Wreading Wednesday

I finally got around to reading a complete book again this weekend. It was so gratifying and invariably led my to find new things to read and new ways of thinking. This past week, I started to dip my toes back into my interest in pseudoarchaeology by exploring the relationship between Afrofuturism and Black religion. I read Roger A. Snead’s The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought(2021). What I want to do here is riff on some of Snead’s ideas as much as review the book.

Before I do that, I should offer a micro review. The book is nice with chapters dedicated not only to contemporary Afrofuturism — as embodied in the Black Panther films and “Deep Space Nine” — as well as historic example drawn from the Nation of Islam and Sun Ra. At times, the links to Black religious thought seem less obviously drawn than I would have appreciated (as a relatively novice to the field). The connections between Nation of Islam, Black religion, and Afrofuturism is rather more straight forward than Deep Space Nine or Black Panther. At the same time, I really love Snead’s more expansive view of what constitutes religious thinking. It reminds me of a student who once quipped that the Harry Potter novels provided her generation with its moral compass. In other words, there’s no reason to assume religion only happens at church (or mosque!).

Anchoring Afrofuturism in Black religious thought creates a connection to the broader Black experience and helps explain the frequent associations between Afrofuturism and Afrocentrism (as well as the Nnedi Okorafor’s emergent concept of Africanfuturism). Or as Bob Marley famous observed “in this great future, you can’t forget your past,” almost certainly evoking his Rastafarian roots as much as his skepticism toward the ambitious promises of a future minded society. 

More significantly for those of us invested in the roots of pseudoarchaeological tradition, the connection between Afrofuturism and Black religious thought parallels the relationship between Afrocentrism — and other forms of Black historical thinking — and Black religious thought. In fact, the intersection of these three elements of Black culture — Afrofuturism, Afrocentrism, and religious thinking — makes them nearly inseparable from one another.

It is notable, of course, that is not necessarily distinct to Black thought. That believers in ancient and modern aliens and distinct — and often diffusionist — historical narratives also rely upon various forms of religious thought. After all, Erich von Daniken’s famous work Chariots of the Gods relies upon a distinctly literal reading of Hebrew Scriptures that parallels those that occur within certain Christian faith traditions.  

Black pseudoarchaeological traditions, then, tend to be embedded in existing ways of understanding the past (e.g. Afrocentrism) as well as distinctive ways of understanding the future (Afrofuturism) that both rely heavily on Black religion. As a result, films like Black Panther, the music of Sun Ra (or George Clinton, for that matter), novels such as Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood (1903) (or even Ishmael Reeds, Mumbo Jumbo [1972] or Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses: Man of the Mountain [1939]) contribute to the preconditions which allow for pseudoarchaeological discourses in the popular sphere. These works of fiction hey no only reinforce (or even anticipate) pseudoarchaeological pasts, but also draw on deep reservoirs of Black religious thinking and experience.

The challenge facing archaeologists who seek to push back against recent, high profile uses of pseudoarchaeological ideas is how to separate their deployment in contemporary narratives with their expansive historical roots. Just as Black historical thinking informs Afrofuturism, it also offers an alternative context for pseudoarchaeology and situates pseudoarchaeological assertions — whether it’s ancient aliens or arguments for diffusionism —  as parts of diverse narratives, emergent identities, faith communities, and prospective futures.