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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Afrofuturist'
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Williams, Jennifer. "The Audacity to Imagine Alternative Futures: An Afrofuturist Analysis of Sojourner Truth and Janelle Monae's Performances of Black Womanhood as Instruments of Liberation." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2016. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/390887.
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African American StudiesPh.D.
I examine Sojourner Truth and Janelle Monáe’s identity performances to identify some strategies and tactics Black women use to transgress externally defined myths of Black womanhood. I propose that both of these women use their identity as a liberation technology - a spiritual, emotional, physical, and/or intellectual tool constructed and/or wielded by Africana agents. They wield their identity, like an instrument, and use it to emancipate Africana people from the physical and metaphoric chains that restrict them from reproducing their cultural imperatives. I argue that both Truth and Monáe consciously fashion complex narratives of revolutionary Black womanhood as a way to disseminate their identities in ways that “destroy the societal expectations” of Black womanhood and empowers women to reclaim their ability to imagine self-defined Black womanhoods. I analyze the performance texts of Truth and Monáe using Afrofuturism, a theoretical perspective concerned with Africana agents’ speculation of their futures and the functionality of Africana agents’ technologies. Its foundational assumption is the pantechnological perspective, a theory that assumes “everything can be interpreted as a type of technology.” When examining Africana agency using an Afrofuturism perspective, the researcher should examine the devices, techniques, and processes – externally or intra-culturally generated – that have the potential to influence Africana social development.
Temple University--Theses
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Spriggs, Bianca L. "Women of the Apocalypse: Afrospeculative Feminist Novelists." UKnowledge, 2017. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/56.
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“Women of the Apocalypse: Feminist Afrospeculative Writers,” seeks to address the problematic ‘Exodus narrative,’ a convention that has helped shape Black American liberation politics dating back to the writings of Phyllis Wheatley. Novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler, and Alice Walker undermine and complicate this narrative by challenging the trope of a single charismatic male leader who leads an entire race to a utopic promised land. For these writers, the Exodus narrative is unsustainable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because there is no room for women to operate outside of the role of supportive wives. The mode of speculative fiction is well suited to crafting counter-narratives to Exodus mythology because of its ability to place marginalized voices in the center from the stance of ‘What next?’
My project is a hybrid in that I combine critical theory with original poems. The prose section of each chapter contextualizes a novel and its author with regard to Exodus mythology. However, because novels can only reveal so much about character development, I identify spaces to engage and elaborate upon the conversation incited by these authors’ feminist protagonists. In the tradition of Black American poets such as, Ai, Patricia Smith, Rita Dove, and Tyehimba Jess, in my own personal creative work, I regularly engage historical figures through recovering the narratives of underrepresented voices. To write in persona or limited omniscient, spotlighting an event where the reader possesses incomplete information surrounding a character’s experience, the result becomes a kind of call-and-response interaction with these novels.
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Ba, Souleymane. "Colson Whitehead : vers une esthétique postraciale?" Thesis, Montpellier 3, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015MON30077/document.
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Cette thèse est une monographie de l'œuvre romanesque de Colson Whitehead (1969– ) replacée dans la perspective de la tradition littéraire noire américaine. Elle pose une question d'ordre esthétique et politique : Whitehead est-il un écrivain postracial ? Dans The Intuitionist (1999), la rivalité entre les personnages noirs et le jeu de masques mettent à mal une politique identitaire qui repose sur la race. La déconstruction du discours mythique qui célèbre le sacrifice d'un travailleur acharné désacralise le héros noir de John Henry Days (2001). Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) offre une réflexion sur le langage, son rapport au pouvoir et à l'appartenance raciale. La deuxième partie explore le paradoxe de l'identité « postblack » face aux stéréotypes raciaux dans Sag Harbor (2009). Enfin, la dernière partie signale un effort de redéfinition de l'humain dans Zone One (2011) où l'invasion des zombies permet de transcender la construction binaire Noir/Blanc dans un monde post-apocalyptique. L'analyse s'appuie sur la critique postmoderne car la notion de « race » et le racisme y sont abordés à travers l'ironie d'un texte qui met en scène et joue avec l'idée d'une société américaine postracialeThis dissertation is a monograph on Colson Whitehead's fiction and nonfiction from the perspective African American literary tradition. It raises an aesthetic and political question: is Whitehead a postracial writer? In The Intuitionist (1999), the rivalry between black characters and the game of camouflage undermine racial identity politics. The deconstruction of the myth celebrating the sacrifice of a relentless worker desacralizes the black hero of John Henry Days (2001). Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) offers a reflection on language, its relationship to power and racial belonging. The second part explores the paradox of a “postblack” identity with regards to racial stereotypes in Sag Harbor (2009). Finally, the last part signals an effort to redefine the human in Zone One (2011) where an invasion of zombies enables the transcendence of the Black/White binary construct in a post-apocalyptic world. The analysis relies on postmodern criticism since the notion of “race” and racism are addressed through the irony of a text that dramatizes and plays with the idea of a postracial American society
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McKinley-Portee, Caleb Royal. "Queering The Future: Examining Queer Identity In Afrofuturism." OpenSIUC, 2017. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/2176.
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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF CALEB MCKINLEY-PORTEE for the MASTER OF ARTS degree in COMMUNICATION STUDIES, presented on JULY 5TH, 2017 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: QUEERING THE FUTURE: EXAMINING QUEER IDENTITY IN AFROFUTURISM. MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Craig Gingrich-Philbrook This thesis examines the art aesthetic known as Afrofuturism. The research provided examines Afrofuturism in music, art, and literature. This thesis provides an example of applying Afrofuturism to performance studies within Communication Studies. This thesis contains the script to a solo performance art piece which attempts to build a bridge between performance studies and Afrofuturism, while also examining Black, Queer identity.
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Paulin, Jameel Amman. "Congo Square: Afrofuturism as a Space of Confrontation." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu158712552620892.
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van, Veen Tobias. "Other planes of there: the MythSciences, chronopolitics and conceptechnics of Afrofuturism." Thesis, McGill University, 2014. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=122982.
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"Other Planes of There: the Mythsciences, chronopolitics and conceptechnics of Afrofuturism" explores the becomings, temporalities, and epistemic systems of Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism — a term more complex than it first appears — delineates a counter-tradition of Afrodiasporic media production, thought, and performance that transforms science fictional practices and themes to envision alternate identities, timelines, and counter-realities. Such envisioning operations create startling, creative, and uncanny effects — often, by imaginatively challenging whitewashed futures and colonialist histories with Africentric and futurist revisionings, so as to alter the discriminatory coordinates of the present — while crucially offering ways to subversively transform Afrodiasporic subjectivities denied privileged access to the "human race". Afrofuturism, I contend, postulates the conceptual thoughtware of its own production: its MythScience, chronopolitics, and conceptechnics. By explicating Afrofuturism through its network of concepts, I outline its production of counter-realities and explore its performative unEarthings of the grounds of human being. By tracing the Afrofuturist exodus from the category of the human, I detail how its practices adopt and disseminate alien, android, machinic, and otherworldly becomings.« D'autres pensées venant de là-bas : les sciences mythiques, les chronopolitiques et les conceptechniques de l'afrofuturisme » explorent les devenirs, les temporalités et les systèmes épistémiques de l'Afrofuturisme. Afrofuturisme - un terme plus complexe qu'il n'y paraît - délimite une contre-tradition de production de médias afrodiasporiques, de pensée et de performance qui transforme les pratiques et les thèmes scientifiques fictifs afin de visualiser des identités, des échéances et des contre réalités alternatives. Ces opérations de visualisation permettent de créer des effets étranges, créatifs et surprenants - souvent, en remettant en cause, à l'aide d'imagination, des avenirs étouffés et des histoires colonialistes avec des reconsidérations futuristes et afrocentriques, de façon à modifier les coordonnées discriminatoires du présent - tout en proposant de manière déterminante des moyens de transformer subversivement les subjectivités afrodiasporiques qui se voient refuser l'accès privilégié à la « race humaine ». Je soutiens que l'Afrofuturisme se donne les moyens de produire sa propre pensée conceptuelle : ses Sciences mythiques, sa chronopolitique et ses conceptechniques. J'explique l'Afrofuturisme à travers son réseau de concepts, soulignant sa production de contre- réalités tout en explorant sa capacité à révéler son humanité. Je trace l'exode afrofuturiste à partir de la catégorie des humains, en détaillant la manière dont elle adopte et diffuse les devenirs étrangers, androïdes, machiniques et autres devenirs fantastiques.
