Abstract
The resilience of people as all-around conceptual scope verges on eliciting a floating signifier, but ordinary traditions of its use also materialize. Overall, resilience as a notion demonstrates how well people, communities, and even ecosystems foreknow, acclimate, and heal—in different words, how broadly people “bounce back” from existential strain, trauma, and violence. The Deep is an artful study of this generational disturbance mixed with elements of fantasy and inventiveness. Rivers Solomon explores the natural catastrophe of the Middle Passage through the fantastic merfolk called wajinru—the fish/anthropoid hybrids born of pregnant African women who were thrown or jumped overboard on these kidnapping vessels. Through a pre-colonial and post-colonial framework, this paper, therefore, will explore the primordial liquids of Rivers Solomon’s Sci-Fi, speculative, Afrofuturist story, The Deep, about the (re)birth of Black people underwater. After having drowned at sea during the Transatlantic passage, the (re)birth of the unborn drowned children occurring in the mouths of whales offers diverse ways to examine sonic, visual, and literary culture as it relates to Blackness, pre-colonial African spirituality and myth, women, and the non-binary being.
Presenters
Ikea JohnsonAssistant Professor, English, Communications and Media, Salve Regina University, Rhode Island, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
REBIRTH, KONGO COSMOGRAM, AFRO-FUTURIST, SPIRITUALITY, PRIMORDIAL WATER, TRANSATLANTIC, AQUATIC THRESHOLD
