PLAYLIST: Utopic/Futuristic Vibes- Inspirations for Thinking Gender 2024 Theme, “Dystopian Realities, Feminist Utopias”

By Lynette Dixon, Thinking Gender Graduate Student Researcher

I arrived at the Thinking Gender 2024 conference theme “Dystopian Realities, Feminist Utopias” through a myriad of visual, sonic, theoretical, and literary inspirations. As I was rereading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower this summer, I was struck by how much Butler’s dystopic projection of the 2020s reflects what is happening today. The environment, society, our political systems, and our bodies are literally crumbling under the weight of capitalism, anti-Black racism, and colonialism.

Parable of the Sower follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman with a unique condition called “hyperempathy,” which allows her to feel the physical and emotional pain of others. Therefore, in a world set after the collapse of society, Olamina must physically bear the weight of the violence, fear, pain, despair, and desperation her community feels. Olamina embarks on a journey to find refuge from the harsh realities of this apocalyptic world and establish a new community. Along the way, Olamina develops a new belief system called “Earthseed,” which emphasizes change and transformation as fundamental principles. Earthseed’s principles guide Olamina and her followers as they seek to rebuild a new world for themselves.

Though Butler’s outlook for the future is seemingly bleak, the novel is also filled with the power of transformation. Butler’s emphasis on change and hope made clear for me the ways in which marginalized communities engage in worldmaking practices amidst world shattering violence. Reading Butler with queer theorist José Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, the utopic impulse in Parable of the Sower demonstrates Muñoz’s argument that performing utopias is an ethical imperative in a dystopic world. Butler and Muñoz highlight how marginalized communities constantly pair critiques of the power dynamics that contribute to our dystopia with worldmaking, utopic practices. The theme was born from an effort to pay homage to the communities, cultures, and practices that dare to imagine alternatives to hegemonic structures.

Sonically, the theme is indebted to Afrofuturist aesthetics in hip-hop music and culture. Afrofuturism and hip-hop culture are built on the systemic critique and utopic imagination that is at the root of this theme. Afrofuturism is an artistic and cultural movement that combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, and African and African-American culture to envision a future in which Black people are at the center and, more often than not, liberated from structures of oppression. Afrofuturism also challenges and reimagines traditional historical narratives, especially those that have often marginalized or overlooked Black folks’ contributions and experiences. It allows us to explore untold stories, revise history, and empower Black communities. Lastly, by placing Black characters and cultures in futuristic or fantastical settings, the aesthetic provides a platform to examine and critique racial disparities, social injustice, and discrimination. It can be a means of envisioning a world in which race and anti-Blackness are reexamined or eliminated.

In the realm of hip-hop music, Afrofuturism has had a significant influence on artists who use futuristic and otherworldly themes in their lyrics, visuals, and sounds. Funk music, one of hip-hops predecessors, saw pioneering acts like Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic incorporate Afrofuturist elements into their music and performance. Contemporary artists like OutKast and Janelle Monáe have also embraced Afrofuturism, infusing their work with futuristic narratives, space-age aesthetics and narratives including those about aliens and cyborgs, and themes about technology’s promises and/or potential dangers.

Building on these influences, the first manifestation of the theme was a syllabus for a summer course in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA. The course was for the department’s core class entitled “Power.” We started the course by reading W.E.B Dubois’ “The Comet” (1920) a short story that imagines race relations at the end of the world. This story is cited as one of the first Afrofuturist texts. The story follows a Black man and a white woman who are the only two people left in New York City after a comet hits, destroys the city, and kills everyone. Race (both Blackness and Whiteness) is rendered irrelevant when the protagonists think the social and political structures that would enforce it are destroyed. However, when the woman’s fiancé (who lived outside of the city) comes looking for her after hearing the news of the cataclysmic crash, they realize the crash only affected NYC and racial divisions still stand. The story demonstrates DuBois’ critique of race and his imagination of its abolition. From there, we read academic theories about power and analyzed the critiques artists made in Afrofuturist and Indigenous futurist works.

