English and Critical Thinking

(Philosophy Cohort)

Semester 1 2021

Reading Pack

Lectures: Mondays, 9:00 - 9:45 ( Ulwazi -BBB)

Tutorials: Thursdays, 14:00 – 14:45 (Ulwazi –BBB)

Lecturer: Dr Femi Eromosele

Email: ehijele.eromosele@wits.ac.za
CONTENT

SHORT STORIES POEMS

Title: What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky Title: An Open Letter to a Prosthetic Leg from an Amputated Limb
Author: Lesley Nneka Arimah Source: hellopoetry.com
Book: What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky URL: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1263551/an-open-letter-to-a-
Place of Publication: New York prosthetic-leg-from-an-amputated-limb/
Name of Publisher: Riverhead Author: Rebecca Kohlmeyer
Year of Publication: 2017 Date posted: July 2015
Pages: No pages (n.p.) Date Accessed: March 12, 2021
Format: ebook

Title: A Prosthetic Limb

Title: Virtual Snapshots Source: hellopoetry
Source: Vice.com URL: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/853381/a-prosthetic-limb/
URL: https://www.vice.com/en/article/aekvne/virtual-snapshots Author: Kate Lion
Author: Tlotlo Tsamaase Date posted: Sep 2014
Date Posted: Feb. 18, 2016. Date accessed: March 12, 2021
Date Accessed: March 12, 2021
Pages: No pages (n.p.)
Title: Our Earth Will Not Die
Title: What the Dead Man Said
Book: The Eye of the Earth
Source: Slate.com
Author: Niyi Osundare
URL: https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/chinelo-onwualu-what-the-
Place of Publication: Ibadan
dead-man-said.html
Name of Publisher: HEBN Publishers
Author: Chinelo Onwualu
Year of Publication: 2012, (First published 1986)
Date Posted: Aug. 24, 2019.
Pages: 48-49.
Date Accessed: March 12, 2021.
Pages: No Pages (n.p.)
Title: Inheritance Title: No Death and an Enhanced Life: Is the Future Transhuman?
Author: John Agard Source: The Guardian (International Edition)
Book: 9 Original Poems on Climate Change URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/06/no-death-
Source: thersa.org and-an-enhanced-life-is-the-future-transhuman
URL: https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/events/climate- Author: Robin McKie
Date Posted: May 6, 2018.
change-poetry-anthology.pdf Date Accessed: March 13, 2021
Pages: (n.p.) Pages: No pages (n.p.)

Title: Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video in Visual

Culture and Art Education
SECONDARY (NON-FICTION) READINGS Author: Pamela G. Taylor
Journal: Studies in Art Education, Vol. 48, No. 3
Title: Environmentalism Year of Publication: 2007
Source: explainthatstuff.com Pages: 230-246
URL: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/introduction-to-
environmentalism.html Title: Rethinking Apocalypse in African SF.
Author: Chris Woodford Author: Lisa Yaszek
Date Posted: Feb 24, 2021. Book: AfricaSF
Date Accessed: March 13, 2021 Editor: Mark Bould
Pages: No pages (n.p.) Year of Publication: 2013
Place of Publication: Vashon Island
Name of Publisher: Paradoxa
Chapter Title: A Human Fairytale Named Black Pages: 47-64
Book Title: Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture
Author: Ytasha L. Womack
Place of Publication: Chicago
Name of Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
Year of Publication: 2013
Pages: 27-38
 WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY

I t means twenty-four-hour news coverage. It means politicians doing

damage control, activists egging on protests. It means Francisco Furcal’s
granddaughter at a press conference defending her family’s legacy.
“My grandfather’s formula is sound. Math is constant and absolute. Any
problems that arise are the fault of those who miscalculate it.”
Bad move, lady. This could only put everyone on the defensive,
compelling them to trot out their transcripts and test results and every other
thing that proved their genius. Nneoma tried to think of where she’d put her
own documents after the move, but that led to thinking of where she’d
moved from, which led to thinking of whom she’d left behind.
Best not to venture there. Best instead to concentrate on the shaky
footage captured by a security camera. The motion-activated device had
caught the last fifty feet of the man’s fall, the windmill panic of flailing
arms, the spread of his body on the ground. When the formula for flight had
been revealed short months before, the ceremony had started
unimpressively enough, with a man levitating like a monk for fifteen boring
minutes before shooting into the air. The scientific community was agog.
What did it mean that the human body could now defy things humanity had
never thought to question, like gravity? It had seemed like the start of a new
era.
Now the newscast jumped to the Mathematicians who’d discovered the
equation for flight. They were being ambushed by gleeful reporters at
parties, while picking up their children in their sleek black cars, on their
vacations, giving a glimpse of luxury that was foreign to the majority of the
viewing public, who must have enjoyed the embarrassed faces and
defensive outbursts from well-fed mouths.
 By blaming the Mathematicians instead of the Formula, Martina Furcal
and the Center created a maelstrom around the supposedly infallible
scientists while protecting her family’s legacy. And their money. Maybe not
such a bad move after all.
Nneoma flipped through the channels, listening closely. If the rumor that
Furcal’s Formula was beginning to unravel around the edges gained any
traction, it would eventually trickle down to the twenty-four hundred
Mathematicians like her, who worked around the globe, making their living
calculating and subtracting emotions, drawing them from living bodies like
poison from a wound.
She was one of the fifty-seven registered Mathematicians who
specialized in calculating grief, down from the fifty-nine of last year. Alvin
Claspell, the Australian, had committed suicide after, if the stories were to
be believed, going mad and trying to eat himself. This work wasn’t for
everyone. And of course Kioni Mutahi had simply disappeared, leaving
New Kenya with only one grief worker.
There were six grief workers in the Biafra-Britannia Alliance, where
Nneoma now lived, the largest concentration of grief workers in any
province to serve the largest concentration of the grieving. Well, the largest
concentration that could pay.
It was the same footage over and over. Nneoma offed the unit. The
brouhaha would last only as long as it took the flight guys to wise up and
blame the fallen man for miscalculating. “Cover your ass,” as the North
American saying went, though there wasn’t much of that continent left to
speak it.
A message dinged on the phone console and Nneoma hurried to press it,
eager, then embarrassed at her eagerness, then further embarrassed when it
wasn’t even Kioni, just her assistant reminding her of the lecture she was to
give at the school. She deleted the message—of course she remembered—
and became annoyed. She thought, again, of getting rid of the young
woman. But sometimes you need an assistant, such as when your girlfriend
ends your relationship with the same polite coolness that she initiated it,
leaving you to pack and relocate three years’ worth of shit in one week.
Assistants come in handy then. But that was eight weeks ago and Nneoma
was over it. Really, she was.
 She gathered her papers and rang for the car, which pulled up to the
glass doors almost immediately. Amadi was timely like that. Her mother
used to say that she could call him on her way down the stairs and open the
door to find him waiting. Mama was gone now, and Nneoma’s father,
who’d become undone, never left the house. Amadi had run his errands for
him until Nneoma moved back from New Kenya, when her father gifted
him to her, like a basket of fine cheese. She’d accepted the driver as what
she knew he was, a peace offering. And though it would never be the same
between them, she called her father every other Sunday.
She directed Amadi to go to the store first. They drove through the wide
streets of Enugu and passed a playground full of sweaty egg-white children.
It wasn’t that Nneoma had a problem with the Britons per se, but some of
her father had rubbed off on her. At his harshest Papa would call them
refugees rather than allies. He’d long been unwelcome in polite company.
“They come here with no country of their own and try to take over
everything and don’t contribute anything,” he often said.
That wasn’t entirely true.
When the floods started swallowing the British Isles, they’d reached out
to Biafra, a plea for help that was answered. Terms were drawn, equitable
exchanges of services contracted. But while one hand reached out for help,
the other wielded a knife. Once here, the Britons had insisted on having
their own lands and their own separate government. A compromise, aided
by the British threat to deploy biological weapons, resulted in the Biafra-
Britannia Alliance. Shared lands, shared government, shared grievances.
Her father was only a boy when it happened but still held bitterly to the idea
of Biafran independence, an independence his parents had died for in the
late 2030s. He wasn’t alone, but most people knew to keep their opinions to
themselves, especially if their daughter was a Mathematician, a profession
that came with its own set of troubles. And better a mutually beneficial, if
unwanted, alliance than what the French had done in Senegal, the
Americans in Mexico.
As Amadi drove, he kept the rearview mirror partially trained on her,
looking for an opening to start a chat that would no doubt lead to his
suggesting they swing by her father’s place later, just for a moment, just to
say hello. Nneoma avoided eye contact. She couldn’t see her father, not for
a quick hello, not today, not ever.
 They pulled up to ShopRite and Nneoma hopped out. Her stomach
grumbling, she loaded more fruit in her basket than she could eat in a week
and cut the bread queue, to the chagrin of the waiting customers. The man
at the counter recognized her and handed over the usual selection of rolls
and the crusty baguette she would eat with a twinge of guilt. The French
didn’t get money directly, yet she couldn’t stop feeling like she was funding
the idea of them. Ignoring the people staring at her, wondering who she
might be (a diplomat? a minister’s girlfriend?), she walked the edges of the
store, looping toward the checkout lane.
Then she felt him.
Nneoma slowed and picked up a small box of detergent, feigning
interest in the instructions to track him from the corner of her eye. He was
well dressed, but not overly so. He looked at her, confused, not sure why he
was so drawn to her. Nneoma could feel the sadness rolling off him and she
knew if she focused she’d be able to see his grief, clear as a splinter. She
would see the source of it, its architecture, and the way it anchored to him.
And she would be able to remove it.
It started when she was fourteen, in math class. She’d always been good
at math but had no designs on being a Mathematician. No one did. It wasn’t
a profession you chose or aspired to; either you could do it or you couldn’t.
That day, the teacher had shown them a long string of Furcal’s Formula,
purchased from the Center like a strain of virus. To most of the other
students, it was an impenetrable series of numbers and symbols, but to
Nneoma it was as simple as the alphabet. Seeing the Formula unlocked
something in her. From then on she could see a person’s sadness as plainly
as the clothes he wore.
The Center paid for the rest of her schooling, paid off the little debt her
family owed, and bought them a new house. They trained her to hone her
talents, to go beyond merely seeing a person’s grief to mastering how to
remove it. She’d been doing it for so long she could exorcise the deepest of
traumas for even the most resistant of patients. Then her mother died.
The man in the store stood there looking at her and Nneoma took
advantage of his confusion to walk away. The grieving were often drawn to
her, an inadvertent magnetic thing. It made her sheltered life blessed and
necessary. The Center was very understanding and helped contracted
Mathematicians screen their clients. None of them were ever forced to work
with a client or provide a service they didn’t want to. Nneoma worked
almost exclusively with parents who’d lost a child, wealthy couples who’d
thought death couldn’t touch them, till it did. When the Center partnered
with governments to work with their distressed populations, the job was
voluntary and most Mathematicians donated a few hours a week. There
were exceptions, like Kioni, who worked with such people full-time, and
Nneoma, who didn’t work with them at all. Mother Kioni, Nneoma had
called her, first with affection, then with increasing malice as things
between them turned ugly. This man, in the tidy suit and good shoes, was
more along the lines of her preferred clientele. He could very well become a
client of hers in the future, but not today, not like this.
At checkout, the boy who scanned and bagged her groceries was
wearing a name tag that read “Martin,” which may or may not have been
his name. The Britons preferred their service workers with names they
could pronounce, and most companies obliged them. The tattoo on his wrist
indicated his citizenship—an original Biafran—and his class, third. No
doubt he lived outside of the city and was tracked from the minute he
crossed the electronic threshold till the minute he finished his shift and left.
He was luckier than most.
At the car, she checked her personal phone, the number only her father,
her assistant, and Kioni knew. Still no message. She hadn’t heard from
Kioni since she’d moved out. She had to know Nneoma worried, in spite of
how they’d left things. None of their mutual New Kenyan contacts knew
where to find her, and Kioni’s phone went unanswered. Maybe this was
what it took for Kioni to exorcise her.
On the way to the school, Nneoma finished off two apples and a roll and
flipped through her notes. She had done many such presentations, which
were less about presenting and more about identifying potential
Mathematicians, who had a way of feeling each other out. She ran a finger
along the Formula, still mesmerized by it after all this time. She’d brought
fifty-seven lines of it, though she would only need a few to test the students.
When things began to fall apart, the world cracked open by earthquakes
and long-dormant volcanoes stretched, yawned, and bellowed, the churches
(mosques, temples) fell—not just the physical buildings shaken to dust by
tremors, but the institutions as well. Into the vacuum stepped Francisco
Furcal, a Chilean mathematician who discovered a formula that explained
the universe. It, like the universe, was infinite, and the idea that the formula
had no end and, perhaps, by extension, humanity had no end was exactly
what the world needed.
Over decades, people began to experiment with this infinite formula
and, in the process, discovered equations that coincided with the anatomy of
the human body, making work like hers possible. A computer at the Center
ran the Formula 24/7, testing its infiniteness. There were thousands and
thousands of lines. People used to be able to tour the South African branch
and watch the endless symbols race ticker-style across a screen. Then the
Center closed to the public, and the rumors started that Furcal’s Formula
was wrong, that the logic of it faltered millions and millions of
permutations down the line, past anything a human could calculate in her
lifetime. That it was not infinite.
They were just that, rumors, but then a man fell from the sky.
As they neared the school, they could see a few protesters with
gleaming electronic placards. The angry red of angry men. Amadi slowed.
“Madam?”
“Keep going, there are only ten.”
But the number could triple by the time she was ready to leave. How did
they always know where she’d be?
The car was waved through the school’s outer gate, then the inner gate,
where Amadi’s ID was checked, then double-checked. When the guard
decided that Amadi wasn’t credentialed enough to wait within the inner
gate, Nneoma stepped in. Her driver, her rules. The guard conceded as
she’d known he would, and Amadi parked the car under a covered spot out
of the sun. Nneoma was greeted by Nkem Ozechi, the headmaster, a small,
neat woman whose hands reminded her of Kioni’s. She had a smug air
about her and walked with a gait that was entirely too pleased with itself.
She spoke to Nneoma as though they’d known each other for years. On a
different day, Nneoma might have been charmed, interested, but today she
just wanted the session to be over with so she could go home.
The class was filled with bored faces, most around thirteen or fourteen
(had she ever looked so young?), few caring or understanding what she did,
too untouched by tragedy to understand her necessity. But schools like
these, which gathered the best and brightest that several nations had to offer
(according to Nkem Ozechi), paid the Center handsomely to have people
like her speak, and it was the easiest money she earned.
“How many of you can look at someone and know that they are sad?”
The whole class raised their hands.
“How many of you can tell if someone is sad even if they are not
crying?”
Most hands stayed up.
“How many of you can look at a person who is sad, know why they are
sad, and fix it?”
All hands lowered. She had their attention now.
The talk lasted fifteen minutes before she brought it to a close.
“Some Mathematicians remove pain, some of us deal in negative
emotions, but we all fix the equation of a person. The bravest”—she winked
—“have tried their head at using the Formula to make the human body defy
gravity, for physical endeavors like flight.”
The class giggled, the fallen man fresh in their minds.
“Furcal’s Formula means that one day the smartest people can access
the very fabric of the universe.” For many the Formula was God,
misunderstood for so long. They believed that it was only a matter of time
before someone discovered the formula to create life, rather than to just
manipulate it. But this was beyond the concerns of the teenagers, who
applauded politely.
The headmaster stepped from the corner to moderate questions. The first
were predictable and stupid. “Can you make people fall in love?” No. “Can
you make someone become invisible?” No. Nkem Ozechi might have been
embarrassed to know that their questions were no different from those
posed by students in the lower schools. Then (again predictably) someone
posed a nonquestion.
“What you are doing is wrong.” From a reed-thin boy with large teeth.
Despite his thinness there was a softness to him, a pampered look.
Nneoma put her hand up to stop Nkem Ozechi from interrupting. She
could handle this. “Explain.”
“Well, my dad says what you people do is wrong, that you shouldn’t be
stopping a person from feeling natural hardships. That’s what it means to be
human.”
 Someone in the back started to clap until Nneoma again raised her hand
for silence. She studied the boy. He was close enough for her to note his
father’s occupation on his wrist (lawyer) and his class (first). She’d argued
down many a person like his father, people who’d lived easy lives, who’d
had moderate but manageable difficulties, then dared to compare their
meager hardship with unfathomable woes.
“Your father and those people protesting outside have no concept of
what real pain is. As far as I’m concerned, their feelings on this matter are
invalid. I would never ask a person who hasn’t tasted a dish whether it
needs more salt.”
The boy sat with his arms crossed, pouting. She hadn’t changed his
mind, you never could with people like that, but she’d shut him up.
In the quiet that followed, another hand raised. Not her, Nneoma
thought, not her. She’d successfully ignored the girl since walking into the
classroom. She didn’t need to look at her wrist to know that the girl was
Senegalese and had been affected by the Elimination. It was etched all over
her, this sorrow.
“So you can make it go away?” They could have been the only two
people in the room.
“Yes, I can.” And to kill her dawning hope, “But it is a highly regulated
and very expensive process. Most of my clients are heavily subsidized by
their governments, but even then”—in case any hope remained—“you have
to be a citizen.”
The girl lowered her eyes to her lap, fighting tears. As though to mock
her, she was flanked by a map on the wall, the entire globe splayed out as it
had been seventy years ago and as it was now. Most of what had been North
America was covered in water and a sea had replaced Europe. Russia was a
soaked grave. The only continents unclaimed in whole or in part by the sea
were Australia and the United Countries—what had once been Africa. The
Elimination began after a moment of relative peace, after the French had
won the trust of their hosts. The Senegalese newspapers that issued
warnings were dismissed as conspiracy rags, rabble-rousers inventing
trouble. But then came the camps, the raids, and the mysterious illness that
wiped out millions. Then the cabinet members murdered in their beds. And
the girl had survived it. To be here, at a school like this, on one of the rare
scholarships offered to displaced children, the girl must have lived through
the unthinkable. The weight of her mourning was too much. Nneoma left
the room, followed by Nkem Ozechi, who clicked hurriedly behind her.
“Maybe some of them will be Mathematicians, like you.”
Nneoma needed to gather herself. She saw the sign for the ladies’ room
and stepped inside, swinging the door in Nkem Ozechi’s face. None of
those children would ever be Mathematicians; the room was as bare of
genius as a pool of fish.
She checked the stalls to make sure she was alone and bent forward to
take deep breaths. She rarely worked with refugees, true refugees, for this
reason. The complexity of their suffering always took something from her.
The only time she’d felt anything as strongly was after her mother had
passed and her father was in full lament, listing to the side of ruin. How
could Nneoma tell him that she couldn’t even look at him without being
broken by it? He would never understand. The day she’d tried to work on
him, to eat her father’s grief, she finally understood why it was forbidden to
work on close family members. Their grief was your own and you could
never get out of your head long enough to calculate it. The attempt had
ended with them both sobbing, holding each other in comfort and worry, till
her father became so angry at the futility of it, the uselessness of her talents
in this one crucial moment, that he’d said words he could not take back.
The bathroom door creaked open. Nneoma knew who it was. The girl
couldn’t help but seek her out. They stared at each other awhile, the girl
uncertain, till Nneoma held out her arms and the girl walked into them.
Nneoma saw the sadness in her eyes and began to plot the results of it on an
axis. At one point the girl’s mother shredded by gunfire. Her brother taken
in the night by a gang of thugs. Her father falling to the synthesized virus
that attacked all the melanin in his skin till his body was an open sore. And
other, smaller hurts: Hunger so deep she’d swallowed fistfuls of mud.
Hiding from the men who’d turned on her after her father died. Sneaking
into her old neighborhood to see new houses filled with the more fortunate
of the French evacuees, those who hadn’t been left behind to drown, their
children chasing her away with rocks like she was a dog. Nneoma looked at
every last suffering, traced the edges, weighed the mass. And then she took
it.
No one had ever really been able to explain what happened then, why
one person could take another person’s grief. Mathematical theories
abounded based on how humans were, in the plainest sense, a bulk of atoms
held together by positives and negatives, a type of cellular math. An
equation all their own. A theologian might have called it a miracle, a kiss of
grace from God’s own mouth. Philosophers opined that it was actually the
patients who gave up their sadness. But in that room it simply meant that a
girl had an unbearable burden and then she did not.

