In the video Erykah Badu – Next Lifetime, one of the leading artists in the Afrofuturist movement conceives of a desire which steps outside of the linear, straight conception of time to map itself to a seemingly unattainable love.  The lyrics of the song, and the video production, depicts a story about two individuals falling in love, but who are “unable” to act on that love because one of the two is already involved in a monogamous relationship,

“Now what am I supposed to do
When I want you in my world
But how can I want you for myself
When I’m already someone’s girl?”

In response to this dilemma, Erykah Badu says, “I guess I’ll see you next lifetime.” The move from “one” lifetime to another, from tribal Africa to the Civil Rights movement then the Motherland, 3037 A.D., manifests itself visually in the video through a cinematographic focus on the ankh—an Egyptian symbol employ in the Afrofuturist movement which is associated with reproduction, sexual union, and life—tattooed on Erykah Badu’s shoulder. The Loop of Ankh is said to represent the womb, while the section extending below it in a straight line is said to represent the penis; both of which are said to come together and form life. It was believed that an ankh conferred eternal life upon anyone who wore it; moreover, it is believed that such energy can be absorbed those in close proximity. However, the Ankh is also a symbol of the life giving elements of water and air and vessels used in religious purification ceremonies would sometimes be crafted in the form of an ankh. The ankh has also been envisioned as a symbol of The Nile, with the transverse beam in the symbol connecting East and West. The grafting of the Ankh and all its meaning onto Badu’s body through the form of a tattoo becomes central in the reframing of the Black body which has made an east-west move across the Atlantic from the banks of The Nile River to the River of the Mississippi—fertile, flowing, life-giving bodies of water which were both sites of slavery. The life giving properties of the ankh on Badu’s shoulder overcomes these histories to embed life giving energy that disrupts and queers the normative, linear history of the Black body—just as Erykah Badu has queered the times and space of Blackness in her video to allow for the desire which transgresses time and space. The Queer I speak of is in the sense of,

“marking disruption to the violence [particularly against the Black body]  of normative order and powerfully so: connecting in ways that commoditized flesh was never supposed to, loving your own kind when your kind was supposed to cease to exist, forging interpersonal connections that counteract imperial desires for Africans’ living deaths.” - Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer imaginings of the Middle Passage, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley

This disruption of the normative order inscribed onto Badu’s Black Body by the Ankh queers the body’s boundaries so that desire between two black body’s can overcome both the tribal boundaries placed on it in pre-colonial Africa and the boundaries placed on it after the Middle passage during slavery, reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the now, as shown in Badu’s video. The inscribing of the Ankh purifies a sexual desire which had been commoditized, and at times even stolen through rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse in limiting master-slave dichotomies, while similarly giving it a water-like fluidity which is able to overcome the boundaries of earth and an airy lightness which allows those same bodies to move up and out of the marginalization placed upon it on Earth. This desire, sex and sexual attraction, in Badu’s video then is not about sex, it is about pain as Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley states in Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic. It is a desire which allows one to move to a post-traumatic, post-Atlantic space in which sorrow is replaced with the pleasures of desire. Badu’s Afrofuture in which desire and sexuality is reclaimed (along with race) through an “Ancient Choosing Ceremony,” becomes more apparent in the Erykah Badu – Next Lifetime [Live Extended] in which she melds her lyrics with the melodies of You Don’t Have to Cry – Rene & Angela.

“You don’t have (Don’t cry, lady
To cry-cry-cry-cry alone
I’ll be right by your side
You’ve found a new home”

In the video, the “new home,” the Afrofuture is filled with water like the old home—which is simultaneously the banks of the Nile, the coastal waters and lands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the banks of the Mississippi river—except this water is a part of a dual racial and sexual liberation; the reclamation of a desire commoditized for slave livestock reproduction, a desire tainted in the private homes of slave masters as they coupled with bodies—willingly and unwilling—that they publicly subjugated with violence. The Afrofuture then cannot be reached without reclamation of Black bodies through non-normative models of desire. - KR

In J. Griffith Rollefson’s work “The Robot Voodoo Power Thesis: Afrofuturism and anti-anti-essentialism from Sun Ra to Kool Keith” the author argues that afrofuturism, though often viewed as a constructed fantasy and sort of post human, futurist sensibility, has “real” productive potential towards the larger project of cultural theory. He argues specifically that, “By stepping out side of the white liberal tradition and rewriting blackness in all its complexity, afrofuturism offers a novel form of revolution that is rooted in a long history of black opposition”. In his work Rollefson sites artists that while productive in their audacity to (re)envision and reproduce alter-destinies, still through practice and position reify notions of hetro-patriarchy and sexism.

In all of his examples he presents male-bodied individuals as the leaders of this new wave of cultural thought and progression into the future. The first is the highly noted Sun Ra, band leader for the Arkestra.  Rollefson highlights the leader’s ability to institute a new wave of futurist thought through an insistence that he was not of this planet and neither is any black person. The author notes that Sun-Ra creates a new space through which black people can begin to let go of desires towards equal citizenship through an indoctrination into an alternate world, that of the uni-verse. Rollefson, notes that Sun Ra and other noted leaders such as George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, as well as MC’s such as Kool Keith “established the core tenet of anti-anti-essentialist collapsed binaries”. He continues further: “ I would like to assert that they do have real political efficacy because they problematize the rigid binary of blackness/whiteness and the matrix of binaries that are inscribed up this central set.” Such reimagining works to blur the lines of whiteness and blackness perhaps, however, they do little to renegotiate the history of sexism and erasure that these same histories present (as an opposition) to the project of feminist politics. 

