Imagined Oceans

Over the past twenty years, Black Atlantic Afrofuturism has been the dominant theoretical frame for thinking about the significance of Drexciya’s aquatically themed techno music and mythology. Yet there have been few analyses of Drexciya from the perspective of ecology, of the ocean as a marine environment. Through a semiotic analysis of Drexciya’s 1993 EP Bubble Metropolis, this paper moves the discussion of Drexciya in the direction of ecocriticism and blue cultural studies, or more broadly, the blue humanities, in order to interpret the stories it tells about an imagined ocean. What do these stories mean? Why are these stories important now? Through the production and circulation of oceanic narratives that encourage listeners to imagine, wonder about, and groove to the ocean, Drexciya’s music and mythology can be understood as a form of “pre-emptive activism,” which designates indirect activist modes that inspire people to care about places, such as an ocean, that they take for granted or ignore. By imagining oceans full of sound, Drexciya fostered a tacit form of marine environmentalism in the 1990s. With oceanic ecosystems on the edge of collapse as a result of the climate emergency, all forms of marine activism, from the direct to the indirect, have gained a new sense of urgency. We need to listen to Drexciya now more than ever.