Otherwise Futures Reimagined: Afro-Futurism as Liberation for Black Women — A Speculative Fiction

• In Event: Creative Insubordination Research: Pushing Methodological Boundaries — Performing Dissertation Research — Liberating Academic Writing

Abstract

Grounded in Black Feminist Thought, Afrofuturism, philosophy of science, and philosophy of history, the researcher strives to center Black women’s experience of dispossession, deprivation, oppression, exploitation, violence, exclusion, persecution, and invasion through technoculture and speculative fiction, encompassing a range of media and artists with a shared interest in envisioning Black futures that stem from Afrodiasporic experiences. Part of the challenges for her dissertation inquiry is to transgress traditional dissertation research paradigms to represent the emergence of Black women identities within technocultural assemblages, digital networks, software platforms, bio-technical augmentation to construct self-determined representations and alternative narratives and to invigorate Black women’s transformative visibilities and otherwise futures. The researcher engenders the disenfranchised Black women communities’ resistance to neoliberalism and privatization in education and their collective struggles for their children’s rights and access to liberative public education. Her inquiry challenges educators, teachers, administers, and policy makers to illuminate Black women’s histories and stories by shattering dehumanizing categories, defying oppressive narratives, and inventing otherwise futures for liberation and freedom. This challenge helps create equitable and just opportunities and engender social justice curricular and learning environment for all in diverse schools, communities, neighborhoods, tribes, and societies in hard times. The researcher’s scholarly work helps decolonize historical traditions of minimizing Black women and empower Black women to bolster sisterhoods and identities, which will make a difference in the lives of Black women, Black girls, and other Black people.

Author

• Khristian Cooper, Pebblebrook High School
  Presenting Author