Through Rollefson’s reading we find that the female presence is non-existent in the theorized (and thus archived) afrofuture. It is problematic to me that no space, imaginary or otherwise, has been offered with which to combat the issues of patriarchy and sexism that override our present quests for “Freedom”. Until the way we think about afro futurism is inclusive off all black bodies, the project towards liberation will continue to be stunted.  -AH

As I consider the fact that our class is indeed ending, I am struggling to make some sense of the richness we have explored throughout the course.  As a student who straddles both the techie and fuzzie disciplinary regions, I find myself frequently melding my modes of analysis, not just in terms of content, but also in process.  I understand the humanities better in a scientific lens (heterotopias as heat engines, afrofuturist art as the recovery of an aliased signal, queer urbanism as a high-resolution climate model).  And it is difficult at times to articulate certain concepts outside of the classes in which they are originally taught and deployed. 

It makes me nervous and despondent about higher education and its applicability when we segment ourselves off into neat disciplines, often saying that we simply cannot perform the functions of our scholarly counterparts in other fields.  Our disciplines have so much critical insight to gain from each other, to gain from becoming unbounded.   

I realize I was going to author a post here about upsampling, the process of taking an aliased or otherwise faulty signal, inserting blank impulses, and processing it until it resembles a useful output.  In a sense I am still concerned with the concept of upsampling, though here I’d like to apply it to academia.  Black (W)holes is one of few classes which not only allows but encourages me to extend my scholarly horizons.  Afrofuturism, science fiction, artificial intelligence, and other categories I put under the umbrella of a “transhumanities” afford a transcendence from space, dimension, and indeed, discipline.   How can we upsample—think creatively and reprocess—higher education to a place where it no longer depends on fixed objects of study?  How can we bring back a general studies major, deep thought, and insights unfettered by department?  For all of these paradigm shifts need to happen simply because issues  concerned with fundamental questions of humanity by design have no home in any one field.  And to truly start to ask those questions we must move towards a radical anti-disciplinarity, one that upsamples our “signals”, our “studies” towards the recovery of the original input: modes of humanity.    - JB

I grew up in Columbus, Mississippi. To me, the Deep South has always seemed to be a very religiously and socially conservative place. Social progress isn’t exactly high up on the list. When I was on the basketball team in high school, we played a team whose mascot was the Confederates. Nobody said anything about it or even challenged its existence. It didn’t bother me then, but it does now. Often throughout history, people confuse some progress with enough progress. You know, even though we can elect a half-black president and full-black first lady subsequently, how much progress have me really made? Richard Wright put it best in Black Boy when he inquired “How does the white man really see the Negro”? The answers to these questions are the only true means of measuring progress.

Unsurprisingly, hurt people hurt people. Therefore, it should come as no surprise when blacks discriminate against their own, erecting intra-racial hierarchies and cliques. It always seemed to me as if gay blacks had it hardest among minorities, especially in the black community. At least thats how I felt growing up. Nonetheless, the gays I knew were not ostracized drastically more than general homophobic reactions typically emanated from the American public. They seemed to fit in well enough, mostly the flamboyant ones. I agree with the author in that regard. Also, it helps to be involved in the church, though ironically one would think it would be the most alienating of places for queer blacks. A reason why church might be a queer space is that some think that you can “pray the gay away”, so if  one who identifies as queer stays in the church, spiritual folk may seem him or her as seeking repentance, redeeming, or saving from their queer tendencies. You can rest assured that there are folk praying behind that person’s back in the church. Sad, but true. 

In my experience, queer men have the hardest time not with the black community in general, but with black men. Black codes of masculinity (via hip-hop, gang culture, or everyday adolescent life) still adhere to self-imposed hyper-heterosexuality. Needless to say, there is no room for the queer black man in this narrow space. Most of the [black] women I know have accepted queerness one way or another; they see a gay man as just another sister (which would imply that both black sexes reject the gay black as a true “man”), especially if he is very flamboyant. Note, these are simply my impressions of the experiences and people that I have come across. Perhaps, I will embark upon the rest of this text in the near future. I hope his case is convincing. He almost makes the South seem like a safe and mildly hospitable place for gay black men. Yet, I feel that there exists no such place in the world right now. Is substantial progress really progress? Or is it just less conservative? According to Malcolm X, “You can’t stick a knife in a brother’s back 10 inches and pull 9 inches of it out and call that progress.” Maybe not verbatim, but the sentiment was spot-on. - DL

Linking the narrative presented in the Sweet Tea introduction and the work of Outcast leads to an interesting vision of the South, Queerness in this culture and the Afro-future’s relation to both of these factors. The focus upon both race and queerness in the story of the South and its cultural history provides an important counter-understanding to the notion of the south as a purely white place.  The work to be done is to “de-center the white southern subject as ‘norm’” and without understanding the race of Southern queerness there is a risk of “reifying the myth that the South is white.”

