic performance from Coachella itself these past sonic traces ulti-
mately project themselves into a circulation of multiple presents and futures
that disrupt and dislocate any sense of absolute temporal flow.
Such a recognition of the spectral presence of past, present, and future
underscores the idea that individual human agency, Tupac’s or anyone else,
is, perhaps ironically, the product of infinitely complex interactions that cut
across notions of materiality, corporality, and traditional distinctions between
human and non-human. If we regard our own individual agency as the prod-
uct of an intricate nexus of past and present labor and technologies, the
distinction between the seemingly virtual, immaterial, non-organic hologram
and our corporeal human presence, as we have traditionally understood it,
becomes blurry at best. With allusions to the currently popular hip hop crew,
it is an “Odd Future” that calls attention to a type of intentionally ironic
hyper modern referencing of past and future. 12
Moreover, as outlined earlier, the prevalent use of holographic musical
performances in the African American community resonates with an ongoing
Afrocentric spiritual discourse. They represent a new technologized re-ima-
gining of the liberatory freedom originally invoked by Christianity, in some
122 Ken McLeod

sense a digital decolonizing and decentering of linearity associated with the

Judeo-Christian narrative. They thus provide new images of both utopian and
dystopian pasts as well as functioning as digitally resurrected prophets of an
as yet to be determined future.

NOTES

1. Contrary to popular belief neither the Tupac hologram nor any of the other recent
instances of performing holograms are in fact true holograms. A traditional hologram is a three-
dimensional view of an object recreated by shining laser light on a recorded interference
pattern. Such holograms are actually flat but the term has also come to mean a kind of volume-
filling projection for the same purpose. The Tupac hologram (as well as those of Gorillaz,
Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Hatsune Miku, and others) uses an old stage magician’s trick known
as Pepper’s ghost. A projector above the stage casts a moving image onto a reflective surface
on the stage floor. The reflection then bounces onto a mylar sheet angled overhead. To an
audience, the projected image appears to be standing onstage in three-dimensional space. The
technology was developed by Musion Systems Limited of London. To quote from Musion’s
website and alluding to their forthcoming Elvis project, “With Musion’s groundbreaking digital
resurrection, you can bring musical legends back on stage for an encore. Elvis has just re-
entered the building.” For a description of the technology and its uses in both various advertis-
ing and musical events, http://www.eyeliner3d.com/ (accessed May 12, 2012).
2. Figures according to data provided on Musion Eyeliner’s website: http://
www.musion.co.uk/ (accessed June 6, 2013).
3. “Tupac Shakur’s mom reportedly ‘thrilled’ with hologram of dead son” NBCNEWS
Entertainment April 17, 2012, http://www.nbcnews.com/entertainment/tupac-shakurs-mom-re-
portedly-thrilled-hologram-dead-son-720487 (Accessed June 20, 2013). The ethics of releasing
recordings with deceased artists, such as Natalie Cole’s collaboration with her deceased father
on a duet of “Unforgettable” (1991), is discussed at length in Jason Stanyek and Benjamin
Piekut, “Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane,” The Drama Review 54/1 (Spring)
2010.
4. The increasingly common archiving of “the moment” on cell phones or other digital
devices and the subsequent posting to YouTube, Twitter, or other social media sites provides
another technological manifestation of the quest for immortality.
5. According to the Times report, the posthumous appearances were approved by Eazy-E’s
widow Tomica Wright and ODB’s mother Cherry Jones.
6. The commercial can be accessed on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=nH2dBHZ47uU.
7. It is worth noting that in almost every case of holographic performance “real” musicians
provide live/real time backing to the preprogrammed hologram, often enacting an onstage
interaction with them. This interaction underscores the blurring of the real and virtual as
outlined at the beginning of the chapter but also highlights the fact that the corporeal human
performers are forced to play and perform more or less metronomically, perhaps even some-
what robotically, in synch with their virtual partners. Perhaps somewhat ironically in the case
of African American performers, we might interpret this, at least in part, as a new form of
human enslavement where live performers are forced to rhythmically obey the mechanically
intransigent lead of the virtual master.
8. The prevalent use of MP3 files and players has, for example, removed much of the
visual aspect of popular music consumption previously manifest in album and CD covers.
9. Holographic musical performances, at this moment in time at least, ultimately draw
attention to the technology and the holographic light medium itself. In some sense, though it
might seem to distract from the musical content of the moment, they also foreground technolo-
gy that has always been inherent in musical performance, creation, and dissemination.
10. Well known African American electronic and hip hop turntablist, producer, and academ-
ic DJ Spooky (a.k.a. Paul Miller) notably reclaims the term in his stage name.
 Hip Hop Holograms 123

11. Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut provide an extensive analysis of this phenomenon
and associated case studies in their article “Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane,” The
Drama Review, 54/1 (Spring 2010): 14–38.
12. The Odd Future crew and its sub-projects such as “Sweaty Martians” and “Jet Age of
Tomorrow” by their names alone highlight a continued fascination with hip hop Afrofuturism,
albeit often predicated on thematic irony and kitsch rather than with an overt fetishization of
technology.

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 Part III

Forecasting Dark Bodies, Africology,

and the Narrative Imagination
 Chapter Seven

Afrofuturism and
Our Old Ship of Zion
The Black Church in Post-Modernity

Andrew Rollins

The emergence of Afrofuturist theory and praxis is relevant to religion and

the effect of Post-Modernity on the Black Church. This topic gives bearing to
the direction and destiny of African American people. It forecasts the out-
come of black people in America and furthermore, presages the destiny of
America itself. More specifically, Afrofuturism equips the Black Church to
face the challenges of Post-Modernity, Transhumanism, Time-Space Com-
pression, and the New Jim Crow, and revises its theology to meet the de-
mands of a new age.
What is presently called Afrofuturism was initially a philosophical tech-
no-cultural vernacular perspective that was engaged in a heterodox form of
cultural production originating in socio-spatial temporal practices of black
urban dwellers in North America after World War II. 1 However, the term
Afrofuturism was coined in 1994 by Mark Dery in an article entitled Black to
the Future. 2 Dery defined Afrofuturism as “speculative fiction that treats
African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the
context of twentieth century technoculture—and more generally, African
American signification that appropriates images of technology and prostheti-
cally enhanced future.” Yet, Afrofuturism has outgrown this original formu-
lation. Previously, Afrofuturism was considered a philosophy of aesthetics
expressing and analyzing art, literature, and music, as well as a way of
critiquing the impact of technology on African American life. However,
Afrofuturism has matured and expanded. Afrofuturism encompasses meta-
physics, ethics, digital hermeneutics, geopolitics, and several other dimen-
127
128 Andrew Rollins

sions of the humanities and sciences. 3 Afrocentric metatheory, Africology,

and the contemporary study of Africanity emerged in the latter twentieth
century during the current western existential crisis. First, Afrocentricity is a
theory of social change, and seeks agency and action, furthermore; the Afro-
centric idea metatheory examins the structure and power of the rhetorical
condition in relation to societal norms and analytically focuses on the “frame
of mind, scope of context, structure of code, and delivery of message”
(Asante 1980, 47, 48). 4 Moreover, “Africology is the trans-generational and
transcontinental study of African phenomenon.” Finally, Africanity is fo-
cused on the “customs, traditions, and traits of the people of Africa and its
diaspora” (Asante 1998, 19). 5 Therefore, in relation to the aforementioned
frameworks, in the twenty-first century, Afrofuturism is an Africological
system of metaphysics, aesthetics, and social thought, used to analyze and
interpret Africanity and Africanist art, literature, music, science, technology,
and society from a perspective which informs the trans-generational study of
the past, present, and future of African peoples.
Currently, the world is going through a cosmological revolution which is
further reaching than the Copernican Revolution. The nature and structure of
the universe is being re-interpreted. It is understood that when someone’s
cosmological perspective is altered, their theology is affected. The Coperni-
can Revolution, which fundamentally changed Western cosmology, was the
Eurocentric basis of debate between the Roman Catholic Church and the
scientific community in the European Renaissance. For example, Eurocen-
trism is not a social or scientific theory that incorporates several different
conceptual elements into a universal “coherent vision of society and history.”
Rather, it is an active “prejudice that distorts social theories; it draws from its
storehouse of components, retaining one or rejecting another according to the
ideological needs of the moment” (Amin 1989, 90). Eurocentrism is com-
prised of an archeologically annexed form of Hellenism that removes Greece
from its geographical and historical relationship to the Near East or Levant
and Northeastern Africa, particularly during the Romantic period of the nine-
teenth century, developing a racism necessary for European cultural unity,
and reinterprets a Near East and African imported version of Christianity to
maintain cultural unity, and constructs “a vision . . . on the same racist
foundation, again employing an immutable vision of religion.” 6 Moreover,
the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s groundbreaking treaties, On the
Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies in 1543, ushered in the Eurocentric mod-
ern way of viewing the universe. The Copernican Revolution was a paradigm
shift from a geocentric model, with the earth at the center of the planetary
order, to a heliocentric model with the sun at the center of the planetary
order. For 1,500 years the Catholic Church’s doctrine was based upon a
geocentric order of the universe. The idea of the planetary order being helio-
centric challenged the church’s theology. The church taught that geocentri-
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 129

cism was the accurate depiction of our planetary system and used scriptures
to support this concept. For centuries the church wrestled with heliocentrism
until it finally found a way to accept it as true and blend it into its belief
system.
Human beings are living in a time of birth of new knowledge and technol-
ogies comparable to what took place during the European Renaissance. For
example, cosmological models have radically changed. Scientists have a new
theoretical model of the composition of the universe. Normal matter, which
is observable with technical instruments, makes up 5 percent of the universe.
However, the majority of the universe comprises 68 percent dark energy and
27 percent dark matter. 7 There is also a greatly enlarged concept of the
cosmos. It is estimated “that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the
Universe” and each galaxy “has hundreds of billions of stars.” 8 Therefore,
the cosmology of the Post-Modern Era is very different from that of the
Modern Era. Thus, theoretical perspectives such as Afrofuturism empower
African people to grasp counterintuitive revelations such as a universe that is
immensely vaster than it was believed to have been in the past. Similarly the
Post-Modern transformation of cosmology is a major source of debate today
between the church and the scientific community.
In light of the new ideas and methodologies being formulated and imple-
mented, the Black Church needs a revised theoretical framework. Pursuing
this further, Afrofuturism is a necessary theoretical approach, due to the fact
that it is informed by the new knowledge sciences that are essential ingre-
dients which should be incorporated into the theology and practical ministry
of the Black Church.
Also, Afrofuturism addresses the questions at hand for today’s clergy
person. How does the minister effectively preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ
in an era informed by a world view comprising a larger universe, Dark
Matter, Dark Energy, String Theory, and Spiritual Machines? Furthermore,
how does a pastor tend to parishioners in a world in which people are suffer-
ing from Time-Space Compression and scientists are working in laboratories
to bring the homunculus into existence? Ultimately, to be progressive, the
perspective of the Black Church has to be Afrofuturistic, which means it is
multi-dimensional, intergalactic, and informed by Afrofuturist metaphysics
and the new science, especially in the areas of physics, astronomy, bio-
medical-technology, nanotechnology, information systems, and agriculture.
Afrofuturism represents an overarching theoretical approach which can help
African Americans find their way in these demanding times. Afrofuturism
interprets the meaning of history, the purpose of life, and the individual’s
relationship with the cosmos. The Afrofuturist world view is based upon an
Africological philosophy of history with additional intergalactic and multidi-
mensional elements. Furthermore, Afrofuturism delineates the relationship of
African Americans as family, race, and as members of the Diaspora from a
130 Andrew Rollins

Pan-African perspective. Finally Afrofuturism speaks on the nature of black

people’s relationship to and within the cosmos. It addresses the metaphysical
questions of the structure and constitution of reality, including the nature and
relation of being and the nature and grounds of knowledge.
Afrofuturism also has a redemptive quality. Exposure to the Afrofuturist
perspective can psychologically free black youth who are trapped in the
disabling mindset of urban dystopian milieu. Far too many vibrant and intel-
ligent African Americans in the prime of life are being caught up in the
subculture of gangs, violence, and drugs. Afrofuturism begins the existential
reorientation of African American youth from the nihilism of a hyper capital-
istic consumer society. Moreover, Afrofuturism opens new vistas of alterna-
tives, opportunities, and possibilities, as well as a metaphysical view which
includes the vastness of the universe, thereby expanding their imagination
beyond the confining perimeter of a race obsessed America.
Sexism and homophobia are also implicated in these systems and institu-
tional structures; however, in the interest of brevity the essay will look at the
interplay of race in relationship to futurological studies. Specifically, the
focus of discussion will be on the Black Church in America, as it relates to
the historical dimension of white supremacy and its possible future. Covering
all the various branches of the Black Church throughout the world is beyond
the scope of this essay. Also, for the purpose at hand when referring to the
Black Church, Protestant Christianity will be referenced. There are other
spiritual practices among black Americans; however, Black Protestantism as
the representative model is appropriate in that it has been the largest faith
tradition practiced within the African American community in North Ameri-
ca.
Historically, the Black Church has played a central role in black America
spiritually, culturally, politically, and socially. Currently there is much de-
bate on the role the Black Church can play in the present and future. During
slavery times, the Black Church was involved in the Abolitionist Move-
ment’s fight to end slavery. The Black Church also participated in the early
Pan-African Movement. Dr. Martin Delaney and Bishop Henry McNeal
Turner were champions of the nineteenth century Pan-African Movement.
Three great slave revolts were led by Christian ministers: Gabriel Prosser,
Demark Vesey, and Nat Turner. Reverend Ransom was one of the founders
of the NAACP in the early twentieth century and was an advocate of the
Social Gospel. He also served as a Bishop in the African Methodist Episco-
pal Church. In the middle of the twentieth century, the Black Church played
a pivotal role in launching the Civil Rights Movement under the leadership
of clergyman Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Overall, throughout its history, the
Black Church sponsored educational institutions, charitable societies, eco-
nomic development, and self-help programs in very adverse circumstances.
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 131

The history of the Black Church is worthy of respect and honor. It is a

noble history and there are valuable lessons to be learned from it. Certainly,
the great achievements of the past should be recognized. Nonetheless, many
people are saying; “That was then this is now.” Therefore, the pertinent
question is “What is the role of the Black Church today?” Some people
believe that the day of the Black Church has passed. They argue that our
society is too diverse and/or too secular for the Black Church to play an
effective role. More specifically, society has transitioned from an old histori-
cal era, Modernity, into a new historical era, Post-Modernity. It is the shift in
historical eras that requires the Black Church to thoroughly examine itself.
The forces of the Post-Modern Era are making a powerful impact on the
Black Church.
It would be profitable to ask two important questions due to the powerful
impact of Post-Modernity: When did the Modern Era end and the Post-
Modern Era begin? What is Post-Modernity? Many believe the Modern Era
died at Auschwitz and Hiroshima. According to Paul Connelly, the Modern
Era of history began in 1620 and ended in 1945 when World War II was
ended in 30 years by the use of an atomic bomb. In Connelly’s time line, the
Post-Modern Era begins in 1948. 1948 was a red letter year. In 1948, Shan-
non developed Information Theory, Weiner published Cybernetics, televi-
sion became a mass market phenomenon, and Orwell completed his novel
1984. Subsequently, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, published a paper
in 1965 that described an observable technological shift which accelerated
change every 18–24 months in society. His paper was later referred to as
Moore’s Law and established the intellectual groundwork for the Post-Mod-
ern Era. Although the Post-Modern Era began in the late 1940s, it was not
until the late 1980s, with the availability of desk top computers, that the
historical shift had full effect on American society. From then on, social
change has been going at an increased pace. This change has been accelerat-
ed by the Internet and other digital innovations.
Daniel J. Adams, a Presbyterian theologian, says that “The Post Modern
era can best be understood in terms of four major characteristics: the decline
of the West, the legitimation crisis, the intellectual marketplace, and the
process of deconstruction.” Adams believes the world no longer functions on
a Eurocentric axis. Furthermore, the theory of the “West is best” and that all
other cultures in the world are inferior to Western culture, is an unacceptable
way to think in a society in which many members have embraced multicultu-
ralism. Metanarratives have lost their authority fostering a legitimization
crisis. Even the Judeo-Christian metanarratives are being called into question
in a society with a plurality of values. Cultural value and religious knowledge
are no longer controlled by intellectual and political elites. Deconstruction is
being applied to all discourse in the Post-Modern Era. All texts, including
sacred texts, are being subjected to this process. Adams believes “decon-
132 Andrew Rollins

struction has profound implications for theology.” Adams concludes: “This

means that sacred texts, such as the Bible, do not have a single ultimate
meaning nor are such texts necessarily authoritative”(5). Consequently the
morals, values, customs, and behavior patterns in Post-Modernity are not
governed by Biblical scriptures because Biblical scriptures in this era are not
regarded as unconditional and absolute.
Post-modernism with its values, world view, technology, communication
systems, philosophy, culture, and art have affected the Black Church to its
core. Never before has the Black Church had to deal with such fundamental
change in the society in which it functions. The Black Church was founded in
the modern world and the majority of its history has been in the Modern Era.
The changes in society the Black Church faced before were primarily the
result of generational changes. Therefore, as an institution, the Black Church
has never had to navigate through the waters of historical era change.
The last time the Western world went through this kind of mega shift
culturally was around 1500 to the early 1600s, transitioning from the Middle
Ages to the Modern Era. Human beings are going through an equivalent
magnitude of change as they transition from the Modern Era into the Post-
Modern Era. Generational change is hard to handle, but historical era change
is a great deal more difficult to manage. Historical era change entails major
alterations of culture and methodologies that often shatter societies. The
impact of the generation gap pales in comparison to the challenge of transi-
tioning from one historical era to another historical era. Perhaps the Black
Church can look outside of itself for approaches on how to face the challenge
before it.
Without a doubt, the church in the Western world with the most experi-
ence in adapting to the change of the historical era proportion is the Roman
Catholic Church. It has gone through the Ancient era, the medieval era, and
the Modern Era and now is dealing with the Post-Modern Era. What the
Catholic Church did was reinvent itself in every era. When the Catholic
Church was assaulted by the Reformation, it responded with the Counter
Reformation. In contemporary times, in an effort to be relevant, the Catholic
Church has been a proponent of the Ecumenical movement. The Catholic
Church discovered a way to make the necessary changes so that it could live
on in new eras. The challenge for the Black Church is whether or not it can
make the qualitative reforms necessary to effectively minister in the twenty-
first century. The Catholic Church’s leadership analyzed the problems that
faced them, then developed strategies and methods to address what was
confronting them in each new historical era. The Black Church must take a
sober look at what is confronting it, then analyze it and develop a strategy to
survive and function in this new era. An important determiner of winning a
battle is realizing the nature of the opposition. Therefore, the Black Church
must recognize that the social forces bombarding it are gigantic and para-
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 133

digm shifting. It is only in that realization that the Black Church will be
capable of developing the kind of strategies necessary to survive and estab-
lish relevancy.
There are elements in this new historical era that only pertain to black
people. Post-Modernity is an outer circle of change affecting America at
large. However, there is an inner circle of change specifically surrounding
black people. African Americans are struggling to find their way in the Post-
Civil Rights American society. This phenomenon has created another set of
problems for African Americans. These problems are social, political, eco-
nomic, and psychological. The psychological problems in the past that im-
pacted blacks as individuals, or as a group, are being exacerbated by the
speed and effect of Post-Modern society.
The question of identity has been a pervasive and vitiating problem with-
in the black community. African Americans, who have been struggling with
an identity problem since emancipation from slavery, adapting to Jim Crow
society, and engaging in a hyper capitalist society, now have the extremely
difficult task of re-negotiating their sense of self and state of being, in a
legally desegregated Post-Civil Rights period which remains racist. This in-
ner conflict over identity keeps the black community off balance and in a
state of crisis. The basis of this theory has psycho-historical elements. During
slavery, Africans were transformed from free African people into dehuman-
ized slaves. In the twentieth century, black people in America referred to
their changing identity as colored, Negro, black, Afro-American, and
African-American and on the verge of a twenty-first century Astro-Blackness
perspective, pursuing the quest of an intergalactic identity.
An anthology titled The New Negro, published in 1925 by Alain Locke,
characterized this process. It delineates the evolution of black people from
one state of consciousness to a new state of consciousness. Locke believed
that the Souls of Black Folk, also the name of a book written by W. E. B. Du
Bois in 1903, had been transformed after slavery. Locke believed that, “Ne-
gro life is not only establishing new contacts and founding new centers, it is
finding a new soul.” The Old Negro was the Plantation Negro. This “Being”
was forged in slavery. However, sixty years after the end of slavery, things
had changed. Locke declared that there was a new Black Man and Black
Woman who never experienced slavery. Increasingly, there were African
Americans in the 1920s that were urban, cosmopolitan, and internationally
oriented. This “New Being” had race pride and appreciated his or her own
black culture. The days of accommodation politics were brought to an end.
The new Black Man and Black Woman would demand civil rights and re-
spect as human beings. In short, the “Old Plantation Negro” was dead. 9
Contemporary Black America has made a similar social/historical leap.
Young African Americans have never experienced legal segregation and
suffered under a Jim Crow society. Jim Crow was a set of anti-black laws
134 Andrew Rollins

asserting white dominance by denying African Americans basic social, eco-

nomic, and civil rights. 10 Further, it was a racial caste system imposing legal
segregation, operating between 1877 and the mid 1960s. Culturally, Jim
Crow was more than a set of laws. Jim Crow actually fashioned the total
fabric of society. It was a way of life that degraded and dehumanized black
people. This new generation only has a historical knowledge of Jim Crow.
They were born after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Therefore,
they do not have memories of the Civil Rights Movement or the Black Revo-
lution. Subsequently, their values and outlook on life are substantially differ-
ent from those who had to live behind what W. E. B. Du Bois characterized
as the veil. These young African Americans have metamorphosed into the
Post-Modern Black Man and Black Woman. Finally, just as the days of the
Plantation Negro have passed, so have the days of the Jim Crow Negro.
To have a future, the Black Church has to come to terms with the reality
that the theology, music, worship style, and ministry approach of the past is
not suitable for this era. The theology of the Jim Crow period and the Church
of the Jim Crow period cannot adequately serve the people of today. What is
needed is a Black Church informed by an Afrofuturistic perspective. This is
especially true because this generation of blacks has to also handle the effects
of the dark side of Post-Modernity as they deal with the pernicious and
debilitating race problem in America. Though Jim Crow has passed off the
scene, racism has evolved into a dreadful Post-Modern form. This form is
subtle, sophisticated and more lethal than its predecessors. African
Americans are being hit by a two pronged attack of racism and the social
pressures of Post-Modernity.
A phenomenon from the darker side of Post-Modernity that is having a
devastating effect is Time-Space Compression. Time-Space Compression is
a conceptual formulation that characterizes a process that accelerates the
experience of time and reduces the significance of distance. 11 Technology is
now able to elide spatial and temporal distances due to such technologies as
the telephone, the fax machine, and the Internet in communication, as well as
cars, trains, and jets in travel. Humans have entered a geographic space,
known as speed-space, by faster means of transportation and communication.
Experiences upon entering this space can be disorienting. In some cases the
individual mind is not able to process the compressed group of experiences
fast enough to understand what is happening or to make good decisions.
Time-Space Compression has caused people to be rootless and to lose their
bearings. Many feel even more alienated than people did during the Modern
Era. In the Post-Modern Era, large numbers of people do not have a sense of
community and are living with a painful feeling of disconnectedness as soci-
ety acquires unprecedented amounts of new knowledge. Therefore, it must be
noted that, though the acquisition of new knowledge is having positive re-
sults, lamentably it is also having negative results.
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 135

Another example of a field that is having both positive and negative

effects on society is Human Enhancement. Human Enhancement, also known
as Singularity and popularly called Transhumanism, is a field which its advo-
cates promote as a means to alleviate human suffering by augmenting human
capacities. Supporters of Transhumanism envision many benefits in its im-
plementation, namely longer life spans, prevention of diseases, and the de-
velopment of methods to repair and rebuild damaged nerves, tissues, limbs,
and organs. There is no question that Transhumanism has positive attributes.
Yet, to fully grasp the meaning of Transhumanism, it has to be viewed
comprehensively. It should be analyzed within a context that also includes
the harmful components of this movement.
Transhumanism is a movement that uses genetics, robotics, artificial in-
telligence, and nanotechnology as tools to redesign human minds, memories,
and physiology. The goal of Transhumanism is to rewrite human DNA by
combining humans with beast and technology. The plan is to integrate hu-
man, animal, and machines to re-engineer humanity. 12 Furthermore, Trans-
humanism could provide a well-educated and wealthy elite group with the
means to impose absolute control over the majority of humanity. Joseph P.
Farrell and Scott D. de Hart speak of “the high degree to which genetic
engineering is also social engineering and therefore, is also the alchemical
transformation of human consciousness and society.” 13
Due to the increasingly apparent growth of the interface between ma-
chines and humans, pastors in the near future will find themselves in the
position of having to counsel enhanced human beings. This challenge de-
mands asking ourselves these questions and seeking answers to them: How
will enhancement affect the cognitive process and ethical perspective of the
enhanced? Are enhanced people human? Is there a point where a human has
been artificially altered to such a degree that they are no longer human? The
social, moral, and political implications of this subject have important ramifi-
cations. According to author and Canadian University Professor Amarnath
Amarasingam, “the changes taking place in technology will radically alter
human nature in the near future.” 14 Amarasingam is referring to “humanity
being completely transformed by the unprecedented progress anticipated”
due to “Singularity/Transhumanism.” Amarasingam further states, “Such
metaphysical speculation leads a scholar of religion to wonder what role
traditional forms of religion might play in the world, if these technologies are
indeed perfected.” He sees these changes in genetics, robotics, information
technology, and nanotechnology as having the potential to be the basis for a
new religion. To illustrate that point, he sites futurologist Ray Kurzweil’s
thinking of Singularity as a kind of technological Rapture. 15 Currently, the
church has to compete in the marketplace of ideas with techno-spirit relig-
ions in a time when the media are churning out widely marketed, mind-
altering books, films, and music with transhumanism themes and fantasy
136 Andrew Rollins

role-playing computer games. Society is permeated with new age thought.

Therefore, for many people, Christian religious principles no longer deter-
mine the ideas guiding the thinking and behavior of many citizens, as society
has increasingly promoted science and the occult as the standards for its
worldview.
Regrettably, there are people who do not believe the Black Church should
be retooled and refitted, but should be discarded. These people want to de-
commission the Old Ship of Zion. They have fallen under the delusional
influence of an idea floating in the atmosphere these days that there no longer
is a need for the Black Church because America has entered a pristine period
of Post-Blackness. Yet, the brutal murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012 is a
poignant example of how racist America is 60 years after the murder of
Emmett Till. Reynaldo Anderson, Humanities Professor at Harris Stowe
State University, noted recently: “Post Blackness was a Post-Modern form of
Double Consciousness.” Paralleling Du Bois’s notion of Double Conscious-
ness, a psychologically disorienting condition experienced by some African
Americans at the height of Modernity, Anderson believes that Post-Black-
ness is characterized by African Americans examining themselves through
the Post-Modern prism of other people’s culture. Consequently, they are
defining themselves through the lenses of the other and evaluating who they
are on the standards and customs of the oppressor. Post-Blackness declares
explicitly in the use of the prefix “post,” therefore implying that black people
must deny their blackness by going beyond being black in order to be human
and acceptable. 16
It is an act of self-delusion to believe America is post-racial. That type of
thinking is bad faith (self-deception and misrepresentation of what it is to be
for self). It is also false consciousness (the inability to understand the true
nature of the situation and accurately interpret the means of oppression).
Racial discrimination and racial inequality are still happening even though an
African American has been elected President of the United States. African
Americans have gone from being victimized by Jim Crow to being victi-
mized by the New Jim Crow. The New Jim Crow is a Post-Modern racist
system of oppression and exploitation.
Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration
in the Age of Colorblindness, states in the introduction: “Denying African
Americans citizenship was deemed essential to the formation of the original
union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not an egalitarian democra-
cy.” 17 According to Alexander, just as the Jim Crow laws replaced slavery as
a form of racial control, the New Jim Crow system has replaced the original
Jim Crow system in the Post-Civil Rights Era, as a form of racial control.
The criminal justice system in the United States is currently functioning as an
instrument to label large numbers of black men as felons, thereby trapping
them in permanent “second class status.” Large numbers of black men have
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 137

been marginalized, disenfranchised, and denied employment because they

have been criminalized. Alexander emphatically states that, “No other coun-
try in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities.” Illus-
trating this point, she goes on to say, “More African American adults are
under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—
than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” Further-
more, she exposes a heart-wrenching travesty of justice, disclosing that,
“More black men are imprisoned today than at any other moment in our
nation’s history. More are disenfranchised today than in 1870, the year the
Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the
right to vote on the basis of race.” The New Jim Crow is a pernicious system
brutally assaulting black men and women, the black family, and the entire
black community psychologically, politically, and economically. It dehu-
manizes, disenfranchises, and demoralizes. According to the U.S. Bureau of
Justice Statistics in 2009, 34.4 percent of the U.S. prison population was
black. In addition, according to the 2010 census of the U.S. Census Bureau,
13.6 percent of the U.S. population was black. This is a sad commentary of
appalling injustice. Just think. This is but one example of the perpetuation of
racism in contemporary America. There are more areas in which racism is
having a devastating effect. To name some: there is racial discrimination in
employment which contributes to staggering unemployment, fostering a per-
manent black underclass; there is racial discrimination in the educational
system limiting opportunity and quality of life; and there is race based police
harassment and brutality exemplified by the cold blooded murder of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
With all these social forces arrayed against the African American people,
it is evident that there is still work for the Black Church. However the Black
Church will have to go through a major reform to be effective in the Post-
Modern Era. First of all, the thinking in the Black Church has to be revolu-
tionized. World view and theology are two areas in which the Black Church
needs to reform in order to be up for the challenges of our times. The Black
Church would be able to see clearer with an Afrofuturist world view. And a
theology with a blend of Neo-Pentecostalism and Black Liberation Theology
would serve the Black Church well as a guide in the twenty-first century.
Having reviewed some of the challenges facing the Black Church, the
question must be raised “What is to be done?” As was stated earlier, the type
of theology needed to inform, guide, and empower the Black Church in the
Post-Modern Era is a blend of Neo-Pentecostalism and Black Liberation
Theology. This mixture of Neo-Pentecostalism and Black Liberation Theolo-
gy offers a critique, a source of refuge, and a template for resistance. As a
critique, it is a system to spiritually, politically, and culturally analyze society
and the impact society is having on the individual, the family, and the com-
munity; as a source of refuge it is an instrument to heal persons spiritually
138 Andrew Rollins

and emotionally wounded by the negative aspects of Post-Modernity; and

finally, as a template for resistance, it empowers the spirit and mind of those
who have been victimized and presents ways to challenge and overcome the
powers that want to continue to exploit and oppress.
First, a major component is the Neo-Pentecostal portion of the theological
formula. Neo-Pentecostalism contains the requisites to minster to people in
the Post-Modern Era. It has the ingredients and spiritual power to combat the
negative factors in this age. The origin of the Neo-Pentecostal Movement
(which includes the Charismatic Movement and Full Gospel Movement) is in
the Pentecostal Movement. The Pentecostal Movement began in the early
twentieth century. The Neo-Pentecostal Movement began in the later twenti-
eth century as an outgrowth of the earlier movement. Whereas Pentecostal-
ism was confined to Pentecostal denominations, Neo-Pentecostalism is oper-
ative in both traditional denominational and newly formed non-denomina-
tional churches.
The Pentecostal Movement was birthed out of the Asuza Street Revival in
Los Angeles, California (1906–1909). This great revival was led by William
Joseph Seymour, the son of a former slave. Seymour was born May 2, 1870
in Centerville, Louisiana, five years after the end of the Civil War. Overcom-
ing great odds, Seymour grew into an outstanding preacher, teacher, and
episcopate. Yale University has recognized him as one of the ten most in-
fluential leaders in American religious history. 18 Seymour was a spiritual and
social prophet and came of age during what the historian, Rayford Logan,
characterized as the nadir of American race relations when overt racism was
at its worst. In response, drawing upon Africanist perspectives, Seymour
delved deep into the realm of the supernatural. Seymour also challenged the
American color line by holding racially integrated worship services during
the Jim Crow period. In recognition of his contribution and achievements,
Seymour deserves to be a hero in the Afrofuturist pantheon. He is an Afrofu-
turist precursor and his life and ministry was an announcement of things to
come. Seymour was a harbinger of a new age.
William Seymour’s ministry and the Asuza Street Revival, which were
the origins of Pentecostalism, were expressions of Africanism. By African-
ism, I mean something that is characteristic of African culture and tradition.
Africanism was the seed of Afrofuturism and was also the seed of Pentecos-
talism. Afrofuturism and Pentecostalism stem from the same Africanist influ-
ences. In fact, Pentecostalism is an Afrofuturist form of spirituality. There-
fore, William Seymour can be characterized as a forerunner of the Afrofutur-
ist Movement. Similar to the jazz musician and philosopher, Sun Ra, Sey-
mour came out of an African heritage seeking a future in a color conscious,
hostile country. Seymour’s quests lead him beyond the terrestrial sphere to
the supernatural realm. On his spiritual quest, Seymour formulated a theolo-
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 139

gy and spiritual practice out of his African heritage tailored to help blacks
suffering from racism, urban alienation, and the evil in the world.
The renowned scholar, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, wrote about the African
roots of the Black Preacher over a hundred years ago in his classic work The
Souls of Black Folk. He goes in depth in a chapter titled “Of the Faith of the
Fathers.” There, he demonstrates that there was a historical and cultural
connection between the African Priest-Medicine Man and the American
Black Preacher, attesting to the age-old universal human need for a spiritual
guide in a bewildering, strife ridden, and terrifying world. Du Bois argues
“that the social history of the Negro did not start in America. He was brought
from a definite social environment.” Du Bois further states that, “the planta-
tion organization replaced the clan and tribe” and “the old ties of blood
relationship and kinship disappeared.” Having said all that, Du Bois chroni-
cles a preternatural course of development of the African in America. In the
New World, we were transformed into a new people in the crucible of slav-
ery. Our original African culture and customs were assaulted and eradicated
by brutal systematic methods. However, there were African cultural residuals
in spite of the efforts of the slave masters. Some forms of our original
African culture were transposed in the new environment. Du Bois goes on
explicitly stating, “Yet some traces were retained of the former group life and
the chief remaining institution was the Priest-Medicine Man. Early on he
appeared on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick,
the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernat-
ural avenger of the wronged and the one who rudely but picturesquely ex-
pressed longing, disappointment and resentment of a stolen and oppressed
people.” As American society evolved, the Black Preacher emerged replac-
ing the function of the Priest-Medicine Man. 19
William Seymour operated out of a tradition that originated in Africa,
characterized by the role of the Priest-Medicine Man or Shaman. Ness
Mountain asserts, “Traditionally, a Shaman is a tribal healer who journeys
into alternative states of consciousness—into the underworld and the over-
world—and returns safely with the treasures found there. They can also show
others the way. Shamans are found in tribal societies worldwide, and practice
in an incredible variety of forms.” 20 Understanding can be gained by compar-
ing Seymour’s spiritual life to Mountain’s descriptive statement about the
Shaman. As the comparison is made, the similarity of the Priest Medicine
Man and the Black Preacher can be clearly seen.
Seymour was a mystic, seer, prophet, and healer and had an intense
hunger for God. Thus he lived a life of fasting and prayer. The great healing
evangelist, John G. Lake, recalled a testimony by Seymour which shows how
dedicated Seymour was in his spiritual pursuits. Here it is in Seymour’s own
words: “Prior to my meeting with Parham, the Lord had sanctified me from
sin and had led me into a deep life of prayer, assigning 5 hours out of the 24
140 Andrew Rollins

every day for prayer. This prayer life I continued for three and a half years,
when one day as I prayed, the Holy Ghost said to me, ‘there are better things
to be had in the spiritual life, but they must be sought out with faith and
prayer.’ This so quickened my soul that I increased my hours of prayer to 7
out of 24 and continued to pray on for 2 years longer until the baptism fell on
us.” 21 This testimony vividly describes how Seymour lived on a high spiritu-
al plane. Though Seymour was physically on earth, he spiritually lived in the
realm of the supernatural. In Seymour’s testimony we hear how he faithfully
petitioned heaven for years, until fire from heaven came down at Asuza
Street. Furthermore, scholars are aware from historical records that Seymour
used the revelations and power he received from his spiritual journey to be a
blessing to others. Seymour’s mission was to lead others into a deeper rela-
tionship with God and into the realm of the supernatural. He endeavored to
“show others the way.”
Historian Leonard Lovett says that “Seymour emerged from the womb of
black slave religion with roots in African soil” and that “Seymour was indeed
the fruit of black slave religion, which has its roots anchored deep in
African . . . religion.” Estrada T. Alexander, in her seminal work Black Fire:
One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism, highlights several
points of African spirituality believed in and lived by members of the Asuza
Street Mission. They believed in one Supreme God and that God was a part
of every aspect of their lives. They believed they were surrounded by spiritu-
al realities. Here we have a striking similarity with the African all pervasive
cosmic view of God and Spirit. They believed the Spirit was everywhere and
the Spirit of God and angels and Satan and demons were moving in their
midst. Honoring their forbears was an important part of their spiritual sys-
tem. This was an obvious retention of the African custom of venerating their
ancestors. Communal solidarity was emphasized, a retention of the strong
family and tribal bonds in African culture. Rhythmic music was a significant
part of their worship experience. It would be the Asuza shaped theology;
worship, and music style that would be the model for all future Pentecostal,
as well as Neo-Pentecostal communities. Alexander turns to the work of
political scientist James Tinney, “The Blackness of Pentecostalism” to sup-
port her theory. Alexander argues that Tinney believes the nature of Pente-
costalism is “truly African.” For Tinney, this “is visible in worship style,
philosophy of faith, practices and an organizational structure.”
It would be this form of religion that would minister to the masses of
African Americans who migrated from the rural south to the urban centers in
the first half of the twentieth century. These migrants came from a rural
southern environment looking for opportunity. Fleeing southern racism, they
ran head long into a new form of racism in northern cities. Furthermore, in
this new environment, they were also assaulted by the alienation and disor-
ientation of urban life. To make matters worse, these hard-pressed people
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 141

were being forced to deal with all that while they still were healing from the
wounds of slavery. It was spirit-filled religion which helped many to survive
and make it in harsh and debilitating circumstances. It was a religion of
Christian Africanism which sustained them.
A similar type of religious experience and practice is needed for African
Americans to overcome the trauma, disorientation, alienation, anxiety, hope-
lessness, and fear generated by the negative aspects of Post-Modernity, the
emerging Transhumanist challenge, and the New Jim Crow. African
Americans need a spiritual discipline that can minister to them in the Post-
Modern environment and interface with them in a manner appropriate for
these times. The social and psychological pressure that was on African
Americans in the Modern Era has intensified in the Post-Modern Era. Fortu-
nately, there is a positive side of the Post-Modern quest which presents an
opening to do ministry. The cyber-anthropologist, Steven Mizrach, asserts
that Post-Modernism “wants to recover the religious sensibility” from the
pre-modern world. 22 Reason was the corner stone of Modernity. However,
intuition will be an essential attribute of this new stage of history. It is
intuition that hones the human sensibilities so a person is able to have a
religious experience. In the Postmodern world view, reason and intuition are
not in conflict but work as partners. During the Modern Era, intuition was
devalued, looked down upon as primitive, anti-intellectual, and unscientific.
In that era, which spawned “The Age of Reason,” intuition was not regarded
as a sound way to create, to make leaps in knowledge, or even to connect
with the Spirit. Reason was believed to be the pathway to travel in order to
acquire fulfillment in all of these areas. However, appreciation of intuition
has always been an integral part of Black Folk Culture and the Neo-Pente-
costal Movement. Flowing in the Spirit has been a guiding principle in black
life. The scripture “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the
Lord of host” (Zachariah 4:6) has been an undergirding text for Black Chris-
tian Spirituality and Neo-Pentecostalism. In fact, Neo-Pentecostalism is a
Post-Modern spiritual expression that does not limit truth to the rational
dimension. The apostolic experience of the Holy Spirit that values the intui-
tive is intrinsic to Neo-Pentecostalism. In fact, Neo-Pentecostalism is a Post-
Modern form of spirituality due to its value of the intuitive which is essential
in the Post-Modern world view.
The tools of Neo-Pentecostal spirituality are indispensable for the welfare
of humanity in the Post-Modern Era. Far too many people, particularly peo-
ple of color and the poor, are living crippled lives because of evil social,
psychological, and spiritual forces. These hurting and desperate people need
healing and deliverance. They need access to a way in which the Spirit
breaks “into the objective world with power and purpose” to redefine their
reality. 23 Neo-Pentecostalism operates in the redemptive power of the Holy
Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, such as prophecy, healing, deliverance, and
142 Andrew Rollins

miracles. There is belief in the reality and availability of the charismata. The
charismata are extraordinary power gifts given to Christians by the Holy
Spirit. These gifts will be used to perform exorcism—expelling evil spirits
from a person or a place. They have the power to generate a catharsis—the
process of releasing—providing relief from negative emotional, physical,
and spiritual ailments. Neo-Pentecostalism teaches that these gifts are
endowments given by the Holy Spirit that the church must operate in to
fulfill its mission and that these gifts are available to heal, deliver, and
comfort people suffering from the negative effects of Post-Modernity. De-
scriptions of these gifts are found in the New Testament, specifically in
Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4.
Although there are those skeptics who are concerned about Neo-Pente-
costalism being a form of escapism, a response to those who feel this way is
that Neo-Pentecostalism does not require the Black Church to give up its
historic commitment for social justice as it goes deeper in the spiritual realm.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ that is preached should have spiritual salvation
and social justice components. It should be balanced and holistic. Estrelda Y.
Alexander points to the combination of deep spirituality emphasizing the
Holy Spirit and activism in the community as the winning formula to do
ministry in the twenty-first century. In her book Black Fire: One Hundred
Years of African American Pentecostalism Alexander quotes Bishop John
Bryant of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who she regards as the
father of African American Neo-Pentecostalism, to refute any claim that
Neo-Pentecostalism is a medium of escapism. Bishop Bryant said, “The meat
of the Holy Spirit is for our empowerment. It is for liberation and develop-
ment. It is for our strength as a people.”
Turning to the other aspect of a revised theological approach for the Post-
Modern era, Black Liberation Theology will give a description of what can
be characterized as the social justice component for the future. Spiritually, it
can be explained as “identifying the Spirit as the liberator who could empow-
er the African American community.” Black Liberation Theology seeks to
liberate black people from political, social, economic, and religious oppres-
sion and exploitation. It grew out of the Civil Rights and Black Power Move-
ments of the 1960s. James Cone, author of Black Theology and Black Power,
published in 1969, was the first systematic presenter of Black Liberation
Theology. Black Liberation Theology is a compass, pointing the way for the
Black Church, as it continues to minister in the Spirit of God and fight for
freedom and justice.
Definitely there is a need for a church informed by Black Liberation
Theology in a racist society. African Americans are still being subjected to
abusive and demeaning treatment because of their race. There is still race-
based social, economic, and political discrimination in American society.
Therefore the struggle for freedom and justice has to continue. To that end,
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 143

the Afrofuturist world view for the Post-Modern Black Church must have a
Black Liberation Theology element, if it is to be true and strong. Black
Liberation Theology is the backbone of the Black Church, and without a
backbone the church will not be able to stand up to fight for justice and
righteousness. Moreover, it will not be able to minister and nurture in Post-
Modernity, as it ministered in the depths of slavery and Jim Crow. Without a
Black Liberation element, the Black Church will not be able to be faithful to
the ancestors, the mothers and fathers, who fought the good fight in slavery
and segregation. Finally, without a Black Liberation Theology element, the
Black Church will not have the fortitude and ethical substance to be faithful
to Jesus who proclaimed:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the Gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the broken hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at Liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18–19)
In order to aid in attaining a fuller understanding of the meaning, value, and
purpose of Black Liberation Theology, we are going to examine the ideas of
theologian J. Deotist Roberts. In his book, The Prophethood of Black Believ-
ers: An African American Political Theology for Ministry, Roberts beckons
the Black Church to form itself after the holistic ministry model of Jesus. The
Church is to minister to the total person: spiritually, physically, psychologi-
cally, and socially. He says that this is the legacy of the Black Church, which
for more than two centuries, “Has been involved in healing the scars of the
oppressed and embattled in vigorous protest against oppression based upon
race.” 24 The mission has not been easy. Often, it has been tragic. Roberts
gives voice to that experience when he declares, “Ministry in the black
churches has been a ministry to an oppressed community. Black people have
been caught up in a bid for survival during their entire sojourn in the United
States.” In spite of phenomenal difficulties, the Black Church has been faith-
ful. It has continued to seek out the lost and minister to the down-trodden and
dispossessed. There is a unique call by God on the Black Church. It was
called to be a bridge over troubled water for the slaves and later for the
victims of Jim Crow. At this point in time, the Black Church is being called
to be a beacon of light for the victims of Post-Modern high-tech racism.
According to Roberts, “The black church was born in protest against racism.
It first had to confront the brutal system of chattel slavery. Since discrimina-
tion based on race has continued, the protest character of black religion/
theology persists.” Historically the Black Church has been a prophetic voice
challenging the powerful who oppress and exploit the powerless and a voice
144 Andrew Rollins

of hope to the hopeless teaching them how to “hope against hope” and “make
a way out of no way.”
The prophetic voice of the Black Church is needed now as much as it was
needed during the Slavery Period and the Jim Crow period. America, at this
juncture, is not headed toward a more perfect union. Rather, the future of
America, if it keeps traveling down the path it is on, will look more like the
dystopia constructed upon racial and economic social stratification depicted
in Walter Mosley’s literary work Futureland. In Futureland, through a series
of science fiction short stories, Mosley describes a very morbid future for
America. It is a future in which a ruthless technocrat owns a company with
sovereignty status that he uses to exploit and abuse the citizens and workers
with impunity. It is a world that has a cruel prison system, epitomized by
Angel’s Inland, the world’s largest privately own prison. In this prison, in-
mates are controlled through drugs and the administration of shock waves to
their bodies by a technical device, to modify their behavior and even their
thoughts. Society in Futureland is in the absolute control of an elite group
who utilize finance, technology, science, and force to maintain their posi-
tion. 25 These stories paint a picture of a future where racism and classism run
rampant. Enhanced with the aid of new scientific and technical advances, it
will be a society where it seems like racism and classism are on steroids. The
necessity for action, along with thought and prayer, is indisputable in these
apocalyptic times. Leaders are needed with the courage of a Harriet Tubman
or a Denmark Vesey and with the prophetic voice of a David Walker or a
Henry McNeal Turner. Scripture teaches that faith without works is dead
(James 2:17).
In an essay written before The Prophethood of Black Believers, J. Deotis
Roberts states, “Consciousness is not adequate by itself to liberate a people;
it must be empowered.” 26 This statement makes it clear that Black Liberation
Theology is hinged on action. Ideas by themselves will not liberate the op-
pressed. Education is not the only objective of Black Liberation Theology.
Ideas must be accompanied by action to bring about change. A cardinal
principle of Black Liberation Theology is to inspire and lead people to take
the necessary steps to improve their lives.
There is a lesson to be learned from the science fiction movie Matrix. It is
from the famous scene in the film about the red pill and the blue pill. In that
scene, Morpheus explains to Neo that he is living an illusion and really is a
slave to the Matrix. That’s when Neo’s moment of decision comes. Mor-
pheus gives Neo the choice between taking a blue pill or a red pill. If Neo
takes the blue pill he will be content in the illusion and passively remain a
slave. If he takes the red pill, reality will be revealed to him and he will begin
the journey down the rabbit hole. Neo chooses the red pill, the life of resis-
tance to being enslaved by the Matrix. In reality, African Americans also are
enslaved in a Matrix. At this critical moment the Black Church should not be
 Afrofuturism and Our Old Ship of Zion 145

passing out blue pills. To do so would be a travesty. Jesus said, “The truth
shall make you free.” (John 8:32). The Black Church has been called by God
to spread the liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ and to set the captives free.
In conclusion, the African American people have been on a long, excru-
ciating march travelling to slave castles, to slave ships, to plantations, to
ghettos, and to prisons. On this demanding journey, African Americans have
proven to be a valiant, strong, and resilient people. Though black people have
fought and won many battles, the war is not over. Black people have not yet
overcome. Marcus Garvey spoke of this many years ago. After traveling to
different countries, Garvey said everywhere he went, black people were on
the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. A century later, this continues to be
the state of black people in the world. In this day, black people still do not
have the power to determine their own destiny. Even Africa, the Mother
Land, is teetering between a Pan-African Renaissance and being recolonized
in a twenty-first century Scramble for Africa.
Although there are more battles to be fought before total victory, the
Black Church must continue to nourish the hope and belief that one day,
black people will completely overcome. It is there that the faith will emerge
among the masses of the people that a new generation of young Africans,
with an Afrofuturist vision and an Astro-Black consciousness, will emerge to
carry on the mission. These visionaries will proclaim a message of liberation,
healing, deliverance, hope, and reconciliation, in a world that has acquired
more knowledge and power than it apparently has the rectitude to use in a
fair way. This new generation of freedom fighters will not be afraid of being
branded Enemies of the State. Undaunted by the might of the Power Elite or
the Deep State, they will have the courage, strength, and knowledge to take
the necessary action. It is my hope that the twenty-first century reformed
Black Church will play a major role in this mission, thus living out its divine
call from God.

NOTES

1. R. S. Anderson 2013.
2. Dery 1994.
3. Anderson and Jennings 2014.
4. Asante 1980.
5. Asante 1998.
6. Amin 1989.
7. Connelly 2008.
8. Adams 1997.
9. Locke 1925.
10. Chegg.com n.d.
11. Pilgrim 2012.
12. Harvey 1992.
13. Farrell and de Hart 2012.
14. Amarasingam 2008.
146 Andrew Rollins

15. Horn and Horn 2010.

16. R. S. Anderson, Personal Communication 2014.
17. M. Alexander 2012.
18. E. Alexander 2011.
19. Du Bois 1903, 132.
20. Mountain Fall 1997.
21. Lovett 2014.
22. Mizrach n.d.
23. MacDonald 2006.
24. Roberts 1994.
25. Mosley 2013.
26. Roberts 1993.

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1993: 64–68.
 Chapter Eight

Playing a Minority Forecaster in

Search of Afrofuturism
Where Am I in This Future, Stewart Brand?

Lonny Avi Brooks

I share a dream: to ensure that long oppressed racial minority and diverse
voices can articulate themselves in the futures imagined in the practices of
long-term thinking and in the professional areas of foresight. 1 Promises
about the future in the strategic fields of long-term thinking and how they are
portrayed in popular culture have quickened their pace in early twenty-first
century digital culture about what we will do, think, and build. Mark Fisher
(2000) calls this science fiction capital. 2 This elite field of work attempts to
map out how our future society will look like for major corporations, govern-
ment agencies, non-profit industries, and for the rest of us. As a witness and
practitioner of the futures being shaped by forecasters, I see their radius of
cultural boundaries as far too narrow and parochial with a few notable excep-
tions.
The mapping of the future still confronts the weighted language of coloni-
al expansion, exclusion, conquest, and erasure for imagining the dilemmas of
racial identity and intersecting identities as we race to the future. Intersecting
identities take into account the fluid, complex, and contradictory nature of
the social identities we inhabit and perform. The social identity categories of
gender, race, class, age, ability, sexuality, as well as their full expression and
currency in anticipatory visions require greater not less diligence. “But let
justice roll down like waters” as we interrogate how science fiction capital
operates and, more importantly, how we can expand its horizons for defining
who partakes meaningfully in the future.

