History and Its Others in Afrofuturism

Authors

  • John Rieder
  • Cristina Bacchilega Università degli studi di Verona

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2016.i8.678

Keywords:

American literature, afrofuturism

Abstract

Afrofuturist fiction proceeds from the position of an enslaved, silenced, subaltern Other within the history of the US. It responds by constructing various strategic discontinuities with historical time, including anachronism, apocalypse, and utopia. This talk will survey the use of these narrative strategies in Afrofuturist work by Sun Ra, Octavia Butler, Andrea Hairston, and in the recent anthology of activist science fiction, Octavia’s Brood .

References

Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon, 2003.

---. Lilith’s Brood. New York: Warner, 2000.

“Creating Futures Rooted in Wonder: Bridges between Indigenous, Science Fiction, and Fairy-Tale Studies.” Open Access University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Library, 2016. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/39998. Last Visited September 26, 2016.

Dery, Mark. “Black to The Future: Interviews With Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose.” South Atlantic Quarterly 92.4 (1993): 735-78.

Hairston, Andrea. Mindscape. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2006.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Imarisha, Walidah. “Re-Writing the Future: Using Science Fiction to Re-Envision Justice.” February 11, 2015. https://bitchmedia.org/article/rewriting-the-future-prison-abolition-science-fiction. Last Visited September 26, 2016.

Imarisha, Walidah, and Adrienne Maree Brown, eds. Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015.

Kuwada, Bryan Kamaoli, and Aiko Yamashiro, eds. Special Issue “Rooted in Wonder: Tales of Indigenous Activism and Community Organizing.” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 30.1 (2016).

Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Nelson, Alondra. “Making the Impossible Possible: An Interview with Nalo Hopkinson.” Social Text 20.2 (2002): 97-113.

Peppers, Cathy. “Dialogic Origins and Alien Identities in Butler’s XENOGENESIS.” Science-Fiction Studies 22 (1995): 47-62.

Rieder, John, Grace Dillon, and Michael Levy, eds. Special Issue on “Indigenous Futurisms.” Extrapolation 57.1-2, 2016.

Space Is The Place. Directed by John Coney. North American Star Systems, 1974. Film.

Szwed, John F. Space Is The Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. New York: Pantheon, 1997. Reprint: Da Capo Press, 1998.

Williams, Kristian. “Demanding the Impossible: Walidah Imarisha Talks about Science Fiction and Social Change.” April 13, 2015. https://bitchmedia.org/post/demanding-the-impossible-walidah-imarisha-talks-about-science-fiction-and-social-change. Last visited September 26, 2016.

Zuberi, Nabeel. “The Transmolecularization of [Black] Folk: Space is the Place, Sun Ra and Afrofuturism.” Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. Philip Hayward. Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey, 2004. 77-95.

Downloads

Published

2016-12-01