This focus on race combined with the consistent use of oral tradition provides a really unique history that is intentionally set apart from the narrative that a historian would provide. This extends into the vision of the future that manifests necessarily from an altered conception of the past. Just as the group of “old-timers” irreparably impacted Johnson’s understanding of the past, the oral tradition and stories that were gathered alter the Afro-future that would stem from the south.

This leads to ATLiens from Outcast in 1998. Reflecting a tradition of “afro-futurist” artists that includes George Clinton and Sun Ra, the duo add a unique flair and echo the cultural significance of the South.

Reminiscent of the readings focused upon the experience of house music, Andre 3000 calls for a culture inscribed within the music that seeks a different future as expressed in the title track. “The alienators cause we different keep your hands to the sky/Like Sounds of Blackness when I practice what a preach ain’t no lie” Throughout the whole album Big Boi and Andre allude to what could be termed an “alter-destiny”, one that either they will provide or that is inevitable in nature.

I am really interested in the cultural differences in Afro-futurism, if there are any. Is this just a part of the “baggage” that you must be willing to leave behind in order to participate in the transcendence of the now into this future as discussed with Sun Ra? How do the narratives of race, queerness and the future interact as in Sweet Tea? If the understanding of the past has a direct impact on the conception of the future, how do counter-narratives like the one that Johnson seeks to provide change the way a queer/Afro-futurism is understood by Southerners like Big Boi and Andre 3000?

-Milton

“The rhetoric of sex” Delany notes, “names the discursive realm that directs an individual’s thoughts and body and that compels one to act while often leaving her desiring or yearning for desire. “ His statement here reifies our knowledge that the very idea of sexual rhetoric is predicated on the business of structure, a business very much aligned with the business of power.  This power ripples outward and is very much influenced (one could imagine) by notions of heterosexuality, binary and biological gender expression, and furthermore progeny.  All of these things work to uphold the laws of order, which govern the bodies of the nation’s citizens (the web). Through this lens we find that the impetus to act is very much detached from emotionality, or desire. Rather is a physical exchange, one which Delany notes oftentimes is prearranged, and at times unwarranted by either party.  Moreover, he suggests that the mainstream language used to discuss sex is not enough. The language and further modes employed limit the possibilities for experiencing intimacy through the expression of desire. 

Delany is interested more in how desire, works to dismantle these rhetorical restrictions.  Desire, Delany continues, “Commands power enough to found and destroy cities, to reform the very shape of the city itself, laying down new avenues and restructuring whole neighborhoods within it.” He continues: “And desire, unlike rhetoric, as well as our actions of which finally rhetoric is a part, breaks against and crumbles”. Its not just desire itself but the expression of desire that works to dismantle these structures because it carves a space for which deviant sexual practices are acceptable, practical, and above all human. 

To the question then “Is the porn theater romantic?” the answer is no, not because of perversion, but because it does not have to be. It breaks through so many notions of courtship, of virginity, of polygamy even and by doing so creates a queer space outside of the traditional power structure. Even in thinking further about the word romantic here in this context we are forced to re imagine what romance and courtship actually entail and what implications we force upon it. Delany is interested in a politic of desire as the ultimate transgressive act. Perhaps this is the way of the future (ten years ahead of scholarship and documentation).

- AH

Octavia Butler speaks about her story as a, “love story between two very different beings,” and as a “pregnant man story… [an exploration] of what it might be like for a man to be put in that most unlikely of all positions.” Bloodchild is a story which addresses several issues, one being colonialism and the history of nation-states being forcibly acquired at the expense of indigenous groups. However, in this reimagining the invaders become invaded—after subjugating the indigenous peoples with violence—as the alien species (modeled after the botfly, a bug) becomes the pathogen that enters the body, which in the traditional colonial context was a product of the invader and not the invaded. Octavia Butler inverts the power structure on its head. However, she does so without demonizing the indigenous peoples nor the invading group by framing either of their actions as evil; instead, one may read it as a story in which the invaded—the victimized—becomes the “white savior” of protection, for the invaded, here, taking up the position of benign host while at the same time the hosted becomes bodily host—for purposes of childrearing—of the ones who are hosting them. Butler goes on to describe it as a story in which the men are impregnated upon their own agency but also because of surrounding difficulties and a genuine love for their impregnators. It also has been read as a story of slavery because of the agreement the humans make with their hosts, but one may argue that this agreement can be seen as one which is mutually beneficial; therefore it is neither slavery nor any other form of oppression. However, I am given pause by the way pregnancy happens in the story and the trauma it inflects on the body. The drugging of the impregnated and then the tearing of the body upon the birth of the offspring is one of bodily trauma. We spoke about the trauma of The Cut—the middle passage—in class and it seems like the Terrans become disenfranchised in their isolation on this extrasolar world just as African slaves were disenfranchised from the continent of African. It may be that the invaders are the ones who have become disenfranchised now based upon their own actions, but I wonder if it is possible for us to imagine a world in which the conquers (Terrans) can also become unjustly conquered (Tlic ). In class, there have been times which we questioned the ability of the disenfranchised, the otherized (Black people, Queer people, Women, etc.) to subjugate, to oppress, the privileged (White people, heterosexual people, Men, etc.,) One could read Octavia Butler’s story as an “yes” answer to the question.  Or do we have to read this relationship as being outside of our current relationship power dichotomies, neither top or bottom but one which shows the potential of the versatile as a classmate said, for there to be a world in which the social hierarchy is not inverted: an inversion in which the invaders become the invaded; a situation in which power, oppression and control are once again enacted through violence on the body, like rape as a war tactic, like slavery, like imprisonment, etc. Instead perhaps the world of Bloodchild  is something so drastically removed from our current experience that trying to analyze it with our current existential dilemmas in mind might lead us to the illusion of a “new” norm where true non-normative life exists? If that is the case, it may be true that “the mothership” so often referred to in Afrofuturism, that another cut, another middle passage, is what is needed to remove us outside of our existence and to a where that is nowhere which will allow us to live without norms. Afrofuturism may itself be a positive envisioning of the effects of the power of trauma. Post-traumatic stress disorders become the avenue for the post-modern world that Afrofuturism calls for. - Kevin R.

