The Mythsciences, Chronopolitics and Conceptechnics of Afrofuturism
Other Planes of Tere: the MythSciences, chronopolitics and conceptechnics of Afrofuturism tobias c. van Veen Communication Studies and Philosophy McGill University, Montréal March 2014 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfllment of the requirements of the degree of Ad Personam Doctor of Philosophy. © tobias c. van Veen 2014 Other Planes of Tere. Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Preface vi Chapter 00. I Am Not A Human Being... 01 Chapter 01. Rewind the Records: 43 Afrofuturism In & Out of the Academy Chapter 02. Vessels of Transfer: 96 Allegories of Afrofuturism in Jeff Mills and Janelle Monáe Chapter 03. In Advance of the Landing 146 Chapter 04. We Have Never Been Human 183 Chapter 05. God-breathing Machines: 247 Te White Mythologies of Consciousness Chapter 06. Calling Planet Earth 322 Chapter 07. Inconclusive: Cosmospolitanism 385 Bibliography 399 Discography and Filmography 417 ii Abstract “Other Planes of Tere: the Mythsciences, chronopolitics and conceptechnics of Afrofuturism” explores the becomings, temporalities, and epistemic systems of Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism — a term more complex than it frst appears — delineates a counter-tradition of Afrodiasporic media production, thought, and performance that transforms science fctional practices and themes to envision alternate identities, timelines, and counter-realities. Such envisioning operations create startling, creative, and uncanny effects — ofen, by imaginatively challenging whitewashed futures and colonialist histories with Africentric and futurist revisionings, so as to alter the discriminatory coordinates of the present — while crucially offering ways to subversively transform Afrodiasporic subjectivities denied privileged access to the “human race”. Afrofuturism, I contend, postulates the conceptual thoughtware of its own production: its MythScience, chronopolitics, and conceptechnics.
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