—
The ride home was silent. Amadi, sensing her disquiet, resisted the casual
detour he usually made past the junction that led to her father’s house,
whenever they ventured to this side of town. At home, Nneoma went
straight to bed, taking two of the pills that would let her sleep for twelve
hours. After that she would be as close to normal as she could be. The
rawness of the girl’s memories would diminish, becoming more like a story
in a book she’d once read. The girl would feel the same way. Sleep came,
deep and black, a dreamless thing with no light.
The next morning, she turned on the unit to see much the same coverage
as the day before, except now the fallen man’s widow had jumped into the
fray, calling for a full audit of the Center’s records and of Furcal’s Formula.
Nneoma snorted. It was the sort of demand that would win public support,
but the truth was the only experts who knew enough to audit anything all
worked for the Center, and it would take them decades to pore over every
line of the formula. More likely this was a ploy for a payoff, which the
woman would get. The Furcals could afford it.
Nneoma told herself she wouldn’t check her messages again for at least
another hour and prepared for her daily run. A quick peek revealed that no
messages were waiting anyway. She keyed the code into the gate to lock it
behind her, stretched, and launched.
The run cleared the last vestiges of yesterday’s ghosts. She would call
Claudine today to see how serious this whole falling thing was. There’d be
only so much the PR rep could legally say, but dinner and a few drinks
might loosen her tongue. Nneoma lengthened her stride the last mile home,
taking care to ease into it. The last time she’d burst into a sprint she pulled a
muscle, and the pain eater assigned to her was a grim man with a
nonexistent bedside manner. She’d felt his disapproval as he worked on her.
No doubt he thought his talents wasted in her cozy sector and was tolerating
this rotation till he could get back to the camps. Nneoma disliked
Mathematicians like him and they disliked ones like her. It was a miracle
she and Kioni had lasted as long as they did.
As she cleared the corner around her compound, she saw a small crowd
gathered at her gate. Protesters? she wondered in shock before she
registered the familiar faces of her neighbors. When she neared, a man she
recognized but could not name caught her by the shoulders.
“We called medical right away. She was banging on your gate and
screaming. She is your friend, no? I’ve seen her with you before.” He
looked very concerned, and suddenly Nneoma didn’t want to know who
was there to see her and why.
It was just a beggar. The woman wore no shoes and her toes were
wounds. How on earth had she been able to bypass city security? Nneoma
scrambled back when the woman reached out for her, but froze when she
saw her fingers, delicate and spindly, like insect legs.
Those hands had once stroked her body. She had once kissed those
palms and drawn those fingers into her mouth. She would have recognized
them anywhere.
“Kioni?”
“Nneoma, we have to go, we have to go now.” Kioni was frantic and
kept looking behind her. Every bare inch of her skin was scratched or bitten
or cut in some way. Her usually neat coif of dreadlocks was half missing,
her scalp raw and puckered as if someone had yanked them out. The smell
that rolled from her was all sewage.
“Oh my God, Kioni, oh my God.”
Kioni grabbed her wrists and wouldn’t surrender them. “We have to
go!”
Nneoma tried to talk around the horrified pit in her stomach. “Who did
this to you? Where do we have to go?”
Kioni shook her head and sank to her knees. Nneoma tried to free one of
her hands and when she couldn’t, pressed and held the metal insert under
her palm that would alert security at the Center. They would know what to
do.
From her current angle, Nneoma could see more of the damage on the
other woman, the scratches and bites concentrated below the elbow.
Something nagged and nagged at her. And then she remembered the
Australian, and the stories of him trying to eat himself.
“Kioni, who did this?” Nneoma repeated, though her suspicion was
beginning to clot into certainty and she feared the answer.
Kioni continued shaking her head and pressed her lips together like a
child refusing to confess a lie.
Their falling-out had started when Nneoma did the unthinkable. In
violation of every boundary of their relationship (and a handful of Center
rules), she’d asked Kioni to work on her father. Kioni, who volunteered
herself to the displaced Senegalese and Algerians and Burkinababes and
even the evacuees, anyone in dire need of a grief worker, was the last
person she should have asked for such a thing, and told her so. Nneoma had
called her sanctimonious, and Kioni had called her a spoiled rich girl who
thought her pain was more important than it actually was. And then Kioni
had asked her to leave.
Now she needed to get Kioni to the Center. Whatever was happening
had to be fixed.
“They just come and they come and they come.”
Nneoma crouched down to hear Kioni better. Most of her neighbors had
moved beyond hearing distance, chased away by the smell. “Who comes?”
she asked, trying to keep Kioni with her.
“All of them, can’t you see?”
She began to understand what was happening to her former girlfriend.
How many people had Kioni worked with over the last decade? Five
thousand? Ten? Ten thousand traumas in her psyche, squeezing past each
other, vying for the attention of their host. What would happen if you
couldn’t forget, if every emotion from every person whose grief you’d eaten
came back up? It could happen, if something went wrong with the formula
millions and millions of permutations down the line. A thousand falling
men landing on you.
Nneoma tried to retreat, to close her eyes and unsee, but she couldn’t.
Instinct took over and she raced to calculate it all. The breadth of it was so
vast. Too vast.
The last clear thought she would ever have was of her father, how
crimson his burden had been when she’d tried to shoulder it, and how very
pale it all seemed now.
“What the Dead Man Said”
BY CHINELO ONWUALU
AUG 24, 2019, 9:00 AM

I suppose you could say that it started with the storm.

I hadn‟t seen one like it in 30 years. Not since I moved to Tkaronto, in the Northern
Indigenous Zone of Turtle Island—what settler-colonialists still insisted on calling North
America. I‟d forgotten its raw power: angry thunderclouds that blot out the sun, taking you
from noon to evening in an instant, then the water that comes down like fury—like the sky
itself wants to hurt you.
As I sat in the empty passenger terminal of the Niger River Harbourfront waiting for the bus,
I watched as rain streaked the cobbled walkways in silver, sluicing through the narrow
depressions between the solar roadway and the gutter. The ferry was long gone, moving up
the river into the heart of Igboland, leaving me stranded in an alien world.
A holographic advertisement for some sort of fertility treatment played out on a viewscreen
across the street. It was distorted by the haze of rain, but I made out a plump, impossibly
happy woman in a crisp red gele—her skin glowing in the golden light of a computer-
generated sun—clutching a newborn baby and dancing toward a household shrine. She was
surrounded by celebrating family members, but she stopped before a regal older couple to
whom she presented the child. The old man took the child with a benevolent smile, while the
woman stretched her hand toward the young mother, who was now kneeling before them, in a
benediction. The ad ended with a close-up of the beaming mother and the logo of the fertility
treatment company in the corner. I turned away before my ocular implants could sync with
the ad‟s soundtrack, but I‟d already caught the tagline: “Keep New Biafra Alive.”
My A.I. announced that the bus had arrived. Its interface had switched to Igbo as soon as I
passed from Nigeria™ into New Biafra, as neither English nor Anishinaabe were recognized
languages here. I hadn‟t spoken Igbo in decades, but its musicality returned to me with
smooth familiarity—as if it had simply been waiting for its turn in the spotlight. I ignored the
ping; I wanted to watch the rain a little longer. Perhaps it would somehow wash this reality
away and I could return to the quiet life I‟d built for myself on the other side of the Atlantic.
You can’t put it off forever.
I frowned, then sighed. The dead man was right. This was like getting a body mod. You‟d be
a brand-new person when it was over, but in the meantime it was going to hurt like hell. I put
up the hood of my hi-dri, shouldered my backpack, and stepped out into the storm.
***
It really started with the notification two days ago. My father had passed on—as they used to
say—but that wasn‟t real. At least not yet.
What was real was me here in Onitsha, my hometown. Even though I‟d spent my childhood
wandering this city‟s narrow red streets, as I slumped in the passenger well of the automated
minibus, it struck me how foreign the place now seemed. How had I forgotten how compact
everything was, as if it had been built to accommodate a mass of people long gone? My
grandparents told me that over a century ago, more than half a million people had packed into
these pristine streets. Now, it wasn‟t even half that.
The minibus glided along Niger Avenue, stopping occasionally to let passengers off or allow
pedestrians to cross the road. As we passed Fegge, I caught sight of the neighborhood‟s
ancient cement family quarters, squat-shouldered and tin-roofed, hulking next to each other
like sullen children. Crossing from Main Market, with its workshops and retail outlets, into
the quiet residential lanes of American Quarters, I spied children in neat uniforms walking
hand-in-hand to their various apprenticeships. Children were rare enough in Tkaronto, and
those few who could afford to give birth preferred to cluster in tower communities that would
protect their precious progeny from the vicissitudes of life. Apart from major celebrations
like Emancipation Day, seeing children in public was unheard of.
Throughout the trip, the lights of the historic Niger Bridge blinked on the horizon. I would
have liked to go walking across it like any other tourist, streaming photos of the mighty river
for my feed back West. But I‟d only packed a change of clothes and some toiletries. The
burial rites would begin this evening with the wake-keeping and end on the evening of the
next day, after the celebratory second funeral. I had no plans of staying past then.
It could be argued that without the Catastrophe, that fraught period between the 2020s and the
2060s that scorched half the world and drowned the rest, New Biafra could never have been
born. At the turn of the 22nd century, as people all over were still fleeing inland to escape the
rising seas, a group of Igbo separatists took the opportunity to declare their independence
from the crumbling colonial creation of Nigeria. The new state called for the return of all its
children in diaspora, and my grandparents—engineers eking out a living on the shores of Old
New York—were among the thousands who moved to regional cities like Onitsha, Nnewi,
Awka, and Aba to answer the call.
We called it the Great Return. Anyone who could prove Igbo ancestry was granted automatic
citizenship. Those with coveted skills—geneticists, engineers, and biologists—were given
homes, business grants, and lucrative government posts. My grandparents and their
generation cleared out the derelict infrastructure of New Biafra‟s empty suburbs and towns to
make way for the forest lands that now covered nearly 80 percent of the country. They
reseeded those forests with bio-engineered plants and wildlife, then built the massive
monorail system that connects all our cities to bypass the pristine forests below. But they‟d
neglected one thing: While they were busy creating our new homeland, they forgot to also
raise the massive families that would be needed to keep it solvent and thriving.
As they grew feeble, the burden of caring for them and maintaining the world they‟d built fell
to us. My agemates, those I kept in touch with after I moved, tell me I was lucky to get out
when I did. Leaving New Biafra when I was only 12 meant that I was too young to be tied
down by the weight of its social obligations. They complained of having to work long hours
to preserve family businesses passed down by aging parents and grandparents. They spoke
wistfully of the massive payouts the government awarded to those who could birth three or
more children, but few of them could carve out the time needed to cultivate such large
families. Though my own life—a spacious apartment in the hills of Highland Crescent, an
easygoing art research consultancy—was very different from theirs, I‟m not sure I did escape.
One cannot cut the invisible threads of familial indebtedness by simply running off to a
distant land.
My father certainly fulfilled his filial duty. He became a ranger, protecting the bio-engineered
species his parents had introduced in the forests they‟d prepared. As his only child, I should
have done the same. I‟d always liked working with the soil, so it was expected that I would
go into agroecology and grow the food that would feed our people. But after what happened
with my uncle … I shook my head to ward off the memory.
As the bus pulled up in front of the family home at 142 Old Hospital Rd., I came out of my
reverie and noticed that the rain had stopped. The house hadn‟t changed since I‟d last seen it
three decades ago. Hell, it probably hadn‟t changed in the 200 years since it had been built in
the 1920s.
It was a U-shaped complex with a central bungalow flanked by two-story apartments, one on
either side. An open courtyard carpeted with moss grass, fruit trees, and wildflowers filled the
space between them. My grandparents had reinforced its walls with permacrete and upgraded
its interior to 22nd-century standards, but that‟s where the improvements ended. After they
died, the house went to my father, who‟d never had much interest in technology. In the 20
years he‟d lived there, he‟d done nothing more than charge its batteries and replace burned-
out solar cells.
Traditionally, the oldest members of the family would occupy the bungalow while their
children and extended family members crammed into the two warrens of flats. If we‟d
restricted the apartments to blood family only, as some still did, those buildings would have
stood empty. These days relatives were defined less by who‟d slept with whom, and more by
whose interests and personalities meshed best. I recalled the boisterous couples and polycules
who‟d lived in the building when I was young—all of them my cousins and uncles and
aunties even though we had only marginal blood relationships to each other.
The compound was abuzz with people. Someone had set up a canopy in one corner of the
open field where my friends and I had played virtual sports as children. From somewhere in
the back the delicate smell of Aba rice and goat stew wafted out, making my mouth water.
The building‟s families had spared no expense for this event. I tried to slip in quietly, but I
was immediately spotted.
“Azuka! Is that you?” screamed a voice from somewhere in the crowd. It was Auntie Chio, a
close friend of my grandmother who‟d lived in the building for as long as I could remember.
I‟d been best friends with her two granddaughters, both of whom now lived in the Eko
Atlantic megacity. She was one of the few adults who‟d kept in touch with me after my
mother and I moved to Turtle Island.
I spotted her lithe frame dressed in her usual motley of clashing ankara fabrics as she swept
out from the main bungalow. Her unlined face spoke nothing of her nearly 90 years, and
before I knew it I was surrounded in her crushing embrace.
I smiled wanly. “Good evening, auntie.”
“Ah-ah, when did you come?” She held me at arm‟s length, taking me in from head to toe,
her eagle-eyed gaze missing nothing.
“Just now. I had to finish some work before I could travel.”
She nodded and gave me a look that was skeptical but sympathetic. She opened her mouth to
say more, but her cry had attracted others and soon I was surrounded by people.
“Azu-nne, welcome! See how big you‟ve grown, eh! So tall!”
“Come, you don‟t remember me, do you? You were so small when last I saw you.”
“My condolences, my dear. It is well with you.”
I tried to respond to each comment and query with as many smiles and few words as possible,
and soon I was ushered into the main house. It wasn‟t until later that I realized one thing in
the compound had changed: The small guardhouse that used to sit just inside the front gate
was gone.
* * *
That evening at the wake-keeping, Auntie Chio and I sat in the living room next to the
biodegradable pod where my father‟s body lay, its feet facing the entryway. Earlier, she‟d
welcomed the community into the home as tradition dictated, presenting kola nuts and palm
wine as an offering to the household gods. Another of my elder aunts—I forget how we‟re
related—led the prayers, pouring libation to beckon the ancestral spirits into our home and
escort my father‟s spirit to the land of the dead.
This was the night of mourning and I wished I was somewhere, anywhere, else. But as my
father‟s only biological child, I had to stay by his body and receive mourners until dawn.
Then, a government representative would show up to sound an ogene and officially alert the
neighborhood of the death. The body would then be interred with its own tree in the front
compound. My grandfather told me that when he‟d visit Onitsha as a child, this alert would
be done by gunshot. After New Biafra banned guns at the turn of the 2140s, we turned to
gongs—something he‟d much preferred.
It was one of the many stories my grandparents told me about why they chose to return to
Onitsha from Turtle Island, after Old New York drowned in the Catastrophe. As a child, I
often joined my grandparents—Mama and Papa, as I called them—when they sat trading
memories on the veranda at twilight. I would climb into my grandmother‟s lap and lean into
her chest, savoring the vibrations of her voice as she spoke.
“It‟s a shame your father never got to see any grandchild from you.” My Auntie Chio‟s voice
jolted me into the present. “But we are glad that we will see them on his behalf, now that you
have come home.”
I looked askance at her but said nothing. I didn‟t need to be reminded that I‟d failed to birth
our family‟s next generation. She must have caught something in my look because her voice
dropped to a reassuring register. “You don‟t have to marry anyone: We can get a surrogate, if
you like. There‟s even a government program that could help.”
“Auntie, is this really the best time to talk about this?”
“But of course! The ending of one life is the beginning of the next.” She shifted to face me,
and I couldn‟t avoid her intense gaze. “My dear, have you forgotten our saying: „To have a
child is to have treasure‟? That is more important today than ever before.
“Look at our history. If it wasn‟t for our children, how would we have survived the Civil
War, when Nigeria wanted to see us all dead? And those in the western lands who laughed at
us when they stopped having even one child after the Catastrophe, look at them now. Are
they not the ones scooping us up to feed their hungry economies? Just look at the brokers
who helped you and your mother resettle in the West—what didn’t they offer you to come?
They have always known the value of our bodies. Before, they packed us away by force in
the bottoms of slave ships, now they lure us with sweet songs of success.
“Azuka, do you know how quickly a people can disappear if they fail to value their children?
It does not take centuries. Your grandparents understood this—that‟s why we all came home.
We wanted to bring our wealth back where it would do the most good. You are part of our
legacy.”
I broke away from her gaze, a wave of grief welling up in my chest. How could I tell her that
my father‟s line would die with me because I still recoiled at any sort of sexual contact? Or
that the thought of having a child sent me into a paroxysm of panic because I was convinced
that what had happened to me would also happen to them? My grief began to curdle into
anger. No. This was no longer my legacy. A family that had essentially abandoned me when I
needed them most did not get to decide what I did with my life.
Auntie Chio reached out and placed a gentle hand under my chin, lifting my head up to hers.
“I will be honest with you, I never thought I would see you again—not after what happened.
But I am glad you have come home, and I hope, for all our sakes, that you will find it in your
heart to stay.” With that, she got up and left, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I sighed, my anger dissipating as quickly as it had come. After we moved, my mother turned
her back on Onitsha—and all of New Biafra by extension—with a certainty that never
wavered. As far as I know, she never spoke with anyone from my father‟s side of the family
ever again. I hadn‟t been able to do the same, even though I had more cause than anyone to
shake the red dust of this city from my feet.
My mother had scoffed when I told her I was coming down for the funeral. I hadn‟t returned
when my grandparents died, why was this burial so much more important? I couldn‟t explain
it. I‟d always felt that I left New Biafra before I could take up my true purpose. That my life
in Tkaronto was a shadow of what it could be. Perhaps I‟d returned to bury more than my
father.
I looked up and two women I‟d never seen before were leaning into the pod, wailing and
calling the dead man‟s name, asking rhetorically why he had left them. I wondered how much
of their performance was obscure cultural theater and how much was genuine grief.
Their wailing increased, and I wished I‟d been allowed to bring my A.I. That, however,
would have been considered an insult to the body, like looking into the eyes of an elder while
you were being scolded. I‟d forgotten how quickly my people whitewash the truth about our
dead. We fear that speaking ill of them will invite death on ourselves as well.
One of the women stopped in front of me, sniffling into an old cloth kerchief. She looked to
be in her mid-40s—about my age.
“Your father was a good man,” she said, reaching for my hands. I slid them into my pockets,
just out of her reach, and she made do with patting my leg.
“Was he?” I tried for a tone of genuine curiosity, not the cynicism I actually felt.
“I wouldn‟t be here today, if it wasn‟t for him.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. My father had been famously generous: Everyone I‟d met so
far had a story of how he‟d stepped in at just the right moment to change their lives. I didn‟t
know what to do with these tales. I suppose it was easier to give money to strangers than to
give of yourself to the people closest to you.
After an awkward pause, she continued, speaking quickly as if to get the words out before her
courage failed her. “You know, after I was raped 10 years ago, nobody wanted to help me.” I
stiffened, tightening my hands into fists in my pockets. “Not my family, not the government,
nobody. Only your father. He brought me into this house and allowed me to stay here for free
until I found a place. He even paid for my marriage and my son‟s apprenticeship. Me and my
wife, we‟re just so grateful to him.”
She pointed to the other woman, who had gone to stand by the door with a child of about 10
years. He had soft brown eyes and a head of unruly curls, and he wore a miniature version of
the ranger‟s uniform that the dead man in the pod was wearing. I didn‟t tell her about the
same dead man‟s reaction to my own rape 33 years ago—23 years before her own. Instead, I
smiled tightly.
“I‟m glad that it turned out so well for you.”
That‟s when I saw the dead man‟s shadow materialize in the corner of the room. I didn‟t tell
her about that, either.
* * *
The dead man appeared again sometime during the night.
I had just struggled out of a dream. I was back in the guardhouse, its small high windows
streaming an uncertain gray light into the room. Then, hundreds of disembodied hands
reached out of the ground to grab at me. They held me down, their fingers clutching, probing,
and rubbing. I bit and clawed and slashed, but for every hand whose finger I tore off, for
every palm I gouged and wounded, a new hand sprang up in its place.
It was an old nightmare, one I hadn‟t had in over 30 years. When we moved to Turtle Island,
my mother and our relocation broker made sure I received all the necessary therapies to deal
with my trauma, but being here where it all happened seemed to have dredged everything
back up.
I lay on the living room couch drenched in sweat and blinked into the semi-darkness before I
saw him sitting on the armrest by my feet. In the light of the bioluminescent trees that lined
the street by the back window, he looked real enough. When I sat up and turned on the lights,
he was gone.
I should have been frightened, but I wasn‟t. I knew he‟d show up again. He and I had
unfinished business.
* * *
He returned the next morning as I sat beneath the neem tree in the back garden, trying to hide
from the unrelenting regard of the crowd of mourners inside the main house. The body was
due to be interred with its tree in the front compound, and the place was choked with well-
wishers.
They spilled out onto the walkway beyond the house‟s hedgerow fence and into the road. I
was agitated, but instead of tuning into the nature sounds queued up on my A.I., I listened to
the weaver birds screeching to each other in the branches above me.
I never noticed how loud those birds are.
The dead man looked up at the tree‟s slim branches, weighed down by the birds‟ basket-like
nests. This time, I decided to respond directly.
“You never did notice much beyond your own interests.”
I expected him to come back with an attack that cut to my deepest insecurities. It was a talent
he had, and he had often used it to great effect when he was alive, but he didn‟t. He just
nodded sadly and put his hands in his pockets.
I suppose I deserve that.
I would have to make do with that. Even in death, he couldn‟t apologize. A group of three
men around the dead man‟s age filtered out onto the back veranda. They joked nervously
with each other, as if their laughter would somehow keep the shadow of death from falling on
them too. Two of them, both dressed in the dark high-collared tunics of Biafran government
salarymen, discussed the finer points of spiritual salvation in Yoruba-inflected Igbo. I itched
for something to read.
“Why are you even here?”
He shrugged, petulant. I just wanted to see you.
I rolled my eyes. He‟d only been dead a few days. He‟d always been impatient, demanding
that I work at his relentless pace no matter how I felt. Now, he couldn‟t even wait to be
missed before showing up again.
“Really? So that you can tell me how selfish I am because I‟m not sitting inside being the
center of everyone‟s grief? Or do you also want to remind me that I‟m going to destroy our
family line if I don‟t have a child?”
I realized I sounded like a child myself, but I couldn‟t help it. Being in his presence made me
feel that I‟d gone back in time and was an angry teenager again.
No. His voice had a wistful quality—like someone looking back at the folly of his youth. You
were never selfish, you know. I was.
I looked at him sharply; this didn‟t sound like him at all. As if reading my thoughts, he
smiled.
That’s one thing dying does—it changes you.
He certainly looked dead. His skin was gray and waxy like a mannequin. His shoulders had a
stiff quality that made his dark ranger uniform fit him perfectly in a way it had never done in
life.
“Am I to believe that dying has made you a different person?”
Look, he said in that chiding tone I hated, you can’t fault people for their weaknesses. You’ll
only be left with bitterness if you do. You have to find a way to let go. That’s what I came to
tell you.
I sighed. In death, as in life, he had nothing but easy philosophies for me. They‟d made for
exciting debates when I was young but served as cold comfort for grief. I wanted to get up
and walk away, but I didn‟t. I never could.
“Just leave me alone.”
I turned on my A.I. It synced with the implant at the base of my skull that monitored my
neural and physical activity. Reading my increased agitation, it cued the soothing whale
songs that worked best to bring my signals within normal range. I leaned back against the tree
and closed my eyes as the sounds poured into my aural inputs, imagining what those long-
extinct creatures might have looked like.
Above me, the dead man and the weaver birds chirped on.
* * *
He didn‟t show up again until evening, when the second burial was in full swing. By then, the
sapling that would biodegrade his pod had joined the other ancestral trees in the front yard.
The necessary prayers had been said, the tree‟s ritual first watering completed. The time for
mourning the loss was over and it was now time to celebrate the life lived. At 80, the dead
man was considered fairly young; he‟d been expected to live for at least another 20 years. But
in my culture, venerated old age began at 60—probably a holdover from when most people
didn‟t live past their 50s.
I watched the revelry from the open window of the guest room. I‟d been allowed this short
time to myself only after pleading exhaustion from the long journey. It was only a matter of
time before I‟d be called out to join the dancing.
The music—a blend of ogenes, ichakas, and udus, cut through by the sweet, sharp tones of
the aja—stirred something deep inside me. I pressed my hand to the center of my chest where
a phantom pain stabbed through me.
It is good to be remembered. That is the true joy of legacy.
The dead man was sitting next to me on the bed, surveying the mass of people dancing and
drinking in the yard.
“Too bad they didn‟t remember you half as well when we needed their help.”
When my uncle was arrested, they led him out of the compound in chains to show how
serious his crime was. My family—once one of the most prominent in the city—was quietly
ostracized. Most of my friends stopped coming over. When relatives and agemates stopped
by, it was only to whisper at the door or drop off food and drinks. No one wanted to stay and
visit. My own education effectively ended—my uncle had been my teacher, after all. It broke
Mama and Papa—my grandparents—to lose one of their sons like that. My grandmother fell
ill soon after and my grandfather withdrew to care for her. As for my father? Well … he
disappeared too, in his own way.
They all had their own problems; they didn’t owe me anything.
I hissed in contempt, but said nothing. He must have mistaken my silence, because he
continued earnestly.
You have to find it in your heart to forgive them. In the end, all that matters are the memories
of the people who knew you. Especially your children.
“And how do you think I‟ll remember you?”
He went quiet at that. We both looked through the window toward the empty space where the
guardhouse once stood.
I didn’t know.
“How couldn’t you have known? Every day after our lessons, right there in the guardhouse.
What were you doing the whole time? Sleeping?”
I was working, he snapped. Don’t you think I would have done something if I had known? We
acted as soon as we found out.
“And after that, when you stopped talking to me, was that also because you were working?”
Silence.
“You know, for years I thought it was my fault. I believed that I was the one who destroyed
our family. Uncle went to prison, Mama got sick, and you … you couldn‟t even look at me.
Even after we left, if I didn‟t call you, I didn‟t hear from you.”
I still remembered those video calls, stilted conversations on birthdays and holidays. In them,
he always seemed too tired or too busy to talk properly.
“I spent years waiting for you … I waited, and I waited, and I waited.”
The tears rose unbidden and I wiped at my face, angry at my own weakness. I‟d sworn long
ago that I would never cry in front of him. The dead man stood and walked to the window,
his back to me. He stared out for a long moment before speaking.
I didn’t know what to say to you. His voice was so soft I could barely hear it over the noise
outside. As if he was talking to himself. When I looked at you all I could see was my own
failure: I was your father and I couldn’t protect you. I hated myself for it and I took that out
on you—and for that, I’ll never forgive myself.
“Good. Because I won‟t ever forgive you either.”
He turned back to me and I watched the slow realization work itself across his face.
You are still angry at me, he said, finally. Sadly.
“You let me down so many times.” Tears sprang to my eyes again, lending a quaver to my
voice. “I don‟t know how to stop being angry at you.”
I wish I could make it up to you.
“Well, it‟s too late for that.” For the first time in 30 years, I looked my father in the eyes as I
spoke. “Did you honestly think that by coming here and chanting your empty platitudes, you
could undo all those years of pain? You said you came back to warn me, but this isn‟t about
me. This is about you getting your last moment of absolution.”
I am so sorry. For everything.
“It doesn‟t matter anymore.” I was suddenly tired. “Go. Find your salvation somewhere else.”
Thunder boomed from somewhere in the distance, sending a ripple of unease through the
crowd. The wind picked up, skittering debris across the yard. As the fat, heavy rainclouds
rolled in, the party outside began to pack up. Families in the building fled to their flats while
those who had too far to go clustered under the canvas canopies to wait out the storm.
I picked up my backpack and looked around, but the dead man was gone.
Outside, a flood of mourners streamed out from the gate, breaking up into little rivulets of
people eager to leave before the rain started. I joined them and headed for the bus shelter. Just
as I reached it, the sky opened up and wept.
Inside the shelter, I wedged myself into a small space in the back and tugged the hood of my
hi-dri up to hide my face. I didn‟t want to explain my sudden departure to any mourners who
might recognize me. I was staring into the haze of the rain, my mind blank with grief, when I
felt a familiar hand on my shoulder.
“So you would have just left us like that, eh?” Auntie Chio‟s voice was sad. I tensed
involuntarily as I turned to her, but her expression bore an unexpected understanding.
Before I could speak, she wrapped me in a warm embrace. For a moment, I wanted to fight
off her kindness. My rage was an invisible load I‟d been carrying for so long that I didn‟t
know how to put it down. Instead, I returned her hug with a fierceness I didn‟t realize I had,
and finally, I let my tears flow. This time I didn‟t bother to wipe them away. There was no
one left to see me cry.
* * *
The storm passed quickly, and I decided to forego the bus and walk back to the Harbourfront.
On foot, I was able to look more closely at the city around me. Though the main roadways
were well-maintained, I noted buckled panels and weedy gardens in the side streets. I passed
rows of empty homes kept ready for returnees, but underneath their neat government-issued
paint jobs the brickwork was crumbling. Eventually, they too would have to be razed and
converted into parkland.
I arrived at the Harbourfront just as the sun was setting behind the Niger Bridge, highlighting
its rusted pylons. My city, like the rest of the world, was disintegrating. The realization
relieved me, in an odd way. I wondered if too many of us were trying to return to who we
imagined we were before the Catastrophe broke us. Maybe what we needed was to learn to
live with the world, and ourselves, as it was now. Perhaps our salvation lay in the broken
spaces inside us all.
Virtual Snapshots
By Tlotlo Tsamaase
February 18, 2016, 5:30pm

