Afrofuturism
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Recent papers in Afrofuturism
In this paper, educational pathways emerge from the nexus of ancient narratives and future possibilities. Such imaginings are as much attributed to African American intellectual traditions as to contemporary Afrofuturisms, including those... more
This article explores space imagery in the music of George Clinton and David Bowie and argues that different horizons of Black and white terrestrial experience give rise to divergent astral imaginaries. Analysis of song lyrics, liner... more
The essay that launched Afrofuturism. Introductory essay, in which the term is coined and theorized in depth, followed by interviews exploring the idea with leading African-American cultural theorists. From the collection FLAME WARS,... more
This essay explores the culturally subversive and incredibly unique enigma that is Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is understood in terms of its inherent delineation from any attempts by a universal cultural modernity to categorise it within... more
In his 1996 essay, ‘Music and Identity’, sociologist and music critic Simon Frith argued that identity was not a thing but a process. That our identities came from the outside, not the inside; subjectivity, a question of doing rather than... more
This paper focuses on the intertwining themes of creativity, sacrifice, and radical imagination in two pieces of contemporary Black Speculative fiction, "Book of Martha" (2005), by Octavia Butler, and "El is a Spaceship Melody" (2018), by... more
RESUMO: O presente trabalho representa o cruzamento dos Estudos Culturais com os Estudos do Currículo e do Lazer. Nesse cruzo, discutem-se estratégias de formação curricular e subjetivação no mundo pós-colonial, a partir da relação entre... more
Taking Octavia Butler’s Patternist series as its primary source of inquiry, this paper examines the ontology of power, intersubjectivity, and social reality through the science and speculative fiction tropes of body-swapping and... more
To analyze the short film Bluesman (2018) this work brings together the concept of Sankofa-originally from the writing of Akan peoples from West Africa-with the concept of Afrofuturism through a methodology that articulates the ideas of... more
Some have viewed the internationally acclaimed blockbuster hit, the Black Panther film, as feminist; meanwhile, others have highlighted its aspects of African culture focusing on its traditional elements and Afrofuturistic aspects. One of... more
Afrofuturism is a storytelling genre that appears in multiple media types, including books, films, television, comics, music, and art. Drawing from genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, and other speculative... more
In this paper, I address the issue of Community in Afrofuturism, based on the thought of Achille Mbembe, united under the label of ‘thought of the in-common’. According to the latter, if the need for community stems from a ‘will of life’,... more
In this essay, I contend hyperempathy syndrome constitutes a kind of new materialism avant la lettre, prefiguring problems we are perhaps only now in a position to address academically. In other words, if both current scientific and... more
In the post-Civil Rights late 1960s, the Black Panther Party (BPP) artist Emory Douglas created visual messages mirroring the US Western genre and gun culture of the time. For black people still struggling against severe oppression,... more
Over the past decade or so, Afropolitanism has become a hotly contested term within literary studies, celebrated for its capacity to articulate an experience of transnational mobility and success in the West as well as criticized for how... more
Oltre a un complesso sistema di rapporti di potere di natura sociale, politica ed economica, il colonialismo ha prodotto anche un apparato di costruzioni discorsive relative alla nerezza e ha svolto una funzione centrale nel processo di... more
In negotiating the representation of the black female as grotesque within Afrofuturism, spectacles in popular culture, such as Kanye West's video, strike an uncanny similarity to images produced by black women artists. The author grapples... more
Introduction to a special issue of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth.
Recent interest in Afrofuturism, as well as the appearance of the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked renewed interest in the political and aesthetic innovations of the Black Arts and Black Power movements, which has in turn given... more
This article examines W.E.B. Du Bois's short story The Comet in the light of the Afrofuturist movement, a transnational and interdisciplinary, theoretical and literary-cultural enterprise which has endeavoured to rethink the history of... more
The essay draws on Pierre Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire to examine the role of memory in moments of liberation and their potential intervention in the development of new cultural structures. In Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed and Mind... more
"De volta para o Afruturo", tradução de "Black to the future", de Mark Dery, ensaio e entrevistas fundadores do conceito de Afrofuturismo.
Global capitalism and its ongoing demand for ever more oil render life in the Niger Delta precarious. Exploitative conditions and ecological devastation are repeatedly resisted by activists in the Niger Delta, as well as by writers of... more
Achille Mbembe posits the radical notion that, in the twenty-first century, Africa will constitute the planet’s main cultural and philosophical event, as the diaspora of the post-colony embraces its African voice and disassembles the... more
The events around the Mauerfall provided conditions for encounters between Detroit techno producers and a nascent Berlin scene celebrating a new – short-lived – openness. Cemented in Berlin’s Wende era, techno reached across decades-old... more
Self-identified Afrofuturist, R&B singer, and now actress Janelle Monae has garnered both popular and academic attention for her musical creation of the alternate cityscape Metropolis via multiple studio-released recordings and videos.... more
In der Interviewpassage, die dem Text folgt, der den Begriff des Afrofuturismus prägen sollte, antwortet Tricia Rose auf die Frage Mark Derys, ob die Frau* mit der Waffe der technofeministischen Imagination der Cyborg nach Donna Haraway... more
In this article, the focus is on Black Panther: a nation under our feet, a comic book series written by American public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates. The point of departure is Coates's idea of 'the Mecca', a term he uses in... more
This essay analyses Nnedi Okorafor's 'Who Fears Death' within the framework of Ernst Bloch’s theories of utopianism. Okorafor’s feminist fantasy forms a radical counter-narrative to Eurocentric perceptions of Africa by breaking down the... more
“Sun Ra deemed ‘Space is the place’ for the discovery of a self liberated from the earthly weight of prejudices and carnal inequities.” Norment, C. (2007), Pathways to Unknown Worlds, p.23. In this is essay, Aaron Sandhu has analysed and... more
Most criticism considers W.E.B. Du Bois mainly as a historian and a sociologist, and Langston Hughes essentially as a poet, yet some aspects of their multifaceted output require closer scrutiny. This book examines these seemingly... more
In this article I explore the influence of Afrofuturism on Olivia Wenzel's play Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien. The play focuses on the black German protagonist Noah by showing scenes from his life, ranging from his childhood in... more
Mark Dery, "Wired Man's Burden: The Incredible Whiteness of Being Digital," in _AfroGeeks: Beyond the Digital Divide_, ed. Anna Everett and Amber J. Wallace (Santa Barbara: U.C. Santa Barbara, Center for Black Studies Research, 2007).... more
Homage to memories you will create.
Critical Black Futures imagines worlds, afrofutures, cities, bodies, art and eras that are simultaneously distant, parallel, present, counter, and perpetually materializing. From an exploration of W. E. B. Du Bois’ own afrofuturistic... more
This bibliography forms the source list for a Hip-Hop independent study I am working on with a student over summer 2019. This study approaches Hip-Hop as a performative archive of critical Black folklore containing the sacred myths,... more