Description
Book SynopsisThe Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design is a 21
st century statement on the intersection of the future of African people with art, culture, technology, and politics. This collection enters the global debate on the emerging field of Afrofuturism studies with an international array of scholars and artists contributing to the discussion of Black futurity in the 21
st century. The contributors analyze and respond to the invisibility or mischaracterization of Black people in the popular imagination, in science fiction, and in philosophies of history.
Trade ReviewThis creative and courageous book is the flowering of black imagination and exploration into alternatives to the catastrophic realities of present-day black life. It is part of a great tradition of theory and praxis, thought and action rooted in concrete struggles for black freedom and black joy! As America and much of the world moves toward neo-fascism, Afro-futurism becomes more timely and powerful! -- Cornel West, Harvard University
Reynaldo Anderson and Clinton R. Fluker have continued a dynamic dance with Afrofuturism, bringing together the giants of the field in a single volume. The authors in this well-anchored volume are the best in the field. Each has made an outstanding contribution to Afrofuturism by rushing quickly into the future. I contend that The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design by virtue of its comprehensive and authorial nature will become the classic in the field. -- Molefi Kete Asante, professor and chair, Department of Africology, Temple University, author of The History of Africa
Table of ContentsForward: 25 Years in a 500 Year Long Song
Sheree Renee Thomas
Introduction: The Year of the Panther
Reynaldo Anderson and Clinton Fluker
Part I: Theory and Extra-Planetary Reason
Chapter One: At the End of “Dasein”: An Afro-German Voyage into the Future
Natasha A. Kelly
Chapter Two: Avant-Gardes, Afrofuturism, and Philosophical Readings of Rhythm
Iain Campbell
Chapter Three: Working on the Other Side of Time: An Interview with Rasheedah Phillips
Reynaldo Anderson
Chapter Four: We Speak, We Make, We Tinker: Afrofuturism as Applied Digital Humanities
Toniesha L. Taylor
Chapter Five: Forms of Future/Past: Black Kirby Afrofuturism and the Visual Technologies of Resistance
John Jennings and Clinton R. Fluker
Part II: Coding Utopia and Dystopia
Chapter Six: “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
Chapter Seven: African Futurist Themes and Fantasy in Modern African Speculative Fiction
Dike Okoro
Chapter Eight: B[l]ack to the Future: Futurism and Blackness in Zone One
Souleymane Ba
Chapter Nine: Dragons, Vescells, and Writing Afro-Latino Futures: An Interview with Enrique Carrion
Stacey Robinson
Chapter Ten: “The Electric Impulse:” The Legba Circuit in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Sherese Francis
Part III: Blackness and Planetary Praxis
Chapter Eleven: Ashes to Ashes: The Second Life of Kiluanji Kia Henda’s Afrofuturist Critique
Dariel Cobb
Chapter Twelve: Metropolis 2.0: Janelle Monáe’s Recycling of Fritz Lang
Erik Steinskog
Chapter Thirteen: Designing Love: Reimagining Technology and Intimacy
Ebony A. Utley
Chapter Fourteen: Performing Black Imagination: The Critical Embodiment of Transfuturism
Amber Johnson
Chapter Fifteen: Fabulous Camps of the Black Fantastic: Sylvester James, Queer Afrofuturism, and Black Vernacular Becomings
tobias c. van Veen and Reynaldo Anderson
Part IV: Images on the Other Side of Time
Chapter Sixteen: Funky Images on the Other Side of Time: Various Artists
Wriply Marie Bennet, Tim Fielder, John Jennings, Jessi Jumanji, Amber Johnson, Sheeba Maya, Stacey Robinson, and Quentin VerCetty