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Schereka, Wilton. "Sonic Afrofuturism: Blackness, electronic music production and visions of the future." University of the Western Cape, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/6548.
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Magister Artium - MAThis thesis is an exploration and analysis of the ways in which we might use varying forms of Black thought, theory, and art to think Blackness anew. For this purpose I work with electronic music from Nigeria and Detroit between 1976 and 1993, as well as with works of science fiction by W.E.B. Du Bois, Samuel Delany, Ralph Ellison, and Octavia Butler. Through a conceptual framework provided by theorists such as Fred Moten and Kodwo Eshun and the philosophical work of Afrofuturists like Delany, Ellison, Butler, and Du Bois, I explore the outer limits of what is possible when doing away with a canon of philosophy that predetermines our thinking of Blackness. This exploration also takes me to the possible depths of what this disavowal of a canon might mean and how we work with sound, the aural, and the sonic in rethinking the figuring of Blackness. This thesis is also be woven together by the theory of the Black Radical Tradition – following Cedric Robinson and Fred Moten specifically. At the centre of this thesis, and radiating outwards, is the assertion that a set of texts developed for a University of the West – Occidental philosophy as I refer to it in the thesis – is wholly insufficient in attempting to become attuned to the possibilities of Blackness. The thesis, finally, is a critique of ethnomusicology and its necessity for a native object, as well as sound studies, which fails to conceptualise any semblance of Black noise.
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Johnson, Clifton Zeno. "Race in the Galactic Age| Sankofa, Afrofuturism, Whiteness and Whitley Strieber." Thesis, State University of New York at Albany, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=13806083.
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Octavia Butler asked if black skin was so disruptive a force that the mere presence of it alters a story? In a post-colonial era, skin color remains a polarizing topic. While humans are still redefining perceptions about race, people across planet earth are opening up to the possibility of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This paper explores how the acknowledgment of a galactic presence would transform perceptions of whiteness. The experiences of the best-selling author and proclaimed contactee, Whitley Strieber, are used as case studies to analyze if Amero-European ingrained bias toward melanin would influence the western world’s interactions with dark-skinned extraterrestrials species. The white male is portrayed as the prototypical sci-fi nerd in popular American culture; however, the themes and struggles present in science fiction remain deeply connected with those present in African American culture. Despite the presence of extraterrestrials in African centered tradition, Stieber's experience demonstrates that whiteness still holds influence on the dominant cultural position regarding alien contact. I will practice Sankofa to trace African centered histories and traditions designed for communicating with entities from different dimensions, realities or even planets that continue to perpetuate in African American culture. I argue that African American culture has been addressing aspects of reality unacknowledged by the western world. I demonstrate that elements of the cosmic, supernatural, extraterrestrial or superhuman continue to manifest in African centered culture. These continually dismissed observations get lost in a world where the European Enlightenment has led to a culture in which whiteness establishes itself as “a norm that represents an authoritative, delimited and hierarchical mode of thought” as Joe Kinechole notes, limiting Amero-European culture from fully embracing a world view that includes extraterrestrials. Whiteness changes as it interacts in a range of settings and this paper examines the role of whiteness in a galactic environment by exploring how whiteness navigates through alien spaces.
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Bagnall, Imogen. "Afrofuturism and Generational Trauma in N. K. Jemisin‘s Broken Earth Trilogy." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-194870.
