What is Afrofuturism?

Title

What is Afrofuturism?

Transcript

In his seminal 1994 essay, Black to the Future, Mark Dery coined the term "Afrofuturism." In interviews with a triad of African American writers, Dery posited that mainstream speculative fiction failed to include people of color in its narratives. Working from an overlooked fact that a body of speculative works created by diasporic artists has existed for years, we could call the stories that address African American cultural themes, replete with ubiquitous technology, in a science fiction setting, Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism could thus be seen as giving a voice to the people whose past had once been told for them or who historically had been excluded from the mainstream SF future.

Enhancing Dery's definition, Sociologist Alondra Nelson adds that Afrofuturism is "challenging mainstream assumptions of a raceless future...explor[ing] culturally distinct approaches to technology." While these definitions of the term are relatively recent, Afrofuturist themes have been retroactively identified in the early 20th century speculative works by African American authors W.E.B Du Bois and George R. Schuyler, and jazz composer San Ra. In short, Afrofuturism is the speculative foundation upon which the African diasporic imagination can create a future resplendent with diverse utopian landscapes, racially complex dystopias, and stories of magic realism that draw on African myths and cosmologies.

Afrofuturism also inspires activism. As a movement, Afrofuturism can galvanize communities to re-imagine urban future-spaces, like the work that is being done in North Philadelphia's Community Futures Lab. The Futures Lab is an arts-based, community-focused center founded by Rasheedah Phillips, an attorney with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. Centers like the Community Futures Lab are popping up in the cities all over the world, based upon an Afrofuturist vision that invokes technology, creativity, activism, and modern griots.