In Blood Child the Terrans (humans) were impregnated by the Tlic, coerced by gifts of life-preserving eggs or in past instances forced to bear their children. Butler explores alternatives to heterosexual procreation by imagining an extraterrestrial place in which men are impregnated by a female aliens. Tlic offspring are the result of this impregnation. Some (not all) Terrans saw this process as cruel and “unnatural”. However, there were many parallels between human pregnancy and the alternative one presented by Butler. As in human pregnancy, the alternative pregnancy was life threatening for the host, and the offspring got nourishment directly from the host’s body. The process of birth in which the Tlic cut open the Terran likened to a cesarean section.

There were also interesting points made about the symbolic significance of procreation in Blood Child. In revolutionary discourses children embody the potentiality to change dominant oppressive structures, and thus represent the potential for new ontological possibilities. The image of Whitney singing, “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way…” comes to mind. The Black Panther Party shared similar sentiments. The movement’s leadership suggested that procreation was a part of female panthers’ contribution to the revolution. Such notions become problematic by infringing upon women’s reproductive agency and exploiting women for their reproductive labor. As Cohen notes in his article, U.S. laws against interracial sex that promoted racial purity were a part of maintaining white supremacy. Procreation, then, not only signifies the persistence of a race or species, but also the persistence of ideologies that construct our social world. After seeing a human sliced open in the birthing process, Gan became skeptical of hosting T’Gatoi’s eggs. The alien children she would help birth would ultimately work to maintain the power structure that prohibited Terrans from having guns, or driving, or confined to guarded ghettoes. The alien offspring would maintain the power structure in which T’Gatoi dominated the lives of Tlic and perpetuate the system in which Terrans are exploited to produce alien offspring.  - KW

Renee Cox’s photographs provide a visual counterpoint to many of themes of this week’s readings and the Afro-Futurist project as a whole. In her photographic practice, Cox embodies a performative self-fashioning through a variety of alter-egos, most notably her figures Yo Mama and Raje. In photographing herself as these alter-egos, Cox is able to reimagine or extend beyond the limitations of “selfhood” into the realm of imagined sites of multiple existences and resistances.

A particular 1993 image from Cox’s Yo Mama series works well in tandem with Crenshaw’s “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” article. [http://www.reneecox.net/series03/series03_3.html] Though a photograph of the heteronormative relationship between mother and child, the image quickly slides into the fluid registers of queer embodiment. In the portrait, a nude Cox stands staunchly upright, holding her child (whose gender is difficult to discern). The child lies across Cox’s body, bisecting the artist in a nearly cross-like manner (see Cox’s It Shall Be Named for an earlier reference to this theme).

The strength and regal quality of Cox’s particular body and pose seems to trouble typical notions of gender. The photographer’s muscled frame harkens back to Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of body builder Lisa Lyon. Black stilettoes are the only article of clothing that the photographer wears in the image. If picturing oneself in shoes when otherwise unclothed wise seems odd, then the juxtaposition of black stiletto pumps upon the strength of Cox’s nude frame appears downright queer.

It must be noted that Cox’s image renders visible the black female body in a way that the art historical canon (of nude white Venuses and virgin Madonnas) rarely has. In previous images from the Yo Mama series, Cox photographed herself in the final stages of pregnancy, nude with full belly and on the verge of birth. In a visual economy in which the nude female body is often the object of a desiring male gaze, Cox’s images take the risk of imaging this body in the face of the associated perils. Importantly, the title of Cox’s alter-ego itself, Yo Mama, upends the common introductory punch line - Yo Mama is so [insert insult] - in order to frame the images within a confrontational mode of address. Cox stares the viewer down, seeming to challenge any sort of gaze that may take her body as a sexual object. Cox’s stern facial expression directly contrasts with the playful visage of her child. Cox, however, appears to know the stakes of the game and is not playing.

