After the End of the World: Sun Ra and the Grammar of Utopia

Abstract

This essay views John Coney’s Space Is the Place (1974) and Sun Ra’s constant refer ence to ancient Egypt and outer space through the lenses of Afrosurreal expressionism and Marxist cultural studies to argue that Sun Ra’s performance advances an alternative conception of time and thus posits a true alternative to conditions in the present. First arguing that space functions as something other than seizing “space- age” ideals and that Egypt is something more than an idealized past, I suggest some limitations to resistance alone as a po liti cal program. This allows me to show Sun Ra’s proximity to the law- and- order politics of his moment and his difference from them. “Grammar” at once signals attention to Sun Ra’s combinatory aesthetic, the nature of some of his more cryptic statements, and the precision of his rhetorical fig ures in order to locate a repara tive politics of performance in Sun Ra’s performance.