Thirteen years ago when I was three years old, the sky used to be a clean blue, curving
outward to meet the horizon. The sun was a bright burning spot and the stars candles in the
night. Men's hearts weren't oiled in evil. The shift from day to darkness was seamless,
dividing activities. It hadn't rained for so long, that all the water stored for the Harvest as the
time was called, was insufficient. Our villages survived on an Aquaculture system, tending to
the water-creatures to cultivate the food we needed. The dome had been created to protect us
from the destructive environment we had orchestrated. It was a righting time.
The day it rained, we were shaken. The sound of a bomb exploded above us. First we thought
the sun was dying, sending flames to torch our world. But the dome had shattered. Instead of
shards of glass, soft drops of water soaked the cracked earth and moistened our bare feet. We
screamed, "Pula! Pula!" The children ran into the heavy drizzle, mouths open to the sky. I
remember that first taste of rain: exotic, addictive. Dangerous. We didn't know what we were
drinking then. We were delighted: old women ululated whilst sweeping the ground with
Setswana brooms. The paranoid ones got their metal bathtubs out to collect this last hope of
survival.
It was the transformation from the old world to DigiWorld.
(I)
Now:
It has been seven hundred and thirty days since I left the house.
Two years.
Well, physically.
Our joints are painful due to immobility. No praying in the mosque, legs dusted by a beg for
God. A god composed of zeros and ones, face etched in lines of lightening, the moon his
nose, an impression of cloud in sky.
Our physical selves are latched to glass pistons by way of plastic tubes feeding medicine into
our narrow veins. Machines beep our lives across limbs of time. We sleep in dark home-cells,
little bulbs lighting our prison, and sweep through the door in our avatar versions.
These are things we are told to remain in safety's skin. Abide the laws. If you wake, do not
detach yourself. If you pain, do not bend to relief. If you itch, do not scratch. In us, our souls
are halos, waning, flickering—the light gone.
I can't remember the last time my skin was brown. Outside DigiWorld, it is expensive to
maintain our health, which is why when we partially disconnect we must pay fees to keep us
breathing.
But, today I must leave. A message had slipped into my visual settings:
Older sister: Hela wena! Mama is unwell. Get here now. Outside DigiWorld, you know she
ain't connected.
Me: The minute I step out of this door, I will need funds to sustain me in the environment
outside of my house.
Older sister: Chill, sisi wame, we will compensate you for your travels and your life. You
are still family, mos.
Pfft. Family, se voet! They kicked me out and never kept in touch. I've been living in a
servants' quarter for years.
If I hide behind these walls I won't see the thing they talk about: Mama's pregnancy. It could
be her death. I will regret my life if I don't see her.
(II)
I have a few financial units that will last me on my journey. I push open the door. Stars fall in
streams of light, soft as rain. Slate blue eyes mock the beauty of the sky.
Botswana. I don't want to denote it the common cliché term 'hot and arid' because I hate to be
another stereotype of limited description. It's landlocked. It's suffocated. It's variety. It
reminds me of the ocean, not in the literal sense, nor rather the freedom eloquence, but like
the ocean it has borderlines you can't see. We understand technology. We sit at computers
and understand what we type. Our cars are not donkey carts. Our houses have corners, and
we don't have lions or animals of the wild parading the city centre but some men are more
beast than human.
The rank is a chortling beast, fattening out into the city. A vendor scrambles to me, holding
rotten goods to my face. "You want, sisi?"
A rumbling, croaking noise alarms the state constituents to a wake. Sun alarm. The sun
creaks. Creaking, creaking, creaking—machinery screws, pipes twist, grinded by laborious
mine-worker hands. Sunrise, sunsets beg to be heard.
Why was my sunlight rations depleted? Hadn't I been in line yesterday to escape the rise in
sunlight prices, effective today?
I'm close to my mother's residence, a place of warmth. A place I was thrown out from
because I had reached the age of independency—because I was not from her womb. I had to
fend for myself, a pariah unfit for their royal homestead.
(III)
My mother is an anomaly in this society. She's one of those rare women who hold babies in
their bodies instead of storing the to-be-born children in the Born Structure that sits in the
centre of the city, its apex a dagger to sky. The Born Structure processes who'll be born and
who'll die. It's how I was born, shaped by glass and steel. Unlike others, the lucky ones, I've
never felt Mama's heartbeat close to my face.
My sister swore to me that Mama's current baby will last in the womb forever. "Sisi, I
swear—nxu s'tru—that baby is not coming out," she'd said a few months ago, in her oft-
confident tone.
I'd grazed passed her, muttering, "Mxm, liar."
"Come on, you're only jealous that you didn't get the chance to bloma in Mama's womb,"
she'd said. "You know I'm right, just admit it."
So I'd kicked her in the shin and ran.
She'd pointed a finger like she was bewitching me: "Jealous one," she'd swore. That was the
last time I saw her.
Mama has been pregnant for a year this time. Water is her church. Baptismal if you think
about it—crawling back to God.
I enter our horseshoe shaped settlement, bypassing the compounds into our own made of
concrete and sweat and technology no one knows.
"Dumelang!" the family members shout in greeting.
I used to think that before I was born, Mama and Papa probably spat fire on my skin and
rubbed warm-beige of fine sandy-desert soil to give it colour, and in particular hand gestures
added dung-shit—for I'm not pure—to drive away malevolent spirits, insect-demons.
But, I am not born. I am a manufacture of the Born Structure.
"Jealous one," Sisi greets me, guarding the doorway. "Howzit?"
"S'cool," I whisper. "Where's Mama?"
"Hae, she can't see you now. Just put your gifts by the fire."
I don't move.
"Ao, problem?" she asks.
"Yazi, it took me my last units—the last money I have to get here, and you won't let me see
her," I say through gritted teeth.
"Haebo! It's not my fault you're some broke-ass—"
I pull at my earlobes to tune her out. This means I am not allowed to stay the night here. My
presence will jinx Mama's condition.
"Can you at least loan me some cash?" I ask. "I don't have enough to sustain me when I get
home. Leaving home and disconnecting activated my spending. You know, there is no
deactivation."
Her smile tells me it was the plan all along. "Then, you'll be prepared for death. Your
reputation dilutes our family name's power. You understand why you must leave."
I don't understand how a sister I grew up playing games with hates me that much. I don't
know when she disowned me—when she stopped thinking of me as a sibling to look up to. Is
it just because I'm not her biological sister? That I'm a bastard shame in the family.
"Leave as in…forever?"
I can't run to anywhere. I don't know how.
 (IV)
When I leave, Mama is still too unwell to see anyone besides my older sister, the gifted one
who lived in her womb for nine months. Mxm.
So, Sisi stands by the door, waving, with a huge grin plastered to her face. "Hamba, jealous
one."
The moonlight bleaches the village into a shockingly ghostly white. Air eases out from my
lungs. My oxygen levels are slowly depleting. My sky is dead, but the blue ceiling is a
magnet. Our thoughts, words and feelings evaporate from our minds like torn birds pulled by
that magnetic force, and they light up the sky.
Our stars are composed of ourselves.
Maybe, tonight when Mama looks at the night sky she'll see me watching her.
On the way home I pass through a nearby village. In one house with the green corrugated
roof, three women sit in the sitting room, their soles bruised with black marks.
"Heh Mma-Sekai," shouts one. "I tell you, a child born with one leg that's similar to the
father's and the other leg that's similar to another man's won't walk. S'tru." True. The woman
crosses her fingers, a sign to God. "Sethunya's child hasn't walked for years. I'm not
surprised. Woman sleeps around. You don't believe? These things happen, sisi."
"Ah, don't say." One claps her manicured hands. "Surely, they can download software to
update the child's biological software," the other says.
Twins—one an albino with pinkish-copper brown hair—and one pulls a younger girl from
the sitting room onto the stoep.
"Hae! If I see you jumping the fence again, you will know me!" shouts their mother as their
shoulders shrink. She gapes when she notices me. I am the child with legs from different
men. I raise the middle finger. When will everyone stop gossiping about my family? So we
aren't rich enough to buy all these gadgets to change our body size, our ethnicity, our hair—
but we're poor enough to know true happiness is not bought. We're also poor enough to throw
out one of our children because she wasn't born naturally. We're poor to not even care about
that child, about the years that crawled into her sad heart because her father was an illicit
man.
"Shem, and she's still so young," one woman whispers.
"Kodwa, would it make it right if I was old to take in this crap?" I want to ask, but I keep
walking with my head folded into my chest.
The sky tenses, pisses, a hiss of warm. Air humid-empty. My lips press tight to my wrist to
check the moisture. My water levels are too low. Low tear supply. There's only a few hours
before the sun temporarily dies. Before I die too.
(V)
When I get home, the skin needs a scrub. But I let my scents accumulate so I won't forget the
skin I wear. So I remember the mother who used to cradle me and sing lullabies. I will miss
her.
Just when the sunlight begins to turn gold, the rain obscures the night-sky eyes into an eerie
greyness. When my grandmother was still alive I used to ask her, "Nkuku, does the sky hurt
and bleed like humans?"
She looked up from her knitted blanket. Wrinkles laced the contours of her face like rippled
water. "The sky is the predator. All animals are humans but some humans are inanimate," she
said. She was the only one in our family who loved me.
(VI)
I wake to noise blaring in my mind. How many megabytes of memory space will be depleted
just to contact those bloody, poor-serviced customer lines?
Very well, psychomail it is:

file report 22
Thought number #53897
Subject complaint: Skin malfunction; does not detect sun. Pre-requisite water levels
contained in lungs reaching 53%.
Sent! Please hold for the next available customer advisor. All networks are busy. In case of
emergency, please hold onto the nearest human for self-powering, explaining clearly your
predicament to avoid violence and he/she shall be compensated within 7 days. Solar Power
Corporations appreciates your patience. Goodbye.
A second is not long enough to send a message to Mama, to tell her, despite what's happened,
I still love them all—my family. That is the only regret I have: no one to say 'I love you' to.
No one to breathe my soul into. I cling to desperation halfway out the door as if a miracle will
split the skies and save me. My neighbour half-waves from her stoep until she realizes what's
happening. Her tear is the last grace I feel.
It is too late to remain alive.
In three seconds I am dead.
An Open Letter to a Prosthetic Leg from an Amputated Limb I am lying in a medical waste bin.
Rebecca Kohlmeyer (Source: hellopoetry.com) Waiting for my turn to enter the fire.

You don’t know how it feels. This

is
When you are cut from your lifeline my
like an apple being picked hell.
when it isn’t fully grown.
When you are replaced I miss him,
with hard plastic and metal will you tell him
where bone should be. that I miss him?
Let him know the feeling is mutual.
You probably want to know why he hates you.
I understand if you tear this up
It is because he has to learn how to walk again. there is no warmth in you.
Because you can’t run like I could. No blood will ever pump through you.
Because you can’t kick a soccer ball like I could. Trust me, I get it.
Because you can’t make him itch like I could.
Because you are a reminder of the infection. When the heart dies, it is buried where it belongs.
The infection... Being hugged by its fellow vital organs.
that took me away from him. it’s just like taking a nap
they say.
I was made with him. But when I die,
You were made for him. I am surrounded
by other dispensable body parts.
You took six weeks to be created We are the forgotten few.
I took nine months. People do not have funerals for finger tips.
I was his first step, It feels like I am being eaten alive.
You were a puzzle piece
that didn’t quite fit You can’t tell me I should feel bad for you.
You had to be forced Or that I should feel sorry for you.
by people in white masks and blue gloves Because I was alive,
They couldn’t touch you and I was moving
neither can he. and you
So instead you lay on his bedroom floor. are plastic.
Just,
And I will not feel bad for you because tell him goodbye for me.
 Our Earth Will Not Die
(To a solemn, almost elegiac tune)
Niyi Osyndare
A Prosthetic Limb Lynched
kate Lion (Source: hellopoetry.com) the lakes
Slaughtered
the seas
I am now Mauled
attached at the thumbs the mountains
connected through the fingertips
it thinks for me But our earth will not die
navigates for me
reads the minds of others to my face Here
it is a lens there
through which I have access to an invisible world that no one can see everywhere
unless they have a prosthetic limb like me a lake is killed by the arsenic urine
from the bladder of profit factories
a poisoned stream staggers down the hills
coughing chaos in the sickly sea
the wailing whale, belly up like a frying fish,
crests the chilling swansong of parting waters.

But our earth will not die.

Who lynched the lakes. Who?

Who slaughtered the seas. Who?
Whoever mauled the mountains. Whoever?

Our earth will not die.

And the rain,

the rain falls, acid, on balding forests
their branches amputated by the septic daggers
of tainted clouds

Weeping willows drip mercury tears

 in the eye of sobbing terrains
a nuclear sun arises like a funeral ball
reducing man and meadows to dust and dirt
But our earth will not die.
Fishes have died in the waters. Fishes
Birds have died in the trees. Birds
Rabbits have died in their burrows. Rabbits
But our earth will not die.
(Music turns festive, louder)
Our earth will see again
eyes washed by a new rain
the westering sun will rise again
resplendent like a new coin.
The wind, unwound, will play in tune
trees twittering, grasses dancing;
hillsides will rock with blooming harvests
the plains batting their eyes of grass and grace.
The sea will drink its heart’s content
when a jubilant thunder flings open the skygate
and a new rain tumbles down
in drums of joy
Our earth will see again
this earth, OUR EARTH
Inheritance
John Agard
If we, the children of the meek,
should inherit an earth
whose rainforest lungs
breathe a tale of waste –
an earth where the ailing sea
shudders in its own slick
If we, the children of the meek,
should inherit an earth
where the grass goes nostalgic
at the mere mention of green
and the sky looks out of its depth
when reminded of blue
If we, the children of the meek,
should inherit such an earth,
then we ask of the future
one question: Should we dance
or break into gnashing of teeth
at the news of our inheritance?
 W
hen I was in college, I remember my African American
History teacher posing a question that would forever

A HUMAN
change our lives. “Which came first,” she asked, “racism
or slavery?” My classmates, all of whom considered themselves

FAIRY TALE
to be quasi black history experts, were firm in their answer: rac-
ism. We believed that those who led the transatlantic slave trade
and infused laws to support it had an intrinsic belief that people
of darker skin were inferior and thus they enslaved them. But we
were wrong. Slavery, she said, came first, and racism was created

NAMEd BLACK
to justify it. We argued with her, because for us, it simply didn’t
make any sense. Race, we believed, always existed. But race, we
soon realized, despite our pride, was a creation too.
Soon after I wrote Post Black, race as a political creation that
we’d all come to live with as this fixed division became so obvi-
ous that I began including it in my book chats as part of my
official stump speech. When I met artist and filmmaker Cauleen
Smith in July 2011, she best summed up race as creation: “Black-
ness is a technology,” said Smith. “It’s not real. It’s a thing.”
Dorothy Roberts, Northwestern University professor and
medical-ethics advocate, calls race “the fatal invention.” She
writes extensively about medical and health experts falsely using
race and DNA to make medical determinations.
“I decided to write [the book Fatal Invention] because I have
noticed resurgence in the use of the term race as a biological cate-

2
gory. And also [I noticed] a growing acceptance among colleagues
and speakers that race really is biological and somehow genomic
science will soon discover the biological truths about race,” says
Roberts. “The more I looked into it, I saw there were more scien-
tists that said they discovered race in the genes, and more prod-
ucts coming out showing that race is a natural division.”1

