Mediating Otherness in Cultural Discourse: The Planetary Posthuman Subject in Afrofuturist Science Fiction

Dissertation

• worked out by Arunima Kundu
• Cohort 1 (since 2022)

Mediating Otherness in Cultural Discourse: The Planetary Posthuman Subject in Afrofuturist Science Fiction

Her project explores how Afrofuturist science fiction participates in the cultural discourses on the human condition by creating examples of planetary posthuman subjects who dismantle binary oppositions based on discourses of race and otherness. It engages with the scholarship on posthumanist theory and the concept of planetarity to come to an understanding of a “planetary posthuman”. The concept of the cyborg lends a concrete form and an embodiment to a posthuman subjectivity with a planetary consciousness, creating an embodied planetary posthuman subject. The aim is to examine how an Afrofuturist planetary posthuman could contribute to public discourse and to cultural development in the United States and North America. This project takes an intermedial methodological approach to a close engagement with and analysis of Hollywood science fiction films, and contemporary science fiction literature, including novels and comic books.