Reading Black Resistance through Afrofuturism: Notes on post-Apocalyptic Blackness and Black Rebel Cyborgs in Canada

Abstract

Taking seriously the temporal aspects of Public Enemy's assertion that since the advent of slavery, “Armageddon been-in-effect” for the African diaspora, this paper examines Canada's black radical tradition through Afrofuturist methodologies that disrupt the linear progress narratives of modernity. As the project of modernity positions black life as outside of humanity, the black condition can be conceived of as cyborg: figured at once as machine, fungible commodity and monster. Yet despite the foundational, apocalyptic violence exerted upon the black Atlantic, subversion and resistance have also defined the black experience, embodied by those who refused, often at great risk, to fight against incorporation into the violent structures of the New World, working instead toward new ways of black becoming. These individuals have been described by Joy James and João Costa Vargas as “black rebel cyborgs.” Taking up Kodwo Eshun's elaboration of “chronopolitics,” in which interventions in our pasts can help to rewrite new futures, this article examines flashpoints of black futurities elaborated by the history of black rebel cyborgs in Canada. This article does not undertake a comprehensive historical narrative, but seeks instead to explore subversive moments in the black rebel cyborg history of Canada, turning to the “runaway slave” and freedom seeker Marie-Josephe Angélique, accused of burning down Montreal's Old Port in 1734; the resistance of black vigilance committees against slave catchers at the border in Chatham, Ontario, in 1858; and Haitian taxi drivers who organized against racism in 1980s Montreal. These flashpoints are explored alongside the Afrofuturist science fiction and speculative myths created by Drexciya, Kaie Kellough and others, with an emphasis toward infiltrating the past and the present with new black futurities.