Grace Gipson: Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism

Dr. Grace Gipson is an academic, writer, and lecturer in the Department of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Richmond Virginia. She studied for her PhD in African American Studies at the University of California Berkeley which was awarded in 2020.  On her website, Black Future Feminist, Gipson describes herself as a “Black Future Feminist, Professor, Pop Culture Scholar, Black Creative, Scholar Activist”.

Her research and writing explore black popular culture, the representation of race and gender within comic books, Afrofuturism, and race and new media. Virginia Commonwealth University describes Gipson’s research in pop culture as originally derived from her curiosity about the world and her interest in comic books, movies, and cartoons (VCU, n.d.) Gipson elaborates on her interests on her website, citing her collections of comic books, ticket stubs, and the stamps in her passport from “travel discoveries” (Gipson, n.d.)

The term “Afrofuturism” was introduced by academic Mark Dery in 1993, as a way of defining trends that focused on Black literature and 1980s techno culture (Washington, 2022). Today, Afrofuturism encompasses technology, science fiction, pop culture, literature, movies and visual arts, and music. Afrofuturistic aims include acknowledgment of cultural heritage and incorporating it within projections of a future society. The work is intended to inspire pride, aspiration, and optimism in the black community (Washington, 2022), but as a non-black person, I see it as also contributing to education and the breaking down of racial stereotypes and cultural differences.

In her chapter Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism, Gipson defines Afrofuturism through a definition proffered by Ytasha Womack “Afrofuturism is an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation”(Womack cited in Gipson, 2019)

Centering her chapter around Twitter and a medium that supports Afrofuturism acknowledges the “uncanny” ubiquity of Afrofuturistic tweets in the platform, and explains using research based around the platform, how Afrofuturism has become a way of rethinking black identities in the digital age. The usage of hashtags on Twitter has enabled huge groups to communicate and share an identity across the globe. Hashtags such as #Afrofuturism link to additional Afrofuturist themes and groups. The Twitter user @wearewakanda used the hashtag to raise the profile of a team of black women STEM students who had formed a robotics team.

Referring to #Afrofuturism Gipson identified a further use of the Twitter hashtag during conferences, to provide attendees with a backchannel to discuss live platform speaker’s content, thus expanding the reach of the conversations with the potential to feed back to the speaker and enhance the participatory nature of the event.

The use of hashtags and Twitter handles (which are not tied to physical identities) has encouraged Afrofuturism to develop and support a digital Black identity. An example of this in action is the Twitter handle @wearewakanda, which references the Marvel Studios fantasy movie, Black Panther. The limitations of this model for expanding the reach of #Afrofuturism are limited only by the imagination of its followers and serve to demonstrate the affordance offered by Twitter to all movements in this digital epoch.

GIPSON, G., Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism. In: DE KOSNIK, A., FELDMAN, K. #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, pp. 84-1

GIPSON, G., n.d. Black Future Feminist [Viewed 04/11/2024]. Available From: https://blackfuturefeminist.com/ 

VCU, n.d. Faculty Profile | Representation Matters | Grace Gipson, PhD [Viewed 04/11/2024]. Available From: https://chs.vcu.edu/about/annual-report/faculty-profile-grace-gipson/  

WASHINGTON, A., 2022. Afrofuturism in the Stacks [Viewed 04/11/2024]. Available From: https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/library-afrofuturism