Abstract

The black arts have been fundamental in the reconstruction of cultures that were fragmented by the middle passage, a reference to the transportation of slaves from Africa across the Atlantic. I trace several examples of the black arts, across a diversity of genres and mediums, spanning from the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade to the present day, in an attempt to illustrate how the arts have functioned to reconstruct cultural identities. All of the cultural examples I consider are linked by the fact that they covertly function as codified forms of communication, comprehensible only to the African diaspora. My theory seeks to expand the term Afro-futurism: a twentieth-century utopian, cultural, and scientific movement which sought to harness the technological developments of modernity in order advance the position of black populations in the future. The cultural examples I explore relate to Afro-futurism through their utopian functions, alongside this, they all, in some way, act to deconstruct the racist mythology that has perpetuated the suppression of black populations by white society. The idea of the myth and mythology became fundamental to the philosophy of Afro-futurist figure, and black musician Sun Ra, whose work embodied all of the threads of thought I consider, making him central in elucidating my thesis.