3.4: Opportunities and Possibilities

Opportunities and Possibilities

 

The below image is of Octavia E. Butler, who is widely considered the godmother of Afrofuturism. Butler fascination with science fiction allowed her to carve her own lane in science fiction's literary canon. Butler famously stateed, “I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”

-Octavia E. Butler- 

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Octavia Butler. (CC-BY-2.5; Wikimedia Commons via Wikkimedia)

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism is best served to situate the opportunities and possibilities within the discipline of Africana studies. Afrofuturism could be understood as several things; a literary movement, an arts movement and aesthetic, a musical offering, a social theory that centers the radical possibility of the Afrikan imagination, or a vital component of contemporary Africana studies theorization. Ytasha L. Womack in her text Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture  provides further definition positing, "Whether through literature, visual arts, music, or grassroots organizing, Afrofuturist redefine culture and notions of blackness for today and the future. Both an artistic aesthetic and a framework for critical theory, Afrofuturism combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-western beliefs. In some cases, it’s a total revisioning of the past and speculation about the future rife with cultural critiques."^[87]Working through the words of Ingrid Lafleur, Womack asserts, “I generally define Afrofuturism as a way of imagining the possible futures through a black cultural lens... I see Afrofuturism as a way to encourage experimentation, reimagine identities, and activate liberation.”^[88]

Womack details how Afrofuturism rests at “the intersection of the imagination, technology, the future, and liberation.” Lafleur thinks of “Afrofuturism as a way of imagining the possible future, to reimagine identities and activate liberation.” What becomes increasingly apparent is the role of the imagination in Afrofuturism. The imagination becomes the conduit for expansive manifestations of worldmaking, the vehicle that actualizes the Afrikan future. The possibility of the imagination firmly grounds the possibility of a Afrofuturist methodology for Africana Studies. The ability to imagine beyond the limitations and confines of anti-blackness, in order to cultivate a pedagogical practice that attempts to ground the learner in their purpose and draw out their brilliance guides the methodological approach of the discipline. Womack posits, “The imagination is the greatest resource that humans have.^[89] As a methodology, Afrofuturism could allow for the discipline to be attentive to the power and possibility of our greatest resource, an often unrecognized manifestation of Black brilliance. Or in the words of Womack, “Afrofuturism unchains the mind.”^[90]

Afrofuturism’s role in Africana Studies takes center stage for Anderson and Jones as they seek to investigate how Afrofuturism can be applied in pedagogical practices through the words of William H. King who posits, "The pedagogical application of technological 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 developments and concerns of black people were interwoven.’^[91] Anderson and Jones continue to employ the insightful observations of Stewart who argues, “An expected early development will be the use of modern technology to bring Black Studies to the black community at large.”^[92] Through the imaginative thrust of Afrofuturism, the potential for new directions for research in the discipline are boundless. As a methodology, Afrofuturism allows us to be attentive to the power and possibility of our greatest resource, an often unrecognized manifestation of Black brilliance. Yet, where can we locate a pedagogy of imagination within an Afrofuturistic discourse?

In the essay “Everything is real. It’s just not as you see it: Imagination, Utopia, and Afrofuturist Feminism in Octavia E. Butler’s “The Book of Martha” Susana M. Morris argues, "Some of the most compelling works of black speculative fiction, whether they are science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, or other forms, not only ask you to suspend disbelief but also invite you to participate in the projects of Afrofuturism, feminism, and Africana Studies, in imagining new possibilities for the world in expansive and transgressive ways."^[93]Morris triangulates Afrofuturism among feminism and Africana studies as projects of “imagining new possibilities for the world.” While feminism and Africana Studies are clearly situated in their respective pedagogical approaches, Morris points us to Butler’s short story “The Book of Martha” as an example of afrofuturism’s ability to uncover the pedagogical work of the imagination as she posits, “Understanding the connection between imagination and change is not only crucial to understanding much of Butler’s cannon, but is particularly helpful in understanding one of her most overlooked short stories, ‘The Book of Martha.’”^[94] Adding further detail to her claim of the imagination’s central role in Butler’s short story Morris continues:

I contend that “The Book of Martha” is an Afrofuturist feminist text that interrogates human possibilities in the face of the destruction of life as we know it, a type of apocalypse itself, despite its billing as a story about a futuristic utopia. I argue the text is a treatise on the nature of the imagination, grace, individualism, and free will, and weighs the cost of personal freedom against communal survival. These are concerns at the heart of Africana Studies, Afrofuturism, and feminism. My analysis uncovers the significance of the story’s meditation on the roles of imagination and grace in the future of humanity and concludes that “The Book of Martha” should be recognized as a critical intervention into utopia and apocalyptic fiction, Afrofuturism, and black feminist and Africana Studies more generally.^[95]           

