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Afrofuturism
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See also: Black science fiction

Afrofuturism is a literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction,
historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in

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order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise,

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interrogate, and re-examine the historical events of the past. First coined by Mark Dery in
1993, and explored in the late 1990s through conversations led by scholar Alondra

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Nelson,[1] Afrofuturism addresses themes and concerns of the African Diaspora through a

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technoculture and science fiction

lens, encompassing a range of media and artists with a

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shared interest in envisioning black futures that stem from Afrodiasporic experiences.[2]

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Seminal Afrofuturistic works include the novels of Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler; the

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canvases of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the photography of Rene Cox; and the explicitly
extraterrestrial mythoi of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Jonzun Crew, Warp 9 and Sun Ra.[3]

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1 History

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1.1 Mid-late 20th century development

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1.2 Cultural criticism in the 1990s

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1.3 21st century

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2 Themes
2.1 Women
2.2 The Grotesque

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2.3 Alienation

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3 Bibliography

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4 References
5 External links

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History

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Afrofuturism can be identified in artistic, scientific, and spiritual practices throughout the
African diaspora.
Contemporary practice retroactively identifies and documents historical
instances of Afrofuturist practice and integrates them into the canon. Examples are the Dark
Matter anthologies, which feature contemporary Black sci-fi, but also include older works by
W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chesnutt, and George S. Schuyler. Since the term was
introduced in 1994, self-identified Afrofuturist practice has become increasingly ubiquitous.

Mid-late 20th century development

[edit]

The afrofuturist approach to music was first propounded by the late Sun Ra.
Born in
Alabama, Sun Ra's music coalesced in Chicago in the mid-1950s, when he and his

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Arkestra began recording music that drew from hard bop and modal sources, but created a
new synthesis which also used afrocentric and space-themed titles to reflect Ra's linkage of
ancient African culture, specifically Egypt, and the cutting edge of the Space Age. Ra's film
Space Is the Place
shows the Arkestra in Oakland in the mid-1970s in full space regalia,

with a lot of science fiction imagery as well as other comedic and musical material.
Afrofuturist ideas were taken up in 1975 by George Clinton and his bands Parliament and
Funkadelic with his magnum opus Mothership Connection and the subsequent The Clones
of Dr. Funkenstein, P Funk Earth Tour, Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome, and
Motor Booty Affair. In the thematic underpinnings to P-Funk mythology ("pure cloned funk"),
Clinton in his alter ego Starchild spoke of "certified Afronauts, capable of funkitizing
galaxies."
William Gibson's Neuromancer describes Zion, a Rastafarian space station populated by
exiles of Earth, and dwelling of Maelcum, a Dub aficionado and one of the novel's main
characters.
Other musicians typically regarded as working in or greatly influenced by the Afrofuturist
tradition include reggae producers Lee "Scratch" Perry and Scientist, hip-hop artists Afrika
Bambaataa and Tricky, electronic musicians Larry Heard, A Guy Called Gerald, Juan
Atkins, Jeff Mills[4]and Lotti Golden & Richard Scher, electro hip hop producer/writers of
Warp 9's "Light Years Away," a sci-fi tale of ancient alien visitation, described as a
"cornerstone of early 80's beatbox afrofuturism." [5]

Cultural criticism in the 1990s

[edit]

In the early 1990s, a number of cultural critics, notably Mark Dery in his 1994 essay Black to
the Future,
began to write about the features they saw as common in African-American
science fiction, music and art. Dery dubbed this phenomenon afrofuturism. According to
cultural critic Kodwo Eshun, British journalist Mark Sinker was theorizing a form of
Afrofuturism in the pages of The Wire, a British music magazine, as early as
1992.[citation needed]
Afrofuturist ideas have further been expanded by scholars like Alondra Nelson, Greg Tate,
Tricia Rose, Kodwo Eshun, and others.[2]
In an interview, Alondra Nelson explained
Afrofuturism as a way of looking at the subject position of black people which covers
themes of alienation and aspirations for a utopic future. The idea of 'alien' or 'other' is a
theme often explored.[6]
Additionally, Nelson notes that discussions around race, access,
and technology often bolster uncritical claims about a so-called digital divide.[7]
The digital
divide overemphasizes the association of racial and economic inequality with limited access
to technology. This association then begins to construct blackness "as always oppositional
to technologically driven chronicles of progress".[7]
As a critique of the neo-critical argument
that the futures history-less identities will end burdensome stigma, Afrofuturism holds that
history should remain apart of identity, particularly in terms of race.[7]

21st century

[edit]

Janelle Mone
has made a conscious effort to restore Afrofuturist cosmology to the forefront
of urban contemporary music. Her notable works include the music videos "Prime Time"[8]
and Many Moons",[9] which explore the realms of slavery and freedom through the world of
cyborgs and the fashion industry.[10][11] Her influences include Metropolis, Blade Runner,
[12]

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and Star Wars.