149
150 Lonny Avi Brooks

As Ronald Jackson states, the mainstay of an Afrocentric rhetorical view

of the world underscores the “interconnectedness of all things” (2003, 120).
In explaining the principles of an Afrocentric worldview, Jackson (2003)
points to the confining Western view of binary interpretations of the dialectic
state of opposed views. The Afrocentric view would shift this emphasis from
opposition to juxtaposing dimensions where a range of truths can be held,
that next digital feat where quantum computing can hold the 1 and 0 simulta-
neously. Where science fiction capital erases race and Afrocentric points of
view especially in the professional industry of futures research, I aim to
restore them and re-categorize future scenarios by noting absences of Afro-
centric values. Re-imagining the future with the rhetorical tools found in
Afrocentric and Africology worldviews confirms a multiverse of possible
identity futures held at once and interconnected and now heralded in the
exponential algorithms of quantum computing.
Through this exercise, three scenarios to critique science fiction capital
and the futures industry emerge. First, the relentless promotion of Futures,
Inc. Unlimited, as a capitalistic enterprise, projects a constant feeling of
change that excludes not just others but ethnicities whose futures it cannot
imagine or quite grasp. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s informa-
tion while its hiring practices and embedded socioeconomic system reify an
extremely segregated workforce where only 2 percent of its employees are
African-American (Jacobson 2014). The emergence and promise of decen-
tralized entrepreneurial startups affirm the new digital truth of segregated
labor practices in Google’s homeland.
The second foresight frame, Futures, Inc. Performed/Performative, views
science fiction capital as a continual series of performances in various social
texts in popular culture that offer future scenarios and shape the professional
futures industry. The circulating artifacts of science fiction and corporate/
government future scenarios carry moral and economic weight. Television
shows and films in the last few years have experienced a renaissance of
science fiction themes from the renewal of old franchises, such as “Star
Trek” and “Battlestar Galactica” to new shows that persist in binary depic-
tions of race such as “Continuum” and “The 100,” each one exploring hu-
manity in the next decades or hundreds of years complete with marauding
darker Others. The primarily black and brown freedom seekers from 2077 in
“Continuum” are depicted as violent terrorists. The brown hued “grounders”
in the “The 100” represent the leftovers of a post-apocalyptic nuclear war on
Earth plaguing the relatively squeaky clean and mostly white teenagers who
arrive to reclaim the Earth from their rapidly decaying orbiting space station
called the Ark. The first and second foresight frames interweave and cross
their boundaries in the case histories and spaces of futures consultancy and
culture I have performed as minority forecaster.
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 151

If the first two foresight frames continue to assault Afrocentric views of

connectedness and spirituality, then Queering Futures, Inc. offers to create a
language for queering the future in re-storying interpretations of unfolding
futures. Queering the future challenges binaries and artificial polarities and
confirms Alondra Nelson’s insight that “an appraisal of identity . . . does not
simply look to what is seemingly new about the self in the ‘virtual age’ but
looks backward and forward in seeking to provide insights about identity,
one that asks what was and what if” (Nelson 2002, 2). Afro-queering the
future especially in re-interpreting the Afrocentric rhetorical perspective
(Asante 1990; Jackson 2003; Turner 1991) emphasizes where the intercon-
nectedness of all things, collective responsibility for all, and the oneness of
mind, body, and spirit are missing. As Nelson describes, the science fiction
lineage of African American authors like Ishmael Reed 1972 novel Mumbo
Jumbo, “jes grew” is the sought after meme of African diasporic culture
contesting the Atonists, supporters of the “Western civilization” mythology
of world history” (2002, 5). The novel’s plot centers on “competing efforts to
encourage and restrain the itinerant cultural virus, ‘jes grew’” (Nelson 2002,
5).
Reed borrows and augments this phrase from civil rights activist, and
cultural and gay theorist James Weldon Johnson, who used it to describe the
proliferation of ragtime songs, commenting that they “jes grew” (or just
grew). Nelson explains how “jes grew” in Reed’s novel refers to “African
diasporic cultures that live and evolve in the forms of gesture, music, dance,
visual culture, epistemology, and language, crossing geography and genera-
tions by moving from carrier to carrier and thus threatening the knowledge
monopoly of the ‘West’” (2002, 6). In this futuristic detective story “Jes
Grew” as Nelson expresses “traversed the land in search of its Text: the lost
liturgy seeking its litany. Its words, chants held in bondage by the mysterious
Order” (2002, 6). Jes Grew are the missing alternative counterfutures that
confirm the promising simultaneity of quantum code to include “the missing
text, which originated in ancient Africa” encoding “African diasporic vernac-
ular culture and create a tangible repository of black experience of past 0s
and future 1s.”
The fragility of an Afrocentric long-term vision and the diasporic rhythms
of “jes grew” are telling in the case of the early Star Trek series when it
launched with its first multiethnic crew. Consider the story of the 1960s TV
series Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols who portrayed the only African-
American woman on the show, as the communications officer Lt. Uhuru, and
who upon announcing her plans to leave from the series, was informed by
Martin Luther King that her departure would remove any trace of African-
American women from the future (Martin 2011; Nichols 1995). 3 Nichols
explained to Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s original executive producer and
creator in 1966 that she was ready to move on after the first season ended
152 Lonny Avi Brooks

since tantalizing offers of a career on Broadway beckoned. Roddenberry,

with shock, asked Nichols to consider the vision he was attempting to convey
and to reconsider her decision over one weekend. While stunned by Rodden-
berry’s reaction, Nichols attended an NAACP dinner during which she felt a
tap on her shoulder by a staff member who informed her that she had a secret
Trekkie admirer who wanted to say hello. Her devoted fan was none other
than Martin Luther King Jr. As surprised as she was to see the civil rights
leader, she thanked him for his compliments and related that this would be
her last season on the show. His praise transformed into insistence that she
remain on “Star Trek.” “You don’t understand, you are the only show Coret-
ta and I allow our children to watch!” Dr. King informed her that her depar-
ture would remove any trace of African-American women from the future. I
share in Dr. King’s fear that the masking and erasure of racial identity in the
future is still as pervasive and real as that moment in 1966. And that erasure
persists in the scenarios created by professional forecasters and other produc-
ers of science fiction capital.
As Kodwo Eshun frames this field from his imagined African archeolo-
gists of the future, “it is commonplace that the future is a chronopolitical
terrain, a terrain as hostile and as treacherous as the past” (2003, 288). The
most comprehensive report to date on global forecasting confirms this era-
sure. The report is from the “Mapping Foresight” project (Popper 2009) of
the European Foresight Monitoring Network (EFMN)—a Europe-wide net-
work inspired and financed by the European Commission for the Foresight
Knowledge Sharing Platform. This report is the first large international effort
designed to understand the makeup of foresight practices in Europe and other
world regions, including Latin America, North America, Asia, and Oceania.
The report underscored that “the large number of foresight exercises mapped
between 2004 and 2008 (over 2,000 initiatives) is clear evidence of the rising
of the ‘foresight wave.’ This is mainly because foresight has become more
than just a tool to support policy or strategy development in Science, Tech-
nology, and Innovation. (STI)” (Popper 2009, 8).
An often highlighted feature of foresight exercises is their potential to
become a “space for opinion gathering and reflection among a wide-ranging
group of stakeholders” (Popper 2009, 8). Expectations for the diversity and
scale of participation are assumed to go beyond what is usually attainable in
more standard agenda-setting arenas. Participation often contributes towards
the value-added and shared ownership goals of foresight. EFMN admits a
couple of difficulties with the mapping of this dimension: Africa remains
underrepresented and was not even considered in the report’s title and re-
gional scope; participation in most of these exercises hovered from 50 to 200
participants, and diversity was difficult to assess. Therefore, while forecast-
ing has now become a mainstream activity for elite policy makers, the up-
swing in foresight requires greater accountability. This groundbreaking re-
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 153

port cycle bodes well for the pace of foresight activities and industry with the
exception of creating the broad anticipatory public space outlined. The
study’s own self-reported omissions encourage a future world ill-prepared to
embrace radical diversity and what Richard Iton has called the “Black Fan-
tastic” (2008, 16).
Iton points to an alternative future he defines as the black fantastic that re-
presents current political boundaries as “the minor-key sensibilities generat-
ed from the experiences of the underground . . . beyond the boundaries of the
modern” (2008, 16). This quote represents a filter for me as I flash back over
the last fifteen years of my journey as a minority forecaster and educator
about long-term thinking. Still in 2013, despite the election of an African
American—read multiracial—U.S. President who plays down his racial di-
versity, that the spaces to imagine racial identity and see minorities repre-
sented in the future have rarely made headway as a serious, sustained conver-
sation within the realms of foresight think tanks and forecasting outfits.
Silicon Valley, home of the forecasting hubs I studied, remains an insular
place where model minorities may thrive while those that have suffered the
most repression continue to reside at the gates of the fringes of a society that
glimpses their status with a shrug. Despite Silicon Valley philanthropic pub-
lic relations campaigns, aspiring undergraduates from less than Ivy League
universities are usually turned away for internships or entering positions,
where even “Cal State Nowhere?” in reference to the California university
state system has been uttered at alumni who have managed to break through
that elite barrier. 4 Still the black tax 5 persists as minorities in order to be
displayed in the future must show some exemplary quality that makes them
either extraordinary or a major threat requiring containment. I want to em-
power minority communities by making the tools of futures thinking more
accessible and visible in order to see themselves in the often closed-quarters
of forecasting where elite visionaries hunker down and hack out the future.
Even as forecasting think tanks such as the Institute for the Future proclaim
an open source work day on their Facebook page: “IFTF co-working starts in
10 minutes. Join us if you’re in Palo Alto!” their networked sentiment is
aimed at a rather small elite audience.
The black fantastic unsettles “the conventional notions of the political, the
public sphere, and civil society that depend on the exclusion of blacks and
other nonwhites from meaningful participation” (Iton 2008, 17). Against this
backdrop, I tell a story about foresight practices that could use an awakening
to the possibilities of the black fantastic. Instead of the scary black swans, the
wild card bad events that could happen in the future, why not propose black
foresight frames and black fantastics? I argue for re-framing foresight prac-
tices to take into account racial and multiple forms of identity as a futures
window for progressive change.
154 Lonny Avi Brooks

Too often, narratives of the future look towards a post-racial future as if

race, gender, and class no longer matter when social science research con-
firms the near millennial effects of hundreds of years of the persistence of
racial bias, discrimination, and socioeconomic echoes that will continue to
reverberate and affect life chances in the near and long term future. As
Wendy Chun contends, considering “race and/as technology” shifts “the fo-
cus from what is race to the how is race, from knowing race, to doing race by
emphasizing the similarities between race and technology” (2012, 38). Ima-
gining how race as a technology is constructed, denied, and projected into the
future offers possibilities for the black fantastic. If we take race as a practice,
something we do and project onto ourselves and others as a technique and
technology “that one uses even as one is used by it—a carefully crafted,
historically inflected system of tools, of mediation, or of ‘enframing’ that
builds history and identity” (Chun 2012, 38), then we can use the tools of
forecasting to intentionally map the contours to expand beyond token diver-
sity to navigate racial identity and racism.
While Jason Tester of the Institute for the Future coined an all-embracing
term for engagement with the future he refers to as “human-futures interac-
tion,” (Tester 2007; Pescovitz 2007, 1) a rigorous inquiry would explore its
alternate and subversive meanings. I want to reframe and interrogate more
deeply human-futures interaction as a set of tactics and literacy for under-
standing race as a technology and as racial identity futures interaction. Here,
I am inspired by the work of Philip, Irani, and Dourish in “Postcolonial
Computing: A Tacitical Survey” (2012), where race as technology is em-
braced as a tactical move to decenter privileged conceptions of ubiquitous
computing. This move strives to understand the complexity of racism in its
nuanced subtleties and abrupt shocks as a form of science fiction capital that
accrues and rapidly circulates.
The professional work of forecasting and long-term thinking has too often
been the provenance of think tanks whose existence depends on a complex
mix of support from multinational corporations, nonprofit foundations, and
government agencies. Together these entities already favor a specific set of
elite interests in how the future becomes real, ordinary, and taken for granted.
These stakeholders bid on the future and look to forecasting think tanks for
navigating and negotiating anticipatory landscapes in parallel with normative
and mirrored organizational interests. While glimmers of nonprofit outreach
work to address the lack of minority and impoverished voices is underway in
Silicon Valley and other contexts, the issue of strengthening anticipatory
democracy continually requires advocacy.
Between 1995 through 2012, as a communication graduate student and
scholar at UC San Diego and incoming professor at Cal State East Bay, I
interned, work with, interviewed, and traveled through one new media incu-
bator, Interval Research Corporation, and two major think tanks: 1) the Insti-
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 155

tute for the Future, and 2) the Global Business Network in the San Francisco
Bay area. By gaining access to these major hubs for forecasting the future
(i.e., in areas such as technology, business, and health), I was able to witness
and unpack how decisions about technology and communication futures are
shaped, enacted, and created by a set of powerful people working within a
particular and peculiar context and with a deeply embedded and carefully
massaged set of assumptions. My first stop circa 1995 was at Interval Re-
search Corporation created in 1992. Although Interval became defunct by
2002 as part of its ten-year mandate, Interval was funded by Paul Allen, the
co-founder of Microsoft and was an early player in incubating new digital
industries. Interval alumni continue to shape the evolving digital landscape
and culture.
The Institute for the Future, founded in 1968 by engineers at the RAND
corporation, a well-known and pivotal civil defense policy think tank, grew
within a specific context of forecasting the future of urban planning and
cities in the late 1960s. The Global Business Network (GBN) began in 1985
by a number of forecasters who previously worked for Stanford Research
International (SRI), Shell Oil, and the Whole Earth Review. Now acquired
by Monitor and Deloitte and Touche, GBN and its crew morphed into the
Long Now Foundation co-founded by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno. These
continuing centers and former nodes continue their roles and influence in
forecasting the future of digital culture. Their peer networks extend to popu-
lar culture and trade industry literature with frequent profiling of their ex-
ploits in magazines such as Wired, Fast Company, and Boing Boing to major
consulting roles in notable films like Minority Report and more recently in
serious gaming.
Even as some forecasting outfits address issues of poverty, conversations
about the sheer weight of racial oppression and its past seem to vanish as the
embedded computing algorithms of new imaginary future worlds favor the
already powerful and privileged. Forecasting captures present moments and
imagines their possibilities. These visions become templates for organiza-
tional thinking and for coding our anticipatory future behavior. The framing
of these visions tends to squeeze out the messiness of cultural histories and
the complexity of exclusion.
In retelling my journey as a minority forecaster, I critique how the future
stories being shaped favor erasures of race where a post-racial other predomi-
nates in a post-racial digital culture. The practices of forecasting continue
forms of racial exclusion and oppression anchored in the past to create new
threads of digital bigotry in its wake. Despite progressive scholarship in
forecasting, few academics have examined rituals of foresight as it is being
produced as its practitioners create narrow and less diverse images of a
tomorrow-land. We can do better in rethinking how forecasting works to
imagine our futures while simultaneously visualizing black fantastics of radi-
156 Lonny Avi Brooks

cally empowering and queer diversity. Queer in this instance means to “queer
the Infrastructure. . . . To queer: to challenge the basis on which categories
are constructed” from science technology studies scholar Susan Leigh Star. I
aim to queer the categories of forecasting, futures studies, and foresight as
they are practiced and as they relate to communication and other social
science disciplines. To engage in this analysis, Afrofuturism promises a use-
ful framework for re-framing current practices in foresight.
Afrofuturism combines science fiction and fantasy to re-examine how the
future is currently imagined and to re-construct futures thinking with deeper
insight into the black experience, especially as slavery forced Africans to
confront an alien world surrounded by colonial technologies (Dery 1994;
Eshun 2003). Dery (1994) characterizes this genre as African-American cul-
tural language that reinterprets images of technology and a “prosthetically
enhanced future” to take on the white technologies that have, like aliens,
enslaved and transported African people from one world to another one to
erase their past and remake their future. Cut off from their original cultures,
Africans in the colonial world endured that abrupt erasure by creating inno-
vative cultural and scientific strategies to reassert novel identities. The social
death of their origins transformed into shields of sonic vibration as music and
the vernacular of oppression turned into daily micro-practices of artistic iden-
tity, renewal, and solace. From the perspective of Afrofuturism, race is a
continual form of science fiction capital not completely biological or cultural
but a mix of science, art, culture, and fantasy.
This struggle retells how stories of the future can move beyond the nar-
row confines of Futures, Inc., a catch-all term I define as future imaginaries
designed to protect the status quo of organizational power over science fic-
tion capital. The forecasting I envision encompasses Afrofutures, stories with
expanded insight to provoke conversations about racial identity. We continue
to struggle with language for how Afrofutures can look. I grew up with Star
Trek in the early 1970s, the first televised show to portray diversity in the
future that still serves as a constrained benchmark for how to speak about
racial and social justice as a major forecasting objective. Afrofuturism as a
basic framework suggests promising directions for reinvigorating our lan-
guage to speak about racial identity in the deep past and long-term future.
Eshun declares that “[t]oday, however, power also functions through the
envisioning, management, and delivery of reliable futures” (2003, 289). This
power has roots in the ascendance of modern forecasting and in the founding
of the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in 1968. At an IFTF dinner in 1998, a
digital storytelling video premiered to celebrate its 30th anniversary as a
forecasting think tank.
During the anniversary dinner of IFTF’s 30th year, a videotape of IFTF’s
digital story presented the Institute’s direct relationship to the research cul-
tures at RAND and its think tank cousin SRI as well as to the counterculture
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 157

shared by its present leadership and co-founders. The story acknowledged its
influential forebear RAND and IFTF’s intimate connection to the early forms
of the Internet and the personal computer. The video unfurls a series of
images to accentuate how the 1960s influenced IFTF. Along with a smiling
image of Bob Dylan, the 1968 image of Olympic athletes appears of African
American Olympians, fists clenched in a Black Power salute, thrust defiantly
in the air. Former IFTF President Robert Johansen narrates the video and
emphasizes: “And I went to the seminary that Dr. King went to. I was there at
the time that he died. So right at that period, just as the Institute for the Future
was being formed, Dr. King was being shot. And I think the combination, the
juxtaposition of those events, had a lot to do with our image for the future of
the group.” With a nod, Johansen referenced MLK’s death as an inspiration
for building a progressive future. Historically, that memory symbolized the
peak of instability and the arrival of inner city rebellion—events that
prompted IFTF’s mission to contain and manage the future of urban life
although the dominance of African-American imagery hinted at a bleaker
truth.
Their vision barely acknowledges the aspirations of the surrounding
1960s protest movements that were, instead, seen as challenges to national
security from a Cold War world perspective. Paul Baran, the principal co-
founder of IFTF and recognized designer of the early Internet, held a long-
standing interest in urban defense at the RAND civil defense think tank prior
to starting IFTF. Baran expressed how RAND’s role in defending national
security expanded from a focus on external threats to a focus on the internal
challenges to societal order. By the mid 1960s the definition of “National
Security” was changing. The Watts Riots, civil disobedience, and violent
anti-war behavior growing in the campus were viewed as new threats to
social stability.
As Eshun argues “[t]he powerful employ futurists and draw power from
the futures they endorse, thereby condemning the disempowered to live in
the past. The present moment is stretching, slipping for some into yesterday,
reaching for others into tomorrow” (2003, 289). Baran’s stance during this
period displayed the imprint of RAND’s siege mentality where the macro-
cosm of U.S. interests incorporated its citizens as strategic assets and poten-
tial adversaries in the larger Cold War struggle. Despite his desire to move to
nonmilitary research, the persistence of an all-encompassing war footing
would continue. Even as he tangled with corporate bureaucracy, Baran urged
the expansion of the definition of National Security to encompass internal
security issues. He worked to broaden the definition of RAND’s National
Security charter to include problems of social unrest and law and order
issues.
At the beginning, IFTF’s forecasting work paralleled this intense concern
about repairing and reining in a fraying social order. Baran’s goals, while
158 Lonny Avi Brooks

laudable, portrayed the conservative tone of technological determinism. The

War on Poverty and focused work on simulating urban futures incorporated
the tenets of interdisciplinary war (Light 2003), the arsenal of cultural and
scientific tools, that fed a campaign of pacification against the urban inner
city riots at IFTF’s founding and were written into IFTF’s mission. IFTF’s
study of the future of cities, initiated in 1968, paralleled the Cold War obses-
sion with extending and equating nuclear war strategy and urban ghettos.
Tracy Augur, in 1946, gave a presentation to the New York chapter of the
American Institute of Planners, arguing for new scientific planning ap-
proaches in urban areas. Urban blight was likened to atomic bombs. He
called for studies of urban poverty that would equal our investment in nucle-
ar weaponry. With a combination of liberal intent and conservative military
rhetorical strategy, Augur argued that slums bred communism by creating
people alienated from capitalism and, therefore, ghettos represented a grave
security risk (Light 2003). As Baran would similarly comment a decade later,
blight and bombs could be avoided by urban dispersion, which he understood
as a necessary defense against internal enemies as equal in importance to an
external attack. The rhetoric imagined predominately black ghettos as the
internal Cold War enemy either to be rescued through disbanding, which
hinted at forms of internal exile, or simply erased and demolished.
IFTF, born out of a well-intentioned effort to distance itself from military
concerns, ironically extended RAND logic to securing the future internal
order of urban spaces. Marginality in IFTF’s story became a hip asset and a
form of coolness for its client futurist audience. Countercultural symbolism
became animated through icons of a hopeful idealism that sidestepped
IFTF’s military past. This story was not necessarily intended to deceive.
Johansen’s digital story was a reconstruction of a very personal, selective
memory based on and categorized from the perspectives of a powerful elite
group of managers of a forecasting network. Its logic sound, its practices
credible for its audience, IFTF’s A Look into the Past projected a different
story, a story that celebrated the counterculture but disguised its fear of 1960s
Black rebellion. Even as Nichelle valiantly stayed in her role on Star Trek,
the framing of futures research sought to deny her future persona.
Unfortunately, during the post-Star Trek TV series years, many of the
forecasts and the forecasting sages I have witnessed look absurdly ethnically
homogeneous across this field, and in the future scenarios created by the
foresight industry, even as our national and global societies become increas-
ingly diverse. The question for all futures professionals, business trend mak-
ers, and communicators who are translating the latest technological and sci-
entific studies for the rest of us is to wonder if we can avoid creating a future
where we continue to pretend as if race does not belong in the future. With-
out a language for articulating and expanding racial and other identity futures
interaction, we will fail to lift our collective prosperity.
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 159

