Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Speculative fiction is a broad literary genre characterized by its imaginative and speculative nature. It often presents narratives set in entirely new societies or reimagined worlds or universes, at times including fantastical or advanced technological elements. Some of its famous subgenres include science fiction, visionary fiction, and fantasy. brown’s most significant contact with the speculative fiction field is through the work of science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Butler’s grappling with key social issues and her choice to center gender and the Black experience in her stories earned her a space in the speculative fiction canon. Due to that, she is usually regarded as one of the most prominent Afrofuturist writers, a cultural, artistic, and literary movement that reimagines the potential for Black liberation.

In Emergent Strategy, speculative fiction and Butler’s influence inspired brown to envision imagination as a vital tool in the pursuit of social justice and transformative change. Butler’s narratives prompted brown to notice the profound connection between creative outlets and social justice work. In collaboration with author Walidah Imarisha, brown came up with the premise that “All organizing is science fiction” (158), recognizing the relevant role dreaming and speculating have in both fields. Just as fiction requires imagination, every social movement in its early stages needs not only practical strategies but also the ability to envision new realities. This is the very first action needed for enacting social change: to envision it as a possibility. Through the lens of speculative thinking, social justice activists can challenge the status quo and work toward a more just and equitable world by engaging in radical collective ideation.

This reclamation of imagination is an urgent task, considering how the imagined futures of marginalized groups have historically been co-opted and limited by colonization and other oppressive systems. In postcolonial literature, the academic area that examines the history, impact, endurance, and effects of colonialism, often within the realm of narrative fiction and literary critique, authors speak of the varied nature of colonial dominance. Many authors often allude to a metaphysical component, a more comprehensive and all-encompassing form of power beyond the use of military force and territorial occupation. The colonization of the mind, as it became known, concerns how colonial narratives, ideologies, and systems exert control over the collective imagination, shaping individuals’ beliefs, values, and aspirations.

Past and current unjust realities were and are, after all, part of someone’s imagination. Regarding this, brown writes, “We are in an imagination battle […] I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18). The battle brown refers to highlights the relevance of harnessing the power of imagination to combat the internalization of oppressive ideologies and biases: “How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture, at their politics and at the social production of wealth, at their relationship to nature and to other beings” (wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1994). By reclaiming imagination, Black individuals and communities can resist the colonization of the mind and disrupt the internalized beliefs and limitations imposed by oppressive structures.

Thus, engaging in speculative imagination in the individual or collective spheres is an act of resistance that allows for the creation of new narratives, possibilities, and ways of being. By first mentally envisioning a world that aligns with justice, equity, and liberation, world-building strategies can take place and inspire transformative change. Doing so becomes a means to transcend fear, dismantle hierarchies, and envision a world that works for all.