During the session, I started to compile a playlist/utopic soundscape. I played some of the songs at the beginning of class to open the space and set a vibe. On the last day of class, I asked the students to imagine utopia and create a mood board. My offering during that activity was a utopic soundscape. I asked the students to share songs they thought could contribute and we made a collaborative playlist. I’ve linked the playlist here for you to hear the sonic impulses for the theme.

In the playlist you will hear Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic, the forefathers of the Afrofuturistic aesthetics in hip-hop. There are also contemporary hip-hop artists including Monáe and Elliott, as well as neo-soul and R&B artists including Jill Scott and Lauren Hill. There are also electronic dance tracks from the queer of color drag and ballroom scene meant to highlight the utopic practices these communities have pioneered. In the playlist, the songs represent definitions of future and utopia that are extremely broad. Some talk about the quotidian pleasure of life (as you’ll hear in Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” or Scott’s “Long Walk,”). They might have explicitly futuristic sounds and themes, or they might talk about better days or hopes for the future, describe love, joy, and encouragement. Some are just feel-good bops that may remind you of a carefree summer day. The main goal of this soundscape is to discover sonic routes to utopia and to have a soundtrack that can help transport us as we find our way there.

Here are some other visual and performative inspirations for the theme for you to enjoy:

• Dr. Fahamu Pecou is an American contemporary visual artist and scholar known for his multidisciplinary work that explores themes of Black identity, masculinity, and popular culture. Pecou holds a PhD from Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts and has also completed studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His art blends elements of painting, performance, and hip-hop culture, often challenging stereotypes and engaging with issues of race and representation. His work is featured in galleries around the world including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. His series entitled “Imagining New Worlds” is one of the inspirations of this theme. Utilizing African cosmologies and deities, Pecou reimagines the covers for the Black magazine Negro Digest (later Black World) which was in print from 1942–1951 and again from 1961–1976. The magazine was created to publish positive stories about African-Americans.
• Lina Iris Viktor is a contemporary British-Liberian artist known for her striking and intricate artwork that explore themes of Afrofuturism, gender, race, and cultural histories. Viktor’s work often incorporates a unique, mixed-media visual language characterized by her use of 24-karat gold, symbolism, and geometric patterns. She has been featured in galleries globally for her work, which is a combination of painting, sculpture, and performance. Her series, In the Black Fantastic, serves as another visual inspiration for the theme. The series is about remapping Blackness. Viktor is interested in rethinking African cartographies which are shaped by colonialism. She critiques the false divisions and fraught communities that the borders drawn by European colonizers during the Berlin Conference (1884) created in Africa. Part of her remapping project includes astrology, and she utilizes constellations to extend and remap the borders of Blackness into space.
• Performance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: This performance honors the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. Indigenous women are victims of violence and exploitation at a rate more than six times that of the national average in Canada. More than simply memorializing the women and girls, the performance utilizes holograms and performance to project the women into the performance space, challenging violence of a colonial temporality that would relegate them to the past or render them invisible.
• Dr. Beverly Singer is a filmmaker and professor in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. She is a part of the Tewa and Diné nations. Her short film, Blank Stare at the Movie “Indian” (2015), exposes the violence of representations in popular culture that trivialize the genocide and dispossession of Indigenous nations. The film begins with a message which replicates the scroll in Star Trek’s introduction. As a result, she forces this popular science fiction franchise (which often appropriated Indigenous aesthetics) to confront its citation of violent legacies of conquest, dispossession, and colonialism.

Register now for Thinking Gender 2024 on March 1, 2024.

Lynette Dixon (she/her/hers) earned a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality from Emory University and a Master of Arts in African American and African Students from The Ohio State University. As a doctoral student at UCLA, her research utilizes Black feminist thought, performance theory, and hip-hop studies to explore the techniques of embodiment Black women in popular culture employ to navigate, contest, and innovate performances of gender and sexuality.