In 2018, something happened that shattered every truism hollywood has held dear for the
past… ever. — Black Panther, a story set in Africa with a mostly-black cast, became
the highest grossing domestic film of the year, beating even Avengers: Infinity War.
And while many people may have heard the term “Afrofuturism” before Black Panther took
the world by storm, suddenly, it solidified Afrofuturism’s entry into the mainstream.
But while Black Panther is a milestone for Afrofuturism, it certainly isn’t the sum
total of the genre. Later the same year, Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone
topped the New York Times Hardcover Best Sellers List, and Janelle Monáe, who has been dabbling
in the genre, both musically and aesthetically, for over a decade, released their 3rd album,
Dirty Computer.
But Afrofuturism doesn’t simply mean “Science fiction” plus Africa--it’s a bit more
nuanced than that. Afrofuturism addresses the cultural issues and concerns of the African
diaspora through technoculture and science fiction, which is what Black Panther does.
But you can’t just wrap a lightsaber in kente cloth and call it Afrofuturism (unless
you’re John
Boyega). Afrofuturism, like rap, reggae, jazz, blues and all the music
to come out of black experience, is about creating art out of pain, strength, loss and
successes. It is fundamentally rooted in being denied a full history and looking to the future
to correct that.
In his 1994 essay “Black to the Future,”, author and lecturer Mark Dairy asks: “Can
a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently
been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?”
And this is where Afrofuturism comes in.
(It’s Lit intro)
At the root of Afrofuturism is black speculative fiction, which uses science fiction as a way
of telling stories about black resistance, history and hope. According to sociologist
Alondra Nelson, who convened an early online forum on Afrofuturism, said: “Afrofuturism
has emerged as a term of convenience to describe analysis, criticism and cultural production
that addresses the intersections between race and technology… Part of the resilience of
black culture and black life is about imagining the impossible, imagining a better place,
a different world… Afrofuturism draws upon the feeling of alienation inherited from the
slavery of American blacks, which it sublimates. In this conception, certain elements of Afro-American
culture (such as the transcendence of spirituals) are re-imagined and transposed into a new
cosmic and legendary perspective, where the alienated becomes extraterrestrial.”
In an essay written by N. K. Jemisin from 2013 titled “How Long ‘til Black Future
Month?” (which later became the title of her 2018 short story collection), she discusses
rewatching the old Hanna-Bar-BEAR-a cartoon The Jetsons and being struck at how homogenous
the series’ depiction of an idyllic future is, with no people of color in it.
According to Jemisin: “There is nobody even slightly brown in the Jetsons’ world. Even
the family android sounds white. This is supposed to be the real world’s future, right? Albeit
in silly, humorous form. Thing is, not-white-people make up most of the world’s population,
now as well as back in the Sixties when the show was created. So what happened to all
those people, in the minds of this show’s creators? Are they down beneath the clouds,
where the Jetsons never go? Was there an apocalypse, or maybe a pogrom?”
Although the mainstreamification of Afrofuturism is relatively new, its themes have appeared
in literature for over a century. In 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt published a collection
of short stories called The Conjure Woman, which discussed themes of black resistance
and revenge against antebellum culture using traditional African American spirituality.
Beginning in 1902, Of One Blood was serially published by Pauline Hopkins, which talks
about a man who goes on an expedition to Ethiopia and discovers a hidden, technologically advanced
civilization. It’s basically Wakanda, before Wakanda.. The novel also explores the protagonist’s
own anti-blackness and ignorance towards black history. He goes to Ethiopia to find treasure,
but instead finds it in the form of his own identity.
In the 1920s, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote among the first post-apocalyptic short fiction with
black subjects called The Comet. In the story, Du Bois writes about a black man named Jim
Davis, the only man left alive after a comet hits New York City and unleashes toxic gases
that kill everyone except himself and a white woman named Julia. Jim rises as the symbol
of the savior and hero of the narrative, a new Adam in this destroyed New York.
