The world of speculative fiction infuses the soul with the hope of the imaginary. My dissertation examines Afrofuturistic liminal imaginary space and the ways it is experienced as life-giving spaces. The imaginary and the aesthetics it births are formularies for art forms that speak to the hope of a transformed future. Speculative fiction, although in the realm of the imaginary, is an enlivened approach to express in the present collective possibilities and hopes of the people within those very imagined futures. During the past three decades, particularly, Black speculative fiction has been increasingly at the core of the new cultural productions of literature, film, horror, comics, fantasy, and music which tell the story of African descendant people. Afrofuturism is an analytic for exploration of the liberative revisioning of Black humanity in the face of persistent practices of structural injustice. My project presents the phenomenological exploration of Black Speculative Thought (ST) as it comes alive through artistic liminal spaces of Afrofuturist comic and science fiction conventions. I argue that Black imaginary liminal spaces such as Comicon Culture offer respite, renewal, and locales for creative resistance to thwart persistent alienation and nihilism of Black humanity. Furthermore, it is within these spaces where intersubjective agency can be taken up as a countermeasure to the existential realities and dominant hegemonic existences of everyday life. I examine the process, events, and experience of Black imaginary as it comes alive as potentiated hope for alternative futures. My intention is to marshal the theoretical specters of Critical Afrofuturism, Africana Philosophy, and Womanist Thought in this task.

This study utilizes semiotic phenomenology as a method of inquiry to describe the lived experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) gamers (gaymers). I begin by discussing my issues with the current gaming literature, arguing that the gamer community is a space that privileges cis, heterosexual, and hypermasculine men while oppressing those who may not fit this mold. I discuss the shortcomings of the current literature that attempts to critically look at race and gaming, noting that race in the gaming community is still portrayed as secondary. I focus special attention to how this space allows for more inclusion than the larger gamer and LGBTQ communities while also critiquing those whom this space privileges. Through interviews of members of the local gaymer organization, the Phoenix Gaymers, I discuss ways in which the gaymer community is more inclusive and conscious of others but still follows forms of what I describe to be gaymer privilege. I focus on gaymer privilege within the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, where I argue from the phenomenological descriptions, reductions, and interpretations that there are still overt issues of sexism and transphobia as well as implicit issues of white privilege. While I describe the issues that are found within the Phoenix Gaymers, I also attempt to provide suggestions for change within the organization as well as in academic scholarship to create more awareness and inclusion for female, transgender, genderqueer, and queer people of color gaymers.