A “Reconcepted Am”: Language, Nature, and Collectivity in Sun Ra and Henry Dumas

Criticism ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-565
Author(s):  
Nathan Ragain
Keyword(s):  
Sun Ra ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Steinskog

A musical imagining of the future and an exposition of a challenge to the normative historical discourse are the subjects of Erik Steinskog’s chapter on Afrofuturism. These topics are dealt with through a discussion of “blackness” and a theoretical discourse that addresses the musical style and polemical and political stance of afrofuturist musicians such as Sun Ra and others following in his path. Steinskog suggests that afrofuturist music is a form of sonic time travel that intertwines the modalities of time represented by notions of past, present, and future, his argument being that reimaginations, reinterpretations, and revisions of a normative past are represented in the technology and music of the black future.


1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 365
Author(s):  
Eleanor W. Traylor
Keyword(s):  

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 353
Author(s):  
Clyde Taylor
Keyword(s):  

Microgroove ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 153-161
Keyword(s):  

POP ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-123
Author(s):  
Diedrich Diederichsen
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Tim Stüttgen

The film Space Is the Place (1974), directed by John Coney, stars Sun Ra who was also co-author of the script. This chapter explores Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism as shown in the film, bringing it into relation with José Muñoz’s notion of a queer future. Rather than focusing on Sun Ra’s sexuality, this chapter argues that his quareness (E. Patrick Johnson’s useful term drawn from African American vernacular) emerges in the sonic and performative aspects of his work. Sun Ra’s spaceship offers a future-oriented response to the slave ship and Middle Passage (as described by Paul Gilroy) and to the limitations of the here and now. The notion of assemblage (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari) articulates the quareness of Sun Ra’s collective improvisational practices.


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