This talk aims to introduce its listeners to the intersections of speculative philosophy and materialist politics. What can be understood by adding the speculative dimension to our understanding of the problems facing our current and future selves? How can Afrofuturism offer us both insight and release from the current political moment and its constraints? Much of the dominant or hegemonic imaginings of the future-as-now seem to be plagued either with visions of the apocalyptic – in the form of climate disaster and impending economic and political collapse –or in an equally terrifying alternative of the despotic ‘techno-utopias’ to come. While the present moment remains engulfed in flames and of course, unrecovered from historical brutalities and traumas, we march onward. How might we discern alternate trajectories/ forms of resistance? In attempting to bring this conversation to a specific locality [the city] we will grapple with the material concerns of time and space through the speculative work of Afrofuturists, and particularly their use of alienation as an anchoring concept.
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Lina Nasr El Hag Ali is a researcher and PhD Candidate in the department of Politics, at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her work connects topics like the politics of technology, race and imagination to labour organizing and localism under capitalism.
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"Confronting Alienation in the Neoliberal City: Lessons from Afrofuturist Thought" +