The work of Maulana Karenga IBS: Introduction into Black Studies, articulates one of the overarching missions of Africana Studies is to offer a moral “critique” and “policy corrective", through “rigorous research and critical intellectual production.” And as discussed previously in this chapter, Kodwo Eshun articulates the mission of Afrofuturism as “a program for recovering the histories of counter-futures created in a century hostile to AfroDiasporic projection.” We see the critique and corrective work that is central to both Afrofuturism and Africana Studies at play within “The Book of Martha,” a text that Morris situates as a Afrofuturist feminist offering. Morris posits, “‘The Book of Martha’ is an Afrofuturist feminist text that not only illuminates the constructedness of race and gender but also the ways in which internalized notions of racism and sexism are difficult to exercise.”^[96] As highlighted by Morris, “The Book of Martha '' causes the reader to question the static and fixed nature of concepts like race and gender, directly aligning with the work of many feminist scholars. If the image of God can be critiqued due to its hegemonic conceptualization, and a corrective can be offered through the use of the imagination, then what other seemingly fixed hegemonic notions can be morally critiqued and corrected through the employment of the imagination? The Afrofuturistic imagination is a boundless technology/methodology that has shaped Afrikan worldmaking for ages. Although systems of oppression and anti-black  subjugation sought to constrict and minimize Afrikan imaginative power, the brilliance that is the Afrikan imagination continues to prevail. The imagination is the prerequisite to manifestation, manifestation is an old Afrikan spiritual technology, manifestation makes the immaterial material. As Somé asserts, "to us, there is a close connection between thought and reality. To imagine something, to closely focus one’s thought upon it, has the potential to bring that something into being… In the realm of the sacred, this concept is taken even further, for what is magic but the ability to focus thought and energy to get results on the human plane? The Dagara view of reality is large. If one can imagine something, then it has at least the potential to exist.^[97]

Somé directs us to a fundamental component of Afrikan manifestation, to “focus thought and energy” in order “to get results on the human plane.” Yet, if this is so, how do we begin to engage in thought and energy or action that is emancipated from notions of anti-blackness, in a society where anti-blackness is pervasive? Furthermore, can we locate a theory that serves to sever the pervasive influence of anti-blackness on the imagination? To address these inquiries, it might be best to engage in a discourse on the possibilities  of Astro Black theory in Africana Studies. “There’s nothing wrong with Blackness”: What if this were the primitive axiom of a new black studies underived from the psycho-politico-pathology of populations and its corollary theorisation of the state or of state racism; an axiom derived as all such axiom are, from the “runaway tongues” and eloquent vulgarities encrypted in works and days that turn out to be the native slave insofar as the fugitive is misrecognized, and in bare lives that turn out to be bare only insofar as no attention is paid to them, only insofar as such lives persist under the sign and weight of a closed question?^[98]

Afrofuturism and what I refer to as AstroBlack Theory offer the most dynamic and boundless opportunities and possibilities for the future of Africana Studies, as it offers the ability to engage Afrikanity or Blackness untethered from the confines of an overdetermined anti-black system of oppression. The work of Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness details further insight positing, “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.”^[99] Astro Blackness is not  to be confused with the practice of ignoring or negating oppressive forces, but to stretch our imaginations to imagine a sense of being that is not predicated on anti-black oppression but the boundless possibilities of AstroBlack futures. Anderson and Jones define Astro-Blackness as, “An Afrofuturistic concept in which a person’s black state of consciousness, released from confining and crippling slave or colonial mentality, becomes aware of the multitude of varying possibilities and probabilities within the universe.”^[100] Moreover, AstroBlack theory questions how can the energy/effort deployed to combat oppressive forces be harnessed and applied to various iterations of brilliance and creativity? Traces of Afrofuturism and AstroBlack Theory can be located in the historical and contemporary abolition movements. To imagine a world without a terroristic police force, or the for-profit prison industrial complex, is to imagine modes of Black being and doing that exist beyond oppression and subjugation. AstroBlack theory is the employment of the axiom that grounds Harney’s and Moten’s desire for a new Black Study.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\):Sun Ra. (Public Domain; wikkimedia commons via picryl)

