Follow along as @black_techne shares some of her research on Black futurism.
Mirella Ntahonsigaye is a doctoral student in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. Her research interests include: material media and cultural techniques, media theory and epistemology, history[icit]y, Afro/Black Studies, archival research, and curation. You can hear an interview with Mirella in episode 3 of the From Remote Stars podcast.
“By intellectually engaging with whatever I’m afraid of, I feel the feelings and get over the fear, freeing myself to a live a different outcome.”
Though seemingly unrelated to futurity, I would argue that at the core of future studies/critique, is this exact same amalgamation of fear and hope. Not in a “doomsday” sense, but in the ubiquitous paranoid reading that comes with being invisibilized and oppressed. Therefore, ideas of the future, especially in works of Afro-futurism deals with to some extent versions of this sentiment; a feeling that aligns with the definition of black feminist futurity (Campt): “...to envision that which is not, but what ought to be.” Do Fuller’s ideas couched in such inventions like the geodesic dome, then understand both “that which is not” as well as what ought to be, in order for 100% of humanity to live a different outcome?
We’re back from a break to pick up on @black_techne’s research on Black futurism.
Mirella Ntahonsigaye is a doctoral student in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. Her research interests include: material media and cultural techniques, media theory and epistemology, history[icit]y, Afro/Black Studies, archival research, and curation. You can hear an interview with Mirella in episode 3 of the From Remote Stars podcast.
“The grammar of black feminist futurity […] is the power to imagine beyond current fact and to envision that which is not, but must be.”
This quotation speaks to the importance of thinking through futurity as being obligated to consider what must be, in spite of what already is. In this case, a future that strives for ecological stability must include a revision of the dominant paradigms of humanity as we understand them today.
Tina M. Campt. Listening to Images. Duke University Press, 2017: https://www.dukeupress.edu/listening-to-images.
Follow along as @black.techne shares some of her research on Black futurism.
Mirella Ntahonsigaye is a doctoral student in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. Her research interests include: material media and cultural techniques, media theory and epistemology, history[icit]y, Afro/Black Studies, archival research, and curation. You can hear an interview with Mirella in episode 3 of the From Remote Stars podcast.
“[man] … must put an end to the narcissism on which he relies in order to imagine that he is different from the other “animals.”
This quote encourages us to acknowledge the anthropocentric tendencies in Fuller’s understanding of the ideal future, whereby “Mankind” as we understand it—per its Eurocentric genre—persists in being the guiding principle for the kind of humanity he envisions.
Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1952: https://tinyurl.com/mffppnbx
Follow along this week as @black.techne shares some of her research on Black futurism. We’ll be sharing quotes in the posts and accounts to follow in the stories.
Mirella Ntahonsigaye is a doctoral student in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. Her research interests include: material media and cultural techniques, media theory and epistemology, history[icit]y, Afro/Black Studies, archival research, and curation. You can hear an interview with Mirella in episode 3 of the From Remote Stars podcast.
Today we remember bell hooks.
“To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.”
This book by bell hooks is an examination of feminism and the necessary changes during the 1980s. But many of the criticisms for feminism’s need to explore a different, more nuanced direction, particularly regarding marginality, are still imperative today. Our general understanding of marginality often forgets that it is part and parcel of the centre, and the privileges of the centre are dependent on the construction of the margin. A future that strives to work for all living things, humans and more-than-humans, must recognize the fundamental structures that allow for supremacy to exist in order to destroy it.
bell hooks. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre, 1984.
Follow along this week on Instagram as @black.techne shares some of her research on Black futurism. We’ll be sharing quotes in the posts and accounts to follow in the stories.
Mirella Ntahonsigaye is a doctoral student in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. Her research interests include: material media and cultural techniques, media theory and epistemology, history[icit]y, Afro/Black Studies, archival research, and curation. You can hear an interview with Mirella in episode 3 of the From Remote Stars podcast.
“The ethic is the aesthetic.”
This quote by Jamaican novelist and essayist Sylvia Wynter, as used in Dr. Katherine McKittrick’s essay “Rebellion/Invention/Groove,” recognizes the work of Black creativity as simultaneously identifying and rejecting the dominant paradigms of “humanity” per the genre of the Western man. In McKittrick’s article, the focus is on black music, sound, and waveform. The technique and expressions of Black cultural inventions, however, talk back to and seek refuge from the dominant genre of “humanity” (ie. white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied etc.) as a pervasive and ubiquitous knowledge of being. With this in mind, we can push against and expand the kind of future Fuller envisioned, as he overlooks this dominant genre of “humanity” and its dependence on the marginalization of the “Other.”
Katherine McKittrick. "Rebellion/Invention/Groove." Small Axe, vol. 20 no. 1,
2016, p. 79-91: https://tinyurl.com/584ajnw
