Abstract
This chapter investigates the tangibility and productiveness of Afrofuturism as an aesthetic mode and genre invested in utopia. It argues that Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber exemplifies the potency of Afrofuturism as a tool of political intervention that merges mythology and technology to create a critical utopia that confirms the ingenuity of the Black technological imagination while resisting the institutionalization of essentialist visions of Black futurity. It argues that the significance of Afrofuturism lies in its encouragement of dynamic and flexible imaginings of Black futurity that draw upon the counter-memories of the past to reprogram the present. The chapter concludes by demonstrating the implications of Hopkinson’s fictitious, utopian interventions upon Black-led resistance movements of today’s digital age.
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Davis, C. (2019). Re-programming the Present: The Dynamism of Black Futurity in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber. In: Ventura, P., Chan, E. (eds) Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19470-3_14
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