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N. K. Jemisin‘s Broken Earth Trilogy explores the methods and effects of systemic oppression. Orogenes are historically oppressed and dehumanised by the wider society of The Stillness. In this thesis, I will be exploring the ways in which trauma experienced by orogenes is repeated through generations, as presented through Essun‘s varied and complex relationships with her children, and with the Fulcrum Guardian Schaffa. The collective trauma of orogenes is perpetuated through different direct and indirect actions in a repetitive cycle, on societal, interpersonal and familial levels. My reading will be in conversation with theories of trauma literature and cultural trauma, and will be informed by Afrofuturist cultural theory. Although science fiction and fantasy encourage the imagination, worldbuilding is inherently influenced by lived experiences. It could thus be stated that the trauma experienced by orogenes is informed by the collective trauma of African-Americans, as experienced by N. K. Jemisin. Afrofuturism is an aesthetic mode and critical lens which prioritises the imagining of a liberated future. Writing science fiction and fantasy through an Afrofuturist aesthetic mode encourages authors to explore forms of collective trauma as well as methods of healing. Jemisin creates an explicit parallel between the traumatic African-American experience and that of orogenes. Afrofuturist art disrupts linear time and addresses past and present trauma through the imagining of the future. The Broken Earth Trilogy provides a blueprint for the imagined liberation of oppressed groups. Using Afrofuturist tropes such as technology, the ―Black Genius‖ figure and alienation, Jemisin demonstrates the power of reclamation and the possibility of a self-created future for oppressed groups.
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Fortier, Rashada N. "Vela & Niyah." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2016. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2213.
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In this thesis paper, I will document and analyze the process of making my graduate thesis film, Vela & Niyah. I will start by stating my overall goal of the film, then move into each specific area of the filmmaking process and what was done to accomplish this goal. I will detail my successes and struggles throughout the process. I will analyze my own work, and reflect on the important lessons learned while making my thesis film. In the end, I will determine if my thesis proves true, and if I was successful in the individual aspects of filmmaking, as well as the thesis film as a whole.
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Amoah, Maame A. "FASHIONFUTURISM: The Afrofuturistic Approach To Cultural Identity inContemporary Black Fashion." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent15960737328946.
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Bates, Jessica Rachel. "Walking the Tightrope: Selfhood and Speculative Fiction in Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42520.
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Janelle Monáe’s multi-part, multi-media work Metropolis can be read as a speculative fiction text. In my work, I examine the ways in which Monáe uses the structure of her second album The ArchAndroid and the music, lyrics, and dance of her video "Tightrope" to contribute to her underlying narrative. The ArchAndroid creates an auditory experience of time travel by varying the beat and musical style and through the use of specific production techniques. The accompanying video "Tightrope" delineates its titular metaphor through its music, dance, and visuals. These elements, as part of the central narrative of Cindi and Janelle, demonstrate the ways in which Monáe plays with the concept of selfhood by continually recontextualizing identity in time and space.Master of Arts
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Saigol, Saif. "Musical Activism: A Case Study of Janelle Monáe and Her Digitized Revolution of Love." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2117.
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Janelle Monáe is a pop superstar whose Afrofuturist art is paving the way for a new revolution of popular music. An investigation into her oeuvre reveals an artform that relies on technological aesthetics and science-fiction narratives as a critical lens through which capitalism and its racist, sexist, homophobic, and hegemonic tendencies are clearly revealed. Monáe displays a masterful understanding of social hierarchy and power imbalances, and uses her music as a form of resistance to those heterosexist, white-supremacist institutions that attempt to reduce Monáe to the profitability of her body and culture. Situating herself as a visible and celebrated queer black musician and activist, Monáe uses her voice to provide political commentary on present-day America, through imagined future dystopias. Her seamless synthesis of black music genres and aesthetics allows for a unified musical project that is accessible, socially informed, powerful, and impactful.
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Coulibaly, Bintou C. "Fasso Town: A Place Where Immigrants Can Reinvent Themselves." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1583998471845665.
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Jones, Cassandra L. "FutureBodies: Octavia Butler as a Post-Colonial Cyborg Theorist." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1368927282.
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Calbert, Tonisha Marie. "(Re)Writing Apocalypse: Race, Gender, and Radical Change in Black Apocalyptic Fiction." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593596843453299.
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Boccara, Ella. "Female identity and race in contemporary Afrofuturist narratives : "Wild seed" by Octavia E. Butler." Thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/24182.
