History and Its Others in Afrofuturism

Abstract

Afrofuturist fiction proceeds from the position of an enslaved, silenced, subaltern Other within the history of the US. It responds by constructing various strategic discontinuities with historical time, including anachronism, apocalypse, and utopia. This talk will survey the use of these narrative strategies in Afrofuturist work by Sun Ra, Octavia Butler, Andrea Hairston, and in the recent anthology of activist science fiction, Octavia’s Brood .

Keywords

• american literature, afrofuturism