27
 Afrofuturism
Race as a biological entity has seeped into conventional wis-
dom with both blacks and whites at various times, using the
invention to explain power imbalances and superiority. Even
Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad taught that the white
race was invented by an evil scientist. Others, in an attempt to
counter racism, developed an odd science claiming that melanin
gave brown people better intuitive or superhuman abilities.
Frankly, as much as people analyze race in the public dis-
course, it’s rarely discussed as an invention to regulate social
order. Even those who advocate against injustice rarely broach
race as a creation. The argument could have the same conse-
quences as that of post-racialists, who say that racial divisions
no longer exist. How does one discuss the realities of the pain
and social maladies caused by lack of equity and at the same
time say that race is a creation? Are the injustices imagined too?
When Roberts was a guest, and I a guest cohost, on WVON’s Matt
McGill Morning Show in Chicago, one angered caller asked, “Well,
if race is an invention and not real, how do you explain racism?”
Roberts shared that the politics and social measures as well as
the laws and injustices around race are real. However, race is not
some default biological category, although it is a social and politi-
cal identity.
The whole contemplation ripped the lid off a Pandora’s box
of questions for me. What decisions do we make because of the
limitations or expectations we associate with race? If we cast
off those limitations, how would our social lives change? Would
we have the same friendships? Live in the same neighborhoods?
Go to the same schools? I’d pose these questions to audiences,
and it was a daunting thought. Outer obstacles aside, what role
have we played in limiting our own lives based on race? This
28
A Human Fairy Tale Named Black
contemplation ultimately led to the Rayla 2212 series. I wanted to
write about a world of people of color where race as we know it
today was not a factor. But I also wanted the challenge of writing
about people of color without using today’s ethnic cultures as an
identity or backdrop while still denoting the value of the cultures
in their past and our present. It was a very Afrofuturistic experi-
ment. For that, I had to take my story to space.
The Birth of the Post-Human
In the fall of 2011, I received a call from Hank Pellissier, then a
fellow with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Pellissier was looking for futurists to submit essays. The insti-
tute is also a proponent of transhumanism, a futurist philosophy
that explores the possibilities of a post-human life. Being human,
as we understand it today, could evolve with new technologies.
Could science extend our life span by three hundred years? Could
new medicine curtail the need for sleep? Transhumanists believe
in maximizing human potential and look to exceed human limi-
tations, physical and otherwise, with new medicine, nanotech-
nology, or robotic culture. Some transhumanists boldly claim
that by 2045, humans will officially merge with machines. Ironic,
I thought, because that same decade is predicted to mark the
beginning of the majority-minority America.
Nevertheless, transhumanism is a fascinating concept. One
day being plain old human could be old school. Physicalities like
childbirth (which is already being revolutionized), eating, or
death could be tokens of the distant past. But in stretching my
imagination to grasp the prospects of post-human life, I found
myself thinking about what it means to be human.
29
 Afrofuturism
We don’t give a great deal of thought to being human,
although history is marred with theories about and battles over
human rights. While some politics and rights are debated, there
are some agreed-upon human rights that supersede national-
ity, politics, and expectations—human rights that are deemed
inalienable. Life, liberty, and the security of person are among
those espoused in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, as well as the belief that we’re all “born free.”
At least this is the general consensus today.
But at one point in history, just as monarchies challenged
Galileo on his Earth-revolving-around-the-sun theory, scientists
and profiteers argued about just who was human and who was
not. A color-based, sex-based hierarchy was formed largely to
regulate who had access to the world’s resources and rights of
self-determination and who did not.
The concept is a weird one. One of the most difficult ideas for
descendants of enslaved Africans to swallow is that at one point
in time, our ancestors were not deemed human. This wasn’t just
an opinion, but rather a legal status encoded in the first version
of the US Constitution. By law, enslaved Africans were three-
fifths human. None of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness that we so proudly celebrate today were extended to
women, Native Americans, or anyone who was not a white male.
Citizenship rights were only granted to those who were legally
human.
“Black people in America came here as chattel, so we’ve had
to constantly prove our humanity,” says San Francisco poet and
Afro-surrealist D. Scot Miller. “I’m not a shovel, I’m not a horse,
I’m a full-blown human being. It’s absurd.”
30
A Human Fairy Tale Named Black
In Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, there’s a pivotal scene in
which radical Republican and antislavery advocate Thaddeus Ste-
phens is drilled by his fellow Congressmen on whether blacks
and whites are equal under God or just equal under the law. To
convince pro-slavery lawmakers to pass the Thirteenth Amend-
ment abolishing slavery, Stephens had to go against his own code
of ethics and emphasize that the soon-to-be-freed slaves should
be equal under the law and no more. Watching this dramatic
negotiation of human status by lawmakers was heart-wrenching.
Now, the Constitution prior to the Thirteenth Amendment
didn’t decree that blacks were aliens, or at least it didn’t use those
words. Those who profited from westward expansion didn’t quite
say that people of African descent were rocketed from a distant
star, either. However, those invested in this new color-based
power imbalance did push literature and fake science deeming
people of African descent and browner peoples in general as hov-
ering on the lower end of the Darwinian scale. No, they didn’t
hail from a planet in another solar system, but they were from
another world, with mysterious lands and customs that were
devalued and vilified to dehumanize.
This dehumanization was wrongfully encoded in laws, vio-
lently enforced, perpetuated by propaganda and stereotypes, and
falsely substantiated by inaccurate science, all to justify a swath
of violent atrocities in the name of greed. Humans have used these
methods to dehumanize others. The transatlantic slave trade, Jim
Crow in the American South, South African apartheid, the Holo-
caust in Europe, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and
in Rwanda, and the massacre of native peoples throughout the
world were waged on the basis of others being nonhuman.
31
 Afrofuturism A Human Fairy Tale Named Black

What Does It Mean to Be Human? but when you do, it is from an impulse or emotion, never intellect.
Humans, well meaning or otherwise, can’t relate to a nonhuman.
British writer Mark Sinker was arguably the first to ask, “What
Even the term “illegal alien,” often used for undocumented
does it mean to be human?” in what would later be called the
workers moving to nations across the world, plays off fears of
Afrofuturistic context. Sinker, then a writer for Wired, posed the
otherness, invasion, and takeover. The fear fanned by the fast-
question and explored the aspirations, sci-fi themes, and technol-
approaching minority-majority nation shift in the United States
ogy in jazz, funk, and hip-hop music.
has led to hotly debated laws and policies that mostly target
“In other words, Mark made the correlation between Blade
Latino immigrants. Advocates charge that racial profiling and
Runner and slavery, between the idea of alien abduction and the
other human-rights violations are on the upswing as undocu-
real events of slavery,” writes Kodwo Eshun. “It was an amazing
mented workers and those who fit the ethnic description of the
thing, because as soon as I read this, I thought, my God, it just
stereotyped “illegal alien” fall prey to unjust attacks, violence, or
allows so many things.”2
surveillance.
Dery identified the parallels in “Black to the Future” as well.
The greater part of the civil rights movement in the United
“African Americans are, in a very real sense, the descendants
States, as well as self-rule movements in precolonial India, the
of alien abductees,” Dery writes. He compares the atrocities of
Caribbean, and on the African continent, were efforts to ensure
racism experienced by blacks in the United States to “a sci-fi
equal rights for all. And this struggle paralleled equal efforts to
nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of
prove that people of color, women, LGBTQ people, the working
intolerance frustrate their movement; official histories undo what
class, and others were in fact human.
has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on
The burden of having to prove one’s humanity has defined
black bodies (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experi-
the attainment of some of the greatest human rights achieve-
ment, and tasers come readily to mind).”3
ments of our times as well as some of the greatest artistic works.
Dery and Sinker were not the first to explore the deplorable
However, this notion of otherness prevails.
need of some to dehumanize others in the quest for power. Yet
their frameworks led to Afrofuturistic writings that for the first time
linked the transatlantic slave trade to a metaphor of alien abduction. The Other Side of the Rainbow
What does it mean to be nonhuman? As a nonhuman, your life The alien metaphor is one of the most common tropes in science
is not valued. You are an “alien,” “foreign,” “exotic,” “savage”— fiction. Whether they are invading, as in Independence Day; the
a wild one to be conquered or a nuisance to be destroyed. Your ultimate enemy, as portrayed in Alien; or misunderstood, like
bodies are not your own, fit for probing and research. You have no in E.T., there is a societal lesson of conquering or tolerance that
history of value. You are incapable of creating culture in general, reminds viewers of real-life human divisions.

32 33
 Afrofuturism
Other films are more explicit in the racial metaphor. District
9, a film set in South Africa about segregated alien settlements,
was inspired by the horrors of Cape Town’s District Six during
the apartheid era. Avatar is a thinly veiled commentary on impe-
rialism and indigenous cultures. And The Brother from Another
Planet depicts an extraterrestrial in the form of a black man con-
fused by the racial norms of the day.
Much of the science fiction fascination with earthbound alien
encounters is preoccupied with how both cultures could merge
and the turmoil that would ensue from overcoming perceptions
of difference.
But other artists have compared their wrestling with W. E.
B. Du Bois’s double consciousness or the struggle of being both
American and black with alien motifs. Artists from Sun Ra to Lil
Wayne have referenced being alien to explain isolation.
Author Saidiya Hartman wrote in her book Lose Your Mother
about feeling trapped in a racial paradox: “Was it why I some-
times felt as weary of America as if I too had landed in what was
now South Carolina in 1526 or in Jamestown in 1619? Was it the
tug of all the lost mothers and orphaned children? Or was it that
each generation felt anew the yoke of a damaged life and the dis-
tress of being a native stranger, an eternal alien?”4
Theorists and the Double Alien
“I think that using alien to describe otherness works,” says Rey-
naldo Anderson, a professor who writes about Afrofuturism.
Anderson is one of many theorists who view the alien metaphor
as one that explains the looming space of otherness perpetu-
ated by the idea of race. “We’re among the first alien abductees,
34
A Human Fairy Tale Named Black
kidnapped by strange people who take us over by ships and
conduct scientific experiments on us. They bred us. They came
up with a taxonomy of the people they bred: mulatto, octoroon,
quadroon.”
He adds that the scientific experimentations conducted in the
name of race mimic sci-fi horror flicks. Henrietta Lacks was a
1950s Virginia tobacco farmer whose cells were taken without
her permission and used to create immortal cell lines sold for
research around the world. Named HeLa, these cell lines lived
past Lacks’s own death and were essential to the development of
the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and in vitro fertiliza-
tion. They were even sent in the first space missions to see what
would happen to cells in zero gravity.
The alien concept has been expanded to explain isolation as
well, with studies of “the black geek” in literature and an array
of self-created modalities that infer a discomfort in one’s own
skin. In summer 2012, Emory University’s African-American
Studies Collective issued a call for papers for their 2013 confer-
ence, titled “Alien Bodies: Race, Space, and Sex in the African
Diaspora.” Held February 8 and 9, 2013, the conference exam-
ined the alien-as-race idea and looked at transformative tools to
empower those who are alienated. It explored how “we begin to
understand the ways in which race, space and sex configure ‘the
alien’ within spaces allegedly ‘beyond’ markers of difference”
and asked, “What are some ways in which the ‘alien from within
as well as without’ can be overcome, and how do we make them
sustainable?”
Afrofuturist academics are looking at alien motifs as a pro-
gressive framework to examine how those who are alienated
adopt modes of resistance and transformation.
35
 Afrofuturism
Stranger Than Science Fiction
Truth is stranger than fiction, but is truth stranger than science
fiction too? Talk about real-time: science fiction has introduced a
flash of technologies that our world is catching up to—the Inter-
net, commercial space flights, smartphones, and the discovery of
the Higgs boson, or “God Particle”—to name a few. In some ways
we’ve surpassed the sci-fi canon.
Afrofuturism is concerned with both the impact of these
technologies on social conditions and with the power of such
technologies to end the “-isms” for good and safeguard humanity.
Historically, new technologies have emerged with a double-edged
sword, deepening as many divides as they build social bridges.
Gunpowder was a technology that empowered colonizers and
gave them the undeniable edge in creating color-based caste
systems. Early forays into genetics were created to link ethnic
physical traits with intelligence, thus falsely justifying dehuman-
ization, slavery, and holocausts across the globe.
The Tuskegee experiment, in which innocent black men
were injected with syphilis for scientific study, or the use of the
immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks are evidence of how profit and
the race to discovery must be tempered with strong ethics. “HeLa
cells were the first human biological materials ever bought and
sold, which helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry,” says
Rebecca Skloot, author of a book on Lack’s immortal cells. “When
[Lack’s family] found out that people were selling vials of their
mother’s cells, and that the family didn’t get any of the resulting
money, they got very angry.” 4
Dorothy Roberts writes about how race is inappropriately used
in medical research and to market products. “There are studies
36
A Human Fairy Tale Named Black
to explain racial divisions in health that are actually caused by
social inequalities,” Roberts said in her interview with me for
my blog The Post Black Experience (http://postblackexperience
.com). She continued, “Yet you have researchers studying high
blood pressure, asthma among blacks, etc., and looking for a
genetic cause. However, research shows these [illnesses] are the
effects of racial inequality and the stress of racial inequality.”5
Although ethics and emerging technologies is a discussion that
all futurists are concerned with, Afrofuturists, in particular, are
highly sensitive to how or if such technologies will deepen or
transcend the imbalances of race.
Son of Saturn
The alien motif reveals dissonance while also providing a prism
through which to view the power of the imagination, aspiration,
and creativity channeled in resisting dehumanization efforts.
“The most important thing about Afrofuturism is to know that
there have always been alternatives in what has been given in the
present,” says Alexander Weheliye. “I am not making light of the
history of enslavement and medical experimentation,” he contin-
ues, “but black people have always developed alternate ways of
existing outside of these oppressions.”
Improvisation, adaptability, and imagination are the core
components of this resistance and are evident both in the arts
and black cultures at large. Jazz, hip-hop, and blues are artistic
examples, but there are ways of life that are based on improvisa-
tion, too, that aren’t fully understood. “Of all the thousands of
tribes on the continent, what they all share is this respect for
improvisation,” says Smith. “That idea in and of itself is a form
37
 Afrofuturism

of technology. In the Western world, improvisation is a failure;

you do it when something goes wrong. But when black people

notes
improvise it’s a form of mastery.”
In Reynaldo Anderson’s essay “Cultural Studies or Critical
Afrofuturism: A Case Study in Visual Rhetoric, Sequential Art, and
Post-Apocalyptic Black Identity,” he talks about the notion of twin-
ness as a form of resistance that pulled on Africanisms but also
was uniquely formulated for survival. This survival took place in
postapocalyptic times, with the transatlantic slave trade being the
apocalypse, he says. Noting that African slaves came from societ- Chapter 1: Evolution of a Space Cadet
ies in which women and men had equal governing power, Ander- 1. Ingrid LaFleur, “Visual Aesthetics of Afrofuturism,” TEDx Fort
son says that “to be a human being an individual should possess Greene Salon, YouTube, September 25, 2011.
both masculine and feminine principles (protector-nurturer) in
order to have a healthy community.” This twinness, he adds, was
Chapter 2: A Human Fairy Tale Named Black
a survival mechanism “that enabled [women] to psychologically
shield themselves and their inner lives.” However, he also says 1. Ytasha Womack, “Dorothy Roberts Debunks Myth of Race,” Post
that rhetorical strategies include signifying, call-and-response, Black Experience, http://postblackexperience.com/tag/dorothy
narrative sequencing, tonal semantics, technological rhetoric, -roberts/ (Accessed January 10, 2012).
2. Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic
agitation, nationalism, jeremiads, nommo, Africana womanist
Fiction (UK: Quartet Books, 1998), 175.
or black feminist epistemologies, queer studies, time and space,
3. Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother (New York: Farrar, Strauss
visual rhetoric, and culture as modes of resistance.6 But the point and Giroux, 2008).
of this alien and postapocalyptic metaphor, says Anderson, isn’t to 4. Sarah Zielinski, “Henrietta Lacks Immortal Cells,” Smithsonian

PROJECT
get lost in traumas of the past or present-day alienation. The alien Magazine, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta
framework is a framework for understanding and healing. -Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html (Accessed January 22, 2010).

IMaGinATION
It’s the reason that D. Denenge Akpem teaches an Afrofutur- 5. Ytasha Womack, “Dorothy Roberts Debunks Myth,” Post Black
Experience, http://postblackexperience.com/tag/dorothy-roberts/
ism class as a pathway to liberation. “The basic premise of this
(Accessed October 17, 2011).
course is that the creative ability to manifest action and transfor-
6. Reynaldo Anderson, “Critical Afrofuturism: A Case Study in
mation has been essential to the survival of Blacks in the Dias- Visual Rhetoric, Sequential Art, and Post-Apocalyptic Black
pora,” she says. Identity” (2012).
The liberation edict in Afrofuturism provides a prism for
evolution.
38 195
 Rethinking Apocalypse in African SF

Lisa Yaszek
Georgia Institute of Technology

Ghanaian sf writer Jonathan Dotse grew up in Maamobi, "an enclave

of the Nima suburb, one of the most notorious slums in Accra" (Dotse
"Developing Worlds"). According to an award-winning FRONTLINE
special, Ghana has, since the 1990s, become one of the world's largest
e-waste receptacles, endangering bothAfrican children (who are pulled
out of school to scrounge for potentially hazardous materials) and the
entire world, as "thousands of old hard drives [find] their way into
criminal hands" ("Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground") . In such accounts,
Ghana seems to be an apocalyptic wasteland that makes evident the bad
practices of global technoscientific modernity and that seems, by its very
existence, to negate the possibility of a new and better future for all.
But Dotse-a college student pursuing a degree in information
technology and a blogger/author who has already made his name as a
spokesperson for pan-African sf -does not see it quite that way. In an
essay first posted to R. U. Sirius's ACCELER80R website, Dotse fondly
recalls watching sf films from around the globe on public television
and then "scavenging through piles of discarded mechanical parts in
our backyard, searching for the most intriguing sculptures of steel,
from which I would dream up schematics for contraptions that would
change the world as we know it" ("Developing Worlds"). For Dotse,
the dumping grounds of Ghana are a complex phenomenon. While he
acknowledges the "asymmetrical relationship" between first-world
nations that produce new technologies and developing nations that inherit
their waste, he refuses to represent his homeland in apocalyptic terms.
Instead, he suggests that Ghana and other African nations are spaces of
uncertain potential that contain the seeds of many different tomorrows.
Dotse is a self-styled "AfroCyberPunk:," and so perhaps it is no surprise
that he presents his childhood in a manner that seems to fulfill Western
cyberpunk's diktat that "the street finds its own uses for things" (Gibson
"Burning Chrome" 215 )." But as Dotse's moniker makes clear, he and
his fellow Africans are not colorful bit players in the adventures of white
hackers and street samurai of Western SF-nor are they uncritical writers
who simply repeat the speculative fictions of their Western counterparts.
Rather, African sf authors such as Dotse create intellectually and
aesthetically exciting stories that recontextualize the source of African
apocalypse, rewrite the role ofAfricans as subjects of apocalypse and, in

Paradoxa, No. 25 ©2013

48 LISA YASZEK
many cases, refuse the notion of apocalypse altogether. In doing so, they
contribute to the ongoing development of sf as a living genre, showing
readers how African scientific and social practices are not just exotic
updates to Western technoculture, but necessary to the development of
a truly global futurity.
A brief history of apocalypse in sf
Tales of apocalypse are as old as sf itself. Over the course of the
nineteenth century, popular writers from Mary Shelley to H. G. Wells
reworked Christian eschatology in secular form to perfect what would
become the classic sf doomsday scenario. As described in the Book of
Revelations, the biblical apocalypse is both negatively and positively
charged, beginning with a battle between Christ and Satan that destroys
Earth and ending with "final judgment of souls" during which God allows
"the righteous to enter into the ultimate, eternal Utopia, heaven" while
the unjust are "sent to that dystopia par excellence, hell" (Knickerbocker
347). Reflecting new scientific understandings of the material world,
such proto-sf stories as Shelley's The Last Man (1826) and Edgar Allan
Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) depicted apocalypses
wrought not by a divine being with a master plan, but by an inhuman
nature that "goes its own way, indifferent to man and man's hopes or
powers" (Wagar 15).
These early sf stories were often much bleaker than their religious
counterparts: while the Earth survives everything from plagues to
meteor strikes, natural disaster spells the end of humanity without hope
for an afterlife in either heaven or hell. By way of contrast, tum-of-the­
century stories, including H. G. Wells's "The Star" (1897) and Garrett
P. Serviss's The Second Deluge (1912), drew inspiration from the
successes of the Industrial Revolution, imagining that if natural disaster
occurred, "heroes of science and engineering [would] save the day at
the la�t possible moment" -and, subsequently, replace the dystopian
. as for the sake of destroying unjust regimes" (19). In such tales, the
societies destroyed by apocalyptic events with their utopian, technocratic
counterparts (Wagar 23). In its classic sf form, then, apocalypse is not
part of a divine plan to end the world. Instead, it is a natural phenomenon
that can be overcome by rational humans working together to create a
new era of history.
Like other modes of sf storytelling, the apocalyptic narrative has
evolved over time in response to changing scientific and social concerns.
Romantic-era writers used natural disaster critically to assess the
scientific and social revolutions of that period, often protesting "the
RETHINKING AroCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 49
attempt to control rather than obey natural law" (Wagar 17). By the tum
of the century, widespread technoscientific positivism and confidence
in the "innate superiority of white Western civilization" led authors
to imagine that at least some humans could work together to forestall
the end of days and make the world new (Wagar 23). Not surprisingly,
the middle decades of the twentieth century saw sf authors turn their
attention to the possibility of military apocalypse; after Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, when such authors suddenly seemed to be "prophets proven
right by the course of events," their ranks were swelled by mainstream
writers interested in trying their own hand at such tales (Berger 143).
In the closing decades of the twentieth century and the opening ones of
the twenty-first, sf authors have continued to spin stories of manmade
disaster. For the most part, however, such authors have shifted their
attention away from the military and political conditions that might
foster world-changing disaster, and focused instead on the economic
and ecological ones.
As sf becomes an increasingly global genre, produced and consumed
by people who are not part of the white, Western elite that saves the
world in the classic sf apocalypse, that story itself has changed in key
ways. Peter Y. Paik explains that authors of diverse nationalities working
in diverse media take their literary predecessors to task for creating
tales of apocalypse and utopia that "advance a form of enlightened
social critique" aimed at present-day society while repressing the
"foundational violence" necessary to combat disaster and then establish
and maintain a new social order (4). Accordingly, graphic novels such
as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen (1986-87), movies such
as Jang Jun-hwan's Jigureul jikyeora!/Save the Green Planet! (South
Korea 2003), and anime such as Hayao Miyazaki's Kaze no tani no
Naushika/Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Japan 1984) decenter the
apocalyptic events that serve as the occasion for their tales, focusing
instead on the sometimes horrific scientific and social actions that must
be "committed in the name of founding new modes and orders as well
driving narrative force is generally "the tragic struggle between two
irreconcilable forms of the good," rather than the more broadly drawn
battle between good and evil, science and nature, or enlightenment and
savagery that structures classic tales of apocalypse (19).
Given this interest in rethinking what Paik terms "the politics of
catastrophe," it is no surprise that many contemporary writers use
sf to expose the racial and cultural biases inherent in the classic tale
of apocalypse. As Grace Dillon explains in her discussion of Native
American speculative fiction, doomsday is not some future or fictional
 50 LISA YASZEK
RETHINKING APOCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 51

event for indigenous peoples because "the Native Apocalypse ... has
and sub-Saharan Africa use new technologies to "shape the geopolitical
already taken place" (8). For such peoples, apocalypse is not a divine
destiny of our civilization" on their own terms ("Fast-Forward"). In a
or natural phenomenon, but the result of very human contact between
�
Eur weste� and indigenous cultures. The indigenous peoples who
similar vein, Zimbabwean editor and publisher Ivor W. Hartmann argues:

