Alternative futurities in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti: the complete trilogy and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust

Abstract

This thesis explores alternative Black futurities in Nnedi Okorafor’s Africanfuturistic/Afrofuturistic science fiction trilogy Binti: The Complete Trilogy (2015-2019) and in Julie Dash’s independent movie Daughters of the Dust (1992), with a focus on alternative images of Black womanhood and the Himba and the Gullah cultures. It discusses the radical futures that the Gullah and the Himba women choose for themselves where the Himba and the Gullah cultures play major roles. I argue that Okorafor and Dash deliberately position the Himba and the Gullah cultures in their futures through the cultural practices of Black women. In these multiple futurities, the Himba and the Gullah women exist in multiple ways (scholar, culture bearer), embody radical futurities (multispecies communion, rebirth, queer), all the while carrying and continuing the Himba and the Gullah cultures into the future. The Himba and Gullah cultural elements and practices like the otjize and remembering the ancestors act as sustaining forces for the Himba and the Gullah women. These cultural practices and elements exist in the past, present, and future simultaneously, transcending temporal boundaries. In this thesis, my motive is to look at how Okorafor and Dash explore the different ways in which Black women and Black culture can exist in the future, without being bound or defined by colonial or racist stereotypes. By exploring two different projects (science fiction and independent film) by Okorafor and Dash, I attempt to discover how these Black artists articulate the relationship between reimagination (of the future), rebuilding (Black womanhood), and representation (of Black culture) through different mediums in order to alter the way Black bodies and Black futures are represented.