In the book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, Ytasha L. Womack,
a leading Afrofuturist, explains that the story is one of the first to portray that
“blackness is not a mark of shame but a source of pride, establishing a space where
black culture can thrive.”
No conversation about Afrofuturism would be complete without Octavia E. Butler, widely
considered the “grand dame” of science fiction today. Starting with the release of
her first book Patternmaster in 1976, Butler went on to release a dozen science fiction
novels featuring Afrofuturist themes. While she wasn’t as appreciated in her time, renewed
interest in Afrofuturism has led to a surge of new readers of her work. Her books are
now often included in many high school and college required reading lists. That Butler
is only recently getting her due reflects how slow the mainstream was to take interest
in black fiction. But hey, we’re getting there.
Noted modern works that fall under the Afrofuturist umbrella include Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears
Death and Binti. Binti is a novella about a girl that overcomes humble beginnings and
is offered a place at Oomza University, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher
learning in the galaxy, but a great deal of the series focuses on Binti trying to reconcile
her heritage with her own natural intelligence and personal goals.
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, who was a Campbell Award nominee for Best
New Writer in 2018, explores how sustained acts of abuse and violence can shape a culture
and people. This one takes place on a generation ship that is not only heavily stratified based
on race, but also extremely restrictive of any nonconformity, especially with regard
to gender. It is, effectively, coping with the violence of colonialism in spaaaaaace.
Afrofuturist storytellers take advantage of the speculative nature of the genre by simultaneously
creating new worlds and deconstructing the racial politics of this one. One of the criticisms
lodged against dystopian fiction like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or Suzanne
Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy is that, even in the worst of futures, there is no
place for black bodies because either they were banished or just seemed to disappear.
This is why it’s important to recognize the thematic elements of Afrofuturism that
go beyond the idea that “Afrofuturism is just science fiction plus Africa.” Afrofuturism
is about reclaiming our past in order to craft our future. And that is done by infusing black
sound and stories with a forward thinking desire to see how our culture could have evolved
or could still evolve unhindered by colonial influence.
Here’s how author N. K. Jemisin put it as part of a panel in 2016: “I think one of
the most radical things that anyone in this world can do is imagine that black people
have a future.” Through Afrofuturism, black society has a future that is beyond the clouds,
just like everyone else.
One final question we should ask: is “Afrofuturism” too broad a term?
Some African authors like Okorafor reject the title of Afrofuturism because they do
not write through the perspective of Western Blackness. Okorafor is a Nigerian-American
who is deeply connected to African culture, and she explains in her TED Talk how she writes
her science fiction through that lens:
“I can best explain the difference between classic science fiction and Afrofuturism if
I used the octopus analogy. Like humans, octopuses are some of the most intelligent creatures
on earth. However, octopus intelligence evolved from a different evolutionary line, separate
from that of human beings, so the foundation is different. The same can be said about the
foundations of various forms of science fiction… In non-Western culture, the mystical coexisting
with the mundane is normal.”
Okorafor also points to the history of Afrofuturism being associated with music, especially in
the United States “with African artists as an afterthought.” In short: “I understand
the necessity of it, I understand the uses of it, but I do not consider myself an Afrofuturist.”
As we enter a post-Black Panther era, Afrofuturism is not just a cultural aesthetic, philosophy
of science, and philosophy of history, but also a money making machine. Disney, Marvel
and Ryan Coogler turned the story of the first black comic book superhero into a film that
became the twelfth highest-grossing film of all time with over $1.35 billion worldwide.
Coogler took the story and infused it with the kind of narrative that is at the heart
of Afrofuturism — the possibility that Africa and its descendants could have a powerful
present and future — and made it immensely entertaining and marketable.
It will be exciting to see Afrofuturism grow and expand as more black authors tackle the
questions, claim the aesthetic and build on its core idea: that not only do black people
across the world have a future, but it’s going to be pretty lit because we created
it for ourselves.