A later series of photographs (1998) with Cox’s other alter-ego Raje lends itself to the futuristic, extraterrestrial vision that we have associated with Afro-Futurist impulses throughout the quarter. In these images, Cox imagines herself as a black Wonder Woman, replete with appropriate jumpsuit garb. In the context of Cox’s Jamaican-American ethnicity, the colors of red, green, yellow, and black can be read as referencing Rastafarian culture more so than Pan-Africanism. Throughout the series, the superhero figure of Raje “liberates” problematic cultural representations such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben and resists other threats, such as Nazi Swastikas. Cox’s performed alter-ego allows the artist to imagine a figure that transcends common cultural confines in order to “fight the good fight.”

The most relevant image to our discussion is a rather uncanny representation, Lost in Space (1998). [http://www.reneecox.net/series06/series06_9.html] In the image, Cox superimposed her portrait and that of a balding white male atop what appears to be a Photoshoped space background. Resisting gravity, the figures hover in this no-place above a molten planet. In the photograph, Cox – or rather Raje - aggressively attacks the white male. On its most basic level, the image presents an active attack upon white patriarchy. In this image, space as a place functions as the site for Raje to turn the tables of traditional power dynamics. (Though the question of what it is about space that allows for such a process to unfold is left unanswered)

The rather bizarre quality of the image opens up a few questions that I myself am having a hard time coming to terms with. Perhaps it is the displacement of 13 years of digital technology from the moment in which this photograph was produced, but for some reason the rather dated representation gives the image a kitschiness that makes it difficult for me to approach Cox’s representation. To be honest, as opposed her earlier work, I find it hard to take Cox’s image seriously. Is this part of the conceit of Lost in Space, and if so how does that play into its meaning? Or is it simply a result of the displacement in cultural moments between production (1998) and reception (2011). If this is the case, how does this of a displacement of a cultural moment open to up broader questions of reading earlier iterations of the Afro-Futurist impulse? It seems that self-fashioned is a central quality of the imaginings that we are exploring (from Sun Ra to Erykah Badu), but do questions of style and what is “in vogue” at a particular moment trouble our attempts to reckon with these artifacts?

I also wanted to include on last image from Cox’s Raje series, Motherland (1998). [http://www.reneecox.net/series06/series06_3.html] In the image, Raje and two black male figures stand atop the globe. The title obviously references Africa as the site of a “Motherland” on which the image centers. In returning to my earlier example of Yo Mama, the question of motherhood, lineage, and progeny also appears. In these images, Cox attempts to trace the roots of her particular family as well as black people in general. I wanted to open up the possibility of thinking through these themes in the sci-fi images of Cox’s Raje and her more somber Yo Mama series in relation to the questions of reproduction in Butler’s “Bloodchild.”

- AF

It is interesting to note that in “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” that the fight for queer rights and activism is sometimes swallowed up in the civil rights movement. Tragic, yet true. Indeed, queerness isn’t included in the dominant binaries of sexual identity today so in that sense I guess it is rather highly unlikely for queerness to command its own separate movement for rights. The previous statement is simply referring to the acknowledgment of said movement by the public, and *not* the existence of the movement itself.

One thing that I have noticed about the queer movement (maybe just in SF or  at Stanford) is the sex-positive movement or just simply moving away from any label of sexual behavior at all. Indeed, Cohen refers to such as encouraging the fluidity in movement of people’s sexual lives. This idea is important because this placed queer politic is direct opposition with the identity politic movement of traditional gay/lesbian. Surprisingly enough, ‘queer’ is category-unfriendly while gay and lesbian are just seeking to define more categories. Queerness seems to me a more all-encompassing and fluid way to identify oneself sexually — and maybe even in an existential sense. If we think about it at a very basic level, doesn’t it seem weighty and so defining to say “I am gay” or “I am straight”. “She ‘is’ lesbian”. It seems as though sexuality is often (socially) inextricably linked to the existential mode of being. Admittedly, this notion may be why the identity politics of queerness is so difficult to pin down.

In all, I believe the most valid and strongest point that Cohen makes is that the crux of the problem with sexual politics today is that heteronormative society is keep trying to integrate those who identify as ‘queer’ into society  (1 reason why ‘coming out’ can become such a beleaguered decision) instead of radically restructuring the laws and opinions of the general public and discovering the real reason why queers are oppressed in the first place. What is the root cause, Cohen asks. I posit that this question is of the utmost to answer. Why do people really fear a queer planet? Just as institutionalized racism still exists for blacks as vicious aftermath from Jim Crow, surely institutionalized (sexual orientation)-ism exists for persons with queer identities. It’s amazing how people forget this sometimes.

The QUASH group most eloquently and fiercely embodies my truest opinions on queer politics (from the reading) “Assimilation is killing us… Some of us adopt an apologetic stance, stating ‘that’s just the way I am’ (read: I’d be straight if I could”)… No matter how much [money] you make, fucking your lover is still illegal in nearly half of the states… The myth of assimilation must be shattered… Fuck the heterosexual, nuclear family” — This quote *really* struck out to me, draws some parallels to the black power movement.

