Survey of American Literature I
An Introduction to A F R O F U T U R I S M
As a definitive genre and field of study, Afrofuturism, which focuses on works of science fiction written by authors of the African diaspora, is fairly new.
· coined by cultural critic Mark Dery in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future,” from the collection Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture:
“Why do so few African Americans write science fiction, a genre whose close encounters with the Other—the stranger in a strange land—would seem uniquely suited to the concerns of African-American novelists? […] This is especially perplexing in light of the fact that African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassible force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies.” (179-180)
“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 a prosthetically enhanced future—might, for want of a better term, be called ‘Afrofuturism.’” (180)
· In the same collection, African-American writer, musician, and producer Greg Tate:
“Well, if you look at the black writing that’s been done in this century [the twentieth], from Richard Wright on, there’s always been huge dollops of fantasy, horror, and science fiction in it. There are science fiction sequences in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, for example.” (207)
Tate also points out the inherently sci-fi aesthetic of even the earliest hip hop (210)—how “SF [science fiction], like hip-hop, is a very sociohistorical genre.” (211)
“Science fiction eschews the psychological dimension in terms of character portrayal for a more all-encompassing look at the impact of the various institutions that govern behavior and the transmission of knowledge. And in the same way that SF focuses on the impact of information technologies on the psychology of a society, black literature moves the silence and intellectual marginalization of blacks to the foreground. Both represent an attempt to view everything through a single lens, so that we can see the specter haunting society that society doesn’t want to acknowledge.” (211)
“that the condition of alienation that comes from being a black subject in American society parallels the kind of alienation that science fiction writers try to explore through various genre devices—transporting someone from the past into the future, thrusting someone into an alien culture, on another planet, where he has to confront alien ways of being. All of these devices reiterate the condition of being black in American culture. Black people live the estrangement that science fiction writers imagine.” (211-212)
· also worth checking out: author and filmmaker Ytasha Womack’s Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture
Themes of Science Fiction as a Speculative Fiction (Applicable to and Typical of Afrofuturism)
1. advanced technology; technological innovation (including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and cyborgs)
2. mad science
3. utopias and/or dystopias
4. panoptic surveillance; conspiracies
5. apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic
6. alien invasion; alien abduction; alien encounters in general
7. alternate worlds; alternate universes; alternate histories
8. retro-futurism (“futuristic” from the standpoint of the past—like what so-called “steampunk” does with the Victorian era)
9. space travel
10. intergalactic warfare
11. time travel
12. overlap with other forms of speculative fiction (fiction that deals with supernatural and/or the future; “speculative” = “What if…?”), especially fantasy and horror (Think of how one of the earliest and most archetypal works of horror literature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is both horror and science fiction.)
The usefulness and significance of these themes comes through their use as METAPHORS—usually pointing towards some sort of historical, cultural, and/or social commentary.
Texts that I required for my English 400 course:
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (edited by Sheree R. Thomas)
Black No More (George S. Schuyler)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
Kindred (Octavia Butler)
The Intuitionist (Colson Whitehead)
Further Reading Recommendations:
· Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins (1903; Telassar = Wakanda before Wakanda)
· I say this without the least bit of exaggeration: EVERYTHING ever written by Octavia Butler. Seriously, all of it.
· Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy and Who Fears Death
· Steven Barnes’ Lion’s Blood and Zulu Heart
· N.K. Jemisin’s How Long ’Til Black Future Month? and Broken Earth trilogy
· Colson Whitehead’s Zone One and The Underground Railroad
· Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring
· Kodwo Eshun’s More Brilliant Than the Sun (musical criticism/theory)
· Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts
Short stories that can be found online as fair use:
1. W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Comet”
2. Derrick Bell’s “The Space Traders”
3. Henry Dumas’ “Ark of Bones” and “Fon”
Afrofuturism in music:
Sun Ra
Jimi Hendrix (especially “Third Stone from the Sun”)
Parliament/Funkadelic/George Clinton/The P-Funk All-Stars
early- and mid-1980s hip hop (think Afrika Bambaataa and early breakdancing music)
1990s hip hop and r&b videos for artists such as Tupac Shakur, Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, and
Busta Rhymes (especially with Janet Jackson)
Outkast (ATLiens, “Synthesizer,” Big Boi’s portion of the “B.O.B.” music video)
Janelle Monae (the music video for “Dance Apocalyptic,” Dirty Computer mini-movie…)
Yugen Blakrok (the Return of the Astro-Goth album; especially check out the official music video for “House of Ravens,” which combines the aesthetics of both science fiction and the Gothic)
the Black Panther soundtrack (especially the track “Opps”)
Animals as Leaders (especially the first album, and especially the track “CAFO” and its official music video)
Afrofuturism in cinema: