Spotlight on Afro-Futurism: Of One Blood (1902-03) by Pauline Hopkins

In this section, we will examine Pauline Hopkins’ serialized (1902-1903) science fiction novel Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self through the lens of afrofuturist criticism. Of One Blood would be considered a work of proto-science fiction; indeed, some of the more mystical elements of the text are explained by reference to religious authority rather than scientific authority. Despite this fact, Of One Blood excels as a work of anthropological science fiction, especially considering how it places Ethiopia at the dawn of human civilization almost a quarter century before the discovery of Lucy the australopithecus in 1974. Written during the racial segregation of the Jim Crow age, Of One Blood estranges the notions of race in the U.S., positing a fictional world where interracial sexual relationships, historically defined as miscegenation, are a strength. To better understand this text, we will analyze it through the lens of afrofuturism, a movement in arts and criticism that informs and frames the SF imagination of the African diaspora

Afro-Futurism: Critical Discussion

Afrofuturism is, at its simplest, a movement in the arts that centers the perspective of Africans and members of the African diaspora in SF. In practice, things are much more complex. Rather than describing a coherent movement, the term has become a sort of catch-all for any speculative fiction in any form by any member of the African diaspora. In fact, some writers, such as Samuel Delany, prefer not to use the term, while others, such as Nnedi Okorafor, make finer distinctions, classifying her own work as African-futurism instead.

The rise of afrofuturism as a literary academic discourse strongly correlates to the critical advances made by Darko Suvin (see above). For a materialist like Suvin, people are determined by their material conditions. Race is a material condition. Therefore, race fundamentally shapes the ways in which people come to know the world (Suvinian cognition). Given the history of race relations in the United States, divided starkly at times and in places between Black and white, race could be said to be a more fundamentally determining category than it might be in a more pluralistic place and time. If SF estranges reality (within certain conditions set by reality) and in so doing plays a role in the real-world intellectual and physical dismantling of unfavorable conditions, then the afrofuturist tradition of SF is necessary to imagining a future path out of a racist past. We emphasize literary above because afrofuturism is a movement that encompasses all the arts. The roots of afrofuturism rest in music and are not limited to compositions—dance, fashion, and a lifestyle, afrofuturist aesthetics are found in funk, soul, and hip-hop. Consider, for example, George Clinton’s out of this world Mothership Connection (1975), Del the Funky Homosapien’s rap-opera Deltron 3030 (2000), or Janelle Monae’s album Dirty Computer (2018).

Although futurisms of all types (indigenous, queer, afro, etc.) have their roots in the cognitive estrangement common to all science fiction, the unique historical experiences of these groups of peoples provides for unique approaches to cognitive estrangement. What, then, makes the afrofuturist approach to estrangement distinct?

In one way, there is something science fictional to the experience of the entire African diaspora. As Greg Tate puts it, ““Black people live the estrangement that science fiction writers imagine.”^[1]

To put this statement another way, if a white science fiction writer imagines someone being abducted by a technologically advanced society then transported to an alien land where they must adapt to alien customs and religions to survive economic exploitation, that’s just a run-of-the-mill science fantasy. For that writer, the scenario is a game of abstract speculation. For the writer of the African diaspora, such a story is not fantasy but history. As such, afrofuturist texts often re-mythologize history itself to imagine new possible futures. A stellar example might be Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, which literalizes the metaphor of the underground railroad in afrofuturist fashion.

If you are interested in reading more about afro-futurism, we recommend Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement (2019) by Isiah Lavender, III as a starting point. Here we will discuss three concepts from that text, concepts that will provide an analytical lens through which to read Of One Blood (or any other afrofuturist text, really). Lavender identifies three concepts, each couched in a science fictional rhetoric, that organize the estrangements of afrofuturism: the networked Black consciousness generates a hope impulse that powers transhistoric feedback loops that re-mythologize the past to envision the future.

That’s a mouthful. Let’s take a second to unpack those terms. First, recognize the rhetoric of networks, impulses, and feedback loops, rhetoric common to our contemporary advanced technological age. For Lavender, these are useful metaphors for understanding not just Black science fiction but all Black literature. The networked black consciousness begins literally with Black bodies, by the current that materializes between them as they labor in the fields, to use Lavender’s example. This current manifests itself in webbed networks of people, songs, and stories. Afrofuturism taps into the network of memories and traditions contained in those stories to spark hope for a better future, not by escaping the past but by confronting it. This feedback loop has a profound effect on how we interpret the present and envision the future.

Of One Blood: Reading Closely and Annotating Passages

In this section, you will be provided with a series of passages from Of One Blood. At the end of each section, you will find questions that will test your knowledge of the concepts in the previous section by applying them interpretatively. It goes without saying that there is a subjective nature to interpretation, which is why the concepts from the previous section will serve as referent and guide. Basically, they’ll keep us on the same page, on the same line of thought.

A metaphor we find useful here is that of the lens. Imagine you have a blue piece of opaque glass and a yellow sheet of paper. If you pass that piece of glass over the paper, for the duration of that moment the paper will appear to be green. It is not green, but we have altered the viewer’s perceptions. In this metaphor, our concepts are the piece of glass. The text is the yellow piece of paper. By the end, the questions and exercises will guide you to a focused, deeper perception of the text.

The first step is understanding, so let’s cover a few questions to make sure you’ve grasped some of the basic features of the text.

Passage #1

Instruction annotations

Passage #2

Passage #3