“You F*cked the World Up Now, We’ll F*ck It All Back Down”: Soteriological Visions of Black Queer Thriving in Janelle Monáe’s “Dirty Computer”

In 2018, Janelle Monáe released the album and film “Dirty Computer” to critical acclaim. The work features themes of gender, sexuality, sex, racism, conformity, totalitarianism, technology, and brutality in an Afrofuturist setting. This paper analyzes both the album and the film through a womanist theological lens, drawing on the works of womanist and black feminist scholars and theologians. By interpreting the soteriological implications and religious imagery of “Dirty Computer,” this paper demonstrates how the work provides a vision of salvation relevant to the experiences and imaginations of queer black women. Continuing the tradition of Afrofuturism as a tool for communicating theology, Monáe promises her audience a model of thriving achievable through relationship and self-actualization, even in the most apocalyptic of circumstances, through her story of queer androids and a memory-erasing police state.