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Ce mémoire explore les notions de race et d’identité féminine à travers le récit afro-futuriste Wild Seed d’Octavia Butler. Décrit comme le nouveau genre de la ‘fiction spéculative’ par les théoriciens universitaires, l’afro-futurisme joint le spéculatif au réalisme afin d’explorer les conjonctions entre les diasporas africaines, l’écriture africaine américaine et les technologies modernes. Cette thèse propose une analyse critique et théorique du roman Wild Seed d’Octavia Butler, en se concentrant particulièrement sur ses divers concepts et ses allégories historiques. Plutôt que d’ignorer le rôle que jouent les notions de race et d’identité dans la science-fiction, Butler les met en avant dans le roman Wild Seed et les questionne en adressant des sujets tels que l’après-colonisation, la tyrannie intime, l’hybridité, la différence, l’altérité, et l’identité. Dans le premier chapitre, j’examinerais tout particulièrement l’influence de la domination de la colonisation patriarcale occidental et l’occidentalisation des africains-américains. Puis, à travers les thèmes du trauma intergénérationnel lié à l’esclavage et de l'objectification des corps noirs qui apparaissent dans le texte, j’analyserais les contradictions présentent dans la lutte des Noirs pour la liberté, la race, et l’incarnation raciale. Le second chapitre explorera les différentes formes de résistance, dramatisées à travers le personnage d’Anyanwu, ainsi que l’utilisation des notions d’espace et de temporalité comme techniques pour comprendre et associer ensemble les problèmes d’incarnation et d’identité des genres: afin de survivre à la domination et au pouvoir perpétrés par la société patriarcale de Doro, Anyanwu doit résister, redéfinir, et reconquérir son identité.This thesis explores the notions of race and female identity through Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturist narrative Wild Seed. Described as a new genre of ‘speculative fiction’ by scholars, Afrofuturism converges speculative and realist modes in order to explore conjunctions between African diasporas, African American writing, and modern technologies. This thesis provides a theoretical and critical analysis of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, with a particular focus on its various concepts and historical allegories. The novel Wild Seed addresses such topics as post-colonialization, intimate tyranny, hybridity, difference, otherness, and identity, questioning and foregrounding the role race and identity plays in science fiction. In the first Chapter, I will specifically examine the influence of dominant patriarchal Western colonization and its Westernization of African Americans. Then I will analyze the contradictions within the black struggle for freedom, race, and racialized embodiment through the themes of the intergenerational trauma of slavery and the objectification of black bodies found in the text. The second chapter will explore the different forms of resistance dramatized through Anyanwu’s character, as well as the use of space and temporality as a process to understand and connect the issues of embodiment and gender identity: Anyanwu has to resist, redefine, and reclaim her identity in order to survive the domination and power of Doro’s future patriarchal and biogenetically altered society.
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"Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, and the Reinvention of African American Culture." Doctoral diss., 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.45002.
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abstract: Modern and contemporary African American writers employ science fiction in order to recast ideas on past, present, and future black culture. This dissertation examines Afrofuturism’s cultural aesthetics, which appropriate devices from science fiction and fantasy in order to revise, interrogate, and re-examine historical events insufficiently treated by literary realism. The dissertation includes treatments of George Schuyler, Ishmael Reed, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Nalo Hopkinson, and Chicana/ofuturism.
The original contribution of this research is to highlight how imagination of a posthuman world has made it possible for African American writers to envision how racial power can be re-configured and re-negotiated. Focusing on shifting racial dynamics caught up in the swirl of technological changes, this research illuminates a complex process of literary production in which black culture and identity have been continuously re-interpreted.
In the post-war and post-Civil Rights Movement eras African American writers began reflecting on shifting racial dynamics in light of technological changes. This shift in which black experience became mechanized and digitized explains how technology became a source of new African American fiction. The relationships between humans and their external conditions appear in such futuristic themes as trans-human anamorphosis, cyberspace, and digital souls. These thematic devices, which explore humanity outside its phenotypic boundaries, provide African American writers with tools to demystify deterministic views of race. Afrofuturism has responded to the conceptual transformation of humanity with a race-specific scope, locating the presence of black culture in a high-tech world.
