Rewriting the Human: Star Trek Discovery, Hip-Hop, and Captain Michael Burnham

• In Event: Hip-Hop, Comics, and Speculative Education: (Re)Storying Equitable Education for the 23rd Century

Abstract

Objectives: What are the historical/aesthetic/pedagogic linkages between hip hop culture and comics and/or speculative fiction and what significance might this hold for educational spaces? I argue that Michael Burnham, the first Black female captain in the Star Trek television show franchise to serve as the main character, challenges the white middle-class Starfleet Starship Captain that upholds western scientific/onto-epistemological hierarchies and modes of human being valued in racist capitalist societies. Second, I argue that this character does so by exemplifying three core tenets of hip hop ethos - freestyling, flow (Benedict, et al., 2015 p.417), and “flipping something out of nothing,” (using the discarded and blending multiple elements, flipping their original uses and meanings to create something new) (Seidel, 2011 p.146). Instead of fitting within the allegorical model of the white male Starfleet Captain, Burnham flips the Star Trek franchise’s aforementioned narratively constructed exemplar mode of the human. Finally, I argue that this “flip,” mobilized by a hip-hop ethos, holds significance in educational spaces. It does so by serving as an example of a reconceptualization, not only of humanness, but the exemplar of humanity and ethics that the traditional white, male Starfleet captain was designed to represent.

Theoretical framework: Utilizing Wynterian concepts of aesthetics (Wynter, 1993), I describe how Burnham’s character subverts the “unitary system of meanings” (Wynter, 1993, p. 244) embedded within television fiction (and systems of teaching and learning) that cohere to integrate specific modes of being human that reflects only white European middle-class experiences. I use Wynter’s (1993) theorizations to explain how Burnham’s freestyling, flipping, and flow subverts Star Trek's humanism; where the pinnacle of humanity (embodied in the role of white male Starfleet captains) is achieved by utilizing the “opportunity to reach his or her full potential, either in the sciences or elsewhere.” (Kamen, 2017). According to the originator of the Star Trek franchise, Gene Roddenberry, “anything less doesn't represent real progress” (Kamen, 2017). 

Methods or modes of inquiry: I use multi-modal media analysis (Halverson, 2010) to analyze how this character serves as a specific example of how filmic texts can be analyzed as multimodal representations of the human/self that disrupts the construction of the aforementioned limiting normative models of human being (subjectivities) perpetuated in practices teaching and learning.

Data sources/evidence or materials: The first three seasons of the show, Star Trek Discovery, serves as data for this particular study. 

Significance: This paper examining how a Black female captain does not take up this somewhat pre-defined, humanistic role/aesthetic but instead flips and expands the concept of what the pinnacle of humanity represents interrogates the particular subjectivities curated in systems of teaching and learning in the United States. In this way, it facilitates vital conversations about cultural forms and models of humanity embedded within practices of teaching and learning that need to be pushed beyond what seems possible for us as educators to imagine today.

Author

• Sarah Ishmael, University of Wisconsin-Madison