The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought: New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
Autor Roger A. Sneeden Limba Engleză Paperback – 5 oct 2021
In The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought, Roger A. Sneed illuminates the interplay of Black religious thought with science fiction narratives to present a bold case for Afrofuturism as an important channel for Black spirituality. In the process, he challenges the assumed primacy of the Black church as the arbiter of Black religious life. Incorporating analyses of Octavia Butler’s Parable books, Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturistic saga, Star Trek’s Captain Benjamin Sisko, Marvel’s Black Panther, and Sun Ra and the Nation of Islam, Sneed demonstrates how Afrofuturism has contributed to Black visions of the future. He also investigates how Afrofuturism has influenced religious scholarship that looks to Black cultural production as a means of reimagining Blackness in the light of the sacred. The result is an expansive new look at the power of science fiction and Afrofuturism to center the diversity of Black spirituality.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258064
ISBN-10: 0814258069
Pagini: 184
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.29 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
ISBN-10: 0814258069
Pagini: 184
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.29 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
Recenzii
“As a feature of the book’s appeal to broader readerships, it is interesting that Sneed is unabashed in embracing a “nerdy” gravitation toward science fiction. I believe this highlights a clear strong suit of the book, namely its interdisciplinary focus. It is at once Black religious reflection coupled with cultural criticism that deftly comments upon the interplay of race, science fiction, and popular culture." —Darrius D. Hills, Nova Religio
“Professor Roger Sneed illuminates the interplay of Black religious thought with science fiction narratives to present a bold case for Afrofuturism as an important channel for Black spirituality. … The result is an expansive new look at the power of science fiction and Afrofuturism to center the diversity of Black spirituality.” —Carrie Lynn Evans, New Books Network
“This book makes connections where they have not previously existed. As Sneed notes, there is little investigation of the intersection of Black religion (theology, in particular) and Afrofuturism—from either Black religious scholars or scholars of Afrofuturism. The Dreamer and the Dream admirably steps in to remedy that.” —Monica A. Coleman, author of Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology
“There has been a lack of attention to Afrofuturism paid by Black religious thought or Black liberation theologies. Sneed’s work is innovative and certainly paves the way for other works to continue in this subgenre.” —Monique Moultrie, author of Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women’s Sexuality
“Professor Roger Sneed illuminates the interplay of Black religious thought with science fiction narratives to present a bold case for Afrofuturism as an important channel for Black spirituality. … The result is an expansive new look at the power of science fiction and Afrofuturism to center the diversity of Black spirituality.” —Carrie Lynn Evans, New Books Network
“This book makes connections where they have not previously existed. As Sneed notes, there is little investigation of the intersection of Black religion (theology, in particular) and Afrofuturism—from either Black religious scholars or scholars of Afrofuturism. The Dreamer and the Dream admirably steps in to remedy that.” —Monica A. Coleman, author of Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology
“There has been a lack of attention to Afrofuturism paid by Black religious thought or Black liberation theologies. Sneed’s work is innovative and certainly paves the way for other works to continue in this subgenre.” —Monique Moultrie, author of Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women’s Sexuality
Notă biografică
Roger A. Sneed is Professor and Chair of Religion at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Extras
This book proceeds from the assertion that an Afrofuturistic consciousness yields a vision of Blackness that, while it may respond to white supremacy, is not bound by whiteness. Further, Afrofuturism is not bound by a conception of a Christian God who stands over and against us. Nor does that God stand “with” us. As Anthony Pinn has articulated in several of his works, part of the enduring problem that Black liberation theology has not adequately addressed is the problem of Black suffering. The vision of God that I argue Afrofuturism might lead us toward is closer to Victor Anderson’s conception of God as articulated in Creative Exchange: A Constructive Theology of African American Religious Experience. He claims, “God names the totality of the World itself, which is the union of life in all of its concrete actualities (finitude) and ideal potentialities (transcendence).” While Anderson seeks to ground this conception of God within institutions such as the Black church and Black families (in all their multiple iterations), I argue that, like Octavia Butler’s Lauren Olamina, God is not to be found in those institutions. Rather, if God is “the totality of the World itself,” then as the fictional Earthseed religion that Olamina creates argues, God is change. Change is God. We shape that change, and that change shapes us. As James Cone argued in his early foundational works, God is Black. To that, I add that God is Black insofar as that Blackness itself is part of a universe shaped by and shaping change. Further, to limit the encounter with God to institutionalized religious organizations is to rob us of the creative possibilities inherent in the encounters with God-as-world. Ruby Sales, a veteran of the modern civil rights movement, put it quite succinctly during the plenary session at the 2015 meeting of the American Academy of Religion when she noted that there is a distinction between “black religion” and “the Black church.” She contended that the difference between Black religion and the Black church is that the Black church as it emerged out of Black religion became an institution that reinscribed hegemonic narratives, to wit, the primacy and authority of the (male) Black preacher, while Black religion is and has been an organic response by Black peoples not only to racist oppression, but also to the possibilities of Blackness in this world. To this point, I turn to Black imaginations as shaping that change and shaping God.