survived this apocalyptic event are currently in the process of recovering

�
from wh t Lawrence Gross calls "post-apocalyptic stress syndrome"
SciFi is the only genre that enables African writers to envision a
_ future from our African perspective.... If you can't see and rely
(qtd. mDillon 9) . One of the key ways that Native authors facilitate this
on an understandable vision of the future, your future will be
recovery is through sf tales of apocalypse that "show the ruptures, fue
co-opted by someone else's vision, one tllat will not necessarily
scars, and the trauma [of first contact] to provide healing and a return to
have your best interests at heart. ("Introduction")
bimaadiziwin [a state of balance]" (9) . This return to a state of balance
includes reclaiming indigenous knowledge systems and "ancestral
Taken togetller, then, African artists see sf as a powerful aestlletic and
traditions" while charting a self-determining future (9) . These indigenous
political tool with which to forge new relations to themselves, the rest
futures also draw from the storytelling structures of Eurowestem sf and
of the world, and futurity itself.
the scientific traditions of Eurowestem cultures. As such, they expand
The history of African sf is fairly short, due, in large part, to what
and reconfigure sf as a global genre.
Dotse calls the "asymmetrical" economic, political and technoscientific
relations of the West to the rest of the world.1 But, he goes on to explain,
with communities across tlle continent acquiring "thousands of years of
Apocalypse, Africa, and sf
technological innovation within the space of a few years," we "clearly
are sailing headfirst into uncharted waters and the mapmakers-science
Both historic and contemporary treatments of apocalypse inform
fiction writers of the world-are only now scrambling to plot the course
modem re�resentations of Africa. Kodwo Eshun argues that global
of our future" ("Developing Worlds"). As African sf writers join tlris
understandings of Africa are shaped by "the futures industry," a coalition
global project, they do so with stories that are by and large written in
of mostly-Western corporations and non-governmental organizations
English. This trend is in line with sf production around the world; as
whose ideas are reiterated throughout the mainstream press (290) .
Istvan Csicery-Ronay explains, "tlle stubborn imperial fact is tllat English
Representatives of tlris industry borrow tlle language of classic doomsday
is the lingua franca of globalization. It is the language of international
sf to castAfrica as "tll e zone of absolute dystopia," as a continent plagued
institutions, of 'communication skills,' of new technologies. It is the
by manmade and natural disasters (292) . These disasters stand in sharp
language of the Internet and of international law .... One needs it to get
contrast to, and can be ameliorated only by, "corporate utopias that
a good job" (482) .2 The tendency to write African sf in English may also
mak � the future safe for industry" (292) . In these updated, corporate
be linked to a certain continental reality: while major centers of African
versions of the Wellsian or Servissian disaster story, compassionate
film production (Nigeria, Kenya, and SouthAfrica) produce sf movies in
business executives replace scientists and engineers as the educated
ra�o�al heroes who save developing nations from apocalypse, thereb ; languages native to those regions, at this point no single African country
can support a dedicated sf publishing house.Accordingly, autllors, artists,
building a better future for all.
and editors typically collaborate on pan-African sf productions.3
By way of contrast, African authors often use sf to combat the "Afro­
pessimism" of tll e futures industry (Mboob qtd. in Wood "Africa"). 1 As late as 2004, Dierdre C. Byrne lamented the "regrettable dearth" of African
South �can editor Jenna Bass sees sf as connecting Africans across sf, even in seemingly stable and technologically advanced nations such as South
Africa (522).
countnes and cultures, uniting "us through ... genre conventions which
2 Furthermore, in South Africa at least, authors often choose to write sf in English
we all understand" (qtd. in Chetty). These shared conventions enable
because they associate the genre with a middle-classAmerican lifestyle (Byrne 522).
Africans to stake claims for themselves in the global imaginary as 3 It is worth noting that a significant minority of African sf is written in French-a
technocultural agents rather tllan victims. Dotse embraces sf as a way language that may or may not be one of the premiere tongues of globalization, but that
to show how tlle future is unfolding today in the "forgotten comers of was certainly one of the premiere tongues of colonialization. Furthermore, it is also
worth noting that much of the African sf written in French is eventually translated
the world" as young people from Asia, the Middle East, Latin America,
into English for a global audience.
52 LISA YASZEK
RETHINKING APOCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 53

The lack of national sf publishers leads to a second significant

governments promise to limit human development to carefully defined
characteristic of African sf: while a small portion can be found in print
spaces that will better "allow the earth to heal itself' (65 ). Thus both
publications such as the South African-based experimental literary
stories begin by invoking the rhetoric of the futures industry: when
magazine Chimurengna and its proudly pulp counterpart Jungle Jim,
environmental apocalypse threatens Africa, it is up to resourceful
most African sf appears in electronic form. For example, both Jungle
Western governments and corporations to save the day and build the
Jim and the first-ever pan-African sf anthology,AfroSF: Science Fiction
continent anew.
by African Authors, are accessible to a global readership in Kindle
But like their Native American counterparts, Kwakwa and Robson
format, while websites such as StoryTime (http://publishyourstory.
insist that outside intervention into indigenous affairs ultimately
blogspot.com/) and 3bute (http: //3bute.com/) provide readers with
precipitates rather than mitigates apocalypse. Kwakwa'sAfricans flock
free access to African sf in both traditional and transmedia formats.4
to the independent federal states for a variety of reasons only to find
Meanwhile, new developments in African sf are reported regularly in
that, once there, they are subject to strict regulations concerning "how
online social networks such as the Black Science Fiction Society (http://
people were to look, dress and act" and are cut off from almost all
blacksciencefictionsociety.com/), news outlets such as the World SF
modem technologies. The only way to survive is to play the part of the
Blog (http: //worldsf.wordpress.com/) and personal biogs such as Dotse's
culturally and sexually exotic other for "tourists interested in exploring
AfroCyberPunk (http://www.afrocyberpunk.com/) and Nnedi Okarafor's
the wild side of life." In Robson's novel, the global environmental
Whahala Zone (http: //nnedi.blogspot.com/).
movement is quickly hijacked by "Conservers of Nature" or "Cons"
who "demand the mass sterilization of people . . . , reserves created where
human beings will be herded together and fenced off from the rest of
Recontextualizing apocalypse in African sf
the earth . . . [and the creation of} genetically-engineered humans" who
will be used to "strengthen the stock of endangered species" (106).
The shared agenda of African sf authors working across cultures and
Eventually the light-skinned Cons take overAfrica and proceed to enact
media is well illustrated by two stories that complicate Western ideas
their agenda, retreating to high-tech ranches nestled in rural splendor
about the sources of African apocalypse in similar ways: Ghanaian
while maintaining power over their dark-skinned counterparts by
nanoscientist and amateur sf author Kwasi A. Kwakwa's online
enacting draconian technological and reproductive laws and drugging
story "Keeping Up Appearances" (2007) and award-winning South
the reserves' water supplies. In both cases, the application of Western
African children's writer Jenny Robson's Savannah 2116 AD (2004).
economic and technoscientific solutions to African problems results
"Keeping UpAppearances" unfolds in a near future where rapidAfrican
in the creation of seemingly new worlds that reiterate conventional
development threatens to deplete the world's already-dwindling natural
distinctions between those who have and those who do not and that are,
resources. To prevent this, the countries of the First World offer African
in fact, profoundly dystopian for their indigenous inhabitants.
people huge amounts of money to move to "independent federal states"
Furthermore, like contemporary writers of apocalyptic sf around
where, they are assured, they can "live in harmony with the ways of
the globe, Kwakwa and Robson explore in great detail the politics of
their revered forefathers." Similarly, Savannah 2116 AD takes place
catastrophe attending their fictional futures-indeed these politics are
in a near future where impending ecological disaster-heralded by
central to both stories. In "Keeping Up Appearances," violence flows
the virtual extinction of the African elephant-marks the beginning
primarily in one direction: from the enforcers of First World policy
of radical scientific and social reform. Corporations agree to eliminate
toward their African subjects. Kwakwa's story revolves around the
"all industrialization, all manufacturing, all burning of fossil fuel," and
misadventures of Ato, a "precocious mathematical prodigy" trapped in
4 StoryTime stopped publishing new works of fiction in 2012 because, as editor
a Togoland preserve with his scholar-tumed-"Mandingo stud" father.
and publisher Ivor W. Hartmann notes, "when I started StoryTime in 2007, it was Like most teenagers, Ato loves video games, but "the government­
partly in response to the dire lack ofAfrican lit mags, especially online mags. In 2012 approved aid laptops distributed to his village school didn't have enough
this is no longer the case, I'm happy to say" (StoryTime). However, the StoryTime processing power to allow anything more than a basic 2-D version of
archives are still available online, and Hartmann continues to publish African fiction the virtual world his best friend [from Shanghai] lived in." Eventually
anthologies, including the annual African Roar anthology and AjroSF.
the bored but brilliant teen builds a quantum computing superprocessor
54 LISA YASZEK
to play with his friends online. Unfortunately, in a town where "using
anything more advanced than the equivalent of a slide rule could get
him killed," "it got him noticed." The story ends with soldiers from the
"Indigenous Authenticity Control Unit" executing Ato and his father.
Here then, the corporate restructuring of Africa might well stave off a
certain kind of hypothetical apocalypse for First Worlders who are not
willing to give up their consumer-oriented ways, but it engenders a very
real and immediate apocalypse for Ato and his father. Furthermore, while
it is not the kind of world-changing disaster so often envisioned by the
futures industry, it is most certainly one caused by the futures industry.
Savannah 2116 AD takes the logic of Kwakwa's story a step further,
showing how apocalyptic violence is deployed by despots and the
oppressed alike. Robson's heroine, the teenaged animal-lover Savannah,
grows up in a world ruled by force. The only child of political activists
who are "put down in the riots of 2104," Savannah comes of age on a
rural reserve with an aunt and uncle who are eventually imprisoned for
the offense of getting "pregnant with a second child" (27). After she
is relocated to an urban detention center, Savannah falls in love with
D-nineteen, a genetically-engineered human destined to be killed at
eighteen so that his organs can be transplanted into sick animals and
ageing Cons. When she learns about her lover's impending execution,
the previously placid Savannah snaps: "Everything she loved ... had
been ripped out and thrown on a heap of decay. It came to her ... No
more! ... She refused to suffer another loss" (122). Without thinking
twice, Robson's heroine picks up a rock, beats D-nineteen's guard to
death, and spirits him away into the African wilderness. Robson may
well write for a young adult audience, but that does not lead her to soften
her message in any way: in a world where some humans will enforce
their sociopolitical agendas by any means necessary, others must use
similar means, however terrible they might seem, to protect themselves
and their loved ones.
Robson also insists, in much the same manner as contemporary authors
writing for more mature audiences, that seemingly terrible actions are
a necessary part of social change. Savannah's consciousness raising
occurs against a backdrop of revolution, as indigenous Africans across
the land rise up to destroy the Cons. This enables Savannah to return
to her people's homeland in the aptly-named Freedom mountain range,
where she reunites with her family and, in a symbolic gesture, renames
her lover "Adam-the first man in a wonderful new world" (141). By
retelling the Western biblical creation story with D-nineteen as Adam
and Savannah as God, Robson asserts both the humanity and creative
authority of indigenous African subjects. Thus Savannah 2116 AD ends
RETHINKING AroCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 55
by challenging the future industry's apocalyptic narratives that position
Africans as victims of natural and historical circumstance who must be
saved by their technoscientifically superior Western counterparts.
Rewriting apocalypse in African sf
While Robson concludes by asserting African agency in the creation of
new futures, other African sf authors take this assertion as their starting
point, rewriting the classic tale of apocalypse to explore the diff erent
forms such agency might take and the different worlds it might engender.
Such stories often begin after a literal apocalypse has taken place.
For example, "Heresy" (2012), the first professional story published
by South African Mandisi Nkomo, takes place on a near future Earth
where the US and Iraq destroy each other in a "nuclear catastrophe"
and Russia becomes a wasteland. This leaves the global political field
wide open for the rise of a new superpower: a communist South Africa
led by ex-African National Congress revolutionaries. Similarly, Kenyan
Wanuri Kahiu's award-winning short film Pumzi (South Africa/Kenya
2009) unfolds in a near future where global water wars have decimated
the natural world.5 However, one group of ingenious Africans save
themselves by moving underground and creating a sustainable society
based on extreme recycling practices and human-powered technologies.
In both stories, world-changing disaster strikes-but not in Africa.
Instead, disaster wipes out the United States and other countries
associated with the futures industry, thereby paving the way for Africans
to stake their own claims on the future.
And yet in both cases, the new world built by Africans remains
unbalanced. "Heresy" takes place in a future that echoes the Soviet­
American cold war past, with communist South Africa locked into an
extended space race against state-capitalist China. W hen South African
scientists discover what they describe as "God, or ancestors" at the edge
of the solar system, President Dlamini decides to prove the superiority of
his atheist state by launching nuclear missiles into the divine realm. The
plan works and SouthAfricans kill God, only to realize that the rest of the
world is infuriated and ready to unite against them in a "whole new breed
of spiritual war." Meanwhile, Pumzi unfolds as a modem variant of the
Kenyan creation myth in which a "manipulative and powerful" council of
nine women rule the world autocratically until their disgruntled husbands
seize control (Hampton). Here, Kahiu' s underground society is ruled by
5 Pumzi is available on Focus Features' Africa First, volume one DVD.
56 LISA YASZEK
RETHINKING APOCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 57

a council of three so eager to maintain the status quo that when a young
remains at heart a scientist, he speaks to Dlamini like a Xhosa imbongi
scientist named Asha (Kudzani Moswela) manages to grow a plant in
or court poet who "prais[es] achievement but condemn[es] excess" in
a fertile soil sample they deny the significance of her finding and arrest
spontaneous compositions designed to promote "the well-being of the
her for heresy. Eventually the scientist escapes to the outside world
polity" (Opland). Like the traditional praise poet, Masemola guides
and plants the seedling, but she must give up her tears, her sweat, and
his chief critically but carefully, condemning excess-in this case,
her life to ensure its survival. Thus both stories suggest that ifAfricans
resources wasted on the space race-while praising past economic
try to go forward by modeling themselves solely on either the historic
achievement and showing how that might be translated into future
or the mythic past, they will repeat the politics of catastrophe for both
social accomplishments. Dlamani finally heeds Masemola's advice
themselves and humanity as a whole.
and "Heresy" closes with Nkomo's protagonist agreeing to become the
Like their Native American counterparts, African writers suggest
head of Foreign Affairs so that he can better guide his country's next
that the path toward a truly balanced future is most likely to emerge
foray into the future.
at the intersection of Western and indigenous practices. In "Heresy,"
While "Heresy" propose thatAfricans look to their own past for models
this possibility is embodied by the evolution of Julius Masemola, the
that will enable productive engagement with the technoscientific future,
bureaucrat who runs South Africa's Department of Air and Space. At
Pumzi reminds readers that such engagements are already taking place
the beginning of Nkomo's story, Masemola is presented as a variation
today. Kahiu has stated in numerous interviews that Pumzi is meant
on a classic sf character type: the sane scientist in an insane world who
to serve as a warning about what could happen if humans continue to
is, as Brian Stableford puts it, an "isolated paragon of sanity locked
abuse the natural world,6 but it is also a celebration of what Africans
into a political and military matrix that threaten[s] the destruction of
are already doing to prevent this. Pumzi's heroine, the clear-sighted,
the world" ("Scientists" 1077). No amount of scientific evidence can
rule-breaking botanist Asha, pays explicit homage to "the world's most
convince Dlamini not to attack the divine realm; indeed, Masemola's
famous modem Kenyan," the "recently [deceased] Nobel Peace Prize
final, impassioned plea that "this could be a big mistake comrades,
winner Wangari Maathai," a US-trained environmentalist and feminist
something is not right here," only results in his dismissal from the
whose Greenbelt movement employs over 30,000 rural Kenyan women
president's council.
in eco-trades that engender biodiversity and economic stability (qtd. in
Masemola finally manages to get Dlamini's attention when he learns
Hampton). As such, Asha is more than just a lone voice crying in the
how to present scientific evidence differently.As SouthAfrica prepares
wilderness. She is the avatar of Maathai and all the other indigenous
to defend itself against an emaged humanity, Masemola returns to his
women involved in Kenya's Greenbelt Movement who are already
president's side with a plan to save the day:
staking claims for Africa in the global future, one tree at a time.

If I may give you my honest opinion-I think we wasted a lot of

money on this. ... I think we killed God, and now there's nothing
Refusing apocalypse in African sf
out there to find.... [But] I have some ideas you see. ... I've been
doing some calculations. According to my figures, we have the
Finally,African sf authors celebrate the possibility that people across
resources to solve at least forty percent of the world's problems
their continent will, both individually and collectively, build better
on our own-with maybe a bit of assistance from the Russians,
global futures with stories that refuse apocalypse altogether. Such stories
or the UK. The Chinese, however, only have the capacity to solve
generally unfold in undeniably African worlds where the technocultural
twenty percent. Especially since nobody likes them. This means
elements of different time periods and cultures blend seamlessly. For
that if we start a new race, who can, ehh, solve more world issues
example, Dotse's "Virus!" (2011) depicts a near future where Accra
in less time. We will definitely win. So we, ehh, can become the
becomes the center for worldwide data trading. Characters celebrate
world's saviour, which will probably increase our reach, and
give us a better image. 6 See,for instance,Dream Hampton's "A Tree Grows in Nairobi," Philip Mwaniki's
"Filmmaker Contemplates a World without Water and Air," and Brendan Seibel's
"Kenyan Sci Fi Film Hits Sundance with Dystopia." As such, Pumzi is very much
While Masemola's talk of calculations and figures suggests that he
in the tradition of the classic "if this goes on" tale.
58 LISA YASZEK
their city as "an infinite sea of light," negotiating gleaming airports
and teenaged girls who "weaved between the traffic, advertising the
wares that balanced delicately on the tops of their heads" with equal
ease. Meanwhile, the ethnically diverse Africans who lead intergalactic
colonization efforts in South African Nick Wood's "Azania" (2012)
decorate their ships with both ancient stone sculptures and digital baobab
trees, paint the cases of their quantum computers with "bright geometric
Sotho art," and program their Als to appear as "the usual generic wise
elder woman, grandmother to us all." While these futures are not
utopian-Dotse's characters struggle with massive unemployment,
Wood's with environmental degradation-they are not zones of
absolute dystopia, either. Instead, they are worlds well into the process
of recovering from post-apocalyptic stress syndrome and achieving a
new state of balance.
Given their interest in cultural trauma and recovery, it is no surprise
that both Dotse and Wood depict their protagonists as damaged people
seeking a new state of balance in their lives. The heroine of "Virus!"
is Dela, an unemployed rural teenager who uses her neural implants to
become a data thief. When a rogue security virus nearly kills her, she
decides to seek out the program designers. Eventually she joins forces
with a police officer and a renegade computer programmer to stop what
turns out to be a "sinister plot" beginning in the "heart of the Sahara" and
"reaching into the highest corridors of power" (Dotse, "Accra: 2057").7
In "Azania," starship captain Aneni reaches the eponymous Earth-like
planet only to find that she and her crew have been neurologically
crippled by a "foreign pathogen." Eventually Wood's heroine discovers
that Azania is trying to communicate with its new human inhabitants by
rewiring their brains, and the story closes with the crew promising that
they will not "do a Shell Oil or Cecil Rhodes on this place"; instead,
they will "learn new things, new ways of being." While both Dela and
Aneni are wounded by their encounters with technoscientific modernity,
there is no sense in either story that these encounters are disastrous,
world-ending events. Instead, they are transformative moments that
encourage characters to acknowledge the worst tendencies of past and
present-day society as they strive to build new and better futures for
Africans and humanity as a whole.
Both Dotse and Wood reiterate the messages central to their stories at
the level of form. Dotse is a self-styled "AfroCyberPunk" who, like his
7 "Virus!" actually ends with the near-fatal attack onDela's brain. However,Dotse's
short story is only the first chapter of a novel in progress called Accra 2057, the
outline for which Dotse has posted to his website, AfroCyberPunk.
RETIDNKING APOCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 59
Western counterparts, writes stylish, high-tech noir stories characterized
by "boredom with the apocalypse" (Sterling 4). This is certainly true
of "Virus!" Dela-like the young hackers who frequent stories by
William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan-sees the world(s)
wrought by technological mediation and transnational capitalism as
spaces of opportunity rather than scientific and social wastelands. But
Dotse insists on key differences between African and Eurowestern
technocultural experiences, invoking and strategically revising Gibson's
groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984) to make this
point. Consider, for instance, how both authors' protagonists perceive
the physical world around them. At the beginning of Neuromancer,
Henry Dorsett Case sees "the sky above the port [of Chiba City, as]
the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (9) Looking out at the
nighttime landscape, Dela sees "as far as the Roundabout, the Kotaka
International Airport, and beyond; the gleaming towers of Airport City.
Accra was unfolding before her eyes, an infinite sea of light that began
to come alive like a million fireflies waking up from a dream." While
both data thieves perceive the urban spaces they live in as a mishmash
of natural and physical elements, the differences are revealing. Case's
world is poisoned and dying; Dela's is beautiful and healthy-no mere
dream, but a new reality.
Similarly revealing differences inform their perceptions of cyberspace.
In the world of data, Case becomes a disembodied entity soaring over
"a transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity," filled with "scarlet
pyramid[s]," "green cubes" and distant "spiral arms" representing
various scientific, economic, and military institutions (68-9). Dela,
by way of contrast, remains herself, seated in an airplane flying under
"the blinding glare of the West African sun" and descending through
"heavy clouds" to drift over a "vibrant mosaic of infrastructure" with
"ramshackle settlements . . . perched above the water on nests of illegal
support structures" and "massive holographic logos [hovering] above
the skyline." Some of the differences in these two descriptions of
cyberspace likely stem from the fact that Dotse, writing in 2011, has
access to a much richer lexicon of computer graphics than did Gibson.
But that does not account for the very different tenor of their descriptions:
even in his "distanceless home" (68), Case sees the world as cold and
abstract while Dela sees hers as warm and concrete, analogous to real­
time Accra. Gibson's protagonist may be bored with the apocalypse and
those historical events that have made his world what it is, but even in
cyberspace he inhabits what is essentially a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Dotse's heroine moves between chaotic worlds, but both landscapes are
vibrant and alive.And so perhaps it is more accurate to say not that Dotse
60 LISA YASZEK
RETHINKING APOCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 61

is bored with the apocalypse, but that he refuses it altogether, insisting

i s a tool ruled by-rather than ruling over-African subjects i s made
that for all its faults, the future can be a new and better place for Africans.
clear in the final pages of the story, as Aneni overrides the Al's protests
While Dotse revises one of sf's newer subgenres, Wood takes on one
against first contact with the point that "I am an African woman!" Thus
of its oldest: the first contact story. Lost race tales, such as H. Rider
Wood rewrites both the futures available to African subjects and their
Haggard's She (1886), and planetary romances, such as Edgar Rice
relations to Eurowestem tools in the creation of those futures.
Burroughs' A Princess of Mars (1917), dramatized the racism inherent
in Darwinian notions of progress through stories about technoculturally
superior white protagonists who naturally win the struggle for civilization
Out of Africa
against their primitive, dark-skinned counterparts. Wood's updated
variant replaces Eurowestem adventurers with African explorers, and
As architects of the future.Africans stake claims for themselves in the
then introduces a twist that turns the narrative trajectory of the classic
global imaginary in a variety of ways, not all of which revolve around
sf adventure story on its head as Wood's protagonists realize they are
apocalypse. Like other authors and directors around the world, they
dealing with a truly complex alien other. W hen Aneni begins to hear
create all kinds of sf stories-media satires, space operas, and even
patterns in the noises of the wind rushing through tall grasses she
horror comedies.8 But given how saturated the historical and current
wonders, "have we been colonized so deeply, too, from within? Or is
global media scene is with images of African apocalypse, it is no surprise
this the consciousness of cells responding to a new and alien call?"
that many authors grapple with stories of world-changing disaster at
Although she cannot decide if Azania is aggressive or friendly, a sentient
some point in their careers. W hat is perhaps more surprising-and
being or a thing that "just is," the questions raised by the planet's effect
certainly more intriguing-is the dazzling variety of ways they do so.
on its new human inhabitants are more than enough to convince them
And that brings us back to the image of a young Jonathan Dotse, who
that "we can't afford to lapse too quickly into neat and convenient
was inspired by the global reach of sf film to use the broken machine
relationships, however fecund." By refusing to depict either Azania
parts he found in his backyard as material for the creation of his own
or the colonists' responses to it in the simplistic, Darwinian terms that
fantastic, world-saving devices. In a similar vein, we might think of
characterize the classic first contact story, Wood paves the way for a
African authors and directors, inspired by the potential of sf as a global
new kind of adventure tale where Africans are free to forge their own
language, as sifting through the heap of broken images generated by
destinies in a wide-open future.
the futures industry, using those fragments as material for the creation
The differences between "Azania" and its tum of the century
of fantastic, world-saving stories.
predecessors are best illustrated by Wood's depiction of Wangari
Maathai, theAl who drivesAneni's ship and serves as the crew's doctor
and occasional therapist. Although formally named for the famous
Kenyan environmentalist and feminist, the colonists typically refer to
their Al as "She" (underlined in original) in a complicated homage to
the title character from Haggard's novel. Like Haggard's immortal,
pale-skinned sorceress Ayesha, She seems to embody the sum total of
white civilization's knowledge in a form too beautiful and terrifying
to behold: Ayesha remains veiled and hidden behind partitions, She is
ensconced in a "heavy casing [that] hides her Quantum core." But while
Haggard's sorceress rules ruthlessly and absolutely over the dark-skinned
inhabitants of interior Africa by dint of her ability to heal deadly wounds,
read minds, and learn about events at a distance without technological s Here, I am thinking particularly of South African Sarah Lotz's media satire
"Home Affairs" (2012) and Nigerian Chinelo Onwalu's space opera "The Gift of
aid, Wood's Al cannot identify the source of the crew's neurological
Touch" (2012), both collected in Hartmann's AfroSF: Science Fiction by African
imbalance, determine why Aneni fears contact with the alien planet, or
WTiters, as well as Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Bekolo's sf-horror-comedy film Les
predict what will happen if she does make contact. The fact that Sill< Saignantes (2005).
62 LISA YASZEK RETHINKING APOCALYPSE IN AFRICAN SF 63

