Afro-Futurism and Black Environmental Knowledge

• In Event: Racial Politics of Outdoor and Environmental Education

Abstract

Purpose: Through the processes of colonization, white supremacy, and antiblackness, Black environmental knowledge has been undermined and erased (Nxumalo, 2021; Mbembe, 2015). This paper explores the alternative epistemologies and articulations of social and ecological relations in Afrofuturist works that center Black life and livingness. This paper illustrates how the insurgent environmental knowledge of Black communities - within the US and diasporically - points to Otherwise futures and worlds outside of destruction (Crawley, 2020). Through honoring these knowledges and source materials, this paper will show how Afrofuturism is a necessary framework for affirming Black life and environmental relations in educational curriculum, practice, and research.

Theoretical Frame: This paper will focus on antiblackness theory to demonstrate how Black communities are specifically impacted by dominant ideologies that shape environmentalism and education (Sharpe, 2016). As a theoretical framework, Afrofuturism will serve to disrupt these dominant ideologies and suggest alternative worlds and ways of being.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources: This paper will provide close readings and cultural analyses of Afrofuturist literary works and archival materials including works of Octavia Butler, Sheree Thomas, and Antoine Williams. These analyses will provide necessary insights for environmental curriculum and pedagogy.

Substantiated Conclusions: Afrofuturism holds possibilities for “looking back to imagine forward” that refuse antiblackness (AERA, 2023). Brought into environmental education, Afrofuturism demonstrates the relevance of speculative fiction and arts for encouraging youth creativity and imagination while undoing the epistemological erasures of colonialism. For researchers, Afrofuturism provides evidence of Black environmental knowledge and unique ways of knowing and disseminating knowledge.

Scholarly Significance: Climate change - as a result of historical and oppressive structures such as colonialism and racial capitalism - has a uniquely disproportionate and deadly impact on Black communities across the diaspora. However, existing educational scholarship reveals a significant gap in affirming scholarship devoted to Black communities and environmental and climate education. Thus, there is a need for heightened focus on the study of Black Thought and Traditions in environmental education and environmentalism broadly. This paper offers such a contribution.

Author

• Maya Revell, University of Oregon