Fighting for the Freedom of a Future Age: Afrofuturism and the Posthuman Body

Abstract This work seeks to examine the relationship between Afrofuturism, the enduring legacies of systems of oppression, and the effects of those systems on the oppressed body. This thesis is comprised of three sections, all of which analyze the effects of posthumanism on the black body. Through the lens of Afrofuturism, one can recognize that the image of the cyborg is part of a legacy of slavery, and that the relationship between technology and blackness is fraught with signified legacy (as discussed in the first and third chapters). The use of time travel creates a liminal space in which a person may either subvert oppression or reify it (as examined in the second chapter). This work asks the question: when the atrocities of the past are played out over a future landscape, how does the legacy of the atrocity change?