Works cited -. StoryTime: Weekly Fiction by African Authors. http://publishy­

ourstory.blogspot.com/ . Accessed 13 Mar 2013.
Berger, Albert I. "The Triumph of Prophecy: Science Fiction and Knickerbocker, Dale. "Apocalypse, Utopia, and Dystopia: Old Para­
Nuclear Power in the Post-Hiroshima Period." Science-Fiction digms Meet a New Millennium." Extrapolation 51.3 (2010):
Studies 3 (1976): 143-50. 345-57.
Byrne, Dierdre C. "Science Fiction in South Africa." PMLA 119.3 Kwakwa, Kwasi A. "Keeping Up Appearances . " Fifty Years
(2004): 522-25 . From Now: A Speculative Future Factory (24 Aug 2007) .
Chetty, Kavish. "Welcome to the Jungle." Mahala (8 Jun 2011 ) . http ://50yearsfromnow .blogspot .corn/2007/08/keeping-up­
http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/welcome-to-the-jungle/. Ac­ appearances .html. Accessed 12 Mar 2013.
cessed 9 Mar 2013. Mwaniki, Philip. "Filmmaker Contemplates a World without Water
Csicery-Ronay, Istvan. "What Do We Mean When We Say ' Global or Air." Daily Nation (5 Sep 2009) . http://www.nation.co.ke/
Science Fiction'? Reflections on a New Nexus." Science Fiction magazines/lifesty le/-/ 1214/653366/-/itern/O/-/ly7crpz/-/index.
Studies 39.3 (2012) : 478-493. html. Accessed 18 Mar 2013.
Dillon, Grace. "Imagining Indigenous Futurisms." Walking the Clouds: Opland, Jeff. " Praise Poetry: Praise Poetry of the Xhosa." Africa (18
An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. Ed. Grace Dillon. May 2012) . http://patachu.com/praise-poetry-praise-poetry-of­
Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2012. 1-12. the-xhosa/ . Accessed 19 Jul 2013.
Dotse, Jonathan. "Accra: 205 7 ." AfroCyberPunk (12 Jan 2012) . Paik, Peter Y.From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the
http://www.afrocyberpunk.com/accra/. Accessed 2 1 Mar 2013. Politics of Catastrophe. Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P, 2010.
-. "Developing Worlds: Beyond the Frontiers of Science Fiction." Pumzi. Dir. Wanuri Kahiu. South Africa/Kenya: Inspired Minority
Acceler8tor (26Jun 2011 ) . http://www.acceler8or.corn/2011/06/ Pictures, 2009.
developing-worlds-beyond-the-frontiers-of-science-fiction/ . Robson, Jenny. Savannah 2Il6 AD. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2004.
Accessed 2 Sep 2012. Les Saignantes. Dir. Jean-Pierre Bekolo. Cameroon: Quartier Motzart
-. "Fast-Forward: The Future of Science Fiction in Africa." AW­ Films, 2005 .
Blogs: Many Drummers, One Beat (25 Oct 2010). http://blogs. Seibel, Brendan. "Kenyan Sci Fi Short Pumzi Hits Sundance with
african-writing.corn/blog/archives/61 . Accessed 2 Sep 2012 . Dystopia." Wired (22 Jan 2010) . http://www.wired.com/under­
-. "Virus!" AfroCyberPunk (13 Sept 2010). http://www.afrocyber­ wire/2010/0l/pumzi/#more-27114. Accessed 18 Mar 2013.
punk.com/virus/ . Accessed 21 Mar 2013. Stableford, Brian. "Scientists." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,
Eshun, Kodwo. "Further Considerations onAfrofuturism." CR: The second edition. Ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. London:
New Centennial Review 3.2 (2003): 287-302. Orbit, 1993. 1076-78.
"Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground." FRONTLINE/World, PBS (23 Sterling, Bruce. "Preface."William Gi bson, Burning Chrome . London:
Jun 2009) . http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/ stories/ ghana804/ Victor Gollancz, 1986 . 9-13.
video/video_index.html. Accessed 2 Mar 2013. Wagar, W. Warren. Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things.
Gibson, William. "Burning Chrome." Burning Chrome. London: Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982 .
Victor Gollancz, 1986 . 195-220. Wood, Nick. "Africa in Science Fiction." The World SF Blog (3
-. Neuromancer. London: Victor Gollancz, 1984. Dec 2012) . http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/monday­
Hampton, Dream. "A Tree Grows in Nairobi." Life + Times (20 Jan original-content-africa-in-science-fiction-by-nick-wood/ . Ac­
2012) . http://lifeandtimes .corn/a-tree-grows-in-nairobi. Accessed cessed 1 Mar 2013.
18 Mar 2013. -. "Azania." AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers. Ed. Ivor
Hartmann, IvorW. "Introduction." AfroSF: Science Fiction by African W. Hartmann. StoryTime, 2012. Kindle edition.
Writers . Ed. IvorW. Hartmann. StoryTime, 2012. Kindle edition.
64 LISA YASZEK

Lisa Yaszek is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the

School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech, and a
past president of the Science Fiction ResearchAssociation. Her research
interests include sf, cultural history, critical gender and race studies, and
science and technology studies. Her books include Galactic Suburbia:
Recovering Women '.s Science Fiction (2008) and the edited anthology
Practicing Science Fiction: Critical Essays on Wi-iting, Reading, and
Teaching the Genre (2010).
Source: explainthatstuff.com

Photo: Earth from space—magical, isolated, and fragile. When astronauts showed us scenes like this, they paved
the way for the modern environmental movement. Picture by courtesy of NASA on the Commons.

Environmentalism
by Chris Woodford. Last updated: February 24, 2021.

You probably take pretty good care of the place you live in: you clean it, you keep it warm,
you carry out repairs when they need doing, you tidy the garden, you're nice to your neighbors
and help them when you can—generally speaking, you look after your home and its
environment because your home looks after you. Our planet, Earth, is just as much our home,
but we don't look after it anything like as well. We use its resources, we pollute it with trash,
we plunder from our neighbors (other animals and plants) without a care, and we give little or
no thought to what things will be like in the future, never mind what shape things will be in
for our children.

Environmentalism is a different way of thinking in which people try to care more about the
planet and the long-term survival of life on Earth. It means recognizing the planet's
environmental problems and coming up with solutions (individually and collectively) that try
to put them right.

What problems does our planet face?

Earth can seem an enormous place—it's a giant ball almost 13,000km (8000 miles) in
diameter. Walking constantly at a steady speed, it would take you at least a couple of years to
go in a complete circle from where you are now, right around the globe, back to your starting
point (assuming it were physically possible). When you live somewhere as big as this, it's
easy not to worry too much about the state of the environment; after all, there's always plenty
more environment where that came from, right? Wrong! There are almost 8 billion
people living on planet Earth, consuming resources, making pollution, and using so
much energy in such an inefficient way that we're fundamentally changing how
the climate works, risking life in the future for hundreds of millions of people. Here are just a
few of the problems the environment is now facing:

Chart: Growing population is one of the greatest pressures on the planet. Please note that the vertical axis of this
chart does not start at zero. Drawn using data from World Bank DataBank, published under a Creative Commons
CC BY-4.0 Licence.

Resources

We live by consuming—buying things and throwing them away, sometimes without even
using them. Elsewhere on the planet, millions of people live in dire poverty with too little
food, no proper water supply or sanitation, and horrible health problems. Earth is a finite
place with limited resources, yet we live as though our supply of raw materials will never end.
Modern humans have successfully lived on planet Earth for something like 200,000 years, but
some of the materials we now critically depend on—metals, minerals, and so on—will last
only a few more decades and many more will be gone in a few hundred years, at best. We've
become very short-sighted all of a sudden!

Energy supply

A basic law of physics (the conservation of energy) tells us it's impossible to do anything on
earth without using energy—even something as simple and effortless as thinking needs us to
consume food, which is simply energy we feed in through our mouths. Our homes need
energy too, for cooking, heating, making hot water, and running all the appliances and
gadgets that make our lives comfortable. Though a small amount of our energy
is renewable (things like solar power, wind power, and tidal power will theoretically never
run out), most comes from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. The
planetary "fossil-fuel tank" inside Earth took hundreds of millions of years to fill up, but
humans have emptied the vast majority of it in just the couple of hundred years or so since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution. How are we going to meet our energy needs in future
when most of the fossil fuels have gone, especially with more people living on the planet (and
in greater affluence) than ever before?

Waste and pollution

There's almost nothing we do that doesn't create some form of waste as a byproduct. Before
the 20th century, that wasn't really a problem: people were pretty good at turning things like
food or animal waste into compost—they certainly didn't have things like landfill sites and
incinerators. These days things are very different because we use a far greater variety of
materials, including plastics, which are harder to recycle or dispose of. Even though most
plastics are made from petroleum (a finite and relatively scarce material), still we tend to
throw them away rather than recycle them. Waste is one thing: if we can contain it and collect
it, at least we can recycle it or dispose of it responsibly. Sometimes, though, waste
becomes pollution: solids, liquids, or gases we throw out into the environment without caring
where they end up or what damage they do.

Some of the gases we hurl into the air stay in the atmosphere, trapping heat around our planet
like a blanket. This is known as the "greenhouse effect" and it's giving rise to probably the
biggest environmental challenge of all, climate change, which could have a devastating effect
on many of our planet's lifeforms in the coming decades and centuries.

Habitats and species

Chart: Deforestation (the loss of forest cover to agriculture and urban spaces) continues to be a major issue.
Between 1990 and 2015, the total forest area fell from 41.2 million square kilometers to 39.9 million square
kilometers. Please note that the vertical axis of this chart does not start at zero. Drawn using data from World
Bank DataBank, published under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 Licence.

Humans have become dominant on Earth through the luck of evolution, but we tend to regard
ourselves as though we are the only species on the planet—and certainly the only one that
matters. With the exception of the pets we keep for amusement, we give little or no thought to
other species—plants or animals—or their habitats (the places where they're most suited to
living). We happily build homes, factories, and highways for ourselves by obliterating the
homes of other species. Mostly we consider animals have no rights at all, though contrary
views don't trouble us much: we abhor cruelty and sometimes oppose things like laboratory
experimentation on animals, but we turn a blind eye to the billions of creatures raised in
appalling conditions and slaughtered in food factories to put cheap, convenient meals on our
tables.
Map: Huge numbers of plant and animal species are currently at risk. This map shows the number of threatened
bird species in each region. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has noted a steady,
ongoing decline in the world's birds since it carried out the first complete assessment in 1988. Source: United
Nations Environmental Program and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and International Union for
Conservation of Nature, Red List of Threatened Species, published by World Bank DataBank under a Creative
Commons CC BY-4.0 Licence.

Social justice

Some environmental problems are caused not just by the way humans relate to the natural
world, and to animals, but to the way we treat one another. People in the rich countries of
Europe and North America often frown on people in developing countries who burn
rainforests, have large numbers of children, or live in grossly polluted cities. We conveniently
ignore the fact that poorer people are often condemned to live that way by the unfair rules of
international trade. If we pay people in developing countries a pittance for products
like coffee, cotton, or rubber, is it any surprise that they have larger families to try to generate
more income to help themselves survive? If we don't share our medicines with them so their
children die, isn't it natural that they should have more children to compensate? Politicians
like to applaud themselves on how much waste people are now recycling and how much fuss
is being made about cutting the greenhouse gases that cause global warming—but we're doing
those things partly by exporting our problems to developing countries: we quietly ship our
toxic waste to Africa and much of the stuff we buy is manufactured in countries such as
China, so we've effectively exported our greenhouse emissions and pollution overseas. We're
very good at brushing environmental problems under someone else's carpet.
Photo: Problems like pollution and climate change, which we might consider purely "environmental," are linked to
much wider and more complex social issues. Photo by Vicki Francis/UK Department for International
Development, published on Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence under the terms of the Open Government
Licence.

What are the solutions?

Recognizing a problem is always the first step in finding a solution. Environmental concepts
such as "ecosystems," "sustainable development," "biodiversity," and "peak oil" are examples
of how we can understand the fragility of our environment, frame our environmental
problems, and try to find solutions. The solutions we actually come up with are a mixture of
different approaches involving conservation, law, economics, technology, education, social
justice, personal change, and activism. Let's look at these in turn.

Conservation

Long before it was fashionable to discuss the environment, people talked about
"conservation": direct preservation of birds, wilderness areas, national parks, open spaces, and
so on. Most of the older environmental groups, including the National Audubon Society,
the Sierra Club, and (more recently) the World Wildlife Fund, came into being as
conservation bodies. Newer groups such as Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Friends of the Earth (FoE) have tended to take a
broader view of a whole range of environmental issues; the older conservation groups have
also reoriented themselves to take account of the fact that habitats and species are often
threatened indirectly by such things as global warming or energy policy. All the same,
preserving wilderness for its own sake remains an important part of environmental protection,
informed by concepts such as the ecosystem (the idea that many species depend on one
another for survival) and biodiversity (Earth's dazzling range of different species, and the
habitats that support them).

Laws

If something people do harms the environment, why not simply make it illegal? Laws and
other regulations have become an important means of solving environmental problems over
the last few decades. We now have laws to protect species, prevent pollution, mandate
recycling, ban the use of harmful chemicals, and much more besides. Since environmental
problems are often international or global, international laws and agreements have a large part
to play as well. In Europe, for example, the member states of the European Union are bound
by collective environmental laws (known as directives) as well as their own national laws—
and the international laws take precedence. There have been some notable successes,
including the London Dumping Convention (LDC) to prevent dumping of waste at sea and
the Montreal Protocol (an agreement to ban chemicals that harm Earth's ozone layer). But
attempts to reach global agreements on climate change have so far been disappointing and
ineffective.

Economics

Like it or not, money makes our world go round. One reason the environment is often
degraded or destroyed is that parts of it have little or no financial value. If a new highway is
planned, it's usually cheaper to route it through a park or wilderness area (which has no value,
because no-one could build homes there) than through urban wasteland (because that has a
market value); in other words, there's often an economic incentive to destroy rather than
preserve the natural world. In much the same way, it can make sense for a farmer in a
developing country to burn down rainforest to grow a cash crop such as coffee, even though
the forest may be home to a dazzling diversity of important species. One solution is to put
prices on harmful activities. In the UK, for example, local governments who want to bury
waste in the ground have to pay so much landfill tax per tonne and that gives them an
incentive to recycle more. Making people pay if they harm the environment is sometimes
called the polluter pays principle.

Technology

Photo: Should we put our faith in technologies like solar power to solve our environmental
problems?

History suggests we can often find innovative, scientific solutions to the problems we
encounter as civilization progresses. For example, agricultural machinery, pesticides, and
fertilizers have made it possible to produce vastly more food from the same amount of land
with a much smaller workforce. People with great faith in technology believe we will be able
to pull off similar miracles in future—perhaps stopping global warming by fundamentally
altering Earth's climate through technological fixes known as geoengineering. Then again,
many people are deeply suspicious of technology and fear that it causes more problems than it
solves. Nuclear power, for example, was originally billed as a virtually free, everlasting
source of energy, but it was developed at enormous expense, and with huge amounts of highly
toxic nuclear waste as a byproduct, largely so the world's superpowers could develop nuclear
weapons at the same time.

Education
One reason people harm the environment is that they simply know no better. How would you
ever know that polar bears in the Arctic are being polluted with PCBs (chemicals we've used
to manufacture electronic equipment in countries such as the United States) unless you'd read
about it in something like National Geographic or seen it on TV? Thankfully, our scientific
understanding of the environment is improving all the time. And thanks to brilliant new tools
like the World Wide Web, it's much easier for people to learn about environmental problems
and share their concerns than ever before. Environmental topics are taught much more widely
than they were 20 or 30 years ago, so future generations will hopefully have a much better
awareness of the need to protect the planet.

Understanding the links between poverty, trade, people, and the planet that supports them is a
hugely important and often neglected part of environmentalism. Initiatives such as fair
trade (which means paying producers more money for commodity goods like coffee and
cotton) can be a start in helping to reduce poverty. And when people aren't struggling to
survive, they can devote more attention to healthcare, education, and protecting their
environment. There's little chance of protecting the planet unless we understand how and why
people feel they need to destroy it.

Chart: Looking up: It's not all bad news! The number of people living in slums continues to
decline in most countries. The percentage of the urban population who are slum dwellers fell
from almost half in 1990 to about 29 percent in 2014. Please note that the vertical axis of this
chart does not start at zero. Drawn using data from World Bank DataBank, published under
a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 Licence.

Personal change

A central part of environmentalism is recognizing the damage you inflict on the planet
yourself and doing what you can to minimize it. That means buying things more wisely
(choosing organic food that doesn't pollute the soil, for example); reducing, reusing, and
recycling things before you buy new ones; using public transportation instead of cars and
taking trains instead of planes; insulating your home; and opting for renewable energy over
fossil fuels. Environmentalists sometimes invite ridicule by taking measures like these to
extremes; and the idea that "every little helps" the planet is sometimes a cruel delusion:
installing a hopelessly inefficient, rooftop, micro-wind turbine that consumes
more electricity than it produces is an example of how our desperation to do the right thing
can lead us astray. Generally, though, "going green"—making fundamental personal changes
to reduce your impact on the planet— is what environmentalism is all about.

Photo: An organically grown cabbage looks (and maybe tastes) no different, but it's better for
the environment because it's been grown without adding artificial pesticides and chemical
fertilizers to the soil. Organic has other benefits too: organic growers have generally higher
environmental standards and better standards of animal welfare.

Activism

Even if you could revolutionize your life to the point where you had zero impact on the
planet, you'd make absolutely no difference to problems such as pollution and climate change
unless you could persuade lots more people to do the same. That's why many
environmentalists ultimately become activists: people who campaign for wider change in
society.

Eco-activists come in many different flavors—and strengths. Some are content to pay a
subscription to green groups and let them do the campaigning on their behalf, while others
form green parties to put environmental issues on the political agenda. Some activists reject
conventional politics altogether, preferring to confront environmental threats head-on
with direct action (for example, locking themselves to bulldozers or chaining themselves to
railroad tracks to stop nuclear waste shipments). Others connect environmentalism to broader
social and political ideas. Eco-feminists, for example, trace many of Earth's problems to our
male-dominated society, likening the plunder of planet to the historic domination of women
by men. Deep ecologists reject shallow, feel-good environmentalism in favor of a much more
philosophical and spiritual approach to our human-obsessed (anthropocentric) view of the
world and issues like the preservation of wilderness for its own sake. Meanwhile, at the
opposite end of the spectrum, green capitalists believe our existing economic systems can be
tweaked slightly so companies can continue to make profit while protecting the environment,
and politicians talk of "sustainable development" (a suspiciously hard-to-define phrase that
often boils down to muddling along, business as usual, and hoping things turn out alright in
the end).
International edition
The Guardian - Back to home
Support the Guardian
Available for everyone, funded by readers
Robin McKie Science editor
Sun 6 May 2018 08.59 BST

No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman?