AstroBlack Theory

AstroBlack theory forces theoreticians to move beyond unacceptable deficit model approaches and beyond resilience theory and even fugitive approaches to Afrikan education. Deficit models to Afrikan education become unacceptable through an AstroBlack theoretical frame, due to the fact that any anti-black forces that seek to render the educational capacities for Afrikan students limited or incapable become antithetical to the approach of drawing out the latent brilliance in Afrikan students. The task is not about highlighting their limitations but honing in on and developing their brilliance. Any educator who seeks to engage in deficit thinking within an AstroBlack theoretical context would for all intents and purposes highlight their inability to be an effective educator. Resilience and fugitive approaches to Afrikan education while vitally important in the context of our current anti-black society, become somewhat limited in the AstroBlack theoretical frame as both resilience and fugitive notions place great emphasis on the anti-black forces that seek to limit the educational opportunities for Afrikan students. In other words, both resilience theory and notions of fugitive educational practices both over determine the forces and institutions of oppression and subjugation. AstroBlack theory is about the ability to think beyond these forces and imagine the possibilities for Blackness independent of the need to be resilient or to be in a constant state of flight.

Moreover, AstroBlack theory questions how can the energy/effort to be resilient or to remain in a constant state of flight be utilized when it is not occupied with the need for survival? How can that energy/effort be harnessed and applied to various iterations of brilliance and creativity, allowing for the possibility to be bold enough to think beyond any seeming limitation of anti blackness even beyond the limitations of earth? AstroBlack theory allows for the reimagining of academic success and raises the stakes beyond career obtainment. After all, when you can build a maroon refuge in space, how insignificant does a job become? While Afrikan people throughout the diaspora are connected by a horrendous atrocity, we are also connected by a multitude of beautiful cultural commonalities. AstroBlack Theory allows the discipline to be attentive to those commonalities, and not allow the seeming differences to be used as a tool to promote or perpetuate notions of anti-blackness.  For this section of the chapter, we will explore an Afrofuturist who employed AstroBlack theory to reimagine and redefine the possibilities of Blackness. No-one embodies the concept of Astro Blackness better than the jazz composer and the progenitor of Astro Black Mythology, (Sun Ra).           

The work of Ytasha Womack, Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture provides the ideal insight into the world of Sun Ra, "When Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount, left Birmingham Alabama, for Chicago in the late 1940s, he was already a well respected jazz musician with extraordinary talents. But his affection for electronic music and predictions that man would one day land on the moon made him stand apart."^[101] Quoting the words of Ra’s band mate Author Hoyle, Womack continues,‘He was very well read,’… His canon of must-reads included books on theosophy, numerology, metaphysics, science fiction, biblical studies, and a glut of underground alternative history books and African history books… Sun Ra wanted to use music to heal. He had a preacher-like conversion moment. Part spiritual revelation, part self-described alien encounter, Sun Ra believed he came to the world to heal.^[102]

Ra sought to heal through reshaping the possibilities of Blackness through his music, he recognized the current state of the world as a “poor world, poor in spiritual values.”^[103] Ra’s corrective for his critique of the poor world would be his science of myth making. GrahamnLock’s Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton situates Ra’s Astro Black Mythology within his practice of myth making positing, "Astro Black Mythology" is a phrase from Ra's poem/song lyric ‘Astro Black.’  Here, it is used to refer to as the  axis of the Ra cosmology, that is, the creation of an alternative mythic future and mythic past for African Americans.”^[104] Alex Zamalin’s text Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism, astutely contributes to the discourse on Sun Ra’s myth making as Zamalin posits, ”Ra acknowledged this activity as a self-conscious form of ‘myth-making,’ which gave normative value to denigrated blackness. For this reason Ra privileged what he called ‘mythocracy’ above ‘democracy,’ it was not to denigrate popular rule, but it was to argue for blending Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘will power’ with poststructural arguments that truth was a narrative. He insisted, ‘Reality equals death, because everything which is real has a beginning and an end.’^[105]

 Although Ra's myth making took on an extremely metaphysical formulation, it had vast implications in the political and social sphere as Zamalin posits, "At stake for Ra was not reclaiming antidemocratic conservative hierarchy. But it was exposing the way democratic values like freedom and justice were co-opted by power historically. Turning to myth provided Ra a frame from which to contest hegemonic ideas.^[106]Challenging hegemonic ideas through myth is indeed a political act. Yet, how Ra contested these ideas speaks to his astute understanding of the social. As Zamalin affirms, “Few things preoccupied Ra more than cultivating a futuristic language unconstrained by prior expectations. His aim was to deconstruct binaries of racial meaning, moral virtue and abjection.”^[107] Zamalin continues,

