What is Afrofuturism? An English professor explains

Original Story Published by: Julian C. Chambliss, The Conversation, www.theconversation.com
Photo Source: Malcom Ali/WireImage via Getty Images

(Above) Octavia e. Butler reads from her novel ‘Fledgeling’ in 2005

The new sci-fi musical “Neptune Frost,” set in a Rwandan village constructed with computer parts, tells the story of an intersex hacker and a coltan miner who lead an anarchist uprising against their oppressors.

The film – lauded for its “Afrofuturist vision” – is only one of the more recent works to engage in the transformative speculation of Afrofuturism, a cultural movement that pulls from elements of science fiction, magical realism, speculative fiction and African history. Undergirding this movement is a longing to create a more just world.

As I point out to my students in my course on Afrofuturism, while the term was coined 28 years ago, it can pertain to multiple kinds of work created by Black people across history. In 1994, cultural critic Mark Dery came up with “Afrofuturism” in an essay titled “Black to the Future.” Black people, he wrote, have “other stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come.”

Starting in 1998, scholars, artists and activists from various fields refined the meaning of the term.

British-Ghanaian writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun’s 1998 book “More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Future” traces the origins and influence of electronic music. He explores how jazz, dub, techno, funk and hip-hop musicians used the tools, culture and experiences of the African diaspora to create an electronic sound of the future charged by a longing for transformation.

That same year, U.S. social scientist Alondra Nelson helped organize the Afrofuturism email list for artists, scholars and everyday people to explore African visions of the world as it is, in addition to “the world to come.”