The persistent and nagging question that kept looming during my visits to
the futurist labs and think tanks was: where are all the folks like me, the
multi-racial people of color, in these futures? Forecasters continue to cele-
brate the varied and largely homogenous cultures (i.e., China, Japan, and
some European countries) and stories of trendy innovation while the discus-
sion of racial minorities closer to home locally and nationally in the future
appears to vanish. However, in those instances when they do appear, it is as a
part of chaotic disruptions that have to be managed by some vague invisible
hand of a corporate power. The continuing legacy of our ghettos, now and
into the future, serves our system as centers for calculation where we can
exclude and confine the Others to perpetual underemployment and outside
the corridors of power.
As the future scenarios I witnessed continue to unfold and start to take
actual shape in the present, the large absence of racial minorities and the
neglected consideration of racial dilemmas in high level discussions of or-
ganizational long term thinking is depressing. The future racial divide and its
troubling implications were vividly on rare display in a recent film to address
the future of the poorer 99 percent. The year 2154 as depicted in the film
Elysium starring Matt Damon shows a stark panoramic view of the earth as
one large mega-shanty town wrecked and ravaged by global climate change
and inhabited by a largely Spanish-speaking majority. In contrast and in high
orbit around our planet, the elite eternally youthful French-speaking minority
live in a luxurious earth-like space habitat. The film shows the attempts of
the earth bound to penetrate this orbiting paradise and at least heal their
damaged bodies with DNA repair via MRI-like machines.
Although the final scenes of the film show a startling reversal of fortune
and we get our Hollywood Robin Hood ending, one is still left with the
nagging sensation that, despite the sympathetic treatment of the earthbound
poor, that the barbarians had come to power. As the Latino leader of the
immigrant space smuggling ring now issued orders to the Androids that had
enslaved him, I wondered if they would do any better than the elite they
overthrew. The film still perpetuates the images of minorities who will sim-
ply continue the logic of inherited power they have decimated. As a glimpse
into 2154, the forecasting industry of the long term thinking professional can
rest assured that their services will still be used to protect the fortunes of
entrenched and powerful interests over the next one hundred years.
As a participant-observer of IFTF from 1998 to 2001, I gained access to
this futurist-making enterprise and was able to study it from a critical cultural
perspective. With the procession of futures created for various clients, I
longed to view a future that acknowledged my own blended ethnic and
cultural diversity and sexual orientation within the range of normative sce-
narios outlined. I discovered in the historical archives of founding members
of the Institute for the Future, the face of pervasive ethnic fear in their early
160 Lonny Avi Brooks

rhetoric of the future for containing and circumscribing African-American

urban anger as if it were an internal communist threat, a fear that existed
during the early years of IFTF in 1968. In the last ten years of my journey
through some of the most central forecasting think tanks in the world, I saw
the continuing danger of elites managing a future in a cocoon to preserve
their status quo against their own self-fulfilling prophecies of an increasingly
balkanized, segregated, and divisive world.
In terms of measuring the future, I define forecasting as the attempt to
map out how human society, and especially forms of communication, will
evolve over the near and long term future: i.e., 10 to 50 and 100 years and
even 10,000 years ahead in time. Current forecasting industry practices gen-
erally play it conservatively at 10 years ahead. More radical practices in the
field have started to challenge this pace. Time horizons and longer trajecto-
ries from 5,000 to 10,000 years in the future have entered into wider public
forums as organizations like the Long Now Foundation seek to create a
cathedral-like 10,000-year clock monument. New educational efforts are es-
tablishing that time-range as a priority including the Long Term and Futures
Thinking Project at Cal State East Bay. Most forecasting and futures think
tanks do not look nearly that long into the future; usually it is under the 50-
year time horizon. Our stories about the future are saturated with the near
term future where issues of racial identity are often pushed aside in favor of
an expanded and transcended identity beyond the human body. Matt Damon
in 2154 embodied that fictional Christ-like cyborg who redeems our fate.
Even in this transcendence, racial identity still gets read as a white crusader.
The venerable sage of futures wisdom at the Long Now Foundation,
Stewart Brand and his executive staff, have started to make strides in sup-
porting greater public outreach about the long term future. As partners with
the Long Term and Futures thinking project at California State University,
East Bay, they have offered their name and profile in highlighting efforts to
reach more diverse audiences to engage in long term thinking exercises. This
effort could begin a more sustained effort in offering counter-futures to the
usual future scenarios that protect white privilege in their erasure of multicul-
tural and ethnic diversity. While I acknowledge that this post-racial trend
may be changing, the pace is slow and the counter-futures too few to serve as
viable competing narratives.
With generous respect to the Long Now Foundation, I take issue with
Stewart Brand’s particular framing of long term thinking and forecasting that
tends to favor a journalistic objectivity that ignores some recent advances in
the social sciences and in qualitative research—the observance and study of
culture and groups of people. Until the 1990s, the field of forecasting and
foresight privileged technological and quantitative physical sciences at the
expense of social sciences and the social study of science, of how human
cultures adapt and repurpose technology. While humanism and the use of
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 161

storytelling anthropological perspectives have entered into the jargon and

methodologies of forecasting, the avoidance of addressing the messiness of
racial assumptions has resulted in bland, underwhelming forecasts about
technocultural futures of diversity. Brand has simultaneously forwarded the
field while constraining more critical conversations about the persistence of
“wicked problems” (Ramos, Mansfield, and Priday 2012, 72; Rittel and
Webber 1973) by ignoring the future of race, class, and gender.
Brand writes in his foundational manifesto for the Long Now foundation,
The Clock of the Long Now, that the difference between real futurists or
forecasters and soothsayers or amateur, unprofessional forecasters involves
their inability to distinguish desire from their “ruthless curiosity about the
world and what is truly going on in it, not from their politics” (Brand 1999,
113). While I agree in principle with looking at the long term future with
curiosity and boldness rather than imagining and longing for an elusive uto-
pian world, what Brand states next troubles me as a social scientist in his
labeling of forecasters with progressive agendas as “futurismo.” Specifically,
this is what he views as those held captive by ideology as if the state of
forecasting is not already captivated and enthralled with capitalistic innova-
tion branding.
Brand proclaims with sympathy, “Futurismists are not bad people, and
certainly not fraudulent. If anything they are captive of their goodness. High-
minded and earnest, they have meetings to determine ‘the goals of human-
kind,’ and to advance worthy causes such as feminism, multiculturalism, and
a world free from hunger” (Brand 1999, 112). So if professional forecasters
express interests and a stance in the social scientific pursuit of social justice,
then they are immediately suspect as biased forecasters in his view?
Brand continues that “The distinguishing trait of futurismists is that they
have an agenda: something they want to have happen or something they want
to prevent from happening in the future, often based on a particular ideology,
political bent, theory of history, or special interest” (Brand 1999, 113). He
refers to the forecasters I have interviewed, Peter Schwartz, former head of
the Global Business Network and Paul Saffo, former director at IFTF, as
liberal and as ideal leaders in the field because they were able to hold their
politics in check to exhibit a rigorous sophisticated curiosity. Great! I could
accept that statement with greater ease if their visions were not already
enmeshed in the elite worlds they have lived in themselves for some time
personally and in the organizations they advise. Moreover, they are some of
the most well-known and progressive futurists in the field! Although these
fellows attracted me to futures studies in the first place, they, nevertheless,
bring the ironic contradictions of white privilege with them too, what Peggy
McIntosh (1988, 31) calls the “invisible weightless knapsack.” David Mum-
by aptly describes this knapsack as “the set of privileges and practices white
people carry around them that protect them from everyday injustices” (Mum-
162 Lonny Avi Brooks

by 2013, 239). Communication scholars and social studies of science re-

searchers have revealed over the last thirty years the continuing fallibility and
bias inherent in maintaining objectivity that is itself a means of excluding
and including relevant facts and tacit, intangible experiences. What we frame
inevitably leaves something out of view and mind. Forecasting is no different
in this respect.
Brand places futurismists who advocate feminism and multiculturalism
on the same playing field as cult-like messianic futurist groups: “Some hive
off into sectlike groups, such as the Extropians-a 01990s California enclave
of bright and enthusiastic Singularity advocates who could hardly wait for
the techno-Rapture. They have a classic case of what Paul Saffo calls macro-
myopia: ‘we overexpect dramatic developments early, and underexpect them
in the longer term’” (Brand 1999, 113). While I admire Stewart Brand and
his work in provoking us into dialogue about the long term especially in
making it a mainstream professional endeavor, he has mistakenly lagged
behind what social science has to offer to the forecasting world. While Futu-
rismo may not be what we need, what we require are more social science
frameworks that take the future seriously.
I call these Cultural and Critical Foresight Frames inspired by efforts to
further the intellectual development of Afrofuturism. Forecasting and fore-
sight have close similarities with communication fields such as advertising
and public relations. Imagining the future and its accruing science fiction
capital circulates as a powerful form of social currency in various genres of
media such as popular culture, advertisements, magazine articles, film,
books, and television about what the near term future promises. Worlds of
the near future abound while deeper long-term thinking lags behind and takes
up less space in this ecosystem of future stories. Forecasting professionals
and their audiences of managers, scientists, and engineers breathe in these
future visions, ones they have grown up with in forging our ubiquitous com-
puting environment today.
By the 1990s, I felt uncanny recurrences of alien invasion as the Internet
became more accessible and the future scenarios of what it might do enacted
another form of enslavement by the exclusion and erasure of lower class,
non-model minorities in forecasts of undulating computer rhythms. Afrofu-
turism is the accompanying story of the countercultural memory to rewrite
and remind us of what the official future scenarios of think tank forecasting
often forget. Critical and Cultural Forecasting Frames based on my own
experiences in the forecasting industry and re-read from an Africological
perspective offer approaches for re-reading and re-mapping assumptions and
the self-fulfilling promises for how technology and communication futures
are shaped, enacted, created, and circulated. Forecasting as a practice and as
part of a set of assumptions in popular culture about how the future will take
place is increasingly being translated into digital algorithms for predicting
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 163

our behavior. Future oriented forecasts and scenarios about the future make
promises for how that future might look by capturing moments and snapshots
in our lives.
As these glimpses of the future are captured, they leave out too much on
the cutting room floor and the messy discarded notions of culture that add to
the sensuality of real life. Instead of erasing culture and race, what can we
gain by celebrating the black fantastic? I borrow from the language and
methods of future scenarios, usually told as a set of three narratives about the
near term future. The logic of this method asserts that the actual future is
bound to contain elements of all three. I flip this methodology around to hold
forecasting and foresight up for scrutiny and transformative accountability.

CONCLUSION

With each future story I encounter and experience, I reflect and deconstruct it
with three lenses. First, Foresight Frame Scenario One—Futures, Inc. Unlim-
ited, which entails the relentless promotion of Futures, Inc. projects a short-
term future of a ubiquitous digital presence in the model of permanent capi-
talistic expansion. Stories about the near term future assemble a language of
branding and mining resources vying to become normal aspects of our daily
present as promises and sets of expectations (Berkhout 2006). I found myself
restricted in this view of forecasting as well, that thinking about the next 100
years or 10,000 was too difficult to translate or envision for my students. My
own conception of long-term thinking had become constrained by this cur-
rency of short-term future sells (read spreadsheet cells) of narrow slices of
myopic possibilities.
In my analysis of the various sets of future visions and case studies, I
view them as competing bids on the near to long term future, similar to
advertising although distinct. I witnessed how as popular narratives they get
produced, distributed, and adopted by various stakeholders. The future as a
story is an easily distributed commodity, although how that vision is made
and for what purposes, is not always transparent. The idyllic Elysium images
of a space colony, a beautiful wheel shaped habitat revolving on its own axis
with a gleaming artificial earth-like atmosphere captured my imagination as a
metaphor for the race for the future where only a few will benefit from the
few prognosticators who are given the power to shape temporal landscapes.
Second at play is the Foresight Frame and Scenario Two—Futures, Inc.
Performed/Performative. This frame views Futures, Inc. as an evolving series
of theater-like and performance spectacles that combine into a moral and
economic force. Future visions project and act out economic and moral val-
ue. Jan English-Lueck (2006) indicates how communicating about the future
as artifacts and tools of foresight provides knowledge workers with more
164 Lonny Avi Brooks

tangible pathways to signify their processes of innovation. Foresight takes on

special currency and power especially in a region where buildings are often
nondescript and where digital work is not easily showcased in three-dimen-
sional form. Foresight shapes digital culture by constantly projecting its fu-
ture value. And the think tanks I studied avidly engaged performance genres
for enacting the future for their clients. The future as a spectacle acted out
future dilemmas on stage, in games, and on the walls as colorful displays of
imagined organizational power taking shape.
Future imagined carries performative weight as well as we construct Fu-
tures, Inc. fantasies through our daily actions. While performance is about
acting out parts in a play, performativity examines how we construct our
identities through micropractices or daily rituals. Our smartphones afford
opportunities to assimilate to our science fiction dreams while reducing our
gazes into one form of human computer and human futures interaction. We
tend to forget that computing is a culture open to re-editing as well and
therein resides our loss of power in understanding what Tarleton Gillespie
has called the relevance of algorithms. The force, power, or nommo (Jackson
2003; Woodyard 2003) of our laws becomes hidden from sight and embed-
ded in our digital artifacts and in the circulating science fiction capital that
promotes continual binaries of constrained future paths.
I played the role of minority forecaster and the Other non-white futurist.
As a participant-observer assimilating to the professional culture of forecast-
ing, I arrived with quiet access and muted voice. I expanded my role as a
promise champion of the future and then realized how I was being seen and
categorized as less than equal, as a minority seeking to be included. With the
dot.com crash in 2001, I then channeled to my “appropriate place” as teacher
reformer at a state university and even this relatively academic elite status is
conveniently labeled to preserve racial distinctions and forms of power. Lisa
Nakamura’s conception of cybertypes reveals the tenacious grip of race cate-
gories in cyberspace. Similarly, Nakamura’s label provides a useful path for
tracing Futuretypes in forecasting as profiles of our imagined future selves,
human beings and digital artifacts and what they represent socially and where
they are situated in terms of status as desired, feared, and erased forms of
humanity.
Foresight Frame and Scenario Three—Queering Futures, Inc. is the third
lens in which current future visions project racial, segregated, and elite future
landscapes. The demographics of forecasting, who forecasts the future and
towards what ends, re-enforce beliefs of racial segregation and discrimina-
tion. Creating a language for queering the future involves retelling and cri-
tiquing the forecasts already being deployed and forecasts in the making. We
can augment visions of anticipatory democracy as a vital social network for
purposes of social justice and diversity in bringing forth Afrofuture frames
and tactics. Africological theories see ntu, universal life rhythms and the
 Playing a Minority Forecaster in Search of Afrofuturism 165

holistic human being and “treat human behaviors as manifestions of the

spirit/forces behind and between words, images, illusions and other signs”
(Woodyard 2003, 21). I have arrived back from the future to retell a number
of stories and for each story I discuss about my sojourn in the forecasting
world, I examine how it reflects the promises of a Futures, Inc. Unlimited
and a Futures, Inc. Performed/Performativity and how any good story of the
future can be queered from an Afrofutures 2.0 perspective.

NOTES

1. The field of strategic long-term thinking is known by a variety of names from futurism
to forecasting to foresight, a term popular in Europe and gaining currency in the United States.
For the purposes of this chapter, I refer to futures work and long-term thinking as forecasting or
foresight.
2. Fisher, Mark. 2000. SF Capital. Themepark magazine.
3. NPR Interview January 17, 2011. Nichelle Nichols: “And his face got very, very serious.
And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, I told Gene just yesterday that I’m
going to leave the show after the first year because I’ve been offered - and he stopped me and
said: You cannot do that. And I was stunned. He said, don’t you understand what this man has
achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. He says, do
you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little
children to stay up and watch. I was speechless.”
4. One self-report from Rich Cline, an alumnus of Cal State East Bay based in Hayward,
California, related his successful journey into public relations and his mayoral candidacy for
Menlo Park, an upscale suburb of Silicon Valley. At a meeting to announce his first, now
successful bid for mayor, he reported his educational credentials. A spectator sarcastically
interjected “Cal State Nowhere?” (2010, alumnus visit and interview). And this incident oc-
curred with a very successful white male in the PR business and founder of Voce Communica-
tions, acquired by Porter Novelli.
5. The “black tax” refers to the well referenced notion in African-American culture that
black people must demonstrate their talents and exert twice as much effort to be recognized for
their achievements compared to white people and other exemplary minorities.

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 Chapter Nine

Rewriting the Narrative

Communicology and the
Speculative Discourse of Afrofuturism

David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

The title of this volume, Afrofuturism 2.0, is a doubly dehumanizing concept.

First, Afrofuturism responds to a society in which the black body is invisible
and, second, Web 2.0 overlooks the human body in favor of the machines
they sit behind. Resistances to either of these dominant cultural discourses
reduce the black body to “disembodied different at a distance” (Catt 2001,
293), a handicap to Afrofuturist interpretation and inquiry. The human sci-
ence of communicology combats these dehumanizing trends by first, ap-
proaching the speculative discourse of Afrofuturism as an embodied event
that foregrounds the experience of invisibility and, second, inviting Afrofu-
turism into a methodologically-rigorous discourse that preserves—and privi-
leges—its experiential roots.
This chapter proposes communicology as a theoretical and methodologi-
cal framework for understanding Afrofuturism as speculative discourse with-
in the context of Africology. With Richard Lanigan, this chapter defines
communicology as a science of human communication that “refocuses atten-
tion on the performance and practice of persons communicating” (Lanigan
1992, 2). Communicology seeks to understand human discourse and interac-
tion as embodied practices that situate people within their worlds. The act of
expressing oneself reveals cultural codes (i.e., race, gender, and sexuality)
which, in turn, shape and constitute the expressive body. Communicology’s
method of explicating “human consciousness and behavioral embodiment as
discourse within global culture” 1 allows for the study of Afrofuturism as not

167
168 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

only “the speculative fiction of the African diaspora” (Thomas 2000) but also
the diasporic transmission of the experience of blackness.
Communicology shares with Africological theory its attention to the in-
ventive power of language to define “what it means to be human in inhumane
contexts” (Woodyard 2003, 133). For communicology, inhumane contexts
reduce the experience of communication to information transmission. For
Africology, inhumane contexts, like those described by Ellison in Invisible
Man, exclude the black experience from the dominant and rational cultural
discourse. Afrofuturism rewrites the discursive narratives of inhumane con-
texts through critical examination of cultural artifacts of the black experi-
ence.
All three frameworks are theoretically linked as not only areas of scholar-
ly pursuit, but also ways of understanding our being-in-the-world. Africology
begins with the ontological study of the “life and cultural experiences of
African peoples” (Woodyard 2003, 133). Communicology begins with cultu-
ral experiences in order to understand the ontological nature of human com-
munication. Afrofuturism begins with cultural artifacts of the black experi-
ence and rewrites the ontology of the narrative of the “whitewashed” West
(Yaszek 2005, 297). Similarly, while Africology works from “Afrocentric
tendencies in the exploration of human texts” (Woodyard 2003, 133), com-
municology begins by bracketing these tendencies in order to identify their
ontological origins, and Afrofuturism provides critical yet constructive direc-
tion for reworking these tendencies.
Woodyard writes that Africology demonstrates that “viewing human ac-
tivity from some constructed African vantage is a sensible, reliable option for
reading human experiences” (Woodyard 2003, 135) where the “prevailing
ideology . . . is centering in a configuration of African ideals and values”
(Woodyard 2003, 143). Likewise, communicology concerns how constructed
vantages come to infuse experiences with meaning. While Africology is
grounded in a particular (in its attention to particular communities), yet col-
lective (in its continental scope) vantage that it constructs through theory,
communicology is grounded in a universal (in its attention to human experi-
ence), yet individual (in its attention to individual human conscious experi-
ence) method that brackets all vantage points to study pure conscious experi-
ence. As theoretical foundations for Afrofuturism, Africology and communi-
cology provide new insights into relationships among race, gender, sexuality,
and technology in human communication, where “Afrofuturism and thinking
about the future will take on the local characteristics of an African population
as it evolves in relation to technology” (Anderson and Jennings 2014, 36).
Communicology is thus theoretically and methodologically compatible
with the call of Africological communication studies for a “conversation
about humanizing tendencies” (Woodyard 2003, 135). Communicology, like
Africology, assumes that human knowledge is a byproduct of human culture.
 Rewriting the Narrative 169

For Africology, culture is the “operative value in understanding human com-

munication” and, for communicology, communication is the ground of cul-
ture and culture the ground of communication.
With this dialectic of expression—the literature of Afrofuturism—and
culture—the transcendent, speculative transmission of its signs and codes—
as a methodological starting point, this chapter proceeds with two major
sections. First, we frame the intellectual origins of communicology as a
liberating hermeneutic, and introduce the methodology of communicology as
a way to engage Afrofuturist discourse. Second, we review the recent litera-
ture on Afrofuturism as a critical method and liberating hermeneutic that,
with communicology as a theoretical and methodological framework, can
rewrite the narrative of human experience through mainstream academic
discourse.

COMMUNICOLOGY AS LIBERATING HERMENEUTIC 2

In the famous first and last paragraphs of Invisible Man, a seminal Afrofutur-
ist novel (Yaszek 2005), Ralph Ellison refers to communication as an em-
bodied human experience. In the first paragraph, Ellison writes, “I am an
invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe;
nor am I one of those Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of sub-
stance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to
possess a mind” (Ellison 1952, 3). In the last paragraph, he concludes, “Be-
ing invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what
else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when
your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who
knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” (Ellison 1952,
581). In both cases, invisibility results from a “phenomenological slippage”
(Yancey 2008, 76) between being black and cultural perceptions of the black
body, from being not only invisible, but also divisible by and dispossessed
from the rational discourse of a “whitewashed” society (Yaszek 2005, 297).
Much like Ellison, communicologists place communication and culture at the
bookends of human existence, and treat spooks, ectoplasms, and human bod-
ies as not things, but signs of human experience. With this in mind, we now
draw on the work of Richard Lanigan, Jacqueline Martinez, and Isaac Catt,
among others, to explicate the a) intellectual origins and b) semiotic pheno-
menological method of communicology.
Intellectual Origins of Communicology. 3 The scope of communicology
extends from mass communication and media studies to public relations and
political economy—“whenever and wherever the signs and codes of culture
impact on the perception of bodily expressive modes.” 4 The term has since
been applied in the context of family communication (Eicher-Catt 2005),
170 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

female/feminine embodiment (Eicher-Catt 2001), and racial relations (Catt

2001). Communicology offers a human-centered approach to conscious ex-
perience that rivals social scientific and behavioralist approaches that reify
culture (Klyukanov 2010) and reduce communication to message and mind
to mechanism (Catt 2010). The origins of communicology emerged a century
ago and reside in a large and disparate literature within the phenomenological
human science tradition of William James (1842–1910) and Wilbur Marshall
Urban (1873–1952) in America, and Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), Roman
Jakobson (1896–1982), Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), and Michel Foucault
(1926–1984) in Europe. As a term for the study of the discourse of human
communication, communicology emerged in the late 1950s alongside the
social science of communication as a “product” of Continental phenomenol-
ogy of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(1908–1961) and the American pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce
(1839–1914) (Eicher-Catt and Catt 2010, 20) with the work of, among oth-
ers, Franklin Knower and Elwood Huey Allen Murray, and later, with the
publication of Joseph DeVito’s Communicology: An Introduction to the
Study of Communication in 1978 (Lanigan 1988, 209).
The primary contemporary theoretician of communicology is Richard
Lanigan, whose works, The Semiotic Phenomenology of Rhetoric (1984),
The Phenomenology of Communication (1988), and The Human Science of
Communicology (1992), codified the study of communication into a human
science of embodied discourse that “refocuses attention on the performace
and practice of persons communicating” (Lanigan 1992, 2). Communicology
achieved formal recognition as a discipline in 2000 with the founding of the
International Communicology Institute by Richard Lanigan at Southern Illi-
nois University. As defined by the International Communicology Institute,
communicology is a human science of communication that, using the re-
search methods of semiotics and phenomenology, investigates human con-
scious experience as constituted through embodied and culturally-embedded
discursive practices. 5 This definition synthesizes the semiotics of Foucault
and Peirce and the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty to account
for the experience of human communication with methodological rigor.
From the perspective of communicology, then, Ellison’s concept of invis-
bility is a product of the Web 2.0 world’s reduction of culture to technologi-
cal capacity. A human science of communication, communicology attempts
to liberate “the existentially humane from obscurity in an Information Age
(Catt 2011, 123) by focusing on not message transmission between disem-
bodied automatons—or invisible men—but on the conscious experience of
communicating with another person. Communicology presupposes that com-
munication, whether face-to-face or technologically-mediated, 1.0 or 2.0, is
not a mere transfer of information among machines, but a lived experience
performed in and through the human body (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 17).
 Rewriting the Narrative 171

Following the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, communicology presumes

language as the origin of conscious experience. It approaches human com-
munication as an embodied practice, an experience made meaningful or ren-
dered meaningless by cultural signs and discursive codes. The human body
relies on these signs and codes to express itself and, through expression, the
body is shaped and changed by the signs and codes.
Communicology examines this “reversible, reciprocal, and reflexive na-
ture of the ‘expressive and perceptive body’” (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 17)
embedded in a culture that grounds communication (Catt, forthcoming).
However, communication and expression are not reversible in conscious
experience. Communication requires expression but, as Ellison shows, ex-
pression may not result in communication, especially if the speaker is outside
the rational or mainstream discourse. Communication is a goal and possibil-
ity of expression, never an assumption or probability of ignorance. Because
cultural signs and discursive codes are meaningless until embodied, the pos-
sibilities of communication depend on the human body expressive of signs
and codes: “As an experience, communication is invisible. The constraints of
discourse on communicative possibility are, then, the substantive objects” of
communicology (Catt, forthcoming). The focus of communicology is not the
invisible body, but an embodied sign of invisibility.
Another fundamental presupposition of communicology is that communi-
cation is intertwined with culture, and culture with consciousness: “Commu-
nication and culture are reversible in conscious experience” (Catt, forthcom-
ing). Communication is the ground of culture and culture the ground of
communication or, as Jacqueline Martinez writes, the synthesis of communi-
cation and culture is “what gives us our ever-evolving and dynamic sense of
self as a person” (Martinez 2011, 117). To communicate is to embody certain
signs and codes that are shared by another in culture. We make sense of
perceptions in the lived world by reifying them into “concepts and, because
concepts cannot speak for themselves” (Catt, forthcoming) they must be
spoken to be communicated. Mere analysis of texts, objects, behaviors, and
cultural artifacts overlooks this experience of communication (Catt, forth-
coming).
Instead, communicology treats the act of communication as an event, the
embodiment of signs in culture. For instance, Isaac Catt describes an initial
encounter with a “stranger,” the intercultural unknown, to illustrate the rela-
tionship of communication to culture. In asking whether an unfamiliar other
thinks the way oneself does, one does so in the context of “normally antici-
pated reciprocities of consciousness” (Catt 2001, 293) where the other is
familiar and known. One creates context for encountering the other through
experience, not abstract rules that can never “be perfectly followed, even if
unconsciously recognized” (Catt 2001, 298). In this case, communication is
an experience of the other, a “stranger” embedded in culture. At the same
172 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

time, every word we speak “is an encounter with an Other. . . . The stranger
is already within” (Catt, forthcoming).
The communicological approach, as illustrated by Catt’s explication of
the “stranger” code, is of particular importance for the Afrofuturist project
because it, first, liberates discourse from the handicap of the stranger code by
beginning with the stranger in oneself and, second, it reflects a “felt need to
reflect the common, cultural sense of things, rather than interrogating . . . a
rationality of discourse” (Eicher-Catt and Catt 2008, 119) that “imposes its
own version of consciousness upon experience by suggesting that equality
exists” (Catt 2001, 311) where there is only invisibility. Afrofuturism, then,
is an embodied meaning played out in personal experience and cultural dis-
course. The signs and codes that infuse experience with meaning often go
unexamined in a taken-for-granted “natural attitude” (Martinez 2011, 117)
that infuses cultural consciousness with commonsense. Communicology ex-
amines this relationship between the signs and codes that infuse culture with
a shared common experience, and the ways those experiences are discursive-
ly expressed both individually and collectively.
This approach is particularly applicable to Web 2.0, where the speed and
hypertextual nature of communicative technologies promote “present shock”
(Rushkoff 2013), and intellectual superficiality (Carr 2011). To discuss how
the presuppositions of communicology play out in Web 2.0, we outline four
levels of discourse—intrapersonal (self), interpersonal (self-other), social
(group-organizational), and intergroup (cultural)—that together form the
background of communicology’s experiential approach to communication
and culture. Proposed in the 1950s by Jurgen Ruesch in his seminal work,
Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (1951) and further expli-
cated by Ruesch and Gregory Bateson in Semiotic Approaches to Human
Relations (1972), the levels are a reaction to the Western tendency to reduce
communication to technicalities of information transmission. They account
for human social existence as a dependent hierarchy where each level presup-
poses the prior, and embodiment of signs at an intrapersonal, subjective level
is a prerequisite for intersubjective understanding at the interpersonal, group,
or cultural level (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010).
The first domain, intrapersonal (self), begins within the body and con-
cerns issues of subjectivity, consciousness, and identity formation (Catt and
Eicher-Catt 2010, 20). The intrapersonal domain provides a foundation for
increasingly complex human relationships. Within the self network of dis-
course, one engages in a dialogue within oneself in which subjectivity is
inextricably intertwined with intersubjectivity, the self with other. The sec-
ond domain, interpersonal (self-other) begins in this relationship of self and
other, or “ratio” of individual embodiedness to shared cultural experience
(Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 18). In the interpersonal level, communication
 Rewriting the Narrative 173

