Universal People: Audiovisual Experiments in Black Science Fiction, 1980-1986

This dissertation reimagines the paradoxical experiences of race in the early 1980s through the vantage point of an influential constellation of artists who experimented with science fiction themes, cutting-edge electronic instruments and digital imagery. My work identifies nuanced, often unexpected connections between expressions of interstellar fantasy and the lived conditions of race. At this historical juncture, Black communities across America were faced with an array of contradictory forces as systematic retreats by civic governments, economic disinvestment, and violent repression unfolded in sync with a growing celebration of Black cultural productions by mainstream America. I argue artists such as hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, jazz great Herbie Hancock, and pop star Michael Jackson mobilized otherworldly, futuristic premises to create temporary spaces of safety, escape and pleasure within that confluence of racial oppression. Further, images and sounds of the galactic, the machinic and the cyborg provided galvanizing metaphorical vehicles to articulate concerns about the tensions and dire stakes that defined the contemporary conditions of possibility for Black life. By listening and viewing for key theories of “ensemble” and “synthesis,” I show how these artists broadcast substantive arguments toward new possibilities for Black identities, racial liberation, and a just, multicultural way of life. These statements were intertwined with broader cultural anxieties about racial Blackness, simultaneously registering the spiraling potential of those visionary projects as the twentieth century drew to a close. My investigation applies an interdisciplinary methodology that draws on media studies, social history and Black radical theory to analyze interviews, archival documents, vinyl records, artist notebooks, music videos, original artworks, costumes, and sociological theory and journalism of the time