As Anderson “suggest[s] that God names the totality of the World itself,” I counter with a suggestion informed by the Earthseed verses outlined in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, namely that we as human beings name (and shape) God. We imagine and reimagine the divine. For the Afrofuturist, this requires a prophetic imagination that sees Blackness in multiple dimensions. We bear witness to the dehumanization of Black bodies, but we do not live in that dehumanization. We see ourselves as agents of change, and that change shapes us. Thus, God-as-world understood via Afrofuturism is indeed Black. It is that Blackness between the stars that encompasses all known reality. It is that Blackness from whence we came. As we understand, the universe is constantly expanding. God-as-world is then understood as constantly changing.
Cuprins
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Foundations
Chapter 1 Race in Science Fiction
Chapter 2 Black Religious Thought and Afrofuturism
Part II Intersections
Chapter 3 Octavia Butler as Architect of Intersectional Afrofuturism
Chapter 4 “It’s Code”: Janelle Monáe, the ArchAndroid, and Queer Afrofuturistic Salvation
Chapter 5 Walking in the Path of the Prophets: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “Far Beyond the Stars,” and Black Prophetic Visions
Chapter 6 “Wakanda Forever!”: Black Panther, the Divine Feminine, and the Subversion of Toxic Masculinity in the Western Superhero Monomyth
Part III Afrofuturistic Thought Experiments
Chapter 7 Space Is the Place: Sun Ra, the Nation of Islam, Afrofuturism, Eschatology, and Utopia
Chapter 8 “Who Am I? Who Are You?”: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Identity
Conclusion “The Shape of Things to Come”: Future Directions in the Intersection of Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought
Postscript
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Foundations
Chapter 1 Race in Science Fiction
Chapter 2 Black Religious Thought and Afrofuturism
Part II Intersections
Chapter 3 Octavia Butler as Architect of Intersectional Afrofuturism
Chapter 4 “It’s Code”: Janelle Monáe, the ArchAndroid, and Queer Afrofuturistic Salvation
Chapter 5 Walking in the Path of the Prophets: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “Far Beyond the Stars,” and Black Prophetic Visions
Chapter 6 “Wakanda Forever!”: Black Panther, the Divine Feminine, and the Subversion of Toxic Masculinity in the Western Superhero Monomyth
Part III Afrofuturistic Thought Experiments
Chapter 7 Space Is the Place: Sun Ra, the Nation of Islam, Afrofuturism, Eschatology, and Utopia
Chapter 8 “Who Am I? Who Are You?”: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Identity
Conclusion “The Shape of Things to Come”: Future Directions in the Intersection of Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought
Postscript
Bibliography
Index
Descriere
Analyzes the interplay of Black religious thought with science fiction to illuminate Afrofuturism as an important channel for Black religion and spirituality.