becomes more complex as it meets other people and personal perception

meets others’ experience and behavior (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 18).
The third domain, social (group-organizational), concerns how discursive
practices within institutions and organizations are constituted through intra-
and interpersonal networks (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 18). The group level
increases again in complexity. Although intrapersonal and dyadic interper-
sonal domains exist within the group, as the number of people increases, the
human body becomes increasingly abstracted and subject to non-human
forces. The fourth domain, intergroup, begins with culture and concerns how
shared cultural experiences are intersubjectively constructed through dis-
course. In the intergroup level, the human body is further abstracted from its
expressive capacities and categorized according to technological affordances.
Approaches to mass communication that focus on affordances often begin
at the intergroup level and overlook the ways in which these technologies
reorient human consciousness at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group
levels of human experience (Catt 2010). The levels provide a framework for
studying the relationship between communication and culture that adequately
accounts for this complexity of human experience. Codes, contexts, and mes-
sages are synthesized in cultures, society, and self as embodied and experi-
enced communication (Catt 2011, 128). In sum, these four levels ground
communicology as a liberating hermeneutic that frees the experience of com-
munication from quantification and reification in a Web 2.0 world. Before
reviewing the complementary aspects of Afrofuturism as a liberating herme-
neutic that frees the experience of blackness from Euro-centric visions of the
past, we outline the semiotic phenomenological method to show what com-
municology looks like in practice.
Communicology and the Semiotic Phenomenological Method. Communi-
cology’s “paradigm exemplar” and method of inquiry is semiotic phenome-
nology (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 20). For communicology, “the complex-
ity of communication stems from the fact that its occurrence is both a semiot-
ic-cultural process and a phenomenologically-embodied event in a social
context” (Catt 2011, 133). Semiotic phenomenology synthesizes semiotics—
the study of signs and sign-systems—and phenomenology—the study of hu-
man conscious experience—to examine how the signs that guide our experi-
ence of the social world come to be through embodied practices of communi-
cation. Using recordings of speech, written texts, and videos of behavior,
semiotic phenomenological inquiry proceeds in three steps: Description, Re-
duction, and Interpretation.
The Description describes an experience, the Reduction reduces the De-
scription to experience in consciousness, and the Interpretation interprets the
meaning of the experience itself. Rather than beginning with potentially
problematic presuppositions, semiotic phenomenological inquiry starts with
conscious experience and works backward to identify the presuppositions
174 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

that infuse experience with meaning. In the Description one brackets all
presuppositions that may distort an accurate description of an experience. In
the Reduction, one reduces the Description to its essential parts free of the
subject’s emotions. In the Interpretation, one identifies the presuppositions
that were initially bracketed. We now discuss each of these three steps,
beginning with the Description.
Description. Description, the first step in the semiotic phenomenological
method, is an “initial account: or awareness of a lived-through experience, a
‘depiction’” (Lanigan 1992, 36) of what a phenomenon is. It is the act of
describing a lived-through and interpersonal experience of a phenomenon in
which one recognizes meaning in oneself, in one’s relations to others, and in
the situation in which one is enrooted (Lanigan 1992, 36). The description
focuses on experience (Lanigan 1988, 173) by asking “What am I experienc-
ing?” or “What am I conscious of?” and answering the question by stating
“To me, it is” (Lanigan 1992, 36). German philosopher Edmund Husserl
called this step the epoché, the act of “unplugging” or “bracketing” percep-
tions to keep out extraneous presuppositions and preconceived notions.
Reduction. Reduction, the second step in the semiotic phenomenological
method, reduces the description to a definition or essence of human commu-
nication (Lanigan 1992, 2). It is an awareness of an awareness of a lived-
through experience that gives a “fundamental account” of how the initial
account is meaningful. It focuses on experience in consciousness (Lanigan
1988, 173) by asking, “How am I experiencing, or “What would other peo-
ple, who know me, say I am conscious of?” and answering the question with,
“To me, myself, it is” (Lanigan 1992, 36). For instance, if the Description is
the act of looking up a word in the dictionary, the Reduction is the act of
looking up a meaning in an encyclopedia.
Interpretation. Interpretation, the third and final step in the phenomeno-
logical method, is the act of interpreting the reduced description. It focuses
on experience itself (Lanigan 1988, 174) by asking, “Why am I experienc-
ing?” or “What would I, who know myself, have said I am truly conscious
of?” and answering the question by stating, “To me, myself, I judge it to
be . . . ” (Lanigan 1992, 37). In this step, one reinterprets the description to
identify the presuppositions that made up the experience.
In her 2011 book, Communicative Sexualities: A Communicology of Sex-
ual Experience, Jacqueline Martinez offers an applied example of the semiot-
ic phenomenological method in a classroom setting. Working in groups,
students first identify a phenomenon, or “anything experienced that becomes
meaningful” (Martinez 2011, 114). In the context of human sexuality, phe-
nomena may include the experience of sexual desire, power, regret, or fulfill-
ment, or the “experience of being sexually objectified,” or the “experience of
having sexual desire that is at odds with social expectations” (Martinez 2011,
114). Having decided on a phenomenon, groups then divide into pairs. Each
 Rewriting the Narrative 175

member of the pair interviews the other about a particular experience related
to the phenomenon. Both the interviewer and interviewee write a narrative,
or description, of the experience. While the narrative written by the inter-
viewer is often more direct, descriptive, and free of justificatory language,
the narrative of the interviewee, the person who experienced the phenome-
non, often focuses more on a rationale for the behavior than the experience
itself. By comparing the two narratives, students become aware of the extent
to which their description of an experience is clouded by biases and precon-
ceptions. Students have now entered the epoché and performed the first step
of the semiotic phenomenological method.
After students wrote a description of the experience and entered the epo-
ché, they then identify and list what Lanigan calls “revelatory phrases,” the
“words and phrases of the person, words that nominate what the discourse is
about as a conscious experience” (Lanigan 1988, 147). The revelatory
phrases reveal the meaning in the description. For instance, a narrative of the
“experience of being wanted by the other more than wanting the other or the
reverse” may result in a revelatory phrase such as, “I had planned it all to be
very romantic but it was really just awkward” (Martinez 2011, 122). Students
then interpret this revelatory phrase to locate the sign systems and normative
conventions that make it meaningful. The experience of a sexual encounter
as unromantic and awkward assumes a societal norm that sexual intercourse
should result from romantic and chivalrous courtship. The students can then
see what it means to embody culture through communication. An experience
of an event is not only linked to, but also constituted by cultural codes and
discursive conventions.
For another example, consider a phenomenon such as, “experience of
sexual power” (Martinez 2011, 115). Students may describe this phenome-
non with revelatory phrases such as, “I kept thinking about how I was going
to be able to tell my friends” (Martinez 2011, 123). In this case, the anxiety
from telling one’s friends about a sexual encounter may be tied to a third real
or imagined entity that constitutes the experience, such as a mutual friend or
previous partner. The experience of the third is a disruption of the societal
norm of the sexual dyad, a norm that is experientially unnoticed, and empiri-
cally meaningless without semiotic phenomenological inquiry that focuses
on human conscious experience.
The world of Web 2.0 has opened up countless possibilities for new
experiences, as well as new ways of documenting them. The semiotic pheno-
menological method shows that the revelatory in human communication ex-
ists not in a vacuum, but in a matrix of codes and conventions that allow us to
make sense of this mediated world. To engage in semiotic phenomenology is
to investigate the “becoming of the sign” (Catt 2011, 125) in discourse, how
it was produced and developed through the interaction of communication and
culture. In a postmodern moment characterized by narrative and virtue con-
176 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

tention (Arnett 2005, 104), it is essential to liberate ourselves from the pre-
suppositions of the dominant rational discourse and investigate the experi-
ence of communication. This perspective lends itself well to the discourse of
Afrofuturism in the Africana Studies classroom as the study of the African
experience, or to texts such as Invisible Man, itself a narrative of the experi-
ence of being invisible or, as Franz Fanon says, of being not only inferior, but
also nonexistent. Together, communicology and semiotic phenomenology
provide respective theoretical and methodological ground for Afrofuturism
as a critical method and liberating hermeneutic.

AFROFUTURIST SPECULATIVE DISCOURSE:

A CRITICAL METHOD AND LIBERATING HERMENEUTIC

In this section, we draw on the work of, among others, Ytasha Womack,
Mark Dery, George Yancy, and Reynaldo Anderson to explicate Afrofutur-
ism as a critical method and liberating hermeneutic. In framing Afrofuturism
as a liberating hermeneutic within the context of Web 2.0, this chapter fol-
lows the work of Anderson and Jennings (2014), who frame Afrofuturism as
a digital hermeneutic that interprets the aesthetics of Afrofuturism as meta-
physical manifestations of the black experience. Just as an Afrofuturist digi-
tal hermeneutic engages the ways in which peoples of the African diaspora
transform and are transformed by a digital world, Afrofuturism as a liberat-
ing hermeneutic imagines a world where non-whites are not only free from
the White Gaze (Yancy 2008), but also free to navigate the narrative and
virtue contention of a postmodern world as human beings with visible bodies
and respected voices.
Just as communicology resists approaches to human discourse that limit
human communication to information transmission, Afrofuturism responds
to and resists the experience of living in a world with “whiteness as the
transcendental norm” (Yancey 2008, xxiii). In Black Bodies, White Gazes,
Yancy points to the epistemic issues raised in the historic experience of black
identity formation, “a shared history of Black people noting, critically dis-
cussing, suffering, and sharing with each other the traumatic experiential
content and repeated acts of white racism” (Yancy 2008, 7). Consistent with
communicology, Yancy’s work details the “reversible, reciprocal, and reflex-
ive” (Catt and Eicher-Catt 2010, 17) implications of racism in American
culture, where the white gaze is a product of the historic embodiment of
racism. For Yancy, a white woman afraid of and disgusted by the male black
body that joins her on an elevator is a “prisoner of her own historically
inherited imaginary and the habitual racist performances that have become
invisible to her” (Yancey 2008, 19). He proposes positive resistance in the
form of “decoding” (Yancey 2008, 110) as a “process of recoding Black
 Rewriting the Narrative 177

embodied existence through processes of opposition and affirmation” (Yan-

cey 2008, 112). By promoting a visible and necessary black presence in the
future, Afrofuturism is one form of resistance that escapes tendencies to
problematize or victimize blackness.
The loosely configured and organic (Jackson 2000, 49) methods and theo-
ries of Afrofuturism allow multiple spheres of values, beliefs, and attitudes.
The term has expanded since its initial use describing the sci-fi reality of a
bleakly “whitewashed” African future (Dery 1994) to encompass issues re-
lated to the experience and expression of blackness and technology. By pro-
viding interpretive ground for marginalized and disparate black experiences
that rupture mainstream prescriptions of time, space, and narrative, Afrofu-
turism imagines positive futures that, through speculative discourse, sever
the shackles of slavery’s shadow.
Afrofuturism proper began not with cultural criticism, but with an open
ended and self-reflexive question, “Why do so few African Americans write
science fiction?” (Dery 1994, 179). This question does not cast stones or
blame, but is an additive probe akin to the epoché that reflects on circum-
stances as they are. Dery suggests that the science fiction genre is suited for
“strangers in a strange land” 6 that are in a “very real sense . . . the descen-
dants of alien abductees” (Dery 1994, 180). With this line of inquiry, Dery
opens three major currents of Afrofuturist thought: time, narrative, and tech-
nology. He blends the temporal experience of African abductees with that of
present day African Americans who temporally and spatially “inhabit a sci-fi
nightmare” still held captive by illusive “force fields of intolerance” (Dery
1994, 180). He also points to the invisibility of Diasporic Africans whose
“past has been deliberately rubbed out” (Dery 1994, 180) and identifies
technology as a site of struggle where “technology is too often brought to
bear on black bodies” (Dery 1994, 180). Although not all Afrofuturists agree
with Dery’s views on the black experience in relation to technology, the
intersection of race and technology emerges as a dominant theme in Afrofu-
turist inquiry.
Long before Dery coined the term, there existed a “legacy of Afrofuturist
cultural production” (Rollefson 2008, 84). For example, Frederick Douglass
challenged linear time, Ellison expressed the existential angst of blackness in
a white world, and Jazz great Sun Ra rejected earthly citizenship. Though
scholars from a variety of disciplines continue to expand and interpret its
practices, Afrofuturism has become “a recognizable field of scholarly inquiry
and artistic production” (Rollefson 2008, 83). As this volume demonstrates,
there is a growing body of scholarship that articulates various themes and
practices that coalesce under the term Afrofuturism (Womack 2013). Afrofu-
turists work in the margins of pop culture with texts as sites of resistance that
reveal “models of expression that transform spaces of alienation into novel
forms of creative potential” (Nelson 2002, 36). A common thread that unites
178 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

most Afrofuturist work is that “it reclaims theorizing about the future” (Nel-
son 2002, 36) in ways that provide space for multiple possibilities. (Indeed,
the purpose of this essay is to propose the theory of method of communicolo-
gy as such a possibility.) However, we primarily attend to the additive as-
pects of Afrofutursim, not as a prescription for what Afrofuturism is or ought
to be, but in order to examine the conversation on its own terms. This conver-
sation leads to three distinct teleological spheres: to write a global history
attentive to the African voice in global development, to create an a-historical/
a-global history unencumbered by the master/slave framework, and to intro-
duce a horizon of future possibilities for a positive experience of blackness.
We now frame Afrofuturism as a critical method that speculates on these
spheres.
Afrofuturism as Critical Method –(Re)writing the Narrative. A key con-
cern in the Afrofuturist conversation is the “representation of history” (Yas-
zek 2005, 298). Afrofuturists contend that traditional history objectifies
blackness, perpetuates an image of the primitive African, and mitigates the
role of Africa historically and moving forward. Lisa Yaszek contends that
“whatever medium they work in” (Yaszek 2005, 298–99), Afrofuturists cri-
tique traditional accounts of history that minimize the “black Atlantic experi-
ence” (Yaszek 2005, 299) and, in response, “generate counter-histories that
reweave connections between past, present and future” (Yaszek 2005, 299).
She argues that the tendency to privilege written texts and prescribed meth-
ods over intuition and improvisation dismisses alternative methods of histo-
ry. Afrofuturists must contend with a different set of realities than those
privileged by traditional historians, contained in stories that involved experi-
ences that words could not capture. This problem is particularly acute in
narratives of the Middle Passage.
The narratives of the Middle Passage survived as oral texts in the form of
improvised stories and songs. This element of improvisation is essential to
Africana culture (Womack 2013, 37). For instance, in her article “‘Africa as
an Alien Future’: The Middle Passage, Afrofuturism, and Postcolonial Wa-
terworlds,” Ruth Mayer explores revisionist moves in Afrofuturist specula-
tive discourse. She identifies the problems with recovering the narratives of
millions of Africans abducted and transported to the Caribbean, and surveys
present-day attempts to recount these experiences as “fantasy spaces . . . that
represent themselves as mixed-up, ambivalent, floating” signs (Mayer 2000,
556). Similarly, in his book The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy, a British proto-
Afrofuturist, explains how music played an essential role in expressing the
inarticulable values and emotions of millions of displaced blacks (Gilroy
1993). He draws attention to the “conspicuous problems with ethnocentrism
and nationalism” (Gilroy 1993, 5) inherent in rhetorical construction of cul-
ture.
 Rewriting the Narrative 179

Gilroy’s work shows that the contemporary experience of diasporic

Africans does not fit neatly into a modernist paradigm delimited by national
boundaries or localized ethnic distinctions. Also, descendants of the slave
trade find themselves in a peculiar bind absent a direct experience of nation-
hood or African heritage. Gilroy’s work foregrounds the racial and nation-
alistic biases inherent in the hegemonic European historical narrative of
black intellectualism (Gilroy 1993, 5). In a variation of the semiotic pheno-
menological method, he uncovers the discursive construction of blackness
and identity in the African Diasporic by problematizing the polemic of race.
He writes, “cultural historians could take the Atlantic as one single, complex
unit of analysis in their discussions of the modern world and use it to produce
an explicitly transnational and intercultural perspective” (Gilroy 1993, 15).
Much like communicology attempts to recover human experience from a
dominant social scientific paradigm, Afrofuturist discourse proceeds outside
the hegemonic paradigm. It accounts for the larger experience of the Black
Atlantic by revealing a more expressive and constructive transnational iden-
tity. A first step, then, in re-visioning the narrative of blackness is to describe
the experience of blackness and bracket any racial and nationalistic biases
from the description.
As cultural critics, many Afrofuturists consider contemporary history a
fiction. They suggest that we are the objects of an “imperial historicism” that
imposes on culture the Western Euro-centric “protocols of institutional mem-
ory, historical citation, national origin, and territorial sovereignty” (Young-
quist 2005, 183) without attending to the authenticity of the lived-experience.
As Yancy writes, “the body is a site of contested meanings” which “signifies
the historicity of its ‘being’ as lived and meant within the interstices of social
semiotics, institutional forces, and various discursive frames of reference”
(Yancey 2008, xxii). Within these institutional forces, the experience of his-
tory “assumes new forms and new antagonisms in different situations” (Gil-
roy 1991, 11) where racist cultural production both transforms and is trans-
formed by history.
Afrofuturism is attentive to this phenomenological ambiguity that results,
most notably, in the lived experience of slavery in which the experience of
foreignness transcends history. Reynaldo Anderson among other scholars
notes that Africans were “among the first alien abductees” (Anderson qtd. in
Womack 2013, 34–35) and, for Womack, the common sci-fi trope of alien
abduction is a quite literal description of transatlantic slave ships carrying
(less than) human cargo “from another world” (Womack 2013, 30). She
explains that the “alien motif” has emerged as a “framework to examine how
those who are alienated adopt modes of resistance and transformation” (Wo-
mack 2013, 35) under the shadow of bondage.
This continuing legacy of bondage is a pervasive theme in Afrofuturist
work. Ellison, for example, writes in The Invisible Man, that, “I am not
180 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of

myself for having at one time been ashamed” (Ellison 1952, 16). The conver-
sation surrounding the legacy of slavery interrupts linear time, another theme
of Afrofuturist discourse, explicated by Womack in her work on the trans-
temporal experience of slavery. She writes that, “Slavery” is not an “ancient
far removed past. The tragedy that split the nation into warring factions has
effects that can be felt in the politics of the present” (Womack 2013, 156).
This underscores the prevalence of “bending time” in Afrofuturist practice,
of realizing the extent to which the experience of the present is constituted by
the past, just as Martinez’s students came to understand that their
(anti-)climactic sexual experiences in the present were constituted by past
presuppositions.
For Womack, the muted significance of Africa and Africans is a “gaping
hole” (Womack 2013, 80) in mainstream accounts of historical progress.
Afrofuturists attempt to color the past by refocusing on black “scientific
inventors past and present,” and incorporating them “into a larger conversa-
tion about technology, creativity and race” (Womack 2013, 46). As a theoret-
ically and methodologically rigorous academic discourse, communicology
can address the gaping hole and invite the discourse of Afrofuturism into the
academic mainstream. However, as itself an approach on the margins of a
dominant paradigm, communicology also privileges the playful and improv-
isational elements of the black experience as a liberating hermeneutic, a
fellow traveler on the mission where no (black) man has gone before.
Afrofuturism as Liberating Hermeneutic. Afrofuturism is a liberating her-
meneutic in the sense that its discourse reveals possibilities for envisioning a
world untethered from the transcendental norm of whiteness, in which a
contemporary Euro-American cannot write a personal future without men-
tioning Africa. While the conventional confines of history provide creative
space for those of white European descent, there is no African future that is
not in some way tethered to forced diaspora. Even stories of victory are
written in a framework designed by the master. Like a red-shirted crew
member on an away mission in the original Star Trek series, the depiction of
black characters in future stories have a “dour fate” (Womack 2013, 7).
In her discussion of the development of narrative portrayals of black
characters in science fiction, Womack writes that in the early years of televi-
sion and film, blacks were simply excluded from the future. As roles began
to emerge, the characters were minor, short-lived, and essentially irrelevant:
“people of color weren’t factors at all” (Womack 2013, 7). Growing up, she
partially identified with leading white characters in science fiction, but the
“quest to see myself or browner people in this space age, galactic epic was
important to me” (Womack 2013, 5). The quest to brighten the muted and
nullified experience of blackness in science fiction urges new imaginative
possibilities for the future of nonwhite discourse.
 Rewriting the Narrative 181

Many of these emancipatory possibilities are found in art and music. In

Shadow and Act, Ellison himself wrote that, “In those days, it was either live
with music or die with noise, and we chose rather despertaely to live” (Elli-
son 1953, 187). Later, he echoes Lanigan, Catt and Martinez: “one of the
chief values of living with music lies in its power to give us an orientation in
time. In doing so, it gives significance to all those indefinable aspects of
experience which nevertheless help to make us what we are” (Eliison 1953,
197). Kodwo Eshun further explores various Egyptian and futuristic themes
used by black musicians, from Sun Ra and Miles Davis to George Clinton.
An exemplar of the creative possibilities of Afrofuturist resistance, the music
of Jazz legend Sun Ra is rife with Egyptian images and spirituality. Sun Ra
challenges the Euro-centric historic narrative in a variety of ways: “For Ra,
Enlightenment rationality, Western progress, and white supremacy are insep-
arable. They reflect only one narrow vision of the world and therefore could
not possibly capture any real truth” (Rollefson 2008, 97). Sun Ra defined his
own existence by rejecting his given name and earthly citizenship. He dis-
rupted attempts to spatially own or temporally classify him, and resisted
earthly limitations of racist cultural production. As his biographer John
Szwed explains, “Sun Ra destroyed his past, and recast himself in a series of
role in a drama he spent his life creating” (Szwed 1998, 143). In challenging
traditional history through music, Sun Ra laid the groundwork for later time-
bending Afrofuturist musicians and artists such as George Clinton, who also
incorporated ancient Africana symbols into his art and music: “The pyramids
become examples of ancient alien technology which the extraterrestrial
brothers ‘have returned to claim.’ Funk becomes a secret Science, a forgotten
technology that ‘has been hidden until now’’” (Eshun 1998, 143). This
blending of past and future reverberates throughout much of Afrofuturist
work, which represents not only a challenge to history, but also a history of
the future.
Afrofuturism is a liberating hermeneutic that provides interpretive ground
for future speculation not bound to a Euro-centric vision of the past, where
slave ships did not sail. Afrofuturism is in many ways a response to this
imagined reality, where a “culture of black sci-fi heads” write new stories,
create new histories, and invent new futures “through the arts and critical
theory” (Eshun 1998, 143). Reacting to a long legacy of intellectual lynch-
ing, Afrofuturists problematize future narratives that reify black marginal life
in a white dominated world. Rather than follow these narratives to gallows
where the African heritage is silenced, forgotten, and objectified, Afrofutur-
ists challenge them by inventing a future not tied to a Euro-centric history of
transatlantic voyage, a future in which a new subject emerges that is not
“locate[ed] . . . in tradition; instead it dislocates you from origins” (Eshun
1998, 143). In short, both the Afrofuturist and communicologist experience
the world as human beings looking toward a horizon of imaginative possibil-
182 David DeIuliis and Jeff Lohr

ities. Together, the discourse of Afrofuturism and theory and method of

communicology can realize an imagined future, both in the pages of academ-
ic journals and in the lived-world.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we first outlined the presuppositions, intellectual origins, and

semiotic phenomenological method of communicology, then applied its
theoretical foundations to Afrofuturism, a speculative discourse similarly
“embroiled in the laborious process of defining itself” (Devito 1978, v). The
human science of communicology seeks to understand human discourse and
interaction as embodied practices that situate people within their worlds. In a
historical moment in which communication is viewed primarily as a form of
technique, skill, or tool (Catt 2010), communicology sheds light on how and
why people use technology to interact through language. It focuses on the
body as sign, not mere “flesh and bone, fiber and liquids” (Ellison 1952, 3).
The human science of communicology—and its “paradigm exemplar,” semi-
otic phenomenology—can serve as a complementary theoretical framework
for approaching Afrofuturism, one that does not reify or categorize distance
or the different, but attends to the background assumptions, the black words
on a white page.
Afrofuturism and communicology share a common goal, to recapture the
experience of communication. Afrofuturism responds to the transcendental
norm of whiteness to recover the human experience of blackness. Paradoxi-
cally, forward-looking Web 2.0 technologies can preclude the very preserva-
tion of humanity that Afrofuturism promotes. By approaching the speculative
discourse of Afrofuturism as embodied human communication, the human
science of communicology accounts for an experience of being human that,
through description, reduction, and interpretation, is measured in the past,
made meaningful in the present and—at least on the lower frequencies—
metastasized in perpetuity.