In closing, I believe that having an non-conformist attitude is paramount to the strength and final impact of the queer political movement. Indeed, its importance cannot be understated. In the same way that queer individuals sometimes try and ‘hide’ in society, blacks (not all, but some) and other minorities have been trying to ‘hide’ for years by changing speaking patterns and hair textures. In fact, some have went to dire straits (mentally and physically) seeking to downplay whatever facet of their self that was considered ‘deviant’ at the time. A non-conformist state of mind is key.

- DL

Octavia Bulter’s short story Bloodchild envisions a trans species world in which normative understandings of race, gender, and sexuality are called into question. In Bloodchild the Terrans are “humans” who’s productivity lies in their ability to incubate and birth the eggs of the Tlic (the non human governing species). The Terrans and Tlic co-exist in a pre-arranged progenic relationship. Butler imagines this relationship, especially the act of “conception” and eventual “birth” as a rather violent and painful meeting; one in which the matured larvae eventually eat their way through their host, oftentimes causing death. Though Butler frames this violent encounter as a dramatic awaking, a coming of age. Bloodchild focuses rather on the young character’s journey towards imagining himself. It is a selfhood that is defined through a regenerative relationship with his Tlic T’Gatoi. It is a self-defined by a non-normative sexuality by mainstream standards simply because of its reversal of gender dynamics, the female being the one who penetrates, the male being the one who carries life.

However, by examining the piece closer one finds that the work rehearses similar hegemonic structures to that of contemporary society through the ways in which it reifies a dominate force over a subordinate other. Bloodchild’s productivity is not found in the ways in which it “queers” space by creating non-normative gender roles, but rather in the ways in which the writer examines the structure of power. Butler creates a world in which the unfamiliar is illuminated and abstracted in such a way, as to make the notions of race, gender and sexuality of lesser importance. The writer’s point of inquiry works to expose the structural mappings which keep a people disenfranchised (through narrative, politics, and drugs to name a few). Butler is interested in the process of subordination, and further she is interested in exploring the oftentimes-complex sexual and intimate relationships between (for lack of better words) slave and master. However, through the creation of a world in which physical markers of difference are veiled Butler allows us to view the politics of disenfranchisement beyond the language and frameworks of race, gender and sexuality in order to directly target the wound that is the structure of power itself beyond a male-female, white-black understanding of oppression. 

- AH

In discussing what we seek in a utopia last week, several themes emerged. One thread that I found was the end of normative thought, and an essential end to non-normative prejudice. In effect an end of performance. In one level/aspect or a utopian vision race, gender, class, sexual orientation need no performance or acknowledgement as queer or in tension with a prescribed norm. 

            But as presented counter to this, the visions of a utopic future are all formed in a place of inundation of the power and normative structures of the current patriarchy and hegemonic structures. The perpetuation of power structures in a utopia, the forming of a new “queer” and the oppression and marginalization of a new “people” is presented in the notion that “Queerness is acknowledgement that utopia is temporary.” So in this understanding utopia is nothing more than an instant between marginalizing power structures, and may be nothing more than the instant between the past and future.

            In this manner utopia may be nothing more than the cut. In Miller’s critique of Octavia Butler’s works he cites Michelle Erica Green’s conception of utopia as more than claims to a “perfect society.” She instead breaks down the original Greek definitions of  “utopia” as “a Greek pun that can be read as ‘nowhere’ (utopia) or ‘good place’ (eutopia)” This again lends a very important nuanced understanding of utopia as unattainable, or at the very least only seen in the breath in limbo between the then and will be.

            Beyond this even, the lack of place or “real” space for a utopia makes it necessarily manifest as in the cut. The cut, lacking specific time or descript place also requires that the utopia, as expressed in the two views above, be fleeting and in a liminal place and space.

            Furthering the understanding of utopia, Miller finds a path of dystopia as process to achieve any notion of utopia. Rather than ignoring or wishing that the problems of the real present world didn’t exist, Butler works to and through a dystopia in order to ever understand and achieve a form of utopia.

            These new understandings of utopia as the cut, and this liminal in between of time and place, really confuse what “reality” of afro-futurism may have been sought to grasp. Is the afro-futuristic movement one that seeks to transcend not only the confines of normative patriarchic and hegemonic power structures, but one that goes beyond to look to transcend the reality that they exist in altogether?

Is the afro-futurism movement one that does have an answer to queerness as “acknowledgement that utopia is temporary” by seeking an alternate or new place and space for reality? Or is this place and space what we have come to call the cut, and only reinforces the temporality and spacelessness for utopia to exist. Is afro-futurism working through dystopia to find that utopia is nothing more than a fleeting dream that exists in the cut where any “resolution” or “healing” may be quickly forgotten for newer norms and more dystopic nightmare?

-Milton

In “Robo Diva RnB”, Robin James posits that Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad albumas well as Beyonce’s “Get Me Bodied” single “critiques white patriarchal anxieties” on black female sexuality and technology via the ways in which both artist blur the natural/technological and hypersexualized/non sexual binaries (404). This argument also extends to Beyonce’s I AM…SASHA FIERCE. On half of the album Beyonce sings heartfelt ballads about romance and relationships, and on the other half her alter ego, Sasha Fierce, embodies the hypersexualized black fembot shaking her thang in a leotard with metallic accessories to techno/pop beats.The Sasha Fierce album, her best yet, is conceptuality predicated in the many representations of black femininity. Throughout the album Beyonce effortlessly crosses the natural/technological and hypersexual/non sexual boundaries as a disruption of these racially implicated gender constructions.  