Transhumanists believe that we should augment our bodies with new technology. Composite: Lynsey Irvine/Getty

The 21st-century tech revolution is transforming human lives across the globe

The aims of the transhumanist movement are summed up by Mark O’Connell in

his book To Be a Machine, which last week won the Wellcome Book prize. “It is their
belief that we can and should eradicate ageing as a cause of death; that we can and
should use technology to augment our bodies and our minds; that we can and should
merge with machines, remaking ourselves, finally, in the image of our own higher
ideals.”
The idea of technologically enhancing our bodies is not new. But the extent to which
transhumanists take the concept is. In the past, we made devices such as wooden
legs, hearing aids, spectacles and false teeth. In future, we might use implants to
augment our senses so we can detect infrared or ultraviolet radiation directly or
boost our cognitive processes by connecting ourselves to memory chips. Ultimately,
by merging man and machine, science will produce humans who have vastly
increased intelligence, strength, and lifespans; a near embodiment of gods.

Is that a desirable goal? Advocates of transhumanism believe there are spectacular

rewards to be reaped from going beyond the natural barriers and limitations that
constitute an ordinary human being. But to do so would raise a host of ethical
problems and dilemmas. As O’Connell’s book indicates, the ambitions of
transhumanism are now rising up our intellectual agenda. But this is a debate that is
only just beginning.
There is no doubt that human enhancement is becoming more and more
sophisticated – as will be demonstrated at the exhibition The Future Starts
Here which opens at the V&A museum in London this week. Items on display will
include “powered clothing” made by the US company Seismic. Worn under regular
clothes, these suits mimic the biomechanics of the human body and give users –
typically older people – discrete strength when getting out of a chair or climbing
stairs, or standing for long periods.
In many cases these technological or medical advances are made to help the injured,
sick or elderly but are then adopted by the healthy or young to boost their lifestyle or
performance. The drug erythropoietin (EPO) increases red blood cell production in
patients with severe anaemia but has also been taken up as an illicit performance
booster by some athletes to improve their bloodstream’s ability to carry oxygen to
their muscles.
And that is just the start, say experts. “We are now approaching the time when, for
some kinds of track sports such as the 100-metre sprint, athletes who run on carbon-
fibre blades will be able outperform those who run on natural legs,” says Blay
Whitby, an artificial intelligence expert at Sussex University.
The question is: when the technology reaches this level, will it be ethical to allow
surgeons to replace someone’s limbs with carbon-fibre blades just so they can win
gold medals? Whitby is sure many athletes will seek such surgery. “However, if such
an operation came before any ethics committee that I was involved with, I would
have none of it. It is a repulsive idea – to remove a healthy limb for transient gain.”

Scientists think there will come a point when athletes with carbon blades will be able to out-run able-bodied rivals. Photograph: Alexandre
Loureiro/Getty Images

Not everyone in the field agrees with this view, however. Cybernetics expert Kevin
Warwick, of Coventry University, sees no problem in approving the removal of
natural limbs and their replacement with artificial blades. “What is wrong with
replacing imperfect bits of your body with artificial parts that will allow you to
perform better – or which might allow you to live longer?” he says.
Warwick is a cybernetics enthusiast who, over the years, has had several different
electronic devices implanted into his body. “One allowed me to experience ultrasonic
inputs. It gave me a bat sense, as it were. I also interfaced my nervous system with
my computer so that I could control a robot hand and experience what it was
touching. I did that when I was in New York, but the hand was in a lab in England.”
Such interventions enhance the human condition, Warwick insists, and indicate the
kind of future humans might have when technology augments performance and the
senses. Some might consider this unethical. But even doubters such as Whitby
acknowledge the issues are complex. “Is it ethical to take two girls under the age of
five and train them to play tennis every day of their lives until they have the
musculature and skeletons of world champions?” he asks. From this perspective the
use of implants or drugs to achieve the same goal does not look so deplorable.
This last point is a particular issue for those concerned with the transhumanist
movement. They believe that modern technology ultimately offers humans the
chance to live for aeons, unshackled – as they would be – from the frailties of the
human body. Failing organs would be replaced by longer-lasting high-tech versions
just as carbon-fibre blades could replace the flesh, blood and bone of natural limbs.
Thus we would end humanity’s reliance on “our frail version 1.0 human bodies into a
far more durable and capable 2.0 counterpart,” as one group has put it.
However, the technology needed to achieve these goals relies on as yet unrealised
developments in genetic engineering, nanotechnology and many other sciences and
may take many decades to reach fruition. As a result, many advocates – such as the
US inventor and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler
and PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel have backed the idea of having
their bodies stored in liquid nitrogen and cryogenically preserved until medical
science has reached the stage when they can be revived and their resurrected bodies
augmented and enhanced.
Four such cryogenic facilities have now been constructed: three in the US and one in
Russia. The largest is the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona whose
refrigerators store more than 100 bodies (nevertheless referred to as “patients” by
staff) in the hope of their subsequent thawing and physiological resurrection. It is “a
place built to house the corpses of optimists”, as O’Connell says in To Be a Machine.

The Alcor Life Extension Foundation where ‘patients’ are cryogenically stored in the hope of future revival. Photograph: Alamy

Not everyone is convinced about the feasibility of such technology or about its
desirability. “I was once interviewed by a group of cryonic enthusiasts – based in
California – called the society for the abolition of involuntary death,” recalls the
Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. “I told them I’d rather end my days in an English
churchyard than a Californian refrigerator. They derided me as a deathist – really
old-fashioned.”
For his part, Rees believes that those who choose to freeze themselves in the hope of
being eventually thawed out would be burdening future generations expected to care
for these newly defrosted individuals. “It is not clear how much consideration they
would deserve,” Rees adds.
Ultimately, adherents of transhumanism envisage a day when humans will free
themselves of all corporeal restraints. Kurzweil and his followers believe this turning
point will be reached around the year 2030, when biotechnology will enable a union
between humans and genuinely intelligent computers and AI systems. The resulting
human-machine mind will become free to roam a universe of its own creation,
uploading itself at will on to a “suitably powerful computational substrate”. We will
become gods, or more likely “star children” similar to the one at the end of 2001: A
Space Odyssey.
These are remote and, for many people, very fanciful goals. And the fact that much of
the impetus for establishing such extreme forms of transhuman technology comes
from California and Silicon Valley is not lost on critics. Tesla and SpaceX founder
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who wants to send the human race to Mars, also
believes that to avoid becoming redundant in the face of the development of artificial
intelligence, humans must merge with machines to enhance our own intellect.
This is a part of the world where the culture of youth is followed with fanatical
intensity and where ageing is feared more acutely than anywhere else on the planet.
Hence the overpowering urge to try to use technology to overcome its effects.
It is also one of the world’s richest regions, and many of those who question the
values of the transhuman movement warn it risks creating technologies that will only
create deeper gulfs in an already divided society where only some people will be able
to afford to become enhanced while many other lose out.

The position is summed up by Whitby. “History is littered with the evil consequences
of one group of humans believing they are superior to another group of humans,” he
said. “Unfortunately in the case of enhanced humans they will be genuinely superior.
We need to think about the implications before it is too late.”
For their part, transhumanists argue that the costs of enhancement will inevitably
plummet and point to the example of the mobile phone, which was once so expensive
only the very richest could afford one, but which today is a universal gadget owned by
virtually every member of society. Such ubiquity will become a feature of
technologies for augmenting men and women, advocates insist.
Many of these issues seem remote, but experts warn that the implications involved
need to be debated as a matter of urgency. An example is provided by the artificial
hand being developed by Newcastle University. Current prosthetic limbs are limited
by their speed of response. But project leader Kianoush Nazarpour believes it will
soon be possible to create bionic hands that can assess an object and instantly decide
what kind of grip it should adopt.
“It will be of enormous benefit, but its use raises all sorts of issues. Who will own it:
the wearer or the NHS? And if it is used to carry a crime, who ultimately will be
responsible for its control? We are not thinking about these concerns and that is a
worry.”
The position is summed up by bioethicist professor Andy Miah of Salford University.
“Transhumanism is valuable and interesting philosophically because it gets us to
think differently about the range of things that humans might be able to do – but also
because it gets us to think critically about some of those limitations that we think are
there but can in fact be overcome,” he says. “We are talking about the future of our
species, after all.”

Body count
Limbs
The artificial limbs of Luke Skywalker and the Six Million Dollar Man are works of
fiction. In reality, bionic limbs have suffered from multiple problems: becoming rigid
mid-action, for example. But new generations of sensors are now making it possible
for artificial legs and arms to behave in much more complex, human-like ways.
Senses
The light that is visible to humans excludes both infrared and ultra-violet radiation.
However, researchers are working on ways of extending the wavelengths of radiation
that we can detect, allowing us to see more of the world - and in a different light.
Ideas like these are particularly popular with military researchers trying to create
cyborg soldiers.
Power
Powered suits or exoskeletons are wearable mobile machines that allow people to
move their limbs with increased strength and endurance. Several versions are being
developed by the US army, while medical researchers are working on easy-to-wear
versions that would be able to help people with severe medical conditions or who
have lost limbs to move about naturally.
Brains
Transhumanists envisage the day when memory chips and neural pathways are
actually embedded into people’s brains, thus bypassing the need to use external
devices such as computers in order to access data and to make complicated
calculations. The line between humanity and machines will become increasingly
blurred.

Robotic exoskeletons such as this one can help people who have suffered spinal injuries. Photograph: Alamy
 National Art Education Association

Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video in Visual Culture and Art Education
Author(s): Pamela G. Taylor
Source: Studies in Art Education, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Spring, 2007), pp. 230-246
Published by: National Art Education Association
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Copyright2007 by the Studies inArt Education
NationalArtEducationAssociation A Journal
of IssuesandResearch
2007, 48(3), 230-246

Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music

Video inVisual Culture and Art Education

Pamela G. Taylor

Virginia Commonwealth University

Correspondence
regarding this article
may be sent to the
author atVirginia
Commonwealth
University, P.O. Box
843084, Richmond, VA
23284-3084. E-mail:
pgtaylor@vcu.edu
Music video is one of themost influential visual culture forms to hit youth culture
since the advent of television. Although provocative, the value of studying such
visual culture as the music video in art education ismuch more than provid
mere or motivational tactic. As many teenagers know, music videos
ing spectacle
portray meaning. They provoke, sell, promote, and tell stories through densely
textured images and sound. They are exciting, dramatic forms of art that are
in their own right an excellent source of learning as well as a provocative link
to more traditional artistic forms. Like any form of art and educational experi
ence, music video, as well as other visual culture studies, requires meaningful
contextual research and analysis as well as alternative approaches towhat we think
about, teach, and learn in art education. In a quest for a critical, comprehensive,
and contextual approach to music video analysis and interpretation, this article
examines and correlates theories of critical pedagogy, visual culture art education,
and music video. Commensurately, it explores Radiohead's music video entitled
Go to Sleep (Radiohead, 2002) and shares descriptions of specific art classroom
practice utilizing music videos.

One of the most influential visual culture forms to hit youth

culture since television is the music video. Music videos appear daily
on television, cell and iPod screens in homes, health
computer, phone,
clubs, restaurants, malls, and the palms of our hands. From
shopping
the children's character to pop music star Madonna, and from
Barney
to the Internet, music are an our visual
television videos
integral part of
and are of study in art education. In a quest for a
landscape worthy
critical, and contextual to music video
comprehensive, approach analysis
and interpretation, in this article, Iwill examine and correlate theories of
critical visual culture art education, and music video;
pedagogy, explore
Radiohead's music video entitled Go to Sleep (Radiohead, 2002); and
share descriptions of specific art classroom practice with music videos.

Video,
Music, and Art Education

Although formally created in 1981 with the advent ofMTV (Music

Television) and theirfirst showing of the Buggies' Video Killed theRadio
*Amusical parody of Star,1 the idea of integrating visual images and music has long been a
the Buggies' Video Killed
theRadio Star entitled part of art and education. Abstract artistArthur Dove's 1927 Rhapsody
InternetKilled theRadio in Blue collage and painting captured Gershwin's 1924 melancholia
Star can be found at with bold yet vapid shapes amidst a swirl of cascading lines. Disney's
http://atomfilms. 1935 Fantasia featured animated elephant ballerinas twirling to such
shockwave.com/af/
classics as Bach's Toccata and Fugue inD Minor and Tchaikovsky's The
content/regurgeO1
Nutcracker Suite. Art teachers play classical music for their students to

230 Studies inArt Education

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video
In Visual Culture and Art Education

draw and paint to during their study of such musically inspiredworks

of art as Kandinsky's 1913 Composition paintings.
a to create and
Contemporary music video is digital medium used
sell artistswhile both inventing and disrupting theworld it represents.
Known for cutting-edge visual effects as well as occasional flippant
and trite stereotypes,music videos are designed to hold up to repeated
As in any media form, some music videos are more successful
viewings.
and/or more aesthetic2 and than others. Music videos 2 Because some
meaningful
be music videos contain
may performance-driven, gothic, animated, computerized, moody more visual images,
classic futuristic extravaganzas, and
dreamscapes, portraiture, up-close techniques, filters,etc.
and-personal home movies (Reiss & Feineman, 2000). There aremany than others thatmay,
music video channels on cable and satellite television fromwhich viewers for example, be simply a
video of a performance,
become keenly aware of the video performances of their favoritemusic
theymay be consid
stars. There are that rate, describe, satirize as well as
programs promote ered "more aesthetic",
music video artists. Granted, some would that music videos
specific say meaning that the visual
are aspects of the video are
becoming obsolete in the popular culturemainstream (JimHerbert,3
experienced for their
personal communication March 10, 2004) because music video tele own satisfaction.
vision programming on such stations as MTV, VH-1, and CMT
^JimHerbert is a
(Country Music Television) appears to featuremore talk, reality shows, formerdirector of rock
and movies than music videos. However, a search on the Internet music group REM's
simple
reveals an on musician videos and professor
abundance of music videos labels',
publishing at theUniversity of
producers', and directors'World Wide Web sites as well as on iTunes,4 Georgia.
Disney, YouTube, and music video televisionWWW sites. Viewing 4 In the fall of
2005,
music videos online viewers more control over what see than iTunes altered its former
gives they
television does because viewers can find and download particular music freemusic video viewing
service.With the added
videos immediately rather thanwaiting for scheduled programming on
video featureon their
television.With the addition ofmusic video viewing capabilities on cell iPods,Apple's iTunes
phones and video iPods comes a resurgence of interest in the art form. replaced itsfreeand
Music videos are made to appeal to all ages. The Disney video viewing-only service (no
downloadable features)
entitled Sloppy Pop was a favorite of young children because it featured with a short freepreview
a musician and a child
splashing in a pool of goop (PBS Kids, 2005). of videos and fee for

High school students follow such rap artists as Eminem and may knowl complete downloading.
5 In addition to the
edgeably explain his satirical commentary on pop music artistMoby referencescited, this
(MTV News, 2004). College students appear enamored with political
paragraph isbased on
videos of such artists as Radiohead and Bjork and engage in
spirited personal experience
conversations about the anarchist of these rock stars (Sakamoto, teaching university
agendas
art education and art
1998). And some people are still talking about the theatrics ofMichael
appreciation courses,
Jackson's Thriller and Billie Jean (MJ News Online, 2004). Music high school art, and
videos have become fundamental to theway some of us view theworld speakingwith people
and a number of them have become deeply imbedded stories in our who witnessed the
advent ofmusic video in
memories.5
the 1970s and'80s.
"Stories used to explain the
underpinnings of reality,"maintains Mark
Stephen Meadows (2003, p. x), stories to our
equating contemporary
understanding or relationship with digital media such as music videos.

Studies inArt Education 231

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 Pamela G. Taylor

These stories or narratives exist to Problematic

convey perspective.
to education is the fact that some perspectives or ways of
perceiving
the world featured inmusic videos may be biased, one-dimensional,
commercialized, and sexist. This is a concern for educators to
seeking
create for their students. Such worries are what
empowering experiences
keep many educators from including visual culture?and specifically,
music videos?in their curriculum. students more hours
Many spend
to television, their cell phones, and iPods, as
watching and listening
well as surfing theWorld Wide Web, than they spend in the classroom.
are an
Although music videos integral part of the youth culture of
many of the new generation of educators, K-12 students typicallyknow
more about visual culture, music videos, than
contemporary including
their teachers do. Co-learning, or learningwith and from our students
about some of the visual forms thatmatter most to them (such asmusic
videos), can inform and indeed transformviewing practices taught and
learned in art education. There are contextual connections
exciting
between popular youth culture forms such as music video and the art
world. What students see or value in music video as taboo and anarchy
may be represented as activism, propaganda, and/or simply inventive
ways of working in theworld of art. Digital tricks inmusic videos can
be connected with technique, style,media, and performance in visual
arts study. Even more important is the way that visual culture forms
such as as music videos become catalysts for understanding the social
and political implications of both the representation and interpretation
of ideas and meaning, when studied in contextual ways.
critically

VisualCulture, Critical Pedagogy, and Art Education

to know the social and political implica
Understanding and coming
tions of our visual culture as well as is at the
participation reception
heart ofwhat Paul Duncum (2002) called Visual Culture Art Education
or VCAE. According to Duncum (2002), "A visual culture approach
a substantial shift inwhat is to be known about images.Knowing
requires
about television productions and audience reception is different from
about Monet... VCAE assumes that visual
knowing representations
are sites of can be as deplorable as they can be
ideological struggle that
praiseworthy" (pp. 7-8).
The visual culture movement is rapidly disrupting, challenging, and
new controversies in the field of art education.
bringing about exciting
Stirring conference presentations (Duncum, 2003), awards (Tavin, 2004),
entire journal issues devoted to the subject {Studies inArt Education,
44(3) in Spring, 2003 and Art Education, 56(1) in 2004), journal articles
Duncum
(Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr, 2001; Barrett 2003; 1999, 2001a,
2001b, 2002,2003; Freedman, 1999, 2000,2003a, 2003b; Heise, 2004;
Keifer-Boyd, 2003; Kindler, 2003; Parks, 2004; Pauly, 2003; Smith

232 Studies inArt Education

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 Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video
In Visual Culture and Art Education

Shank, 2003; Tavin & Anderson, 2003; Tavin, 2003, 2004; Taylor &
Ballengee-Morris, 2003; Wilson, 2003) and Kerry Freedman's (2003a)
book Teaching Visual Culture'are the firstofmany visual culture provoca
tions that critique some of themost basic and sacrosanct beliefs ofwhat
art education is and/or should be. Thus far, critics of visual culture art
education issue on the Internet, offer confronta
challenges impassioned
tions inmeetings, and distribute scathing flyerson the subject (Kamhi,
2004). The passion with which advocates as well as detractors approach
the prospect of a visual culture art education energizes our field inways
some of us have not witnessed since theDBAE era so long ago.Whether
loudly lauded or vehemently denied, a passing trend or an enduring
no one can the effects that the visual culture movement
practice, deny
has on what and how we think about art education.

our contemporary world is filled

According to Freedman (2003a),
with visual culture and "... it is important for human beings to be able
to understand how visual culture images mediate social
relationships
between and among makers and viewers and among viewers" 1-3).
(pp.
We learn about theworld through the images we see on our television
screens, the front page of the newspaper or online news
through agencies.
We decide how to cast our votes in response to the the
recognizable,
poignant, and the passionate images associated with political candidates.
6What Not toWear
We understand What Not toWear.6We long for 30-Minute Meals,7 and
is a realitytelevi
we fantasize about an American IdoP as we watch and
being respond to sion program on The
television shows our closets, our votes
through rearranging speed dialing Learning Channel
on cell
phones, and shopping at the grocery store. In addition to being (TLC) and the British
affected by the visual images that surround us, we play an important Broadcasting Corpora
tion (BBC) featuring
part in the creation of that affect others.
images fashion and style
Freedman (2003a) wrote that the foundations of teaching visual makeovers of unsuspect
culture include reconceptualizing the field,meaningful aesthetics, social ing people nominated
by friends and family.
interactive cultural response,
perspectives, cognition, interdisciplinary 7 30-Minute Meals is
interpretation, experience and constructive
technological critique (pp. a television program
20-22). These foundations relate to the idea of studyingmusic video as on the Food Network
more than mere illustrative source, or noise for starringRachel Ray.
spectacle, background
a music video as visual culture in the art Ray quickly and easily
self-expression. Approaching demonstrates recipes
classroom an examination of the social, and
requires political, ideological for complete meals that
contextual constructs of the video, artist, director, and the music video can be prepared in 30

genre.We must be critically reflective of the ways similar contextual

minutes or less.
?American
constructs within our classrooms, schools, and Idol is
communities, personal
a reality television
social lives affect theway inwhich we engage and perceive the video as
program on Fox TV and
well as how these experiences ultimately affecthow and what we make involves hopeful singing
or create in the art class. contestants
competing
for a music recording
An understanding and attentiveness to the context of a work of art or
contract.
visual culture can informand perhaps "transform"viewer responses and/
or interpretations.Art educators
Jacqueline Chanda and Vesta Daniel

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 Pamela G. Taylor

(2000) equate contextual attentiveness with "reCognizing" that trans

^
Although Chanda and forms "our thinking by firstmoving beyond the physical knowing and
Daniel (2000) primarily
into the contextual knowing by making ourselves aware of the origin,
discussed "reCognizing"
in referenceto contex nature, and limits of historical and cultural settings" (p. II).9 Contextual
to personal new to
tual understanding of
understanding is often the key learning and is not
culture and ethnicity, education (Harwell & Blank, 2001; Parnell, 2001; Sears, 2002). Yes,
theyclearly pointed to we understand
the need for challenging something by placing itwithin the context of our own
students "to search out lives.But when we critically contextualize that learning,we question the
themultiple dimensions those contexts affect how we and make decisions in
ways view, value,
of an artisticphenom
our world. This critical and transformativeway of
enon" (p. 6). thinking about visual
culture such as themusic video is the point of this discussion.
our students involves an of the contexts
Understanding appreciation
of their everyday lives. Freire's (1970/1994) notion of co-learning is
same way as Tavin
especially important in this discussion inmuch the
(2003) stated "... itwould be helpful for teachers to engage in the same
process as their students by problematizing their own relationship to
popular culture" (p. 200). Alone, a contextual study of music video in
art education does not promote criticality. It is a
through methodology
that calls into the ways "audience, voice, power, and evalu
question
ation work to construct relations between teachers
actively particular
and students, institutions and and classrooms and commu
society,
sense illuminates the relationship
Pedagogy in the critical
nities....
among knowledge, authority, and power" (Giroux, 1994, p. 30). There
are contexts in which music videos serve to exercise,
multiple appro
and exert power.
priate

Contexts
ofMusic Video Theory and Analysis

Although critical contextual research and analysis ofmusic video may

takemultiple forms, I offer the following four approaches as examples.
is a crucial component
to many musicians' careers. Therefore,
Marketing
at the ways that, for brand, and
looking example, image, reputation
serve to promote a musician as well as rouse
provoke meaning may

spirited and critical student inquiry.Another approach involves listening

closely to the music in the music video and analyzing the ways the
more
images depict, contradict, and/or extend the lyricsand melody. A
traditional approach involves identifying and connecting images and
art forms as well as discovering the directors'
meaning with traditional
art. Similar tomarketing,
appropriation of other images and works of
at the phenomenon of stardom involves students in critically
looking
or imposed image or brand of a musician or band
relating the perceived
on a video.
particular
to Elvis' gyrating
Marketing. From Madonna's impaling brassiere
hips, themusic business has "never underestimated the importance of
image, or been afraid of enlisting fashion,magazines, film, or television

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 Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video
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to help the fan hear themusic (and buy the record/8-track/CD)" (Reiss
& Feineman, 2000, p. 11). Sut Jhally (1991) argued thatMTV crossed
over frombeing "merelyan avenue for thepromotion of products to being
a product itself that communicates meaning and ideology to itsmass
audience" (p. 24). Granted, all young people are not blindly accepting
own experience, young
everything thatmusic videos tell and sell. Inmy
people are very attuned to the contextual implications of what they see
and hear inmusic videos, probably more so than they are to theworks
of art and other studies typically presented to them in their art classes.
these students can teach art teachers about music videos, their
Although
teachers can them in what it means to know and understand
engage
both critically and contextually by analyzing the construction ofmusic
videos, looking closely at the intentions and meanings of visual images,
on the varied
symbols, and techniques and critically reflecting impres
sions left, felt, or manipulated by the viewer.