NOTES

1. Richard L. Lanigan, “Communicology: Lexicon Definition” International Communicol-

ogy Institute, 2007–2013, http://www.communicology.org/content/definition-communicology.
2. In his book, We Have Been Believers: An African-American Systematic Theology (Min-
neapolis: Augustberg Fortress, 1992), James H. Evans, Jr. defines a liberating hermeneutic as a
perspective that “allows one to be grasped by the truth, in full consciousness of one’s limita-
tions and in deep awe and respect for the reality that is being revealed.” We use the term in
reference to communicology’s focus on communication as revelatory of the human condition.
3. For an extensive review of the development of communicology and its cognates, see
Richard L. Lanigan, “Communicology: Approaching the Discipline’s Centennial,” Special Is-
sue: “Semiotica y Comunicologia,” Razón y Palabra, No. 72 (Mayo-Julio), http://www
.razonypalabra.org.mx/N/N72/Monotematico/8_Lanigan_72.pdf.
 Rewriting the Narrative 183

4. Richard L. Lanigan, Maureen Connolly, and Thomas D. Craig, “What is Communicolo-

gy? Who is a Communicologist?” International Communicology Institute, 2005, http://
www.communicology.org/content/definition-communicology.
5. Lanigan, Connolly, and Craig, “What is Communicology? Who is a Communicologist?”
6. The phrase “Strangers in a strange land” comes from Exodus 2:2 (KJV): “And she bore
him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange
land.” The name Gershom in Hebrew can be translated as “a sojourner there.” This allusion to
ancient history forecasts the bending of time in Afrofuturism.

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 Chapter Ten

Africana Women’s Science Fiction and

Narrative Medicine
Difference, Ethics, and Empathy

Esther Jones

Medicine—whether as a system, institution, or discourse—wields, quite ar-

guably, the most power in our contemporary era to identify, name, and cate-
gorize difference. In spite of its humanistic and altruistic underpinnings,
those who embody difference are treated differentially within the medical
establishment. Notwithstanding all the ethical principles of autonomy, benef-
icence, non-maleficence, and justice undergirding medical ethics, many phy-
sicians have noted a decline in the capacity of doctors to practice empathy
toward their patients since the rise of science in medicine. Interestingly, the
rise of science in medicine was accompanied by a rise in the codification of
racist and racial discourse about the difference of non-European others. At
the bottom of this scientific, biological hierarchy resided African people, and
the long history of medical abuses against black bodies that continues even
today suggests that the early stereotyping of Africans lingers, pervasive with-
in the cultural and scientific medical imaginary, casting blacks outside of the
purview of medical ethics. While there has been a growing movement to
recapture the humanism of medicine through the cultivation of empathy by
studying and analyzing literature, the continued mistreatment of black bod-
ies, collectively and individually, begs the question of how precisely narra-
tive ethics—the study of literature and medicine—might engage with the
problem of racial difference in their methods.
The relationship between literature and medicine and its capacity to in-
crease empathy has received increasing attention over the past 25–30 years
(Holmgren et al. 2011, 46) in what is now referred to as narrative ethics.
185
186 Esther Jones

Doctors reflect on stories about patient experience that reminds them to

consider the whole patient—their unique experiences, their backgrounds, the
fullness of their lives—in a manner similar to how we come to understand
the fullness of a well-developed character in a novel or speaker in a poem
(Holmgren et al. 2011, 249). Some of the most well-respected medical
schools offer courses in literature and medicine as part of their ethics training
(Charon 2005, 599). And the benefits of reading literature to increase empa-
thy are praised by those practitioners who routinely engage literature as
clinical practitioners (Jones 1997, 246). As Karla Holloway argues, “what
one discovers in stories are the thick public matters of culture and commu-
nity—histories of families and social and political national stories that have
their own meanings in the expansive sense of a speaker’s meaning” (Hollo-
way 2011, 149–50). There is evidence to suggest that medical schools that
offer narrative medicine as part of the curriculum produce a superiorly
equipped physician who engages with their patients with increased empathy
and compassion (Holmgren et al. 2011, 251).
However, people of African descent continue to suffer from the failure of
physicians to extend empathy to them and their families. In this essay, I
explore the connection between the history of scientific racism, racial/sexual
pathologizing of black people, and the disjuncture between the rising trend of
returning the humanistic elements of empathy and compassion to the practice
of medicine through narrative ethics and the continued maltreatment of
blacks within the medical system. I argue that narrative medicine may not
adequately deal with issues of racial and gendered difference in their devel-
opment and application of methods for increasing empathy. Moreover, as
Priscilla Wald points out, while “the field of medical humanities has long
turned to realist fiction to help address such ethical questions . . . few com-
mentators have explored the perspective on those questions offered by the
(often debased) genre of science fiction” (Wald 2008, 1908) and I would also
add the exponentially disregarded subfield of Afrofuturist fiction.
I suggest that narrative medicine may be well-served to turn to science
fiction writings by black women writers to begin to engage the cultural and
ideological complexities of what it means to relate to “distant others.” In the
examination of three black women science fiction writers and their novels—
Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Nnedi Okorafor’s Who
Fears Death (2010), and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) and
Parable of the Talents (1998)—I demonstrate the ways in which black wom-
en use their presumably subjugated statuses to challenge narratives of author-
ity, recoup denigrated African spiritual and non-mainstream ideologies as
sources of legitimate knowledge and authority, and develop ethical codes
that result in patterns of relating more humanely across difference.
As near-futuristic novels, these three texts conduct the important work of
using science fiction to “explore the necessary relations of science, society,
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 187

and race, and to stake claim for themselves and for their communities in the
global future imaginary.” 1 Writing against the “blackness as catastrophe”
trope, 2 the near future worlds depicted by Hopkinson, Okorafor, and Butler
are deeply rooted in the historical realities and contemporary concerns that
particularly affect black well-being at the same time that they defamiliarize,
or estrange readers from the empirical details of social realities. Speculative
literatures and Afrofuturist forms, as Wald argues, depict

the fantastic, futuristic, and often alien settings that are conventions of the
genre [which] lend themselves to broad speculation about the boundaries be-
tween what is and what is not human. Furthermore, the strangeness of these
settings enfranchises speculation since it does not reproduce readers’ precon-
ceived ideas about present-day social issues with which they believe they
identify. (Wald 2008, 1908)

The Afrofuturist form enables their engagement with the specificity of

historical black relationships to social health institutions and systems of med-
icalized oppression to envision, instead, alternative modes of ethics and jus-
tice that have been denied women, minorities, and the poor in historical and
contemporary reality. As English has pointed out, throughout the history of
African American literary production, blacks have had to turn to speculative
fiction—an imagining of blacks in other times and other places—in order to
“imagine full black subjectivity” and the justice that has been withheld his-
torically (English 2013, 77). In particular, “Afro-futurism considers issues of
time, technology, culture and race . . . foregrounding Black agency and
creativity” (Jackson and Moody-Freeman 2011, 3). The novels analyzed in
this chapter feature worlds populated with images of black bodies in times
and spaces that fundamentally challenge our habituated patterns of think-
ing—our social and cultural scripts—about race, gender, sex, and health.
Through this form, these novelists write a future of health justice by rewrit-
ing old yet persistent cultural and social scripts that undercut the authority of
black women as healing agents in their personal lives as well as that of their
communities.

MEDICINE, AUTHORITY, AND THE HEALTH HUMANITIES

In his Mystery, Magic and Medicine: The Rise of Medicine from Superstition
to Science (1933), Harvard physician Howard Haggard, sang the praises of
the rise of science in medicine and extolled the primacy of the role of medi-
cine in every aspect of modern civilization: “In the past medicine had its
place only at the bedside of the individual patient. Today medical science has
transcended these narrow limits and has become a guiding force in modern
civilization . . . [it] has enlisted to its aid every agency of our society, even to
188 Esther Jones

the participation of the individual citizen” (Haggard 1933, 5). As recently as

2007, Frank González-Crussi acknowledges the far-reaching influence and
authority of the medical profession and its practitioners, arguing that “The
spectacular progress in their field reinforces physicians’ authority, even that
of those who had no part in producing the advances” (Gonzalex-Crussi 2007,
x). He goes on to acknowledge the troubled history of how scientific medical
knowledge has been acquired while ultimately diminishing it: “for all the
bunglings and failings—sometimes even crimes—of its practitioners, [medi-
cine] remains an essentially altruistic endeavor. And in a world that often
seems bent on using science and technology to create better means of mass
extermination, one can only think well of a discipline whose goal is to devise
better ways to alleviate the suffering and to cure the ills of our fellow
man”(González-Crussi 2007, xi). He further notes that, “[Physicians] must
find ways of reinforcing the skills and attitudes that make a doctor caring and
understanding of the needs of the whole human being. Whether this can be
taught . . . in addition to the heavy load of facts required to practice medicine,
is not the least of the problems that the profession faces, especially in a
system of medical care that seems adverse to the fostering of these very
qualities” (Gonzalez-Crussi 2007, x).
But as the work of Harriet Washington (2006), Karla Holloway (2011),
and Dorothy Roberts (2011) has revealed, African-descended people have
for too long been denied the altruistic efforts of medical science. Instead,
medical science has been “the most effective tool for giving claims about
human difference the stamp of legitimacy” (Roberts 2011, 27), and black
women, in particular, have been singled out as the literal embodiment of
disease and difference. According to Roberts, Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish bota-
nist and physician born in 1707, developed twelve editions of his catalogue
of living things, Systema Naturae, published between 1735 and 1778. Lin-
naeus divided Homo sapiens into four natural varieties (americanus, euro-
paeus, asiaticus, and afer) linked to the four known regions of the world,
color-coded the subspecies red, white, yellow, and black, and assigned each a
set of physical, personality, cultural, and social traits, borrowing from the
classical concept of the Great Chain of Being described by Saint Thomas
Aquinas (Roberts 2011, 29). Of the four descriptions of the so-called varie-
ties of races, only the description for H. sapiens afer singles out the female
for special differentiation, focusing on sex organs: “females with genital flap
and elongated breasts. Crafty, slow, careless. Covered by grease. Ruled by
caprice” (Roberts 2011, 29–30). A bevy of European scientists and philoso-
phers—among them Georges Cuvier, Johann Blumenbach, and Immanuel
Kant—would follow suit with their own versions of racial classification
schema, their own race always at the top of the hierarchy (Roberts 2011, 27).
Early scientific taxonomy, with its methods of observation and general-
ization, was founded upon supremely unscientific extrapolation corrupted by
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 189

European ethnocentrism and cultural bias. The physical difference reflective

of the customs of a particular tribe in one region of a vast and diverse
continent became the basis for sweeping generalizations and devaluation of
an entire group of people who likely would not have categorized themselves
accordingly. Thus, what we now know to be the stereotyping of Africans
reveals an obsession with classification and categorization that inextricably
links difference with pathology and maps that pathological difference onto
the observable racial, sexual, and gender characteristics of the Other (Gilman
1985, 11–12).
I focus on black women’s science fiction, then, because of these historic
linkages between black women’s sexualized pathology and the scientific
legitimation of racial and gender hierarchies. To date, the historical research
on the medical establishment’s relationship to African-descended commu-
nities has focused upon the problems of historical and contemporary experi-
mental medical abuses, continued unethical research practices conducted in
black communities across the globe, and equity and access issues to the basic
standard of care, especially in poorer communities. Scholars such as James
H. Jones (1981), Dorothy Roberts (1997; 2011), Harriet Washington (2006),
Rebecca Skloot (2011), and Karla Holloway (2011), have amply documented
the uneven (if we are generous) and at times outright abusive research and
care practices of health professionals against blacks. This is not relegated to
the era of slavery as with J. Marion Sims’ anesthesia-free gynecological
experimentations on black women, (Washington 2006, 2, 61), nor the Jim
Crow / Pre-civil rights era of the government-sponsored Tuskegee syphilis
experiments on black men. Medical ethics and the law continue to refuse to
recognize blacks and poor people as humans worthy of ethical treatment and
provision of the basic standard of care as early as the eighteenth century
(Washington 2006, 7), and as recently as during the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, when Anna Pou, the attending physician at New Orleans’ Memorial
Medical Center, euthanized non-terminal black patients under her care (Fink
2009). It is time that those invested in narrative medicine consider in more
concrete terms the ways in which pathological stereotyping and unconscious
bias undermine ethical practice.
Since the rise of science in medicine, then, the essential beneficence of
which González-Crussi speaks has been obfuscated by pernicious racial
stereotyping, which for centuries held the stamp of scientific legitimacy. In
the past thirty years or so, however, a growing cadre of physicians has sought
to restore the humanistic values that have traditionally resided at the core of
medicine. The meta-discourse now taking shape as narrative medicine has
sought to transform the primarily positivist approach of medical science by
bringing to bear the constructivist epistemological approach that charac-
terizes humanistic inquiry (Jones 1997, 1243). Rita Charon, one of the lead-
ing proponents and theorists of narrative medicine and the scholar respon-
190 Esther Jones

sible for the coinage of the name of the field has defined narrative medicine
as a set of competencies practiced by the physician that includes empathy,
reflection, professionalism, and trustworthiness. Mastery of these competen-
cies would help to achieve the skills of “attentiveness, representation, and
affiliation” which literary analysis is uniquely suited to develop (Holmgren et
al. 2011, 251). Narrative theorists argue that “analysis of fictional representa-
tions of illness can enhance a medical practitioner’s treatment of patients”
and “strengthen the human competencies of doctoring,” because of the “ethi-
cal reward and insight into human behavior enhanced by literary analysis,
which is thought to improve one’s capacity for empathy” (Holmgren et al.
2011, 249).
The goals of narrative medicine are noble. Yet, examples of medical
injustice for people of color persist. Such injustices are racialized, classed,
and gendered. These identity markers represent some of the main operatives
of difference upon which medical ethical decisions are based. In other parts
of the world, these vectors of difference may operate along other social or
physical markers. Nonetheless, the fundamental issue of developing patterns
of relating more ethically across difference in order to “do no harm” and
maintain the dignity of human life remains a core competency yet to be
achieved fully and applied broadly within healthcare practice.
Certainly, for people of African descent, any method that would result in
improved relationships with the medical establishment and better health out-
comes would be welcome considering the long and troubled history of medi-
cal abuses against black people. The issue I want to interrogate more specifi-
cally here, however, is whether the theories of narrative medicine adequately
engage with the problem of difference and the pernicious operation of patho-
logical stereotyping which likely accounts for the breaches in ethical behav-
ior enacted by medical practitioners upon blacks and others who embody
difference. The ongoing record would suggest that the physician’s capacity
to relate to distant others remains a theoretical abstraction when it comes to
black people. As such, a number of questions arise: How does one develop
empathy for groups and individuals representative of that group in the face of
systemic racism and racial stereotyping? What kinds of literature, specifical-
ly, would increase empathy for black bodies in particular? Does reading
stories about black people or narratives about blacks’ encounters with medi-
cine do enough to counter the stereotypes that may already exist in the minds
of some practitioners? Will reading narratives of what may represent radical-
ly different perspectives on spirituality and its place in the medical paradigm
engender any greater understanding and respect for these perspectives in the
intersubjective construction of illness narratives? What additional training
might be required to properly “absorb, interpret, and respond to stories” by
blacks that moves beyond reinforcement of stereotypes or simplistic reduc-
tionism?
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 191

DISCOURSES OF (IL)LEGITIMACY: NARRATIVE MEDICINE,

SCIENCE FICTION, AND BLACK WOMEN WRITERS

The research on the power of narrative in medicine suggests that the interre-
lated experiences generated by stories—telling, reading, listening—enhance
the visibility and, presumably, the relatability of seemingly “distant others,”
increase empathy in medical practitioners; and facilitate a more collaborative
doctor-patient relationship for more effective care (Jones 1997, 1246). And
beyond autobiographical narratives of illness, the reading of “good litera-
ture” has long been advocated as a means of enhancing empathy on the part
of medical practitioners. In part because of ideas surrounding the “truth”
value of different genres of writing (Holmgren et al. 2011, 252), the field of
narrative medicine has been rather slow to embrace science fiction and other
speculative/fantastic forms (Wald 2008, 1908). After all, some detractors
argue, the claims that science fiction can make are limited since they often
feature worlds and creatures that may not exist in empirical/ordinary reality.
However, scholars such as Priscilla Wald, Jay Clayton, and Eric Rabkin
have touted the ability of science fiction to make inroads to medical ethics
discourse. According to Rabkin, “Science fiction, the literature defined by its
concern for the possibilities and social implications of scientific and techno-
logical change, provides a dramatic mirror for bioethics” (Rabkin 2011, 138).
If scientific discourse has a tradition of characterizing blacks as non- or
lesser-human beings, then it is not a stretch to consider the capacity of the
conventions of the science fiction genre—particularly the tropes of alien
bodies, settings, and worldviews—to allow for broad speculation about what
it means to be human (and to behave humanely) in confrontation with onto-
logical Others (Wald 2008, 1908).
I concur with Rabkin and Wald on the position that science fiction en-
ables us to interrogate our naturalized assumptions about our social patterns
and behaviors, how we construct difference, and the development of ethical
codes to deal with those differences. Science fiction, therefore, should not be
regarded as an untenable, fantastical, and therefore absurd proxy for “factu-
al” science. Rather, it must be appreciated for its capacity to approach the
question of social justice (in the realms of law, medicine, and public policy)
through the interrogation of our most fundamental conceptions of human
identity and behavior. As Rabkin suggests, “If we cannot adjust our ethics
through a change in our own customs, our behaviors, our relations with our
group, our habits, we can adjust our ethics through enlarging our habits of
mind. And that, of course, is the great gift of science fiction” (Rabkin 2011,
148).
To put it another way, science fiction contributes in fresh ways to medical
humanities and narrative ethics discourse, particularly as it relates to the
practice of empathy in medicine. I argue that black women’s science fiction
192 Esther Jones

enables us to challenge stereotypes through analysis of the complexities of

raced, gendered, and ideological difference for both individual identities and
collective cultural groups. Moreover, this body of literature suggests that
ethical considerations must extend to reflect changes in ethical actions. Such
practices may work towards transforming our current uneven medical para-
digm to establish a culture of health parity.
Among the key assumptions of those who practice narrative ethics is that
literature generates increased empathy by expanding the lived context in
which patients’ attitudes toward the medical establishment and issues of
compliance and trust are negotiated. Understanding this broader context pre-
sumably requires the doctor to devise strategies of deep listening as the
patient tells the story of his illness and representing that narrative back to the
listener, an act of interpretation and translation that occurs in the writing of
the narrative. Telling and representing, according to Charon, spiral into the
affective experience of “affiliation,” the recognition that we are all connected
as humans, “humble in the face of time, ready to suffer our portion, and brave
enough to help one another on our shared journeys” (Charon 2005, 269).
Charon’s skills of “attention” to the telling and “representing” what has been
told require, in practice, acts of reading the patient (deep listening) and
interpreting or translating the story the patients have told about themselves
(representing back to the teller/patient what has been shared).
But for what I call radical ontological others—groups like black women
who have been either so severely stereotyped or whose beliefs are perceived
to be so alien to the norms of the dominant culture—their encounters with the
medical establishment have been fraught with misreadings and misinterpreta-
tions to the detriment of the black patient. Was the doctor who diagnosed
Terry Ragland, a fifty-five-year-old middle class black woman, with “ghetto
booty” imagining himself as “representing” her narrative of back pain to her
in a way that was supposed to make sense to her? 3 In addition to being racist
and sexist, such a diagnosis insults the intelligence of the patient and, argu-
ably, harkens to the age of scientific medical racism when illness was
thought to manifest differently in blacks (Washington 2006, 58). Ragland,
offended, filed a complaint with the Tennessee state department of health,
but Dr. Sweo, the offending doctor, fails to see that he did anything wrong. 4
Such routine and unapologetic indignities do little to inspire trust by blacks
in a medical establishment that continuously fails to recognize its failures to
treat them equitably and ethically. As such, we must interrogate more fully
the ways in which stereotyping and unconscious bias function to blunt the
skills that narrative medicine advocates.
Such acts of clinical violence as those enacted by Sweo highlight the
degree to which acts of misreading and misinterpreting patients of presum-
ably different cultures can erode the cultivation of doctor-patient trust that
narrative medicine tries so assiduously to develop. This can extend, particu-
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 193

larly, to the arena of spirituality and religion wherein non-mainstream relig-

ious beliefs and practices may conflict with scientific medical standards of
care. When I teach Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), for
example, a text which imagines a near-futuristic Toronto based on empirical
and historical realities of white flight and urban decay, students can relate to
the sociological phenomena that provide the setting of the text as a fairly
recognizable political context. They understand the power dynamics of a
wealthy suburban politician who views and treats the largely minority popu-
lation in the city’s urban core as a farm for surplus organs. It is the Yoruba-
based African diasporic religious system, a living religious tradition that
continues today but remains denigrated and suppressed in many parts of the
African diaspora, practiced by the text’s heroines Ti-Jeanne and Mami Gros-
Jeanne that renders the text too far-fetched, fantastic, and entirely unrelatable
for students to engage. This, in spite of Hopkinson’s efforts to demonstrate
the marginalized status of the Yoruba belief system and to make clear the
complex generational and émigré politics that inform Ti-Jeanne’s own am-
bivalence about the belief in and public practice of traditional African relig-
ion. This, in spite of the fact that a significant percentage of the world’s
population believe in spiritual systems that feature the miraculous, mystical,
and magical as routine occurrences. This, in spite of our ongoing theoretical
class discussions about difference and empathy.
My experience teaching this text suggests a tendency to bifurcate biologi-
cal difference and ideological difference, when in reality the kind of differ-
ence we attribute to biology (the physical, observable, “immutable,” and
public) and the kind of difference we attribute to belief (intangible, esoteric,
“mutable,” and private) are mutually constituted and mediated through vari-
ous stereotypes. In other words, black bodies are always already representa-
tive of a worldview that is intellectually inept, spiritually backward, and
ideologically bereft, and therefore in need of either reeducation or suppres-
sion. From the slave era up through the twentieth century, these were charac-
terized as efforts to “civilize” and “modernize” black people; under these
paradigms, slavery was a beneficent civilizing institution which blacks
needed in order to approach the status of modern subjects through the influ-
ence of and contact with whites. As Washington argues, “Western physicians
had placed African holistic plant- and spirit-centered healing systems outside
the purview of medicine, relegating them to the realm of superstition, the
occult, ‘voodoo,’ and old wives’ tales” (Washington 2006, 56). Formally
trained doctors denigrated black midwives and healers as uneducated even
though they also had “no academic preparation beyond a few months in a
proprietary medical school or a few years of apprenticeship, which many
blacks also shared” (Washington 2006, 50). The well-documented history of
the suppression and criminalization of granny midwives further demonstrates
the aggression with which stereotypes about all blacks—even ones esteemed
194 Esther Jones

and revered by their own communities as competent and trustworthy heal-

ers—colored the medical establishment’s attitude towards and treatment of
all blacks as ignorant, unclean, naturally disease-prone, and noncompliant
(Washington 2006, 50).
Black healers’ knowledge was discredited because the people who pro-
duced it had been delegitimized, to paraphrase Toni Morrison. The suppres-
sion of these systems of knowledge which credit the spiritual as integral to
the healing and wellness paradigm cannot be extricated from the mainstream
culture’s process of Othering and pathologizing of blacks. And it has played
a largely uninterrogated role in determining who is worthy of ethical treat-
ment in medical discourse. The process of Othering, of defining who is
human and which bodies are worthy of ethical treatment is a high-stakes
game in the medical arena with all too often life and death consequences. To
that end, black women’s science fictions contribute to narrative ethics in
three significant ways to be expanded upon in the sections that follow.
First, they engage in the project of humanizing Others who exemplify
embodied difference by fleshing out the complexities of multiplicity and
intersectionality in the formation of individual and collective identities, chal-
lenging traditional narratives of authority. Secondly, they develop alternative
ethics derived specifically from denigrated African religious traditions, al-
lowing the potential for readers to enlarge their habits of mind as a means of
increasing empathetic actions toward alien Others. The exploration of the
role of traditional African spiritual systems and their conceptions of health
and wellness is a process central to imagining a responsive holism in main-
stream narrative medicine. Finally, black women science fiction writers dem-
onstrate that relating to others empathetically across difference is a matter of
political, moral, and ethical action, not simply abstract exercises of sympa-
thetic thinking and feeling. In so doing, they expand the purview of narrative
medicine and challenge the process of discourse legitimation.

