Giving Postblackness the Silent Treatment

Janelle Monáe has demonstrated herself to be a lot of things. The talented actress, queer icon, and social activist has also brought Afrofuturism to popular music by way of android alter ego Cindi Mayweather, who Monáe has suggested represents societal fear and resonance with otherness. Her single from The Electric Lady, “Q.U.E.E.N.” (2013), with Erykah Badu, bears an acronym for structurally marginalized communities: “queer,” “untouchables,” “emigrants,” “excommunicated,” “negroid”—all “others” represented by the android trope. The song’s video begins with an announcer on a screen at the Living Museum (where black¹ figures are frozen in active poses) suggesting, “It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel” (Monáe 2013). Sitting at a desk at the center of these rebels is Monáe, who reanimates along with the rest of the exhibited bodies as she starts singing. As time travelers, they are also illegible as social beings within normative...