Correlation between Afrofuturism and science fiction in Space is the Place: praxis or paradox?

In this paper, I use the culture studies approach to investigate how themes such as the space age, psychedelia and the creation of a post-apocalyptic black colony in the film Space is the Place (Coney 1972), interweave with Darko Suvin's (1974) concept of cognitive estrangement and novum. I specifically study how these relate to science fiction, with the goal of subverting the stereotype of blackness as uncivilised and Luddite. I propose to critically review the general categorization of the film as Afrofuturist and argue that what is positioned in the film as a novelty and salvation is, in fact, constructed in a problematic way. As such, positioning the film just as Afrofuturist, as demonstrated, may contradict the genre’s goals. Instead, I follow David Seed’s proposal to use an interdisciplinary reading method for film analysis based on deconstructing the relation of the film within the two framings: Science fiction and Afrofuturism.