Other musical artists to emerge since the turn of the millennium regarded

as Afrofuturist include dBridge, SBTRKT, Shabazz Palaces, Heavyweight Dub Champion,[4]

and "techno pioneers" Drexciya (with Gerald Donald).[13]
Chicago is home to a vibrant community of artists exploring Afrofuturism. Nick Cave, known
for his Soundsuits project, has helped develop younger talent as the director of the
graduate fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other artists include
visual artists Hebru Brantley as well as contemporary artist Rashid Johnson, a Chicago
native currently based in New York. In 2013, Chicago resident Ytasha L. Womack wrote the
study Afrofuturism: The World of Black Science Fiction and Fantasy, and William Hayashi
has published two volumes of his Darkside Trilogy[14]
which tells the story of what happens
in America when the country discovers African Americans secretly living on the backside of
the moon since before the arrival of Neil Armstrong, an extreme vision of segregation
imposed by technologically advanced Blacks.[15][16]
Krista Franklin, a member of University
of Chicago's Arts Incubator, is
currently exploring the relation between Afrofuturism and the
grotesque
through her visual and written work with weaves and collected hair. Recently,
she also created an audio narrative in collaboration with another Afrofuturist, Perpetual
Rebel, called The Two Thousand and Thirteen Narrative(s) of Naima Brown, which explores
the ideas of identity and transformation within the context of hair and African American
culture.[17]

Themes
Women

[edit]
[edit]

Jared Richardson's Attack of the Boogeywoman: Visualizing Black Women's Grotesquerie in

Afrofuturism[18]
assesses how the aesthetic functions as a space for black women to

engage with the intersection of topics such as race, gender, and sexuality. The
representation and treatment of black female bodies is deconstructed by Afrofuturist
contemporaries and amplified to alien and gruesome dimensions by artists such as
Wangechi Mutu and Shoshanna Weinberger.

The Grotesque

[edit]

In the Afro-Surreal Manifesto, Afro-surrealism is juxtaposed with European surrealism, with

European surrealism being empirical. It is consistent with the New Black Aesthetic in that
the art seeks to disturb. It samples from old art pieces updating them with current images.
This technique calls to the forefront those past images and the sentiments, memories, or
ideas around them and combines them with new images in a way that those of the current
generation can still identify.
Both seek to disturb, but there is more of a "mutant" psychology
that is going on. Afro-Futuristic artists seek to propose a deviant beauty, a
beauty in which
disembodiment is both inhumane, yet distinct; Afro-Futuristic artists speculate on the future,
where Afro-Surrealism is about the present.[19]

Alienation

[edit]

Afrofuturism takes representations of the lived realities of black bodies in the past and
present and reexamines the narratives to attempt building new truths outside of the
dominant cultural narrative. By analyzing the ways in which alienation has occurred
afrofuturism work to
connect the African diaspora with its histories and knowledge of

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racialized bodies. Space and Aliens function as key products of the science fiction
elements: black bodies are envisioned to have been the first aliens by way of the Middle
Passage. Their alien status connotes being in a foreign land with no history, but also being
disconnected from the past via the traditions of slavery where slaves were made to

renounce their ties to Africa in service of their slave master. Kodwo Eshun locates the first
alienation within the context of the Middle Passage. He writes that afrofuturist texts work to
reimagine slavery and
alienation by using extraterrestriality as a hyperbolic trope to
explore
the historical terms, the everyday implications of forcibly imposed dislocation, and the
constitution of Black Atlantic subjectivities". This location of dystopian futures and present

realities places science fiction and novels built around dystopian societies directly in the
tradition of black realities.[20]

Bibliography

[edit]

Barr, Marleen S (2008). Afro-future females: Black writers chart science fiction's newest
new-wave trajectory. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN9780814210789.
Bould, Mark and Rone Shavers, eds. (July 2007). "Special Issue on Afrofuturism" .
Science Fiction Studies 34 (2).
Dauphin, Gary. 2006. 'They Came Before the Matrix' (Afrofuturist Film)

[dead link]

Dery, Mark (reposted 2002). "Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0" . rumori (Mailing
list). Retrieved 13 February 2014. Check date values in: |date= (help)
Dery, Mark (1994). "Black to the future: interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate,
and Tricia Rose". In Dery, Mark. Flame wars: the discourse of cyberculture. Duke
University Press. ISBN9780822315407.
David, Mario (2007). "Afrofuturism and Post-Soul Possibility in Black Popular Music".
African American Review 41 (4): 695707. doi:10.2307/25426985 .
DeFrantz, Thomas F. (2003). "Believe the Hype: Hype Williams and Afrofuturist
Filmmaking" . Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media 4. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
Eshun, Kodwo (1998). More brilliant than the sun: adventures in sonic fiction. Quartet
Books. ISBN9780704380257.
Eshun, Kodwo (2003). "Further Considerations of Afrofuturism" . CR: The New
Centennial Review 3 (2): 287302. doi:10.1353/ncr.2003.0021 . ISSN1539-6630 .
Francis, Reese. "What is Afrofuturism? (series)" . Aker: Futuristically Ancient. Retrieved
2014-03-26.
Hicks, Cinqu (April 2004). "What is Afrofuturist Art?"

