Possibilities Otherwise: Studies in Black Asynchrony from an Afrofuturist Standpoint

Regis A. Saxton

Advisor: Amy Best, Amaka Okechukwu, Department of Sociology

Committee Members: Blake Silver, Nancy Hanrahan

Online Location, Zoom: https://to.gmu.edu/SaxtonDefense
July 24, 2025, 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM

Abstract:

In the United States, the prevalence of antiblack racism continues to shape epistemologies warranting both future possibilities and the relationship between being and social reality. This situation produces a kind of temporal inequality with no definable limits in time, where Black experience and the realization of freedom are continually asynchronous. I argue that thinking with and through this asynchrony generates opportunities to break through those epistemic walls and imagine possibilities otherwise, storylines toward new futures. This dissertation is a work of theory to unpack this asynchronous way of thought through developing an Afrofuturist standpoint across three interconnected essays that 1) interrogate racial progress narratives as colonial projects of enforced synchronization through ontological and epistemic discipline; 2) analyze the cultural texts of racial justice organizations as worldmaking projects refusing state control; and 3) create Afrofuturist text to reflect upon what it means to educate and theorize outside the epistemic walls of the university. I use Afrofuturism as a way of thinking that intervenes in how futures are imagined and produced; the essays presented here think through the limits and possibilities of its inclusion in sociology.

Please join us on Zoom: https://to.gmu.edu/SaxtonDefense