LIMINAL SUBJECTIVITY,
SICK SOCIETIES, AND NARRATIVE AUTHORITY

The protagonists of the three main texts that I analyze here share characteris-
tics that make them especially useful for demonstrating the claims of this
essay. Nnedi Okorafor’s Onyesonwu in Who Fears Death (2010), Nalo Hop-
kinson’s Ti-Jeanne in Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), and Octavia Butler’s
Lauren Oya Olamina in the Parables series (Parable of the Sower, 1993;
Parable of the Talents, 1998) are all very young black women (between the
ages of eleven and twenty during the bulk of the narratives) who are healers
and/or spiritual leaders, proponents of belief systems that lack legitimacy at
the beginning of their tales. These protagonists are culturally liminal figures
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 195

who reside betwixt and between competing elements of their cultures but
who manage to embrace their healer/leader statuses in spite of their subjugat-
ed positions as black girls. They each, in various ways, have been targeted as
vulnerable and therefore, eligible for rapid extinction in their societies. Final-
ly, they all must devise an ethical standard and set of concomitant practices
or actions that will enable not only their individual survival, but the survival
of broader social groups in which they live. These converging elements result
in what I call a womanist survival ethic: the spirit-based beliefs and actions
devised and implemented by black women that enables not only their indi-
vidual survival in hostile cultural environments but which also ensures that
those survival capacities extend to broader vulnerable groups.
For each protagonist, their minoritized, liminal status enables a critique of
the dominant culture’s problematic belief systems that delimit their capacity
for survival. Further, their vulnerability status is intimately linked with the
highly disordered societies in which they live. Oyesonwu is Ewu, the term
for a mixed-culture child born of rape. The war-torn society that is the con-
text of her survival efforts is characterized by tribal violence and ethnic
cleansing. The rape of Okeke women by Nuru militants is used as a tool of
war and genocide to decimate the Okeke at their biological core. The culture
denigrates women, mixed-race people, and especially those who are products
of rape. Ti-Jeanne of Brown Girl in the Ring is a third generation Caribbean-
Canadian young single mother whose community is being exploited by
Rudy, a dangerous drug lord whose reign is enabled by a negligent and
absentee government. Butler’s Olamina is impaired with hyperempathy syn-
drome, a psychological delusional disorder that causes her to feel the pain
she believes others are experiencing. This impairment heightens to a disabil-
ity status in the dangerous postapocalyptic environment where violence and
torture, death and disease are rampant. As such, she is highly invested in the
ethical thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors of the desperate masses. Each text, in
turn, articulates the interplay between individual vulnerability and societal
sickness to challenge the issue of narrative authority. In the case of Who
Fears Death and the Parables, narrative authority is represented by control-
ling documents that inculcate widespread problematic beliefs and practices.
How these controlling narratives operate in the world is a fundamental issue,
and the protagonists engage in the re-writing of such narratives as a starting
point for devising a new ethics of relationality. In Brown Girl in the Ring, Ti-
Jeanne is engaged more so in an act of cultural translation and integration
that allows the authority of competing ideological paradigms to coexist with
equal power side by side.
Who Fears Death extrapolates the modern day issue of ethnic cleansing
in recent Sudanese tribal conflicts and demonstrates the ways in which per-
ceived differences are given value through the social meanings assigned to
them. Oyesonwu is a member of a despised outcast class of “Ewu” children
196 Esther Jones

born to dark-skinned African-featured Okeke women who have been raped

by fairer-skinned Arab-featured Nuru soldiers as a means of ethnic cleansing
(Okorafor 2010, 25). Traditional beliefs surrounding the evil and violence
that begets the sandy-colored freckled Ewu children as well as the lower
status of women in the Okeke and Nuru cultures stress the social construction
of difference institutionally supported, in this instance, by religious institu-
tions and their texts. The Great Book, the religious tome used to justify the
ethnic cleansing of the Okeke people, signifies the codification of oppressive
traditions and practices, and holds clear parallels with the ways in which
selected narratives from the Bible have been interpreted to justify the en-
slavement of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade as well as the more
recent current-day realities of ethnic and inter-tribal conflict in the Sudan.
Told through the perspective of Onyesonwu, one sees the ways in which
perceived biological difference, cultural beliefs and attitudes, and the human
desire to belong to a community inform the decision-making processes of the
protagonist. In her effort to overcome the clear physical markers that cast her
outside of the community, she undergoes the adulthood initiation rite of
circumcision on her eleventh birthday to stake her claim as a member of the
community by demonstrating belief in a shared ideological and cultural prac-
tice. It is during this initiation ritual that her gifts as a sorceress with abilities
to both heal and kill begin to emerge and she struggles for the right to be
apprenticed to develop those gifts. As Ewu and woman, the resistance to
teaching her is redoubled. Yet, this prejudice also works to her benefit: the
sexism of the sorcerers who prophesy the coming of an Ewu child who will
put an end to the violence of the ethnic cleansing causes them to alter the
message to state that it will be a Nuru man. She is underestimated by General
Daib, the sorcerer general at the helm of the ethnic cleansing, and goes on to
rewrite The Great Book and to begin the process of healing the entire culture
by rewriting its most fundamental system of belief.
This notion of rewriting The Great Book functions as an allegory for the
uses of narrative and its role in healing not simply on an individual level, but
on a broader cultural level. Ethical action towards groups and individuals
representative of those groups cannot take place without consideration of the
systems that perpetuate and reinforce bias and stereotype. Okarafor’s text
moves questions of illness and wellness from individual pathology (being a
child of rape) to the social construction of pathology, problematizing the
broader context in which narratives of individual illness are defined. Ironical-
ly, from a Western standpoint, the moments in which Onyesonwu is physi-
cally ill are understood as transitional spiritual initiations in African culture.
The true illness is that of the broader culture: the ongoing ethnic cleansing of
the Okeke by the Nuru based on religious/ideological intolerance that is
mapped directly onto the bodies of the darker-skinned Okeke.
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 197

Butler proposes a similar rewriting of grand narratives and controlling

cultural scripts in the Parables (1993; 1998). Like Who Fears Death, the
Parables extrapolate a near future in which violence and danger are the order
of the day, and survival is the protagonist’s prime objective. The conver-
gence of economic collapse, governmental decline, and multiple devastating
natural disasters have so weakened the societal structures that the U.S. has
devolved into a state of virtual dissolution, which creates a rapidly diminish-
ing middle class and a burgeoning sector of desperate, dangerous, homeless
street poor. As is characteristic of societies that experience rapid cultural
change, a culture of normlessness and a loss of guiding moral principles
abounds as the masses justify any and all actions that they feel will enable
their survival. Olamina is among the most vulnerable to a quick and painful
death among the street poor because she is young, black, female, and af-
flicted with hyperempathy syndrome.
In response to these conditions, Olamina develops a religio-ethical system
named Earthseed, which seeks to distill the single consistent truth articulated
in every scientific law and major religious belief system she knows of: the
power, pervasiveness, and inevitability of change. Therefore, God is Change
(Butler 1993, 70). Reimagining God as a force rather than a persona radically
revises the Christian narrative of God as unchanging and imbued with human
emotions like empathy and compassion or judgment and anger. It is in this
reimagined conception of God that the exploitative and abusive misapplica-
tions of the Bible as exemplified in the Ku Klux Klan-like activities of the
Christian America church of the text are thrown into bold relief. Christian
Crusaders, ostensibly Christian “fundamentalists” who view ideological dif-
ference as the cause of the nation’s instability, revive the worst elements in
the history of the Christian tradition when they target those who believe
differently for violent attacks, enslavement, rape, and reeducation (Butler
1998, 202–7).
Like Carl Linnaeus, Olamina’s method of understanding and organizing
the world is based on observation and taking notes. But unlike Linnaeus, her
minoritized subjectivity and life experiences as a young impaired black girl
determined to survive in a dangerous and hostile environment demand that
her assessment of the observed world result in ethical statements that pro-
mote behaviors of beneficence and justice. She compiles the didactic Earth-
seed: Books of the Living as a means of explaining and clarifying “what God
is, what God does, what we are, what we should do, what we can’t help
doing” (Butler 1993, 70). As a study of both human behavior and theological
insight, the text of Earthseed articulates principles that will produce consis-
tency in ethical thought and action. Stressing the values of interdependency
(upon which any notion of autonomy must rely), an inclusivity that empha-
sizes the imperative of embracing diversity, and a model of community that
enables resilience for all its constituents, Earthseed provides a newly articu-
198 Esther Jones

lated set of ethics that fosters the capacity for its adherents to relate more
equitably across human difference.
While Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) does not explicitly
engage with narrativity through revision of sacred texts and their accompany-
ing misuse as justifications of oppression, it does identify the sickness of
society as the context in which survival strategies and newly conceived ethi-
cal practices are born. Hopkinson’s text might be more readily interpreted as
an act of cultural translation and adaptation. The authoritative, controlling
narratives to which she responds have primarily to do with the subordination
of her youth to the wisdom and demands of her elder, Mami Gros-Jeanne.
Due in large part to her ambivalence towards Afro-Caribbean spiritual cultu-
ral practices, Ti-Jeanne initially fails to understand and acknowledge the
syncretic practices of dual culture integration that Mami Gros-Jeanne has
embraced to enable a highly resilient livelihood for her and her progeny, both
before the riots that burned Toronto’s city core and afterwards.
This dualism is represented in Gros-Jeanne’s training as both a registered
nurse trained in Western allopathic medicine and as a myalist, schooled in
the naturopathic methods of herbalism and which integrates spirit work and
ancestor veneration. She uses both as tools available to her to improvise
healing technologies that respond to the shifting availability of resources.
Such a strategy suggests that Western and traditional health practices are not
mutually exclusive methods, but rather offer opportunities for complemen-
tarity and inventiveness that enable survival. Even though Ti-Jeanne does not
even begin to learn all that her grandmother has to teach her about the
spiritual side of healing work, she learns enough to improvise a strategy to
fight Rudy’s machinations by conceptualizing the CN Tower, where Rudy’s
office is located, as an oversized center pole which serves in myalist ceremo-
nies as the bridge for the spirits to enter the world of the living (Hopkinson
1998, 221). She makes use of both modern technologies and African tradi-
tional practices to perform the unheard-of feat of calling all of the Seven
African Powers down from the heavens and the souls of all those Rudy had
killed up from the earth to break his power. In the end, in spite of having
overcome her fear and resistance to the spiritual inheritance of Mami Gros-
Jeanne and coming to peaceful terms with the use of her spiritual powers, she
retains the right to her autonomy, to decide for herself how and when she will
use her gifts as opposed to simply stepping into her grandmother’s role as
might be expected. Such assertions of autonomy resist controlling cultural
scripts of what we think about when we imagine a black teenage mother
surviving in the inner city.
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 199

AFRICAN RELIGION AND ETHICAL ACTION

The previous discussion of narrative authority and the revision of controlling

cultural scripts necessarily involves an examination of religion and spiritual
ideologies because of the dominant culture’s tendency to dismiss the rele-
vance of spirituality to the medical paradigm. Since the rise of science in
medicine, the role of spirituality in understanding health and wellness has
been largely dismissed as hoodoo and quackery, but for centuries prior, med-
icine was intimately connected with religion (Haggard 1933, 13). Now, with
the rise of scientific medicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ques-
tions relating to the spiritual aspects of health have been jettisoned for more
empirically verifiable approaches (Haggard 1933, 28). Black women science
fiction writers consistently recuperate denigrated African-based spiritual
practices and engage with them as a holistic part of health and wellness;
spirituality is understood to be intimately connected with wellness, and the
healer figure is often times a spiritual leader as well. Onyesonwu is a sorce-
ress and a healer who must overcome the sexist prejudices of her culture in
order to develop her skills as a healer and warrior with repercussions for the
entire culture. Mami Gros-Jeanne struggles to overcome the Canadian deni-
gration of her Afro-Caribbean religion while her granddaughter Ti-Jeanne
works to understand her spiritual gifts for their healing capacities as opposed
to the solely dark powers of obeah that Rudy, who exploits the impoverished
poor of the inner city of Toronto, practices. Olamina revises and adapts
multiple received religious beliefs and scientific laws to develop her own
religio-ethical system called Earthseed which declares as its key truth that
God is Change. Earthseed is womanist in its strategic underpinnings of inclu-
sivity, interdependency, and community-building and evocative of her
African namesake the Yoruba orisha Oya—goddess of water, storms, and
winds, agent of rapid change and transformation, teacher of truth, and bringer
of justice.
Onyesonwu, Ti-Jeanne, and Olamina take seriously the ethical principles
of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice which are supposed
to consist in medical ethics. They are uncompromising in their struggle to
realize those struggles in spite of living in social contexts that severely de-
limit the capacity to achieve those ideals. For Onyesonwu, the rampant sex-
ism of the culture reveals itself most notably in the violence inflicted upon
girls’ and women’s bodies. These acts of violence—circumcision, rape—are
centered on women’s sexuality and are accompanied by myths about the
danger and instability of women because of their reproductive functioning.
One of the first acts of medical ethical autonomy that Onyesonwu performs
is the breaking of the Eleventh Rite juju (Okorafor 2010, 229) that she and
her friends underwent as part of their initiation into a liminal phase that casts
them as both child and woman. Not only are the girls circumcised, but the
200 Esther Jones

scalpel with which the circumcision is performed is fixed with juju, or sor-
cery, that makes the young women feel pain whenever they are too sexually
aroused. This pain is bound to occur until the next initiation into woman-
hood, which is marriage, and functions as a means of controlling female
sexuality (Okorafor 2010, 76).
The Eleventh Rite is performed by elder women and reveals the extent to
which the culture’s ethical principles require challenging and revision in
order for these young women to fully access those ideals. Just as with the
Eleventh Rite, women are often just as culpable as men in perpetuating the
beliefs and practices that suppress women and make them responsible for the
violence that is inflicted upon them. Onyesonwu’s ethics demand that she
hold both communities of Nuru and Okeke accountable for the beliefs that
allow women to be raped and their children to bear the brunt of the hostility
and responsibility for the outcomes of rape. If the Nuru were responsible for
the unconscionable rape of women in order to destroy the Okeke people, the
Okeke people are equally responsible for perpetuating oppressive behaviors
that blame the woman for her rape. Sickness is manifest in both cultures as it
pertains to the mythology surrounding victims of rape and their mixed off-
spring, and Oyesonwu’s response must be to rewrite the controlling narrative
that governs both groups’ beliefs and resulting actions.
In Brown Girl in the Ring, Rudy’s use of obeah, the malevolent control
and use of the spirits, is articulated in distinct contrast to Mami Gros-
Jeanne’s service to the spirits in which she works as a healer, eats a primarily
vegetarian diet in gratitude to the animals she breeds for her myalist ceremo-
nies, and functions as a benevolent benefactress for those who need medica-
ments, spiritual guidance, or simply a decent meal (Hopkinson 1998). When
the city government abandoned the city core, minoritized subjects like Mami
Gros-Jeanne and Romany Jenny began to more openly practice their belief
systems.
Hopkinson is careful to express the distinction between the kind of benev-
olent spirit work Mami Gros-Jeanne and other practitioners of New World
African religions perform and Rudy’s problematic obeah work: “anybody
who try to live good, who try to help people who need it, who try to have
respect for life, and age, and those who gone before, them all doing the same
thing: serving the spirits. . . . Now Rudy, he does try and make the spirits
serve he” (Hopkinson 1998, 219). Rudy has twisted his knowledge of the
spirits to make the spirits serve him by catching spirits of dead people,
working the dead to control the living (Hopkinson 1998, 121–22). Mami
Gros-Jeanne is fully aware of the maleficence of Rudy’s work—he was
formerly her husband—but she has ignored the instruction of her father spir-
it, Osain, and done nothing to stop him; she has been content to go on
practicing her own beneficent work to counterbalance his evil.
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 201

Likewise, her daughter Mi-Jeanne, Rudy’s daughter, refuses to learn how

to master the spiritual gifts that manifest as visions and is lost to madness
during the Riots that created the Burn. When Ti-Jeanne starts to see visions,
she fears them and does not understand them. She has internalized the deni-
gration of Afro-Caribbean spirituality and resists developing these gifts be-
cause she perceives them as evil and backward. But as Mami Gros-Jeanne
repeatedly points out to her granddaughter, the work she does is not obeah, it
is a gift from God-Father that must be put to use for good (Hopkinson 1998,
47). In a ceremony designed to implore the spirits to help Tony, who has
been conscripted into Rudy’s service to procure a human heart donor, Mami
Gros-Jeanne’s spirit guide, the healing orisha Osain, delivers the message,
“Tell Gros-Jeanne is past time for she to do my work. Is too late for she and
the middle one, but maybe the end one go win through. Ti-Jeanne, she have
to help you to get Rudy dead bowl and burn it” (Hopkinson 1998, 98). In
other words, the forces for good cannot leave those of evil unchecked. Ti-
Jeanne must confront Rudy and break the bad obeah he uses to terrorize the
Burn and its inhabitants.
It is important to note that Rudy does not work his obeah, however,
without broader systemic support from the distant official Toronto govern-
ment. Their simultaneous negligence and opportunism enable Rudy’s reign
over the Burn and its residents as the government fails to acknowledge any
responsibility towards the citizens it has left behind in the city core. The
geographical disconnect between the suburbs and the urban city core paral-
lels the psychological and relational distance between the people who popu-
late each district. The city core and the suburbs are separated from each other
by bridges and gates that keep the impoverished locked in the city even while
suburbanites continue to have access to the Burn’s night life and red light
districts via rooftop helicopters that allow private entry into and out of the
spaces without ever needing to venture into the streets of the neighborhoods
in which they reside. And while the Burn is depicted as having developed a
thriving communal barter culture, the power dynamics between the two areas
of the city continue to intrude upon the well-being of the Burn’s inhabitants.
When Premier Uttley, an ailing politician in the suburbs in need of a heart,
decides to buck the medical system and demand a human donor for her heart
transplant when porcine organs have been the established standard of care for
years, the political spin of “humans helping humans” rings false. Unsurpris-
ingly, no human donor is available in the suburbs, so they turn to the Burn
and the presiding drug lord, Rudy, to “find” a heart, refusing to concern
themselves with the unethical methods he will use to procure it.
This kind of unidirectional access with no genuine contact with the peo-
ple of the Burn creates a people-as-commodity culture in which the practices
of sex tourism, cultural voyeurism, and organ harvesting reduce the most
vulnerable members of society to their use-value and treat them as economic
202 Esther Jones

surplus: inconsequential, interchangeable, expendable. Such attitudes severe-

ly constrain the capacity to view such people as in any way relatable and
therefore worthy of the same ethical considerations they extend to those with
whom they readily identify—other wealthy suburbanites. Moreover, the resi-
dents of the Burn must remain in constant vigilance against the exploitative
and inherently unethical practices of Rudy.
Clearly, the inhabitants of the Burn have their own sense of ethics, and
that sense of ethics is certainly not monolithic. Rudy has no empathy or
feeling for anyone; driven by bitterness and revenge, no relationship is sa-
cred. He has captured his daughter’s spirit in his duppy bowl and commands
it to go hither and thither doing his evil works, killing, and providing visual
access to places where he should not be able to see. He is willing to kill
Mami Gros-Jeanne, his ex-wife, for her heart, and to kill Ti-Jeanne for inter-
fering with his business. Mami Gros-Jeanne, on the other hand, thinks it is
sufficient to keep out of Rudy’s way and continue her rootwork, nursing, and
ministering to her small congregation. However, the text suggests even Mami
Gros-Jeanne’s overall beneficence is insufficient to protect her or her loved
ones from the reach of Rudy’s malevolence and the government’s negli-
gence. Evil must be rooted out at its core and actively struggled against. In
the end, Ti-Jeanne is able to triumph with the help of the Seven African
Powers and the limited spiritual training Mami Gros-Jeanne was able to
impart before she was killed.
While the evil Ti-Jeanne confronts is consolidated in the figure of a single
nemesis whose unethical behaviors are institutionally supported by the poli-
tics of the Toronto suburbs, the danger that confronts Butler’s Olamina is
diffuse, ubiquitous, indiscriminate, and largely impersonal. It is the condi-
tions of society as a whole that give rise to widespread desperation and
normlessness, turning those who under better social conditions would submit
to the Hobbesian social contract of security and safety into survival-oriented,
ruthless, and dangerous opportunists. In Butler’s near-futuristic fiction, there
is no single problem, no clear-cut enemy. Rather, the problems that individu-
als face and which the society faces are a result of our collective failure to
deal with problems of our own creation. Taylor Bankole, Olamina’s husband
who characterizes the period known as “The Pox” as an installment-plan
World War III, argues,

I have . . . read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic,
economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox
was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas.
We caused the problems: then we sat back and watched as they grew into
crises . . . I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than
the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have
watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more danger-
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 203

ous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease

become inevitable for more and more people. (Butler 1998, 8)

Bankole’s analysis shifts focus from an individual act of malintent to the

systemic culture of abuse and negligence that, as a collective, U.S. society
failed to acknowledge until the situation was beyond remedying. With the
majority of the nation’s citizens reduced to a daily struggle for survival,
Olamina recognizes that in order to address the broad-ranging sickness of the
culture, an equally expansive ethical system is required.
While Earthseed cannot be reduced to a single belief system, African or
otherwise—for, as Who Fears Death demonstrates, not all African beliefs
and practices should be replicated—the methods of cultural adaptation and
improvisation that Olamina uses to realize Earthseed have been key to
African spiritual survivals in the African diaspora. Just as Mami Gros-Jeanne
and Ti-Jeanne learn to combine the elements of Western technology with the
traditional knowledge and spiritual practices of their Afro-Caribbean culture,
so Olamina makes use of what tools are available to her to improvise an
ethical system that enables not only her survival, but that of the broader
community. Like her namesake, Oya, she becomes an agent of rapid change
and transformation, a teacher of truth, and a bringer of justice. Those who
adopt the Earthseed system enter into a gender egalitarian, communal social
structure where individuality is respected but interdependency is understood
to be paramount as in the old African adage, “I am because we are.” These
foundational philosophies and strategies engender a survival ethic that fully
enables the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and jus-
tice.

TOWARDS A COMPLEMENTARY ETHICAL SCHEMA:

WOMANIST SURVIVAL ETHICS AND AN ETHIC OF
RELATIONAL RESPONSIVENESS

Thus, on the whole, this study suggests the following about our understand-
ing of narrative ethics and its application to ultimate ontological others. First,
the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice have
always been differentially applied to minoritized subjects like black women
because they were never meant to survive. Each heroine is embattled with
direct murderous assaults on their persons and must find a way to survive in
the most literal sense of the word. In fact, the most challenging principle for
these heroines to engage is that of non-maleficence; they are often required
to engage in violent acts in order to secure their own survival. This is espe-
cially true in these science fiction novels because the broader cultures abound
in violence. Thus the reconsideration of what this term means, for these black
girls are all targets for violent death, is necessary in these highly violent
204 Esther Jones

narrative settings. Second, in order to begin to achieve these ideals, black

women writers have had to turn to science fiction to first elucidate their
positions as not wholly subjugated and marginal, but rather as liminal—an
in-between status that occupies the position of both power and powerless-
ness. In the assertion of power in positions of seeming powerlessness, they
critique the cultural and systemic nature of oppression and violence against
them. Third, they articulate an alternate conception of these principles and
revise their meanings and the practice of their revised ethics according to
spiritually-based methods and values.
These elements of liminal identity, spiritual worldview, and empathetic
action constitute what I call a womanist survival ethic in black women’s
science fiction: the idea that the health and wellness of the human commu-
nity as a whole—what Octavia Butler would call species survival—is predi-
cated upon understanding the interdependence of all people, regardless of our
perceived differences, in order to avoid self-destruction. As these texts re-
veal, the womanist survival ethic is a strategy black women develop and
adopt to survive hostile social environments. For those non-black others who
wonder how this black women’s differential understanding of ethics and
wellness might enable them to craft their own interactions with this kind of
difference, I want to suggest a complementary ethical strategy: an ethic of
relational responsiveness. The concept of relational responsiveness is what
non-black others in their roles as doctors and healthcare practitioners must
cultivate to mitigate the conscious and unconscious biases and stereotypes
that inform their interactions with black people and the poor. I propose the
concept of relational responsiveness to suggest that one need not understand
nor identify with the beliefs and ideologies held by a group or individuals in
order to provide compassionate care. Rather, one must first, if we are to take
the goal of a “Levisanian intersubjectivity between doctor and patient, pro-
ducing the trust and clinical partnership necessary to the physician’s tasks”
seriously (Holmgren et al. 2011, 251), recognize the validity of the individu-
al’s experience and cultural background and resolve to respond to the holistic
needs of the patient regardless of capacity to relate to their sense of the world
and the meaning made of their illness within that worldview.
If biodiversity—a scientific way of articulating difference—is essential
for species survival, as current science indicates, then the means and methods
of Othering constitute a set of defeating practices that surely will result in the
mass extermination of the human race unless we can learn to relate more
humanely across our perceived differences. This is the warning toll that black
women science fiction sounds, from the individual experience of the liminal
and outcast to the collective of humanity. Such narratives help us to question
the assumptions that shape our narratives of human identity and belonging, to
redefine who belongs within a community of care, and to develop an ethical
system that makes humane, ethical action the standard for all people.
 Africana Women’s Science Fiction and Narrative Medicine 205

NOTES

1. Lisa Yaszek, “Race in Science Fiction: The Case of Afro-futurism and New Holly-
wood,” A Virtual Introduction to Science Fiction (2013), http://virtual-sf.com/?page_id=372.
2. Ibid.
3. Cadance McCowan, “Mid-South Doctor Gives Ghetto Booty Diagnosis.” WREG.com
(July 12, 2013).
4. Ibid.

REFERENCES

Butler, Octavia. 1993. Parable of the sower. New York: Warner Books.
———. 1998. Parable of the talents. New York: Warner Books.
Charon, Rita. 2005. Narrative medicine: Attention, representation, affiliation. Narrative 13, no.
3: 261–70.
English, Daylanne. 2013. Each hour redeem: Time and justice in African American literature.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fink, Sheri. 2009. The deadly choices at memorial. The New York Times, August 25. Retrieved
December 28, 2013.
Gilman, Sander L. 1985. Difference and pathology: Stereotypes of sexuality, race, and mad-
ness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
González-Crussi, Frank. 2007. A short history of medicine. New York: Modern Library.
Haggard, Howard W. 1933. Mystery, magic, and medicine: The rise of medicine from supersti-
tion to science. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company.
Holloway, Karla F.C. 2011. Private bodies, public texts: Race, gender, and a cultural bioethics.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Holmgren, Lindsay, Abraham Fuks, Donald Boudreau, Tabitha Sparks and Martin Kreiswirth.
Terminology and praxis: Clarifying the scope of narrative in medicine. Literature and Medi-
cine 29, no. 2 (2011): 246–73.
Hopkinson, Nalo.1998. Brown girl in the ring. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Jackson, Sandra and Julie E. Moody-Freeman, eds. 2011. The black imagination: Science
fiction, futurism, and the speculative. New York: Peter Lang.
Jones, Anne H. 1997. Literature and medicine: Narrative ethics. The Lancet 349 (1997):
1243–46.
Jones, James H. 1981. Bad blood: The Tuskegee syphilis experiment. New York: Free Press.
McCowan, Candace. 2013. Mid-South doctor gives ghetto booty diagnosis. WREG.com, July
12, 2013. Accessed December 28, 2013.
Okorafor, Nnedi. 2010. Who fears death. New York: DAW Books.
Rabkin, Eric. 2011. Science fiction and bioethical knowledge. In Bioethics and biolaw through
literature, eds. Daniela Carpi and Klaus Stierstorfer. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Roberts, Dorothy. 2011. Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business re-create race
in the twenty-first century. New York: The New Press.
Skloot, Rebecca. 2011. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Pan Macmillan.
Wald, Priscilla. The art of medicine: Cognitive estrangement, science fiction, and medical
ethics. The Lancet 371 (2008): 1908–9.
Washington, Harriet A. 2006. Medical Apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation
on black Americans from colonial times to the present. New York: Anchor Books.
Yaszek, Lisa. 2013. Race in science fiction: The case of afro-futurism and new Hollywood. In
A virtual introduction to science fiction, ed. Lars Schmeink, 1–11. http://virtual-sf.com/
?page_id=372.
 Chapter Eleven

“To Be African Is to Merge Technology

and Magic”
An Interview with Nnedi Okorafor

Qiana Whitted

Afrofuturist writer Nnedi Okorafor is the author of four novels, two chil-
dren’s books, and numerous short stories and essays. Her approach to specu-
lative fiction resists easy categorization, drawing upon elements of fantasy,
magic realism, hard science fiction, and dystopian horror for a wide and
diverse readership. While Okorafor has said that “labels can be very confin-
ing” when it comes to her writing (Womack 2010), she values the notion of
Afrofuturism as a way of being for the indomitable female protagonists that
so often populate the magical Nigerian landscapes of her stories. Born in
Cincinnati, Ohio, to immigrant Igbo parents, she is the first African
American to win the World Fantasy Award for her critically-acclaimed nov-
el, Who Fears Death (2010). She has also received the Wole Soyinka Prize
for Literature in Africa for the young adult novel, Zahrah the Windseeker
(2005) and the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award for best speculative
fiction by a person of color for The Shadow Speaker (2007). In this inter-
view, the writer and Chicago State University professor talks about the role
of Afrofuturism in her work, including the cultural merging of technology
and magic, on being compared to J. K. Rowling, and her enthusiasm for
bringing black speculative fiction to the comics medium.

