Contents

Introduction

Race and class

Theoretical Approach

Mark Dery : Black to the Future
Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic
Kodwo Eshun: More Brilliant than the Sun

Practical Approach

Jazz & Funk: Sun Ra and George Clinton
Hip Hop: From Afrika Bambaataa to the Electronic Black Market
Techno: Black Secret Technology

Sources

Mark Dery: Black to the Future

In his essay Black to the Future (1993) Mark Dery defines the term Afro-Futurism by referring to various African-American writers, musicians and other artists. Beginning with the question "Why do so few African-Americans write sience fiction?", Dery makes a connection between literary fiction and electronic music, future technology and being alien, i.e. being outside the social mainstream.

At least beginning with the first science-fiction novels written by black authors in the 1930s (1931: George Schuyler's Black No More) there is a tradition in African-American culture of seeking salvation from a state of discrimination by applying (future) technology. Additionally Cool Jazz in the 1950s and Sun Ra's cosmic synthesizers in the 1960s turn the "being different" into "being not from this world".

As examples Dery refers to writers like Samual R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Steve Barnes and Charles Saunders and points out some motifs in their literature such as perfection and technology, body and technology, or race and technology (Delany: "Boy's Club! Girls, keep out! Black and Hispanics and the poor in general, go away!"1)).

Dery brings together literary tradition with youth culture, music and movies by giving a brief overview on black (youth) culture from the 1950s to the 1990s, from jazz and blues to hip hop, techno and rastafari. The affinity towards technology is explained with the embracement of alien and robot images. Dery quotes Tricia Rose (author of the book Black Noise on rap and youth culture) saying, "Adopting 'the robot' reflected a response to an existing condition: namely, that they were labor for capitalism, that they had very little value as people in this society."2)

African-American voices have other stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come. If there is an Afrofuturism, it must be sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-flung points. We catch a glimpse of it in the opening pages of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, where the proto-cyberpunk protagonist---a techno-bricoleur "in the great American tradition of tinkerers"---taps illegal juice from a line owned by the rapacious Monopolated Light & Power, gloating, "Oh, they suspect that their power is being drained off, but they don't know where." One day, perhaps, he'll indulge his fantasy of playing five recordings of Louis Armstrong's version of "What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" at once, in a sonic Romare Bearden collage (an unwittingly prescient vision, on Ellison's part, of that 1981 masterpiece of deconstructionist deejaying, "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel").3)

The characteristic use of technology in an Afro-Futuristic sense according to Dery is that of applying it in new ways that were not intended by the original producers.

1) Dery
2) quoted in Dery
3) Dery