Review: The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought, by Roger A. Sneed

Abstract

Roger Sneed’s The Dreamer and the Dream interrogates the transcendence and disruption of truncated and constipated expressions of Black religious experience. Envisioning an Afrofuturistic turn in Black religious discourse, Sneed is indebted to Victor Anderson’s powerful critiques offered in Creative Exchange (2008) and Beyond Ontological Blackness (1999). Afrofuturism is responsive to the cultural ingratiation of White supremacy, but is unbound to the dictates of Whiteness as an ideological, cultural, and social frame of reference for either Black humanity or religious experience. Drawing upon the same cultural and intellectual zeitgeist guiding Black religious thought as an iconoclastic response to White religio-racial constructs, Sneed argues that Afrofuturistic religious orientations explode and reimagine Black religious meaning-making.The opening chapters discuss race in popular culture and science fiction, and spotlight pioneering thinkers who fuse Black religion and Afrofuturism. Citing the paucity of Black representation in popular science fiction, Sneed critiques the adjunct status of Blacks in shows like Star Trek, illustrating the need for greater diversity in popular science fiction. The second chapter clarifies the major thrust of his project, namely that Afrofuturism functions as another powerful space for Black religious reflection. Afrofuturism as Black religious discourse extends “beyond repeated analyses of the Black church and tradition from Black liberation and womanist theologies” (36), thereby providing a needed intervention in the scope of Black religious studies.Chapters 3 and 4 interrogate literary and film representations of Afrofuturism. Starting with writer Octavia Butler and music artist Janelle Monae, Sneed positions both as intersectional Afrofuturists who critique contemporary modes of oppression and generate new frames for identity formation. Butler and Monae both work within creative paradigms that embrace complex explorations of race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Butler’s fiction adopts a feminist vision—notably in the Parable series and especially The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents—highlighting female protagonists that challenge the restrictive constraints of heteropatriarchy (55). The Parables also highlight an enfleshed and lived religiosity (the new religion called “Earthseed”), that aspires to the creation and sustenance of Black futures that is both prophetic in its warnings to societies beset by tribalism, but also attuned to the role(s) of human beings in protecting the web-like nature of planetary life. As a “queer Afrofuturistic manifesto,” (62) the science fiction-based and queer themes of Janelle Monae’s discographies are tropes for (Black) self-discovery in the age of intelligent machines that spotlight fluid gender identity and sexual formation. Read through Audre Lorde’s notion of erotic power as a means of embracing oneself as well as the dynamic quality of human liberation, Monae’s Afrofuturism embodies a salvific quality (75), proffering revolutionary space to think through contemporary movements of Black and queer religious experience.The remaining two chapters in the second section consider representations of Afrofuturism in television and film, focusing on Star Trek and Deep Space Nine, as well as Black Panther. Sneed examines how science fiction in television explores utopianism and the flourishing of human life. On this point, Sneed highlights the Black prophetic vision(s) of its characters as central to the crafting of new religious possibilities and sacred imaginaries that propel Black bodies into new worlds. Black Panther represents another Afrofuturistic utopia, but Sneed’s focus on this score accomplishes two objectives. He illustrates how the other-worldly technology developed in Wakanda and its sophisticated Africana religious orientation critique the presumption of inferiority tethered to African culture(s). Secondly, Sneed reads the film as a reversal of heteropatriarchal models of the superhero-as-savior (98), offering a powerful critique of constructions of masculinity that advance male interests at the expense, and devaluing, of women.The final section commences with the eschatological bent of Afrofuturistic religious orientations. Sun Ra’s visionary jazz musicianship and the theology of the Nation of Islam (NOI) serve to reconfigure Black humanity outside of a spiritually void and racist world. Sun Ra’s music critiques the present order as a false history for African Americans and positions jazz as a sonic otherwise possibility that reinscribes Black personhood. Sneed’s comments on the NOI explicate its cosmology and elaborate upon the “Mother Wheel” ufology. He draws upon both as discursive and mythological tools that alter the White sanctioning of Black humanity and emphasize an apocalyptic hope in the ultimate destruction of White racism. The final chapter situates Afrofuturism as a new religious movement, allowing for the creation of diverse and intersectional Black religious identities.As a feature of the book’s appeal to broader readerships, it is interesting that Sneed is unabashed in embracing a “nerdy” gravitation toward science fiction. I believe this highlights a clear strong suit of the book, namely its interdisciplinary focus. It is at once Black religious reflection coupled with cultural criticism that deftly comments upon the interplay of race, science fiction, and popular culture. Sneed also covers new ground in that he reveals the deep modus operandi of Afrofuturistic religious thought—the effort to situate and (re)imagine Black bodies and Black sacred imaginaries along broader registers. The greatest value of Sneed’s volume, however, is his situating of Afrofuturism as a new (Black) religious movement. On this score, Sneed’s engagement with the hallmarks of Afrofuturism and its links to religious reflection offer further constructive and interpretive depth to Black religious studies by highlighting the spectrum of nonconfessional, beyond-the-Black-Church conceptualizations of Black religious experience and spirituality.