207
208 Qiana Whitted

AFROFUTURISM IN FICTION

QW: On the matter of fantasy fiction, Samuel Delany once wrote that,
“what it presents us, even as it seems to lure us away to another age and
clime, is our own home reviewed through the distorting (or, better, orga-
nizing) lens of a set of paraliterary conventions” (Delany 1993, 20). Dela-
ny was referring to the imagined historical past of his Nevèrÿon series,
but the same might also be said of the future realms in which many of
your stories take place. Do you feel that the lens of Afrofuturism encour-
ages you and your readers to see the present-day concerns of home in
new ways?
NO: I don’t see speculative fiction or Afrofuturism as “tool” when I’m
writing. As I said, I’m not very interested in labels. I’m a subconscious
writer. I write what comes to me, and often what comes to me comes from
some unknown place or voice. So the fact that I’m writing what is considered
speculative fiction isn’t really intentional. I see the world as a magical place
and therefore that’s how it comes out in my work. I am interested in looking
into the future, usually that of Africa and that’s why what I write is consid-
ered Afrofuturism.

QW: How do the conventions of speculative fiction shape your willing-

ness and ability to tackle more controversial issues, for instance, such as
female circumcision, dangerous mining for oil and other natural re-
sources, and political and military corruption in West Africa?
NO: All these issues that I address, they are issues that have been around
me nearly all my life. They are real to me. They are not an academic discus-
sion. They are not distant. I know people who have been circumcised; it is
even something that used to be done in Traditional Igbo culture. I know
about genocide, too, because of the Biafran Civil War. I know about the
Niger Delta conflict. I’ve had personal experience with military corruption in
Nigeria and corruption in general there. These are what I write about.

JUJU AS TECHNOCULTURE

QW: One of the mystical Leopard People in your novel, Akata Witch
(2011a), describes the main character’s initiation through the metaphor
of a computer, already installed with programs and applications that
need only to be activated through a series of ritual lessons. And later, on
a humorous note, the story identifies disreputable Leopard People as
some of the culprits behind the Nigerian 419 scam emails. What do you
hope to accomplish in works like Akata Witch and others with this merg-
ing of technoculture and ancient magical practice?
 “To Be African Is to Merge Technology and Magic” 209

NO: Technology is just another form of juju in Akata Witch. And it’s not
the most powerful or useful. But really I don’t feel I NEED to merge them. I
feel they are naturally merged. Especially in African culture. To be African is
to merge technology and magic. That’s a bold statement to make and I can
imagine certain groups of African people rising up like angry snakes against
such a blanketing statement but so be it. In my experience as an African, the
mystical and the mundane have always coexisted. It’s expressed within the
explanation of things, in ways of doing things, the reasons for doing things.
That’s just life. So add the fact that technology is a part of African life, too,
and you get a natural merging. I’m not doing anything in my fiction that
doesn’t exist already. I got the idea FROM my experiences of being an
African, from being amongst Africans, and being IN Africa.

WRITING RACE, GENDER, AND NATURE

QW: I’m also curious about the relationship between race and the ani-
mal kingdom in your fiction. You have noted elsewhere that a childhood
interest in entomology informs your depiction of fantastical insects.
You’ve praised animal books like the Tove Jansson’s Moomin series that
you discovered as a young girl during a time when you were growing
frustrated by the lack of black characters in fantasy and science fiction.
You explained: “So I started migrating to books that featured ani-
mals . . . where the main characters were not even human so they didn’t
have to deal with that whole racial thing” (“Geeks Guide” Podcast).
How do you approach the animals in your own writing? Do the animals
and insects that you invent offer a kind of reprieve from those burdens
of social identity or are they integral to the constructions of race and
culture?
NO: I don’t write “constructions.” I’m literal. I see animals as people,
literally. It’s not about metaphors or ideas; this is what I believe. When I look
at pigeons in the streets of Chicago, I see communities. When I find an ant in
my home, I take it outside and hope it rejoins its family. There are many
types of people on this earth and most of them are not human. I’ve always
been this way. When I was a kid, I migrated to reading books about non-
humans because the ones about humans didn’t include me and I could relate
more to the other types of people, real or mythical. These days, I’ve since
learned that even when humans write about animals, however, they are often
equally as racist and sexist, for their animals are indeed just representations
of human beings.
210 Qiana Whitted

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY IN AFRICAN-CENTERED FANTASY

QW: Many of your stories, including Who Fears Death, Akata Witch,
“The Go-Slow” (2010b), and “Spider the Artist” (2011b), emphasize the
power of awakenings as the protagonists come to the realization that
there is wisdom and strength through difference. Yet these awakenings
often materialize in spite of (or perhaps, due to) the painful family rela-
tionships and antagonistic communities that surround them. Can you
comment on the role of family and community in your fiction, and the
significance of the surrogate parents, siblings, and mentors that emerge
to take the place of traditional family units in times of trouble?
NO: I was raised within a close knit traditional nuclear family because my
parents were immigrants and the rest of the family was still in Nigeria. Yet,
we remained deeply connected to extended family back in Nigeria. My
father, my mother, two older sisters, and one younger brother—we used to all
eat dinner together at the table every day. Uncles and aunties visited and we
visited Nigeria often and my parents called Nigeria even more often. My
father talks about spending as much time living and being raised by his uncle
as by his father and mother. My mother speaks fondly about being raised by
her aunts as much as by her parents. I was taught early on the African form of
family. In the African form of family, aunts and uncles aren’t always blood.
It’s not taboo or shameful to spend more time with your aunt than your
mother. And it’s normal and beneficial for one to be raised by many. So for
example, if your father is a jerk, you just look to that good uncle. Or if your
mother dies, you were close to grandma anyway, so there is someone to catch
you. When there is trouble, there are options in order to deal with the trouble.
This naturally comes out in my work.

HARRY POTTER IN NIGERIA

QW: Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has been used to describe

your approach to fantasy in your first novel, Zahrah the Windseeker
(2005), while reviews of Akata Witch (2011a) often praise the novel by
comparing it to J. K. Rowling’s work as a “female Harry Potter” or
“Harry Potter in Nigeria.” What is your response to these comparisons?
What do you think these kinds of assessments suggest about the way
your works are read and interpreted by American audiences?
NO: The comparisons are understandable. However, I think these com-
parisons are often a reaction reviewers have to dealing with cultures they find
are unfamiliar. By boiling my work down to what is familiar to them, they
therefore don’t have to discuss those many things that are not familiar to
them. It’s a cop out. And they also miss a huge part of the story. I think
 “To Be African Is to Merge Technology and Magic” 211

American audiences could benefit from stepping out of themselves more

often, out of what is familiar. Right now, I think too many Americans are
very insular and when they do peek out at the rest of the world, they get
overwhelmed. And because they are overwhelmed, they stamp all those
things outside of their narrow window of familiar as “foreign,” “bad,” “not
fun,” “wrong,” and “difficult.” Then they go retreat back into their little cave
where they can look at and play with those things that make them feel
comfortable and secure. That’s not the way to live.

CONFRONTING THE LEGACY OF RACISM IN FANTASY

QW: Among your literary ancestors, you have cited the influence of
writers like Octavia Butler, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Roald Dahl, and Isaac
Asimov. But you’ve also written at length about Stephen King, an au-
thor that you admire deeply, but whose representations of race and
blackness are sometimes problematic (“Stephen King’s Super-Duper
Magical Negroes” [2004]). And after becoming the first black person to
win the World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death in 2011, you wrote
quite powerfully on your blog about the tensions between that honor and
the racism of well-known fantasy author, H. P. Lovecraft—the figure
whose head is featured on the award statuette: “This is something people
of color, women, minorities must deal with more than most when striv-
ing to be the greatest that they can be in the arts: The fact that many of
The Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us.” How have
your thoughts on the Elders progressed since you’ve written those
words? What has been the response of fellow writers and fan commu-
nities to your challenge to think critically about the legacy of racism in
science fiction and fantasy?
NO: My thoughts on the issue remain the same. I was just glad I had a
platform to voice them. The response was great because apparently I’d spok-
en what was on the minds of many people. Of course there were those who
were shocked and angry that I’d taken a shot at one of their sacred icons but I
don’t think even they will be able to look at Lovecraft in the same way again.
Success!

BUILDING AFROFUTURIST WORLDS IN COMICS AND FILM

QW: In the last couple of years, you have also begun to write for comics;
could you share some information about your interest in graphic narra-
tives? How has the experience of writing for a different medium, partic-
ularly one with a visual component, affected your storytelling strategies,
if at all?
212 Qiana Whitted

NO: I’ve always been interested in comics, though not in the most tradi-
tional way. I grew up addicted to the Sunday comics in the newspaper and
I’ve always loved cartoons. However, when it came to traditional comic
books, they never pulled me in. I didn’t feel that I existed in their worlds. I
didn’t even feel welcome in comic book shops! I’d take one look at the
covers of the comic books, the shop owners and the customers and then just
walk right back out. Everyone was always white and male (or in the case of
the comic book covers, targeted toward white males). However, about eight
years ago I discovered comics that were beyond those traditional superhero
white male narratives. These were realistic comics, comics that told deep
stories similar to novels, comics that were about characters other than super-
heroes. I grew excited and I read voraciously. Reading these graphic novels
opened me up to reading some of the traditional superhero comics. I went on
to read Watchman [by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons], The Dark Knight
Rises [by Frank Miller], Wonder Woman, etc.
I began to see that my own stories could become something else within
this genre. I’ve always been a very visual writer. And I’m a world builder,
too. I started to dream about people actually literally SEEING my characters.
I write about Africa in the future, strong African characters who are not
royalty, who look African. I realized that comics could open things up on a
whole new level. Especially in the highly visual society we live in today. I
also suspect that I can reach a new audience to gather into the one I currently
have. Has my experience with comics affected the way I tell stories? Not at
all. I think the way I tell stories already naturally lends itself to graphic
narrative, so it’s a smooth transition.

REFERENCES

Adams, John Joseph, and David Barr Kirtley. 2010. “Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy #021: African
SF & Fantasy! Nollywood! Entomology! (Guest: Nnedi Okorafor),” Tor.com Podcast, May
24. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/05/geeks-guide-to-the-galaxy-021-african-sf-a-fantasy-
nollywood-entomology-guest-nnedi-okorafor.
Delany, Samuel. 1993. “Return . . . a Preface,” Tales of Nevèrÿon. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan
University Press.
Okorafor, Nnedi. 2004. “Stephen King’s Super-Duper Magical Negroes.” 2004. Strange Hori-
zons, October 24. http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20041025/kinga.shtml.
———. 2010a. Who Fears Death. New York: DAW Books.
———. 2010b. “The Go-Slow,” The Way of the Wizard, ed. John Joseph Adams. Gaithersburg,
MD: Prime Books.
———. 2011a. Akata Witch. New York: Viking.
———. 2011b. “Spider the Artist.” Lightspeed Magazine, March.
———. 2011c. “Lovecraft’s Racism and The World Fantasy Award Statuette, with Comments
from China Miéville,” Nnedi’s Wahala Zone Blog, Dec. 14. http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/
12/lovecrafts-racism-world-fantasy-award
———. 2012. “African Sunrise,” Subterranean Magazine Online: http://subterranean-
press.com/magazine/fall_2012/african_sunrise_by_nnedi_okorafor.
Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedi. 2005. Zahrah the Windseeker. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
 “To Be African Is to Merge Technology and Magic” 213

———. 2007. The Shadow Speaker. New York: Hyperion Books.

Womack, Ytasha L. 2010. “Sci Fi Author Nnedi Okorafor Talks Literature and Afrofuturism,”
Post-Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity, Aug. 9, 2010,
http://postblackthebook.blogspot.com/2010/08/sci-fi-author-nnedi-okorafor-talks.html.
 Index

aesthetic praxis: African-American Afro-pessimism: blacks and gratuitous

signification, 45; ancient magical violence, constrained by, 50; non-
practice, merger with, 209; conceptual revolutionary emancipation, 51
grammar, 64; design, transgression of, Akata Witch, discussion of, 208
31. See also Afrofuturism; Alien Nation, 73–76
technoculture Armageddon, 66
African American youth, existential Astro-Blackness, vii
reorientation of, 130
Africana Studies: Afrofuturism within, xi; Badu, Erykah. See Sun Ra
presuppositions, liberation from, 175; Bailey, Xenobia. See Afro Punk
science and technology within, xiii Baraka, Amiri: Technology and Ethos,
Africology, 127 essay, 31, 63
Afrika Bambaataa. See Sun Ra The Black Church: Afrofuturism,
Afriscape, definition, discussion of, 37 intersection with, xvii; Post-Modernity,
Afro Punk, 31. See also semantic, cultural relevance to, 127
arts network black experience: metaphysical
Afrocentric: normative assumptions, manifestations of, 176; slavery,
development of, xiii; quantum phenomenological ambiguity of, 179
computing, multiverse identities of, 150 black science fiction, concepts of, 65
Afrodisaporic: cultural production, 66; black women : black female subjectivity,
projection, hostility to, viii xv; black girl protagonists as targets,
Afrofuturism: definition of, 30, 63; 203; black women science fiction
dialectic and methodology of, 169; writers, spiritual ideologies of, 199. See
evolution, methods and theories of, also empathic medicine
177; subject areas, ix; theoretical Brown, James: Say It Loud, I’m Black and
approach, 129 I’m Proud, 31
Afrofuturist: cosmology, analysis of, 97;
ethics, alternative modes of, 187; Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945). See commu-
history, representation of, 178; inquiry, nicology
dominant theme of, 177; practice, 179; chronopolitics: definition of, 80; in
writers, critics, 47 Afrofuturism, Afrocentrism, 83

215
216 Index

clinical violence. See empathic medicine I, Robot: African-American futuristic film,

Clinton, George. See Sun Ra 46; technology, appropriation of, 45.
Coltrane, John, 29, 37, 63–75 See also Detropia; technoculture
communicology: definition of, 167;
intellectual origins of, 169; semiotic Jake, Yung. See Afro Punk
phenomenological method, three steps Jakobson, Roman (1896–1982). See
of, 173 communicology
curriculum. See National Council for Black Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969). See
Studies communicology
jazz musicians: John Coltrane and Sun Ra,
Dead Prez. See prophetic hip hop syntactic and semantic exchanges of,
Detropia : documentary film, 53; racial 29. See also Coltrane, John; Sun Ra
urban imaginary, recentering of, xvi; Jennings, John. See Afro Punk
techno-cultural network, development Joseph, Kahlil. See Afro Punk
of, 28. See also I, Robot; technoculture
Kweli, Talib. See prophetic hip hop
Ellison, Ralph. See Africana Studies
empathic medicine : black women, Locke, Alain, 133
sexualized pathology of, 189; clinical
violence, 192; scientific racial and Mos Def. See prophetic hip hop
gender hierarchies, legitimation of, 189
Eshun, Kodwo, xvii, 78 Nas. See prophetic hip hop
National Council for Black Studies, xi, xiii,
Fanon, Frantz. See Africana Studies 220
flight : African Americans as aliens, 177; nommo : algorithms of, 164; digital word,
Afropunk, 31; nineteenth century Negro power of, 120
spirituals reject earth, 114; Octavia
Butler, 31; Sanford Biggers, Outkast. See Sun Ra
foundational “DIY” technoculture and
aesthetics, 31 performative practices, 65
Foucault, Michel (1926–1984). See prophetic hip hop : West, Cornell,
communicology identified by, 115; practitioners of, 115
Public Enemy, 55, 64–71
Gilroy, Paul: African Diasporic Blackness,
99; in Between Camps, 63 Satterwhite, Jacolby. See Afro Punk
Scott-Heron, Gil, 55, 64–70
heliocentric. See Sun Ra semantic, cultural arts network, 39
Hendrix, Jimi, celebration of, 76 slavery: forced diaspora frameworks,
hermeneutic: whiteness as transcendental tethered to, 180; forced relocation, 29;
norm, resistance of, 176 modernity rendered suspect, 68;
Hill, Lauryn. See prophetic hip hop nonsubjectivity, 50; othering and
holographic: Beyoncé hologram, 113; pathologizing of blacks, 194
Eazy-E hologram, 112; Mariah Carey Smith, Cauleen. See Sun Ra
hologram, 113; Old Dirty Bastard Studio Museum in Harlem, The Shadows
hologram, 112; Tupac Shakur Took Shape. See Sun Ra
hologram, 116 Sun Ra, xvi, 12, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38,
40, 63, 64, 72, 73, 74, 75–76, 79, 80,
91–94, 99, 109, 123, 138, 177, 181, 184
 Index 217

technoculture, 31, 45, 58, 127, 208, 209 vernacular cartography: contemporary art
technology: human consciousness, forms, augmented space, applied to, 39;
reorientation of, 173; web-based segmented space, reconceptualized, 28;
technologies, 38 vernacular space, as navigational, 35.
technoscape: the social imaginary, See also vernacular commodification, ,
grounded within, 30 31

Urban, Wilbur Marshall (1873–1952). See William, James (1842–1910). See commu-
communicology nicology
Woolfalk, Saya. See Afro Punk
 About the Editors and Contributors

Reynaldo Anderson currently serves as a member of the executive board for

the Missouri Arts Council and as an associate professor of communications
at Harris-Stowe State University. Reynaldo was recognized by Gov. Jay
Nixon in 2010 for his leadership in the community and serves on various
non-profit boards. Finally, Anderson publishes research in regard to several
dimensions of the African American experience and the African diaspora
including Afrofuturism, rhetoric, communications, Africana womanism, glo-
balization, and world systems theory, and recently taught as visiting lecturer
in Accra, Ghana.

Tiffany E. Barber is a scholar, curator, and writer of twentieth and twenty-

first century visual art and performance with a focus on artists of the black
diaspora living and working in the United States.

Lonny Avi Brooks is interested in how strategic narratives about the future
of new media, human-computer interaction, futurists think tanks, and ubiqui-
tous computing gain currency between policy-makers, professional futurists,
modelers, and the media, and gain interpretive flexibility, utility, and status.
Finally Brooks is interested in how new media technologies shape interper-
sonal communication and racial identity online and offline.

David DeIuliis is a PhD candidate and visiting instructor in the Department

of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. His re-
search interests include communication theory and philosophy of communi-
cation, particularly the philosophy and aesthetics of Marcel Proust. DeIuliis
has guest edited the Pennsylvania Communication Annual and published
chapters in edited volumes in the area of communication theory and cultural

219
220 About the Editors and Contributors

studies, as well as articles and reviews in Communication Research Trends

and Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication,
among others.

Nettrice R. Gaskins, PhD, was born in Baltimore, MD. She majored in

visual art at DuPont Manual High School in Louisville, KY. She earned a
BFA in Computer Graphics with Honors from Pratt Institute in 1992 and an
MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
in 1994. She worked for several years in K–12 and post-secondary education,
community media, and technology before enrolling at Georgia Tech where
she received a doctorate in digital media in 2014. Her model for “techno-
vernacular creativity” is an area of practice that investigates the characteris-
tics of this production and its application in STEAM (science, technology,
engineering, art, and mathematics). When she is not advancing interdiscipli-
nary education, Ms. Gaskins blogged for Art21, the producer of the Peabody
award-winning PBS series, Art in the Twenty-First Century, and publishes
articles and essays about topics such as Afrofuturism and ghost nature. Her
essay was included in Meet Me at the Fair: A World’s Fair Reader published
by ETC Press.

Grace Gipson is a doctoral student in African American studies at the Uni-

versity of California Berkeley. Her research interests are black popular cul-
ture studies, film/media studies, (mis)representations of race/gender in
African American film and comic books, black gender and sexuality studies,
and performance of blackness.

Ricardo Guthrie is associate professor of ethnic studies at Northern Arizona

University. He examines political narratives of the black press and writes
about cinema as cultural political artifacts. His publications include book
chapters: “Reading Radmilla: The Semiotics of Self (Black and Navajo),” in
The Politics of Identity: Emerging Indigeneity (UT-Sydney Press, 2013);
“Oprah Winfrey and the Trauma Drama,” in Presenting Oprah Winfrey, Her
Films, and African American Literature (Palgrave, 2013); and “Minstrelsy
and Mythic Appetites: The Last King of Scotland’s Heart of Darkness in the
Jubilee Year of African Independence,” in Hollywood’s Africa After 1994
(Ohio University Press, 2012). He is currently researching the life and influ-
ence of Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett and the San Francisco Sun-Reporter
(1945–1966).

Charles E. Jones is an architect in the field of African-American studies. At

Old Dominion in Norfolk, VA, Jones’s first job, he built a minor program in
black studies and headed the Institute for the Study of Minority Issues. Then
he went on to Georgia State where he built an undergraduate program and
 About the Editors and Contributors 221

then a master’s program. Dr. Jones is a board member of the National Coun-
cil of Black Studies (NCBS), the leading professional organization for those
in the field of African American studies. Jones has spent a career grooming
the future of Africana studies—from building programs to doing original
research to encouraging students in the classroom. Now he is looking for-
ward to completing his “marathon,” as he refers to his career, at University of
Cincinnati. He is currently teaching Black Politics and Intro to Africana
Studies.

Esther Jones specializes in the study of black women writers in the Ameri-
cas, with a focus on the intersections of race, gender, class, and nationality,
and theorizations of difference. She has a particular interest in speculative
literatures and science fiction by feminists and writers of color, and how such
texts attempt to theorize and/or critique how difference operates within con-
temporary culture. Her current book project, Traveling Discourses: Subjec-
tivity, Space, and Spirituality in Black Women’s Speculative Fictions pro-
poses a theory and method for reading experimental, or “problematic texts,”
generally, and black speculative fiction, specifically, as a discourse that oper-
ates within the liminal spaces between genres, or within the “slipstream.”
Professor Jones’s research and teaching interests also include historical fic-
tion and autobiographical/life writing. Professor Jones teaches both general
and special topics courses in African American literature, theory, and culture.

Jeff Lohr is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and

Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. He has published entries in sev-
eral encyclopedias in the areas of critical theory and philosophy of communi-
cation, as well as critical and communication theory.

Ken McLeod is an associate professor of music history and culture at the

University of Toronto. He has published on identity politics in popular mu-
sic, popular music appropriations of art music, and the intersections between
technology, science fiction, and rock music. His book We Are the Cham-
pions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music (Ashgate, 2011) examines
the interconnection of sports and popular music in constructing racial, gen-
der, ethnic, socio-economic, and national identities. He is currently research-
ing issues surrounding technology and identity politics in Japanese popular
music and hip hop as well as the relationship of popular music to automotive
culture. His work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-
search Council of Canada.

Andrew Rollins has done extensive study and research on metaphysics, the
occult, and post-modernism. In March 2013 he spoke on “Transhumanism
and the Prophetic Voice of the Black Church” at The Speculative Visions of
222 About the Editors and Contributors

Race, Technology, Science and Survival Conference sponsored by the Race

and Gender Center and Multicultural Center at the University of California,
Berkeley. In February 2014 he spoke at the Astro-Blackness Colloquium at
Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles on “Racial Ethics and Afrofu-
turism.” Currently he is the pastor of St. James A.M.E. Church in San Jose,
California.

Tobias C. van Veen is SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of

Communications at the Université de Montréal. Writing in both popular and
academic publications, Tobias’s work explores questions of race, becoming,
and technology in culture, music, and philosophy. Tobias is editor of the
Afrofuturism special issue of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music
Culture (2013) and co-editor with Hillegonda Rietveld of the special issue
“Echoes from the Dub Diaspora” (2015). A techno-turntablist and practition-
er of interventionist media arts since 1993, Tobias is also creative director of
the IOSOUND.ca music label and resident DJ of Ion Storm podcast at
djtobias.com. Tobias has collaborated with festivals and media arts centers
worldwide as founding director of UpgradeMTL.org and concept engineer at
the Society for Art and Technology (SAT) in Montréal.

Qiana Whitted is associate professor of English and African American stud-

ies at the University of South Carolina. Her primary research and teaching
interests focus on African American literature and American comics. Her
work frequently examines representations of race, history, and popular cul-
ture, and lately she has become more interested in questions about genre in
mass culture. She also enjoys studying post-modern narrative and metafic-
tion. The subjects that she explores often intersect with southern studies and
the philosophy of religion as well. She’s currently working on two projects:
one on EC Comics, and another that looks at race and social justice in late
1940s and 1950s comic books.