BTW, I don't think the villains win in the end. Nothing last forever. Certainly White power & Western domination will have a shorter shelf life than ancient Rome, let alone the storied ancient cultures that lasted thousands or even tens of thousands (see: Australia) of years.
Some of us are just wondering how much of humanity Western civ takes out during its decline and fall. One would hope for a bloodless changing of the guard, but every cell of our body, and every bit of DNA within some of us, doesn't leave us hopeful.
In my worst moments, I am sure that's what Mars colonization is all about: not Roddenberry's naively optimistic Star Trek vision, but a colony of last resort for the ultrarich if they destroy Earth's biosphere.
In fact, they're quite open about it. But I doubt they'll win.
First, Mars is completely unsuited for human biology. The first few generations of any colony would absolutely be dependent upon resources from Earth. If the Earth is irradiated, or otherwise impossible to live on, then no, they can't retreat to Mars.
Second, space is really, really big. I'm an English major, but I'm very good at math, and I read lots of Douglas Adams.
And finally, if your plan is to extract all of Earth's resources and exploit the rest of humanity for fun and profit before retreating to Mars or beyond, you're planning for a posthuman future. Mars environment is going to change you, and your grandchildren will be Martians...
Which would be fine, but just as the United States is the way it is because of who settled it, Mars will reflect its colonists.
This goes beyond even comic book villain levels of evil. Nah. What I think is going on is levels upon levels of unsustainable, unmitigated, White supremacist levels of stupid that are difficult to fathom.
The Mars stuff reminds me of what I've read about the slaveocracy's plans to colonize Latin America, to expand slavery there. They were defeated, but at great cost to the country, and their ideologies were allowed to seed & take root in future generations. purdue.edu/uns/x/2009a/09…
This stuff is all tied together. Always has been. These latest horrors are but the latest chapter in a centuries-long story.
The two research projects of my early career are #TheDarkFantastic & #ReadingRacialHistory. Both have blended into an odd spacetime continuum in my mind as I read, research, learn -- past is present is future.
(It's weird. At times, I can almost *sense* time for what it is.)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Coffee & proofreading! Copyedits for #TheDarkFantastic are due in 48 hours.
Press suggested "Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games" as a subtitle. Why not "from Harry Potter to Black Panther?"
Because I'm writing another book about the Black fantastic.
One of the things my mentors told me is that it's one thing to write a lot of books. Quite another to write a book people wanna read.
The final version of #TheDarkFantastic was approved back in March. I'm not a supergenius like some of you -- my writing & thinking takes time.
I wanted Black Panther to land, have its impact, and read its aftermath & re-evaluation. I wanted to read what my colleagues in comics studies had to say about it.
I also wanted to watch the Year of YA Black Girl Fantasy, to see how audiences & critics reacted.
This. (That's why I'm not holding my breath for the "blue wave," which is assuredly a myth. Around 50% won't give up their pedestal. Never have, never will.)
Here's a truth that's as American as apple pie: You're going to have a hard time convincing ~50% of WW to give up their promixity to the most powerful group in the nation.
The half that are already voting blue aren't economically or socially dependent upon conservative WM.
Every single gain in this country was hard won. Few of those gains were made by pleading with that 50%. In fact, they're the ones who transmit White supremacist ideology to each successive generation.
Also, for those talking about Black mythology "beyond" or "outside of" slavery & Jim Crow -- there is no beyond, or outside of. Those experiences were the crucible. Our myths and folklore were created back then, because our ancestors were fully human, and humans create culture.
Why is it so difficult for us to look at our enslaved ancestors fully in the face & see them as not only completely human, but extraordinary?
Why do we reduce their lives to mere survival? Flight? Suffering?
What about their dreams? Hopes? Stories? Imagination?
If we don't understand them and their lives better, who will?
I'm not sure if Octavia Butler was Black American or if her folks were from the Caribbean, but KINDRED is sort of Shakespeare for anyone wanting to build a Black North American fantastic world. She dealt with the problem of slavery way back in the 70s.
Plenty of challenges for building a North American Black fantastic: 1) Slavery, of course. How can you build SFF while incorporating that? 2) Also, it's not North America after all. This place is Turtle Island & belongs to 100s of Native nations -- have to take that into account.
3) What do you do about language? Naming people and places? Naming magical phenomena? Sounds cooler when it's not just plain old English. 4) What about religion? Many (not all) Black US folk are Christian & Muslim, and much of our history & folklore -- & myth -- involves faith.
Honestly, this is why I spent time in #TheDarkFantastic examining the construction of race in the Western speculative imagination, and left Afrofuturism -- which I do value as a Black American, and a Diasporan -- alone.
There's been a lot of heat for (a few) African immigrants to the US for critiquing Black Panther, but I think that it's important for us to read what continental Africans have to say about it.
(And we have to listen to their refusal to be labeled with our constructs, too.)
Thread. (Those of us who came of age in the 1990s had better language & definitions, but the culture was the same as described in the 1980s. Assault was viewed as your own fault. The Internet -- and especially the social Web -- changed everything.)
(Trigger and content warnings, pls mute) The vast majority of women who came of age before 1990 did not have adequate terminology or definitions for sexual violence. *My cohort was the first to have them, but there were violent sanctions & even social death for women who dared.*
We came of age in the 1990s.
1990s sitcoms and the culture in general gave us the language. But you risked social death if it wasn't a stranger. You risked being retraumatized. #DesireeWashington