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4 - Afrofuturism and the Speculative Turn

from Part II - African American Genres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2023

Yogita Goyal
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

This chapter discusses Afrofuturism with reference to a wide range of literary works, influential critical and theoretical accounts, and artistic manifestos, identifying its overlaps and distinctions from the broader speculative turn apparent in African American literature from the 1980s onward. The chapter focuses on two rubrics that lend cohesion to the array of genres, styles, and aesthetic principles associated with the label of Afrofuturism: the politics of time and the idea of race as technology. Through various devices of temporal dislocation, Afrofuturist works invent revisionist histories, shatter consensus narratives about the present, and challenge prevailing discourses of futurity. In addition, the chapter argues that Afrofuturist literature at its best defamiliarizes established ways of reading race through its innovative engagement with race-making techniques and technologies ranging from genre conventions to genetic engineering.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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