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Science fiction imagines aliens and global crises as world-unifying events, both a threat and promise for the future. Black Apocalypse is an introduction to the past and present of black engagement with speculative futures. From Octavia Butler to W.E.B. Du Bois to Sun Ra, Tavia Nyong’o shows that the end of the world is crucial to afrofuturism and reframes the binary of afropessimism and afrofuturism to explore their similarities.
Interweaving black trans, queer, and feminist theories, Nyong'o examines the social, technological, and existential threats facing our species and reflects on shifting anxieties and hopes for the future. Exploring the apocalypse in movies, art, literature, and music, this book considers the endless afterlives of slavery and inequality and revives the radical black imagination to envision the future of blackness. Black Apocalypse argues that black aesthetics take us to the edge of this world and into the next.
"In Black Apocalypse, Nyong'o provides a succinct, comprehensive exploration of connections between afrofuturism and afropessimism, introducing the term “Black counter-speculation” to describe persistent, alternative worldmaking in the face of ongoing Black erasure."
“Brilliantly brings the afropessimist theorizations of Frank Wilderson III, amongst others, into engagement with a wide range of afrofuturist cultural production of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”
“Black Apocalypse excels in its synthesis of cultural production. Nyong’o’s examination of queer and trans-Black aesthetics demonstrates a keen eye for how marginalized communities rework apocalyptic narratives into sites of resilience.”
“Black Apocalypse puts less emphasis on Afropessimism’s conclusions than its dynamic, fluid force, in effect reminding us that what is at stake when talking about Black performance is not what Blackness is and is not, but rather what Blackness does and can do.”
Overview
Introduction
1. The Virus Is the Alien
2. The Changing Same
3. A Reenchanted Cosmos?
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography