Afrofuturism

In: Social text 71

In: special issue

Abstract

Introduction : future texts / Alondra Nelson -- Images / Fatimah Tuggar -- Feenin : posthuman voices in contemporary black popular music / Alexander G. Weheliye -- Race, sex, and nerds : from black geeks to Asian American hipsters / Ron Eglash -- That just kills me : black militant near-future fiction / Kalí Tal -- Poetry / Tracie Morris -- Making the impossible possible : an interview with Nalo Hopkinson / Alondra Nelson -- Bitter nigger inc. / Tana Hargest -- The revolution will be digitized : Afrocentricity and the digital public sphere / Anna Everett. Challenging mainstream technocultural assumptions of a raceless future, Afrofuturism explores culturally distinct approaches to technology. This special issue addresses the intersection between African diasporic culture and technology through literature, poetry, science fiction and speculative fiction, music, visual art, and the Internet and maintains that racial identity fundamentally influences technocultural practices. The collection includes a reflection on the ideologies of race created by cultural critics in their analyses of change wrought by the information age; an interview with Nalo Hopkinson, the award-winning novelist and author of speculative fiction novels Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring, who fuses futuristic thinking with Caribbean traditions; an essay on how contemporary R&B music presents African American reflections on the technologies of everyday life; and an article examining early interventions by the black community to carve out a distinct niche in cyberspace. Contributors. Ron Eglash, Anna Everett, Tana Hargest, Nalo Hopkinson, Tracie Morris, Alondra Nelson, Kalí Tal, Fatimah Tuggar, Alexander G. Weheliye. Alondra Nelson is a Ph.D. candidate in the American Studies Program at New York University and the Ann Plato Fellow at Trinity College.