Techno-scientific progress has provided important resources in contemporary theory, yet these theoretical foci too seldom have been drawn into critical race discourses. This discrepancy is due to techno-scientific progress having served as a tool for the legitimation of scientific racism under global capitalism for centuries. Responding to this critical lacuna, the dissertation highlights an under-explored field in which African American literature responds to techno-culture’s involvement in contemporary discussions of race. Rather than repeat nominal assumptions of Eurocentric modernity and its racist hegemony, this dissertation theorizes how modern techno-culture’s outcomes—such as information science, genetic engineering, and computer science—shape minority lives, and how minority groups appropriate these outcomes to enact their own liberation.Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation English 2017
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Joseph, Mélodie. "Féminisme et afrofuturisme dans Pumzi de Wanari Kahiu et Metropolis de Janelle Monáe." Thèse, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/23711.
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Ce mémoire explore les liens intertextuels existants entre les féminismes noirs et les œuvres afrofuturistes Metropolis de Janelle Monáe et Pumzi de Wanari Kahiu. Une revue de la littérature a permis de montrer que des personnages incarnés par des femmes noires dans des rôles principaux sont peu présents dans le genre cinématographique de la science-fiction, mais qu’ils tiennent une place centrale dans l’afrofuturisme. Cette recherche s’interroge ainsi sur le manque de représentation des femmes noires dans la science-fiction et offre une étude de l’évolution du courant afrofuturiste, de ses modalités intermédiales, et des conséquences de sa récente popularisation. Cette recherche propose donc une analyse textuelle de Pumzi et de Metropolis et une exploration de l’interaction de ces deux objets culturels avec les courants féministes noirs en relation avec le principe de l’intertextualité. Il émerge de cette analyse une étude sur la récente marchandisation et édulcoration subséquente des motivations sociales radicales du courant afrofuturiste, entraînant un questionnement sur les possibilités d’une redéfinition.This thesis explores the intertextual links between black feminism and the afrofuturist works Metropolis by Janelle Monae and Pumzi by Wanari Kahiu. A literature review showed that characters played by black women in protagonist roles had a minimal presence in the cinematic genre of science fiction but that they had a central place in afrofuturism. This research interrogates black women lack of representation in science fiction and futurism and studies the evolution of the afrofuturist movement, its intermediality and the consequences of its recent popularization. This research proposes a textual analysis of Pumzi and Metropolis and an exploration of the interaction between those two cultural objects and black feminism movements in relation with the concept of intertextuality. Out of this investigation emerges a study of the recent commodification of the afrofuturist movement and the subsequent weakening of its radical and social motivations, leading to a questioning on the possibility of a redefinition.
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Richardson, Jared C. 1988. "Br(others) only : Rashid Johnson, class, and the fraternal orders of Afrofuturism." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/26810.
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Br(others) Only conceptualizes the wall sculptures of Rashid Johnson as free-standing “altars” that play with different and sometimes divergent brands of black masculinity and classed homosociality. Primarily, I analyze three of Johnson’s sculptures from the late 2000s: I Who Have Nothing (2008); I’m Still in Love with You (2008); and Souls of Black Folk (2010). I argue that, by invoking the history of black renaissance men, gentlemen scholars, and entertainers, Johnson’s work plays with various kinds of black masculinity and homosociality that simultaneously straddle the past and future. By doing so, his art not only enacts a racialized temporality, but it also chips away at monolithic notions of black masculinity by fabricating contradictory amalgams of race, class, and gender. For my analysis of Johnson’s artworks, I utilize Cassandra Jackson’s Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (2010) as the chief framework for conceptualizing the waxy coats of Johnson’s sculptures as wounded bodies in an effort to “flesh out” the vulnerability of black men. Theorizing the putrescent surfaces of Johnson’s sculptures as violable bodies allows me to consider the ruptures between seemingly impenetrable black masculinity and the always-present vulnerability of the black male body to violence.text
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Bequengue, Rosa de Fátima Casimiro. "Ficção e arquitetura : o desenho do afrofuturismo e de outros cenários especulativos." Master's thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10437/11798.