Her award-winning hit “Single Ladies” juxtaposed with “If I Were A Boy”, another song from the album, evidence her play on racialized/gendered hierarchies. In the video she delivers stellar choreography (which I am prepared to dish out at any and every given moment) in a one-piece. Home girl is giving legs-for-days as she shakes her booty and flicks her mechanical hand while singing “If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it.” “If I Were A Boy”, on the other hand, embodies the natural, non-sexual woman, which usually signifies white womanhood. In the beginning shot of the video Beyonce stares at the camera with warm eyes, no make up on, her hair simply hanging down. She talks to her presumed lover, calling for “intimacy, commitment [between] you, me”.        

Okay so Beyonce, like Rihanna, subverts dominant patriarchal myths on race and gender, following Robin James’ argument. I am curious, however, on mapping queer gender performances over this terrain. Let’s go back to “Single Ladies”. The choreographer of the dance and performer in live renditions of the song is the legendary Jante. In the following rendition of “Single Ladies” Beyonce dances alongside Jante and another male dancer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTPFkK6br-M). I am hesitant to call them robo-men because of their gender queer performances—let’s call them robo-queers! They perform with the same cyborg aesthetic and hypersexualized, feminine dance repertoire. How do they engage the Classic 60’s myth of the hypermasculinty of black men and contribute to conversations on black biopolitcs?   

In the performance on the Tyra Banks show Beyonce dances next to Jonte and the other roboqueer performer singing, “If He Like It Then He Shoulda Put a Ring on It”. Wait. Are the roboqueers included in this put-a-ring-on-it business? Certainly not given that gay marriage is not recognized in most states. If the robo queers are not directly included in the psychic and emotional evocations of the song, what then, is their relationship to and function in the performance? The presence of the roboqueers deflects the patriarchal male gaze from the performance and reorients the gaze to that of a black female/gay male spectatorship. Hyperfeminine black gay men, as in the roboqueers, allow black female spectators to celebrate their sexual energies without the evoking denigrating moral judgments on black female sexuality (of course there are still myths about gay and black male sexuality that the performance may affirm). While men can certainly objectify Beyonce the same, the black queer body disrupts and fights her consumption. In watching the performance heteromen also have to confront the equally fierce, sexual, and feminine performances of gay black men, a threat to their heterosexuality and masculinity. More so, the hyperfeminine black gay male is the antithesis of masculinity: the roboqueer is sterile (but still sexual), and represents a form of masculinity sans heterosexual male privilege. Furthermore the roboqueer emasculates and castrates the male viewer, denying him his phallic power via the heteromale objectifying, consuming gaze. Of course, heteroidentified men can still have homoerotic desires and thus sexually object the roboqueer in a way that affirms the male privilege. 

 Can hyperfeminine gay male performers be consumed in the heteropatriarchal music industry, or do they inherently subvert and renegotiate the-body-as-commodity. Because of their genderqueerness, will they be accepted as performers in the music industry, or continue to be relegated to subsidiary roles. Jonte is a solo artist but has yet to gain mainstream attention in spite of his phenomenal work with artist such as Beyonce. I hope to explore these topics more in my final paper—the role of roboqueers within the Afro-futurist project, examining the work of Jonte.

Check out some of his songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CEGb-bxU8U

http://www.youtube.com/user/HelloJonte#p/u/8/OzWYVV-GaFg

- KW

           In my previous post I addressed the concept of aliasing as the issue resolved by an afrofuturist project.  Aliasing is a phenomenon that can be understood in the time domain, but fundamentally occurs in the frequency domain.  When the sampling rate of a particular analog-to-digital conversion is below the Nyquist rate, aliasing occurs.  Frequency domain analysis can be difficult to grasp without an image or example. We obtain frequency response curves by taking Fourier transforms of the original signals, yielding power/frequency curves.  See below.

         The time signal represented by the sinusoidal curves displayed above are captured in a simpler manner in the frequency domain. Furthermore, in the frequency domain we encounter the concept of an impulse response.  The term refers to the output of a function to which an input dirac delta function is applied.  The dirac delta function is one which contains all its “power,” or “impulse” at a particular moment when its parameter is zero, and is valued zero elsewhere.  See below.

            For certain systems (known as linear time-invariant or LTI systems), the impulse response completely characterize their outputs. That is, the output in the frequency domain is equal to the product of the impulse response and the input.  As previously, I am probing how these concepts relate to the project of afrofuturism.  The exact definitions are not important here, but what is important is this notion of the “response” as definition, of reaction as boundary.  The notion of impulse response recalls the logic of the Cut—that is, it muddies the lines between what is input/system/output, before/during/after, African/Passage/blackness.  This is what frequency domain analysis allows us to do: to escape the usual confines of temporality (of time signification).  It becomes a site that is post-race, post-gender, even post-human. There is no programmatic way to understand what an actual time signal was or is while inside the frequency response.  Instead, the frequency domain is the domain of holograms, the technologically constructed and reinforced apparitions.

