Black To The Future -

 “this is especially perplexing in light of the fact that African Americans, in a

very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi
nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance
frustrate their movements official histories undo what has been done; and
technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies (branding, forced
sterilization, the Tuskegee experiments etc) pg 180
 Moreover, the sub legitimate status of science fiction as a pulp genre in
Western literature mirrors the subaltern position in which blacks have been
relegated to throughout history. Pg 180
 Afro-futurism according to Adam, ‘speculative fiction that treats African
American themes and addresses concerns in the context of 20th century
technoculutre – and more generally, African America signification that
appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future. Pg
180
 The notion of Afro-futurism gives rise to a troubling antinomy: can a
community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies
subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history,
imagine possible futures? Pg 180
 It’s struck me more and more over the years that one of the most forceful
and distinguishing aspects of science fiction is that it’s marginal. It’s always
at its most honest and most effective when it operates- and claims to be
operating from the margins. Whenever- sometimes just through pure
enthusiasm for its topic- it claims to take center stage, I find it usually
betrays itself in some way. I don’t want to see it operating from anyone’s
center: etc pg 189
 The historical reason that we’ve been so impoverished in terms of future
images is because, until fairly recently, as a people we were systematically
forbidden any images of our past. Pg 190-191
 I do feel that it speaks directly from “the political unconscious” of the
cyberpunk sub-genre that, as soon as Bill specifically “darkened” the Lo-
teks image and re-presented it in the form of the Rastas, they lost all their
oppositional charge- hell, all their physical strength- all their cultural
specificity, their massive group presence, and their social power to escape
the forces of multinational capitalism. Pg 197
Afrofuturism- Ytasha L Womack
 Afrofuturism is an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and
liberation. “I generally define Afrofuturism as a way of imagining possible
futures through a black cultural lens,” pg 9
 I see Afrofuturism as a way to encourage experimentation, reimagine
identities, and activate liberation. Pg 9
 Afrofuturism can weave mysticism with its social commentary too. Pg 10
 Race is more of a creation that an actual biological thing that exists. We as a
people have created race, the laws and injustices around race are real but
race itself is more of a construct. Pg 28