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Orientação: Catarina Isabel Santos Patrício LeitãoÀ luz da força inventiva da ficção na arquitetura, com esta dissertação pretendemos investigar pelas formas vernáculas africanas em cenários especulativos, percebendo como a latência arquitetónica das utopias e distopias modernas tem fomentado o potencial construtivo de um Afrofuturismo. Com base nos cenários especulativos destilados da ficção utópica O Lesábendio (1913) de Paul Scheerbart, que inspirou a arquitetura de vidro; e da ficção distópica Mil novecentos e oitenta e quatro (1949) de George Orwell, que é apontada como momento de antevisão da vigilância atual, procurámos ensaiar elementos para cenários afrofuturistas. Seguindo os procedimentos metodológicos propostos pela criatividade tecnológica vernácula negra, como a reapropriação, a reconcepção como improvisação, e a recriação como reinvenção, compusemos cenários especulativos híbridos, reintegrando a tecnologia como extensão da criatividade – não como uma força externa desumanizante ou artificial, mas como uma efetiva ligação ao meio natural, como retorno à Terra. Tendo a imaginação como catalisadora das reinterpretações e reapropriações, o Afrofuturismo responde à necessidade urgente de transformação do espaço através da perspetiva afro-ecológica, por meio da localização da presença da cultura africana num cenário de viragem tecnológica por vir.
In light of the inventive strength of fiction in architecture, with this dissertation we intend to investigate by african vernacular forms in speculative scenarios, realizing how the architectural latency of modern utopias and dystopias has fostered the potential of an Afrofuturism. Based on the distilled speculative scenarios of utopian fiction The Lesabendio (1913) by Paul Scheerbart, which inspired glass architecture; and George Orwell’s Nineteen eighty-four (1949) dystopian fiction, which is pointed out as a preview moment of current surveillance, we tried to rehearse elements for Afro-futuristic scenarios. Following the methodological procedures proposed by black vernacular technological creativity, such as reappropriation, reconception as improvisation, and recreation as reinvention, we compose hybrid speculative scenarios, reintegrating technology as an extension of creativity – not as a dehumanizing or artificial external force, but as an effective connection to the natural environment, as a return to Earth. Having the imagination as a catalyst for reinterpretations and reappropriations, Afrofuturism responds to the urgent need to transform space through the afroecological perspective, by locating the presence of African culture in a scenario of technological turnaround to come.
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"Afrofuturism, Womanist Phenomenology, and The Black Imagination of Independent Comicons: A Liberative Revisioning of Black Humanity." Doctoral diss., 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.54954.
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abstract: The world of speculative fiction infuses the soul with the hope of the imaginary. My dissertation examines Afrofuturistic liminal imaginary space and the ways it is experienced as life-giving spaces. The imaginary and the aesthetics it births are formularies for art forms that speak to the hope of a transformed future. Speculative fiction, although in the realm of the imaginary, is an enlivened approach to express in the present collective possibilities and hopes of the people within those very imagined futures. During the past three decades, particularly, Black speculative fiction has been increasingly at the core of the new cultural productions of literature, film, horror, comics, fantasy, and music which tell the story of African descendant people. Afrofuturism is an analytic for exploration of the liberative revisioning of Black humanity in the face of persistent practices of structural injustice. My project presents the phenomenological exploration of Black Speculative Thought (ST) as it comes alive through artistic liminal spaces of Afrofuturist comic and science fiction conventions. I argue that Black imaginary liminal spaces such as Comicon Culture offer respite, renewal, and locales for creative resistance to thwart persistent alienation and nihilism of Black humanity. Furthermore, it is within these spaces where intersubjective agency can be taken up as a countermeasure to the existential realities and dominant hegemonic existences of everyday life. I examine the process, events, and experience of Black imaginary as it comes alive as potentiated hope for alternative futures. My intention is to marshal the theoretical specters of Critical Afrofuturism, Africana Philosophy, and Womanist Thought in this task.Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Women and Gender Studies 2019
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Sivier, Claire. "Afrofuturism & the Present: An (Auto)ethnographic journey to Walking interviews with Black Women Arts Practitioners in Porto." Dissertação, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/10216/131548.
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Sivier, Claire. "Afrofuturism & the Present: An (Auto)ethnographic journey to Walking interviews with Black Women Arts Practitioners in Porto." Master's thesis, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/10216/131548.
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