#BlackLivesMatter:

An Afrofuturist and Afropessimist Reading of “The Deep” and The Deep

Abstract

Through a variety of narrative discourses and forms, Afrofuturism has frequently dissected concrete and figurative traverses that intersect and engage in interaction with one another across the Black Atlantic and beyond. It has redefined, extended, and dislocated white supremacist narratives about time, culture, history, violence, and racism, taking an interesting stance on the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, after the movement Black Lives Matter was born following George Zimmerman's acquittal in Trayvon Martin's shooting murder in 2012. On the same note, Afropessimism is an outlook that focuses on the infinite consequences that the black body confronts as a nonexistent slave, a space and often as a defenseless being prone to ceaseless violence. An exact antithesis of humanity, Afropessimism proclaims that the white dominant society simultaneously forgets and exploits the black and the anti-dictatorial apparatus and discourses. Being the case, even psychological procedures cannot alleviate the sufferings of those nonbeings who exist beyond the boundaries. This article undertakes an Afrofuturist and Afro-pessimistic reading of an American experimental hip-hop band clipping.’s (stylized as clipping.) song “The Deep” (2017) and Rivers Solomon’s novella The Deep (2019) to examine how the narratives of trauma and collective memory work to create a futuristic nexus of emancipation, liberation, and technology. Based on the mythology of Detroit electronic band Drexciya, clipping.’s song "The Deep", a multilayered and evocative sci-fi tale, deals with the underwater descendants of pregnant African women who were cast off slave ships. Based on the song, Solomon has tweaked the outline and turned it into a literary work of the same name, The Deep, which will be examined as a text to further inspect the power relationship. The aim of the article is two-fold. Firstly, underpinning Afrofuturism and Afropessimism lenses, it seeks to explore the texts to portray embedded collective trauma and memory to redefine, re-explain, and reimagine the archived history/ies. Secondly, the article will connect the text to study how every black lives matter.