Both of your pieces deal with how the future can be conceptualized as different from the present – not just separated as that-which-is-yet-to-come but as radically different. You both focus on this fact that it should be unexpected – words such as monstrous, outside typology, the unknown, uncertainty, accident and interruption are commonly used to describe the future that is different from today and different from the management-type thinking of best course of action for the future.

Lars’ piece deals primarily with how the future arrives, so I’ll start with his. He argues that the future is an unexpected change in the unfolding of the present time – expressed as when one chunk of duration is replaced by another. As I understand that, it is a radical change (the only “real” future for both of you) if it is a change that could not – even with “perfect knowledge” - be predicted or expected. As far as I can tell, this ties in with Mark Matt’s interest in a critical vocabulary for the unknown – Lyotard’s paralogy.

Because of this tension of the knowledge to describe the future as it arrives (replaces and unfolds), the future becomes a site of struggle and ideology, according to Mark Matt. The one who can stake out the territory of the future and determines (within reason) that the changes were expected, is in a position of hegemonic ideology (which, in Lars’ point of view would be a hegemonic ontology, right?), and so can naturalize the future and so makes alternatives unthinkable (alternate ontologies, for Lars). Hegemonic ideology would prefer to keep developments within the unfolding present, thus never becoming unpredictable.

An unpredictable future world would thus prove monstrous, unthinkable from the hegemonic point of view. So, the future is folded into the present as the best course of action, thereby naturalizing technological (and other) developments. Challenging this naturalized future and predictable developments must be done by engaging critically with the moments of ontological disruptions, and to do this we need a new vocabulary based on a different discourse which does not depend upon “perfect knowledge”. Instead, it must be an approach to the unknown and attempt to perform as the Other.

The way I see it, the best instances of science fiction (sf) does exactly that; it is culture’s and society’s “performing Other” in the way it attempts to articulate a sense of difference or change from the current historical moment. Sf is almost perfect for Lyotard’s strategy of paralogy because sf has so many empty signifiers – words that are either invented or taken out of context and given a new meaning. Sf is therefore useful in discussions of the future not because it can predict the future, but because its words – its fictional discourse – provides a vocabulary for talking about future change. Sf is about change in whatever form it will take, and sf is willing to speak of these changes from a position outside of perfect knowledge. The words, ideas and concepts of sf can thus be used to de-naturalize discussions of the future that would otherwise take place within a hegemonic ideology/ontology – as in the case of Haraway’s cyborg essay.

“You don’t exist in this society”: Sun Ra’s Space is the Place

I’m not real, I’m just like you. You don’t exist in this society. If you did you your people wouldn’t be seeking equal rights. You’re not real, if you were you’d have some status among the nations of the world. So we are both myths. I do not come to you as a reality, I come to you as the myth because that is what black people are: myths. I came from a dream that the black man dreamed long ago. I’m actually a presence sent to you by your ancestors. I’m going to be here until I pick out some of you to take back with me. (Sun Ra, Space is the Place)

The above quotation is spoken by Sun Ra in response to a challenge by some young black people, who ask if he is “for real” or not. Sun Ra was the stage name and persona of Herman Poole Blount, a jazz musician who created a rich tapestry by drawing from free jazz, Egyptian mythology, B-movie science fiction and much more. Ra thus made a vivid personal mythology in order to articulate his concept of blackness in 60s and 70s USA. Although primarily a musician, Ra made this one film called Space is the Place which tells of Sun Ra who attempts to save Earth, but in the end concludes that it cannot be saved and so destroys it while bringing the proper blacks to another planet. This bizarre yet also straightforward story is a perfect example of afrofuturism, a black subcultural movement which uses science fiction (among other things) as means of exploring black experience and finding strategies for resistance against oppression.

In this article, I will investigate how Sun Ra narrates black identity through the use of science fiction. In presenting the black experience on Earth as inherently alien, Ra insists that there are fundamental differences between blacks and whites which cannot be easily overcome, but also shows how some blacks can be led astray and serve the white man too much. It is only by employing the ancient myths of their ancestors that the black man will ever be truly free. I will show how this black identity is narratively constructed, and how science fiction serves as a way for Ra to resist and subvert the white dominant society in which, as the earlier quote shows, the black man does not exist. Ra’s ambition is to create a cultural space for blacks, and in the film this space is located on a different planet.