Music video. Carol Vernallis (2004) treatedmusic video as a distinct

medium with its own ways of materials,
genre?"a organizing exploring
themes, and dealing with time" (p. x). Most significant to Vernallis'
work is that her emphasis on themusic moved the interpretation of
visual to contextual considerations. to Vernallis,
images According
visual images inmusic videos aremusically driven. They serve to visually
the lyrics, story, musical beat, timbre, and/or asso
represent cacophony
ciated with the sound. On the contrary,Sally Stockbridge (1987) looked
to the music video elements of and address when
performance, spectacle
the between the music video text and viewer.
analyzing relationship
Rock starMichael Stipe and his fellow REM band members approached
their music videos as "more than visual of a song. They
interpretations
[music videos] create narrative and visual that are different
landscapes
from theway a listenerwould seemusic" (Stipe inReiss and Feineman,
2000, p. 4). In thisway, the music video extends the song to be and
demands a different and more informed response. The video adds a
visual dimension to themusic and lyrics that often suggests different
connotations and contextual associations than one would from
interpret
the music and lyrics alone.

Images, meaning, and

appropriation.
One of the most
exciting
connections between music video and art education is the art
through
world. When at the ways Fredric Jameson's (1983) concepts
looking
of Pastiche and Schizophrenia operate inmusic videos, Robart Pahlavi
Bowie (1987) observed that "Rock-video directors get most of their
... from an attic full of half-remembered media
imagery images, plun
.. all of film
dering. history aswell as painting and photography, and even
television shows" (para. 4). For example, works of art from artist Frida
Kahlo and photographer Joel PeterWitkin are evidenced inMadonna's

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 Pamela G. Taylor

video Bedtime Story (Taylor, 2000). Rage Against theMachine's

People of
theSun video flashes reproductions of Posado woodcuts (Taylor, 2005).

Studying music video appropriation techniques through critical and

reflectiveresearch and inquirymay lead to uncomfortable, but important
discoveries. For example, Sheri Kathleen Cole (1999) researched the
ideological content and harm resulting from the impact and creation of
sexual stereotypes thatmusic video borrowed from pornography. Simon
Frith (1996) wrote that the analytical problem of
studying popular
music was to "trace connections back from the work score, the
(the
song, the beat) to the social groups who make and use it.... From this
perspective musical meaning is socially constructed" (p. 269). When
analyzing music video, Frith challenged that "we need to reverse the
usual academic argument; the question is not how a of music, a
piece
text, 'reflects' values, but how?in
popular performance?it produces
them" (p. 270). Friths challenge suggests a critically reflectiveapproach
to music video
analysis that requires asking the tough questions and
being prepared for the equally difficult answers.
Context of stardom. The international record industry is dependent
on stars who reach audiences across national boundaries and who incite
broad media exposure, guaranteeing massive record sales (Goodwin,
1992, p. 103). Andrew Goodwin (1992) argued thatmusic videos should
be approached as part of the largercontext of stardom and identity rather
than short movies created to illustrate Such contextual
simply songs.
links extend to what Goodwin refers to as the star text?constructed
from a combination of recorded live concerts, interviews and
pop songs,
TV as well as music videos. Because star text is not limited
appearances,
to one video, multiple and and connections
particular in-depth analyses
a of contexts are considerations when
among variety important studying
music videos in art education. Goodwin suggested that pop stars such as
Madonna need to reinvent themselves in order to maintain
constantly
media attention and coverage (p. Ill), which adds another dimension to
the study ofmusic video?career span. Sven Carlsson (1999) developed
a method of music video analysis
throughwhat he called the "modern
mythic embodiment" (para. 4). According toCarlsson, themusic video
artist represented different aspects or roles of the commercial exhibi
tionist (selling voice, face, lifestyle, records, etc.), the televised bard (a
who uses to create audio-visual and/
singing storyteller images poetry),
or the electronic shaman as the
(shiftingbetween multiple selves singer's
voice and rhythm anchors the images) (para. 5).
careers of musical stars is an integral
Recognizing and following the
part of what music and music video aficionados do. A search formany
music stars on the Internet will a number of discussion
popular produce
boards (MJ News Online, 2004), blogs (music.com, 2004) and other
World Wide Web sites (Radiohead, 2002) that are dedicated to talking

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about and sharing information about musicians' lives and careers. Like
it or not, many musical stars serve as role models for young Fans
people.
not only want to look and dress like suchmusical stars, theywant to act
like them through emulation of famous musicians' ways of speaking,
accents, and Problems arise when such fan becomes
language. activity
"fanatical" or isperformed in an uninformed or simply imitativeway. An
extreme example involves the 1994 suicide ofKurt Cobain, Nirvana's lead
that was his followers as the ultimate statement to
singer, "interpreted by
demonstrate the integrityof his artistic vision and reinforced their belief
that his music truly came from the heart. In their eyes, Kurt Cobain
was a martyr" (iat, 2001, para. 1). Recent reports reveal that Cobain
sufferedfrom a history of depression and bipolar disease (Libby, 2002).
But, "since Nirvana singerKurt Cobain killed himself, at least a dozen
of his fans have been distraught enough over his death or their own lives
to follow his example. Cobain is, of course, an extreme example of the
influence rockmusicians wield." (Rau, 2005, para. 11).
For better or worse, some music videos take up a of our
large portion 10Some videos criticize
visual Like all comprehensive to the of art,
landscape.10 approaches study themedium such as
is a complicated and
teaching and learningwith and about music video SarahMcLachlan's
in the following section, Iwill
complex undertaking. By way of example Worlds onFire, which
featured scathing text
firstbrieflydescribe the British pop band Radiohead's music video Go to
star text,visual representation messages suggesting that
Sleep (Radiohead, 2002) and examine the the excessive production
of music, narrative, with viewers, and roles of the artist. I costs ofmusic videos
relationship
will link and describe theways that these contextual examinations reveal could be used to combat
world hunger.Music
social, political, and ideological constructs of the video, artist, director, videos may also provoke
and themusic video genre. Secondly, Iwill discuss possibilities for actual action such as in the
classroom practices with music videos that link critical reflectionswith case of Public Enemy's
Shut Em Down that
contextual interpretation. called for a boycott of
to Nike athletic shoes in
Radiohead's Sleep (LittleMan
Go Being Erased)
ghetto neighborhoods.
The video began with black, white, and gray figureswalking quickly
behind an animated blooming red rose. The lead singer,Thorn Yorke,
sat on a park bench. His animated face and body were made up of
flat crystal-shaped planes reminiscent of Pablo Picasso's 1909 Cubist
a
sculpture Portrait of Woman. As he sang "Something for the rag
and bone man. Over my dead body, Something big is gonna happen.
Over my dead body," the bustling figures continued towalk amidst an
urban landscape of skyscrapers as leaves fell slowly to the ground. Yorke
continued with "Someone's son or someone's Over dead
daughter. my

body. This ishow I end up sucked in.Over my dead body. I'm gonna go
to sleep. And let thiswash all over me," as the large buildings exploded
and crumbled to the ground amidst the continuing walking figures
who appeared oblivious to the destruction around them. Typical of
Radiohead music, a furyappeared to build as soaring crescendos peaked

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 Pamela G. Taylor

in a barrage of sound and images. "We don't reallywant a monster

over.Tip toe around, tie him down," sangYorke in a pure almost
taking
as strong rhythmic
ghostlike voice pulses sounded louder and louder.
The final lyrics, "We don't want the loonies takin' over.Tip toe around,
tie him down. May prettyhorses come to you as you sleep. I'm gonna go
to sleep.And let thiswash all overme," were sung amidst a sonic almost
erratic guitar swirling out of control as the buildings (seeminglymoving
in reverse) rebuilt themselves. The video ended as Yorke walked away,
the figures continued towalk obliviously, and the rose reverted back to
a bud (Radiohead, 2002).
Star text. Radiohead lead singerThorn Yorke was born with a para
lyzed lefteye. Following many surgical procedures as a child, Yorke was
leftwith impaired vision and his trademark drooping eye.Yorke avoided
fame during the early part of his career. "Media adulation and public
obsessiveness drove Radiohead nuts" (McLean 2005, para. 10). Such fan
and media avoidance drives or more media and fan
provokes paparazzi,
fanaticism than if the band performed its own promotion. In between
a public and
hiding and running from public scrutiny,Yorke became
notable spokesperson for a campaign to drop Third World debt. He
Westminster Abbey to call for trade justice for
participated in protests in
the world's poorest workers. He for carbon emis
campaigned cutting
sions in theUnited Kingdom. He helped launch Friends of the Earth's
climate change crusade to cut pollution and worked to support "War
Child Music," a campaign to assist children leftmaimed and impover
ished bywar (McLean, 2005).
With to the Thief album (which includes Go to Sleep)
the Hail
(Radiohead, 2003), Yorke and Radiohead compare the presidencies of
George W. Bush with John Quincy Adams, "whose father stole him
the election and who was known as theThief through his presidency.
It struck me as the most phrase, of the
amazing, powerful regardless
circumstances" (Yorke in McLean 2005, para. 30). Although Yorke
decried that this album was a direct protest, his 2005 short
vehemently
a war in Iraq11
speech to peace rally in Gloucestershire attacked the
11
Begun in 2002
and though officially thatAmerica "is run by a bunch of religiousmaniac bigots
over that same year, saying being
who stole their election and theironly way of retaining power is towage
U.S. troops continue
patrolling, policing,
war" (Yorke inMcLean 2005, para. 18).
and losing their lives in Role of the artist. Yorke was the only band member visible in the Go
Iraq at the date of this toSleep video. Although stylizedwith animation techniques, the televised
writing.
bard's (Carlsson, 1999) observable drooping eye, thin appearance, and
mannerisms were classic Yorke to any viewer familiarwith Radiohead.
He sat looking directly into the camera telling (singing) both story
and admonition in classic Radiohead sarcasm. Even as a single imaged
is an electronic shaman whose voice and anchors
identity, Yorke rhythm
the staccato of movement, destruction and reconstruction in
images,

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the video. Awareness of Yorke's involvement, or his "star text"

political
a to be told, a or that
suggests story yet warning against complacency,
continual nightmare that plagues our ability to Go toSleep.
Narrative. Imbedded in our U.S. visual landscape aremedia images of
the September 11, 2001, terroristattacks on theWorld Trade Center in
New York City. Therefore, we may associate thishorrible eventwith the
to even associate the
crumbling buildings in the Go Sleep video.We may
fact that afteralmost 6 yearswe, like the video's oblivious figureswalking
the streets the destruction, work to maintain a
throughout seemingly
as
impossible life-as-usualway of living. Specific lyrics in the song such
"we don't want the loonies taking over," may be linked with terrorists
and Al Queda. And further research of the song lyrics' interpretations
a
(Songmeanings, 2005) suggest pointed "loonies" political reference to
"hawks" as "those who advocate an aggressive foreign policy based on
strongmilitary power" (Answers.com 2005, para. 1). Another direct
visual culture reference?DC Comics, describes "hawks" and "doves" as

"superhero duos that fight crime together despite the partners' typically
sharply differingmethods and attitudes about violence. This difference
is signified by the bird iconography of the hawk typically representing
aggression and the dove representing pacifism" (Answers.com 2005,
para. 4). Radiohead may also be
parodying
the conservative
right's
view
of the liberal left as "loonies." upon the viewer's context,
Depending
these lyricsmay takemultiple meanings. A loonie is a Canadian one
dollar coin that bears an image of a loon.Was Radiohead lamenting the
consequences of capitalism? Al Queda leaderswere often referred to as
fanatical and loony in news reports.Did Radiohead blame conservative
dogmatism for the terroristattacks?Or do we?
Relationship with viewers. In this video alone, the viewer should
not be considered a passive recipient of Radiohead's
seemingly political
laments, admonishments, and modus
self-deprecating/aggrandizement
operandi. Many Radiohead fans understood that this video was both
a culmination and a of their constant battle the
single part against
status quo
(Songmeanings, 2005). This video should be understood
within the context of the band members' personal histories, beliefs,
and historical and futurework. Someone unfamiliar with Radiohead's
ways ofworking, however, would possibly not understand or know the
intricate connections among the the band, and
song, politics, personal
histories. "What do Radiohead believe in?Collective action that benefits
as many
people as possible. It's like an art school ethic" (McLean 2005,
para. 40). Political underpinnings related to the band's geographic place
as well as
political climate provide essential contextual information. A
simple Internet search of the phrase "rag and bone man" reveals that it is
a British term for
junk dealer. "The Rag and Bone Man is a champion of
recycling?like scrapmetal merchants?occupations with a dirty/sleazy

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 Pamela G. Taylor

reputation, but providing a valuable service... in the 1960s, the rag and
bone man would come round the streets out and
calling 'Rag-n-bone'
householders would offeranything that theyno longerwanted, whatever
condition" (Phrase Finder 2005, para. 5). This informationmay dispute
other possible interpretations or comparisons of this phrase with, for
death, skull-and-cross-bones, or skeletons. In this case, under
example
standing the context of the language and culture of the artistsmay alter
12As in traditional art or at least call attention to the need for critical
interpretations completely,
history,my use of photo reflectivepractices that result inmultiple interpretivepossibilities.
realistic in regard to
music video refersto a
Visual representation ofmusic. The style of Radiohead's Go toSleep
character or scene that video was photo realistic12 in movement combined with stylized and
reflectslifeas itwould animated polygonal faceted textures.13Lead singerYorke was fairly real
be naturally seen. In
istic in his performance, while at the same time being a stylized version
this case, although the
character in the video of himself. The images and action appear tomimic the beat, crescendo
is stylized,he moves and fury of themusic. The near absence of color (except for the red
as a natural human
rose) and stylized imagery render the lyrics fathomable as we imagine
being would move. It is
necessary tomake these
ourselves dreaming in black and white with only a relevant object
not
observations as music
perceived in color. Looking at the visual aspects of the video does
videos, just like other exclude contextual analysis. Just as a painting or other traditional form
films,can be highly
of art cannot be understood by reducing it to formal elements or prin
stylized through special
a
effectsthat render the ciples removed from thework's context (Gude, 2004), visual aspects of
image unrealistic. music video aremetaphorically and symbolically constructed. They are
representative and meaningful by themselves, yes, but theirmeaning is
^Traditional anima
tion isused frequently
inmusic videos. The expanded when critically approached through the videos' (or paintings'),
British pop band artists', and/or viewers' context.
Gorillaz is entirely
animated. Cartoon Music Videos and Classroom Practice
Network and Disney A critically contextual approach to the study ofmusic video involves
featuremany animated
activities that students and teachers to
analytically reflect on the
music videos for provoke
see in the video aswell as theway theyperceive and interpret
children.Artist Bob images they
Sabiston bases his them. Such activities should the critical, aesthetic, historical,
interrogate
animation styleon
social, and political implications of a video through a close examination
live-action footage often
colored over individual
of its varied contexts. Like works of art, differentmusic videos require
frames. Sabiston's In Table 1, I offer questions related to
differing systematic approaches.
Inter
technique, firstseen in strategies for approaching the study of music video through (1)
themovie Waking Life,
to other works of Reflective
is currentlymaking pretation; (2) Links art; (3) strategies; (4)
itsway into televi Semiotics; (5) Social and Cultural Issues; (6) Artist Intent; (7) Formal
qualities and analyses; and (8) Aesthetics.
sion commercials such
as those forCharles
I recommend as a startingpoint the question: "What questions does
Schwab investment
brokers, (www. thismusic video generate and what avenues of researchmight we take to
wakinglifemovie. com/ answer them?" Students research and find news articles and reviews
may
index.html and www.
to discover how others interpret and value the video. They may find
bigfoote.com/web/
interviews with the artists, take in online discussions, read books,
schwab30/schwab30. part
html) and/or contact the artist(s) directly.Many of the online music video

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Questioning Strategies I

Reflective strategies: Semiotics: i

Does this video bring any
questions to mind? What does
this video say about you?What
Idoes this video mean? What did
you see in the video that made
you come to this conclusion?
Do you see any symbols inthis
video? What do they symbolize?
Why do you think that the artist
used these symbols?Would they
symbolize the same thing in j
another culture?

Social and Cultural Issues: | Formal qualities and analyses:

What does this video assume I
What process do you think
about its audience? Is the artist was used to create some of
Ifor or against anything? To what the images inthis video?
| j
group or age people does this |Describe how the color inthe
video appeal? What political or jvideo isused to portray certain
social issues does the video bring emotions, feelings, or meanings?
to mind? Does the video represent Write a visual description of a
a male or female point of view? particular scene or image inthe
Would some people be offended video,
by this video? Why orwhy not?
What would the video have you
believe about theworld?

Interpretation: Links to other works of art:

What does this video say to Do you see any works of art

you?What does itsay about inthis video? Do you see any

the artist? Isthere anything of commercial art references inthis
which this video reminds you? Is video?
there anything inthis video that
I reminds you of something you
have studied in school?

Artist Intent: Aesthetics:

Do you think your interpretation Do you likethis video? Why or I
of this video iswhat the artist why not?What are the most j
intended? Does itmatter? Can we effective parts or aspects of this J
always know an artist's intent? Is work of art? How would you
an artist's intent when available, persuade others to appreciate

always relevant to the meaning thiswork of art as much as you

!of the video? To a work of art? do? How could you convince
ICan an artist mean to express one someone to appreciate an

thing, but then express more than artwork that he or she thinks
that, or something different from isnot good? How could you
that? Should the artist's stated counter this person's argument?
intentbe the final arbiterwhen
determining the accuracy of an

interpretation?

Table 1.Questioning possibilities for engaging students in critical

contextual of music videos.
analyses

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 Pamela G. Taylor

discussionWorld Wide Web sites are, in essence, a form of criticism and

appreciation as are the consumer reviews on suchWWW purchasing
sites as iTunes. The point is that students choose to participate in varied
criticisms and discussions online or otherwise about themusic videos
that they like. Although these discussions are very informative and
provide interesting contextual clues when studying and interpreting
music videos, they lack the depth of informed critical analyses.When
such visual culture forms as the music video are brought into the
classroom, they extend artistic inquiry and learning through relevant and
critical social, political, cultural, and technical connections. Such criti
cality is inspired by provocative and challenging questions. For example,
when studying Radiohead's Go to Sleep video (2002), Imay ask further
as: (1) What historical and/or
probing questions (See Table 1) such
event occurred on or near the date of thisvideo that you believe
political
may have affected the singer, songwriter and director? (2)What are the
event? (3) How are they
singer, songwriter and director saying about this
it? (How did the video create the faceted effects in the
saying producers
video? How does this effect influence your interpretation?) (4)What
artist and/or work of art or visual culture that you have studied used a
similar artmaking technique and how does themeaning of thatwork
compare to your interpretation of the Go toSleep video? (Attentionmay
be called to Picasso's Guernica, toVietnam war news film footage, and/
or to the frame-by-frame and multiple-view collection of images of the
on theWorld Trade Center) (5)What are
September 11, 2001, attacks
the connections between the video's use of these faceted and your
planes
use
study of projected geometry? and (6) How does Cubism and/or the
of faceted planes in art and thismusic video encourage a differentway
of seeing or interpretinghistorical and political events?Answers to these
as research notes in personal journals, sketch
questions may be kept
books, and/or portfolios. Students may give formal and informal presen
tations of their research to the class. construct
They may communally
to
concept and/or context webs ormaps (Taylor, 2000). They may refer
these notes when artist statements, and/or self
writing critiques,
assessments.

sense of music videos can be a highly complex and cogni

Making
our students' ability to
tively demanding activity that informs both
view and theworld around them as well as translate
critically interpret
thoseways of knowing into their own artmaking. Like anywork of art
that inspires classroom practice, music videos can be used to provoke
technical and conceptual artmaking projects. A critically contextual
linked or illustrative
approach requires that those projects be directly
of critical and reflective inquiry. Such projects as student-led presen
tations, research papers, World Wide Web page constructions, video
creation or re-creation, construction of a personal star text as an
collage,

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 Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video
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.^IiKDIMLVertt ?yg>nr?>v?ramtiiii/ii* imntorgy

*
1 IlITI I ImI M ?* .. :?*!* < .w-~

1. Two created a music video in

Figure paintings by teachers during
art education Students may re-tell a music video
workshop. through
traditional media to reveal connections
personal by borrowing images
from works of art as well as the video.

avatar, video construction or traditional must include or

self-portraits
demonstrate visually the critical reflectiveprocess with which students
approached theirwork (See Figure 1).
Music videos are an integral part of youth culture. Many young
students view such visual culture as music videos as their own site of
may
resistance (Giroux & Simon, 1989). It is part of their culture and their
world and is separate and apart from the authoritative schooling site that
dictates every aspect of the students' education time. The
seemingly
a sense of ownership is a demand for accuracy.
typical consequence of
When students own and/or have a voice in their education then
process,
are more to want to know as much as and conse
they likely possible,
quently defend, clarify, and demand accuracy in their and others'
discussion. In this way, the study of music video can the impor
epitomize
tance of approaching both art and visual culture through conscientious,
critical, and accurate
contextually approaches.

Studies inArt Education 243

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 Pamela G. Taylor

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