The original contribution of this research is to highlight how imagination of a posthuman world has made it possible for African American writers to envision how racial power can be re-configured and re-negotiated. Focusing on shifting racial dynamics caught up in the swirl of technological changes, this research illuminates a complex process of literary production in which black culture and identity have been continuously re-interpreted.
In the post-war and post-Civil Rights Movement eras African American writers began reflecting on shifting racial dynamics in light of technological changes. This shift in which black experience became mechanized and digitized explains how technology became a source of new African American fiction. The relationships between humans and their external conditions appear in such futuristic themes as trans-human anamorphosis, cyberspace, and digital souls. These thematic devices, which explore humanity outside its phenotypic boundaries, provide African American writers with tools to demystify deterministic views of race. Afrofuturism has responded to the conceptual transformation of humanity with a race-specific scope, locating the presence of black culture in a high-tech world.
Techno-scientific progress has provided important resources in contemporary theory, yet these theoretical foci too seldom have been drawn into critical race discourses. This discrepancy is due to techno-scientific progress having served as a tool for the legitimation of scientific racism under global capitalism for centuries. Responding to this critical lacuna, the dissertation highlights an under-explored field in which African American literature responds to techno-culture’s involvement in contemporary discussions of race. Rather than repeat nominal assumptions of Eurocentric modernity and its racist hegemony, this dissertation theorizes how modern techno-culture’s outcomes—such as information science, genetic engineering, and computer science—shape minority lives, and how minority groups appropriate these outcomes to enact their own liberation.
Space exploration and science fiction have deep historical ties with science fiction literature. From the beginning of the space race, American science fiction stories influenced policy makers, scientists, and the public in their visions of space exploration. However, in the 21st century, the who, what, and why of space exploration are changing. Space exploration is no longer the endeavor of the world's superpowers. Countries from across the global south in Asia and Africa have created space programs and have constructed spacecraft to benefit their country and their international power. The emergence of new countries and the interconnectedness of the modern world has the potential to empower postcolonial countries' perspectives and interests. India is a prime example of a country impoverished by colonialism that has now become one of the world's largest economies and a primary stakeholder in future human space exploration. Moreover, India's rich literary heritage, especially in mythology and science fiction, has the potential to predict and to shape what India brings to the international table. This thesis aims to answer the question: How will/should Indian post-colonial science fiction affect the country’s advancement of human space exploration, without making the same mistakes as the west?
In this thesis I examine two Afrofuturist, feminist pieces of speculative fiction: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin and The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I analyze the two novels together and separately using a Black feminist framework to extract sustainable solutions for environmental justice. In close readings of the novels, I utilize multiple frameworks in my analysis, including Afrofuturism, Black Feminism, Intersectionality, and Ecofeminism. Applying Afrofuturist theory shapes the examination of how the oppressive systems within each novel’s society resemble that of the past and how they inform the future. This oppression is seen in the mistreatment of marginalized groups in both novels, including women, racial minorities, and orogenes and sharers. I further explore how these groups are suppressed and how this influences their interactions with the environmental crisis using Back feminist theory. Then, an ecofeminist lens is used in conjunction with Black feminism to uncover sustainable solutions from the novels to solve and mitigate the environmental crisis. My proposed solutions taken from these novels include empathy and embracing change.