            I argue, then, that the black female “robo-diva” artists analyzed in this week’s readings (including Grace Jones, Beyonce, and Rihanna), with their emphasis on a post-human and post-soul rhetoric embody an impulse response.  They are simultaneously the system and its boundaries.  They are operating in the frequency domain, with a flagrant disregard for space/time, with the escapist logic of disidentification.  To answer Francesca Royster’s question, Grace Jones may be a hologram, but that only enhances her subversive potential.  

- JB

I was particularly intrigued this week by the two readings that focused on Grace Jones, Beyonce, and Rihanna (Royster’s Feeling like a woman, Looking like a Man, Sounding like a no-no and James’ Robo-Diva R&B). From Royster’s account, I learned about the legacy of Grace Jones as subcultural provocateur and deviant trickster. James’ essay extended this diva narrative into the more contemporary moment, through the figures of Beyonce and Rihanna.

In particular, the readings raised the important questions of artistic intention and agency, which are quite common in cultural analysis (I hear the question “did the artist really mean that?” all the time in my field of art history). In these essays, all three divas are positioned as having a semblance of autonomy in regards to the image and production that they provide. In terms of the larger structure of the class, I am interested in this question of how much we can credit the “artifacts” that we are studying with consciously imparting the messages that we in turn read as a product of artistic practice.

From Royster’s writing on Grace Jones, we see an entertainer who seemed very much in control in the medium and mediation of her message. Through close collaboration with her then-husband Jean-Paul Goude, Jones created an image at once alluring and alarming, as destructive in its deviance as it was seductive in its sexuality.  Jones’ somewhat subcultural role, or peripheral presence in regards to the specifically mainstream, probably aided the artist’s endeavors. From Royster’s analysis, Jones’ project is one that was not at risk of being co-opted by mainstream concerns. Instead, the article concludes by arguing that Jones in fact cannibalizes the corporate, as her music “gives testimony of the ravaging hunger of the marketplace, as well as her own ability to stay one step ahead of it.”

In particular, I found a subsequent pitfall of James’ essay was that the author purported far too much agency to Rihanna as an entertainer, when I see her project as falling far more within mainstream cultural confines. James does hint at the effect that the “entertainment complex” has in manipulating Rihanna’s image, parenthetically noting that “(indeed, she is in many ways produced by the fashion–beauty complex and by the music industry)” and reading Jay-Z’s opening to the singer’s Umbrella music video in the follow manner: “Visually, the “Umbrella” video begins not with Rihanna, but with a verse from Jay-Z, who is also president and CEO of Rihanna’s label, Def Jam. Thus, from the start Rihanna’s position as a product of the music industry.” That said, James continues to read Rihanna’s “robo-diva” image as one that upends common stereotypes of black femininity and utilizes the technological to do so. For me, this reading gives the singer far too much credit.

As much as I love Rihanna, her music and image are far from coalescing into what I would refer to in terms of a “cultural project.” Her recent single S&M and the controversy surrounding its lyrics and music video prove this point. Rihanna attempted to counter accusations against the illicitness of her lyrics (which revel in S&M sexual “deviancy”) under the guise of her ongoing “S&M battle” with the media. One listen to the song, and this metaphor falls short. Further, shortly after the release of the song’s music video, far and a way her most creative visual representation from the recent CD Loud, a lawsuit by the famed photographer David La Chapelle accused the singer of working too closely from his images as source material: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1353935/Rihannas-S-M-music-video-strikingly-similar-David-LaChapelles-work.html

We could very easily overlook the fact that Rihanna does not write nearly any of her own lyrics and probably has very little to do with her styling and music videos. Death of the author, birth of the reader. Yet, such disregard provides this entertainer with more cultural wherewithal than she merits. Would a robo-diva, as a “competent, empowered agent of their own destiny, whose very existence challenges the political and aesthetic norms of white patriarchy” also sing the hook for a hit-song by (white) rapper Enimem about relationship abuse just months after her own Chris Brown controversy? I think not. For me, Rihanna has never actively upended anything, but rather fits into the mold that popular culture requires from her. She is what the mainstream wants and needs at all times.

Tangentially, James’s argument that “the machine-vamp, with its abnormal, dangerous, destructive hypersexuality, symbolizes the threat black femininity and black female sexuality posed/poses to white capitalist patriarchal civilization” neglects a trend towards this theme throughout popular culture. One needs only to think about Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video, which concludes with the pop diva du jour incinerating her recent bedfellow with machine guns for breasts. The futuristic, destructive robot of femininity is a common trope throughout pop culture, which in recent years has moved towards a “spewingly” active, aggressive, rather phallic notion of femininity. Rihanna is only one of many examples. Of course, these acts take on a different valence when produced from a black body as opposed to a white body. That said, James’ account gives far too much credit to Rihanna’s engagement with the technological.

A take-away point that I think this discussion brings up: How are the “artifacts” that we are studying throughout this course in dialogue with more “mainstream” representations (which unfortunately more often than not read as White representation)? In situating our meditations within a larger cultural context, we can better understand from where our Afro-Futurist reckonings are blasting off.  

- AF