(PDF). Retrieved 15 January

2014.
Lewis, George E. (2008). "Special issue on Technology and Black Music in the
Americas" . Journal of the Society for American Music 2 (2).
Nelson, Alondra. "Afrofuturism: Past-Future Visions." Color Lines (Spring 2000): 34-37.
Nelson, Alondra, ed. (June 3, 2002). Afrofuturism: A Special Issue of Social Text. Duke
University Press. ISBN978-0822365457.
Rockeymoore, Mark A. (February 27, 2002). "What is Afrofuturism?" . AuthorsDen.
Retrieved January 16, 2014.
Weiner, Jonah (June 20, 2008). "Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III, and the Afronaut invasion." .
Slate. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
Williams, Ben (2001). "Black Secret Technology: Detroit Techno and the Information
Age". In Nelson et al. Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life . NYU Press.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism[27/07/2015 11:47:24 a.m.]

Afrofuturism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

pp.154176. ISBN9780814736043.
Womack, Ytasha (2013-10-01). Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Culture . Chicago Review Press. ISBN9781613747964.
Yaszek, Lisa (2005). "An Afrofuturist Reading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man" .
Rethinking History 9 (2-3): 297313. doi:10.1080/13642520500149202 . ISSN13642529 .

References

[edit]

1. ^ Rambsy II, Howard (2012-04-14). "A Notebook on Afrofuturism"

. Cultural Front.

Retrieved 2014-03-26.
2. ^ a b Yaszek, Lisa (November 2006). "Afrofuturism, science fiction, and the history of the
future". Socialism and Democracy 20 (3): 4160. doi:10.1080/08854300600950236

. NB:

Open Access version also available

3. ^ "Calls for Papers: Afro-Futurism"
doi:10.1353/cal.2003.0081
4. ^

ab

. Callaloo 26 (3): 932934. 2003.

. ISSN1080-6512

. Retrieved 2014-03-26.

Reddell, Trace (2013). "Ethnoforgery and Outsider Afrofuturism"

. Dancecult (Griffith

University ePress) 5 (2): 8990. doi:10.12801/1947-5403.2013.05.02.05

. Retrieved

22 March 2014.
5. ^ Fitzpatrick, Rob, "The 101 strangest records on Spotify: Warp 9 - It's A Beat Wave," May
14, 2014 [1]
6. ^ Alondra Nelson (Interviewee) (2010). Afrofuturism
7. ^

abc

(Youtube).

Nelson, Alondra (2002). "Introduction: Future Texts" . Social Text: Special Issue on

Afrofuturism 20 (2): 115. doi:10.1215/01642472-20-2_71-1

. ISSN1527-1951

Retrieved 2014-03-16.
8. ^ Prime Time
9. ^ Many Moons
10. ^ Gonzales, Michael A. (1 October 2013). "[BLACK ALT] What Is Afrofuturism?" . Ebony.
Retrieved 14 February 2014.
11. ^ Calveri, John (2010-09-02). "Janelle Mone: A New Pioneer Of Afrofuturism"

. The

Quietus. Retrieved 2014-03-16.

12. ^ Barrow, Jerry L. (2009-04-14). "Janelle Monaes Top 5 Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time"

. The

Urban Daily: Beats, Buzz, & Lifestyle. Retrieved 2014-03-19.

13. ^ Womack, Ytasha (2013). Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture

Chicago Review Press. p.70. ISBN9781613747995.

14. ^ Darkside Trilogy
15. ^ Hayashi, William (2009-12-04). Discovery: Volume 1 of the Darkside Trilogy. Xlibris.
ISBN1441586946.
16. ^ Hayashi, William (2013-10-21). Conception: Volume 2 of the Darkside Trilogy. XLIBRIS.
ISBN149310005X.
17. ^ Hazel, Tempestt (2012-05-28). "Black To The Future Series: An Interview with Krista
Franklin"

. The Chicago Arts Archive: A Sixty Inches from Center Project. Retrieved

2014-03-19.
18. ^ Richardson,
Jared. (2012) "Attack of the Boogeywoman: Visualizing Black Women's

Grotesquerie in Afrofuturism." Art Papers Magazine 36. 6

19. ^ Miller, D. Scott. "AfroSurreal Generation: AFROSURREAL MANIFESTO"
20. ^ Eshun, Kodwo (2003). "Further Considerations of Afrofuturism"
Centennial Review 3 (2): 287302. Retrieved 19 December 2014.

External links

[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism[27/07/2015 11:47:24 a.m.]

. CR: The New

Afrofuturism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The AfroFuturist Affair

AFROFUTURISM.net
Black Science Fiction Society
Daathrekh Publishing
Afro-Futurism
Categories: African-American culture

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