His aim to resignify meaning explained why Ra consistently called enslaved people in the United States ‘angels’ for brutally laboring in the fields. This was not to romanticize or sanctify their suffering, but to reclaim the existence of black dignity beyond the experience of commodification under racial capitalism. Ra’s insistence upon using jarring descriptions— for him, black people were ‘aliens’ and nonblack Americans were ‘niggers’— was not driven by perpetuating sensationalized narratives of absolute otherness within an established community or to mobilize racism against itself. But instead, it was about defamiliarizing established meaning of American nationalism.^[108]

Ra’s desire to reframe hegemonic racialized notions of blackness through language not only sought to reshape the possibilities for Black brilliance, but was an act of Black brilliance within itself. To exclusively refer to Afrikans within America as angels and nonblack Americans as niggers, is to explode the common sense understanding of these terms. It absolutely turns the understood conceptions of these terms on their heads and renders their meaning opaque. With this rhetorical move, Ra demonstrates a supreme understanding of the role language plays in myth making.           

Both Sun Ra through his myth making, and Octavia Butler in “The Book of Martha,” employed a type of speculative worldmaking. By being attentive to the ills of their current world, they were able to reimagine, rebuild, and refashion new worlds. This notion of the speculative is a common idea in the Afrofuturist cannon. Mark A. Neal in the text The Black Ephemera, provides insight to the speculative component of afrofuturism through an engagement with the iconographic film The Last Angel of History positing, “That on-the-nose quality of space travel also places the three artists [Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Lee Scratch Perry], along with The Last Angel of History, within the realm of science fiction, or what André M. Carrington adroitly refers to as the ‘speculative fiction of Blackness.’”^[109] Quoting the words of Carrington, Neal continues, "Carrington describes this ‘speculative fiction’ as a system of cultural production that coalesces around the concept of ‘Afrofuturism, surrealism, Otherhood, and haunting,’ which in their own ways reconsider ‘how genre conventions and the distinctions between them have played a role in the struggle over interpretations of what it means to be Black.’^[110]

The speculative work of Sun Ra and Butler do phenomenal work as it pertains to disrupting static notions of what it means to be Black. Engaging in the type of AstroBlack theoretical work that unchained the Afrikan imagination. Afrofuturism is based on its concerns and theorizations on the future of Afrika and Afrikan people, and is a bi-product  in direct conversation with Pan Afrikanism, as it is concerned and theorized on the future of Afrika and Afrikan people. The connection between Pan Afrikanism and afrofuturism is also articulated  by Anderson and Jones who posit,"Afrofuturism 2.0 is the early twenty-first century technologenesis of Black identity reflecting counter history, hacking and or appropriating the influences of network software, data-base logic, cultural analytics, deep removability, neuroscience, enhancement and augmentation, gender fluidity, postman possibility, the speculative sphere, with transdisciplinary applications and has grown into an important Diasporic techno-cultural ‘Pan African’ movement.^[111]

---

  

Endnotes

^[87] Womack, Ytasha L. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. Chicago: Lawerence Hill Books. 2013. 9

^[88] Ibid. 9

^[89] Ibid. 14

^[90] Ibid. 15

^[91] Anderson, Reynaldo and Jones, Charles E. Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness. New York: Lexington Books. 2016. xiv

^[92] Ibid. xiv

^[93]  Anderson, Reynaldo and Fluker, Clinton R. The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art + Design. New York: Lexington Books. 2019. 77

^[94] Ibid. 77

^[95] Ibid. 79

^[96] Ibid. 84

^[97] Somé, Malidoma P. Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. New York: Penguin Press. 1994.8

^[98] Harney, Stefano and Moten, Fred. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. New York: Minor Compositions. 2013. 47

^[99] Anderson, Reynaldo and Jones, Charles E. Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness. New York: Lexington Books. 2016. vii

^[100] Ibid. 59

^[101] Womack, Ytasha L. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. 2013. 59

^[102] Ibid. 59

^[103]  Zamalan, Alex. Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism. New York: Columbia University Press. 2019. 107

^[104] Zamalan, Alex. Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism. New York: Columbia University Press. 2019. 107

^[105] Zamalan, Alex. Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism. New York: Columbia University Press. 2019. 99

^[106] Ibid. 100

^[107] Ibid. 100

^[108] Ibid. 100

^[109]  Neal, Mark A.The Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive. New York: New York University Press. 2022. 156

^[110] Ibid. 157

^[111] Anderson, Reynaldo and Jones, Charles E. Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness. New York: Lexington Books. 2016. X