In so short a form as a single diary, even a long diary, it’s not advisable or practical or even possible to do more than open a conversation about the literary and cultural umbrella that is Afrofuturism. We can only begin to consider its emergent influence in fashion, architecture, music, literature, culture — in short: life, especially since so many of us are new to the form and don’t know what it’s about, except that it’s often used as shorthand label in general punditry for anything pertaining to Black Panther.
The term was coined around 1995 by Mark Dery in his essay “Black to the Future” (available online with a quick search). While the enormously-successful Black Panther film might be the most prominent and widely popular example of the genre, it’s not unique or singular. But certainly, of the many such works to hit mass culture, it’s made the biggest splash. Even so, Afrofuturism hasn’t been hiding in a back current—it’s enormously influential now, even as its practitioners struggle to nail down a definition or set parameters (and that’s a good thing — it means it’s alive and squiggly and growing).
Very briefly and superficially, Afrofuturism:
defines art forms based on imaginations of the future through the lens of blackness. Against the domination of sci-fi/fantasy by white male writers, Afro-futurism provides a space for artistic work and scholarly inquiry built around identifying what is futuristic about black life, worlds, imagination, and power.
Envision the empowerment that must come from imagining a world whose visions of the future don’t depend on the white heroes of Haggard, Heinlein, or Asimov, visions that are not particularly interested in colonialism or white supremacy, or male hegemony, or any power situated in what John Scalzi memorably called the Lowest Difficulty Setting.
Some critics apparently limit the term to the work of the African diaspora whose cultures were systematically erased, suppressed, silenced — very much in the way that Africans brought to America between 1600-1860 lived with their cultures, their histories and traditions, their very families and genealogies erased, destroyed — the project being to build an imaginative history and culture to replace the one that was lost. Other critics and writers widen the scope, opening the canon to African writers, as Geoff Ryman is doing in his current project 100 African Writers of SFF.
I am not qualified to write about Afrofuturism, so I’m opening the subject with hesitation, trepidation, and a great fear that I am writing about things I have no business writing about, being no more than a white American eccentric with a bookcase and a whole lot of opinions.
However, I’ve been reading that bookcase, and there are Afrofuturist writers working today that you too should read: Samuel R. Delany, Tannanarive Due, the incomparable Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, the witty and insightful Nnedi Okorafor, and others—many others, but these will get you started. Even Ta-Nehisi Coates has written Black Panther graphic novels, three of them, and this year will apply his voice and perspective to Captain America, that quintessential American Hero who adheres to the dream and promise of what America can be but is betrayed by those who betray the dream itself (which is what happened during Emancipation and Jim Crow, those times writ large, and betrayals all written in blood in every town and county, every state, every generation, since the country was founded, those times writ smaller and more individual). These writers have taken fantasy and science fiction into places that the Old Dead White Dudes never dreamed. Fans of the Old Dead White Dudes need not worry—they’re still canon. But the canon is opening up; new voices, new perspectives, new protagonists, new heroes, previously-marginalized writers working in science fiction and fantasy and enriching, revitalizing, both forms.
Nnedi Okorafor, some of whose work I’ll look at next week, is one of these urgent artists. About her place in science fiction and fantasy, she remarked
Growing up, I didn't read much science fiction. I couldn't relate to these stories preoccupied with xenophobia, colonization and seeing aliens as others. And I saw no reflection of anyone who looked like me in those narratives.
Her sense of Otherness, of being an American tourist in Nigeria, led her into her particular style of science fiction and fantasy, a blend of futurism deeply rooted in traditional cultures, ancient rivalries and tensions. Next week I want to look at Okorafor’s ability to navigate cultural boundaries, to write about the Other (even the non-human Other) with sensitivity and compassion. Her heroes are people in transition, transformation; they’re exiles and outcasts, but they’re growing, in the process of becoming more than they are.
[The] idea of leaving but bringing and then becoming more is at one of the hearts of Afrofuturism, or you can simply call it a different type of science fiction. 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.
Nnedi Okorafor, 2017 Ted Talk
That’s for next week. Tonight has been an incomplete introduction borne by an overmatched and misassigned emissary. I’m sorry for that, but don’t let my inadequacies affect your interest in the art. If you’re not already reading in Afrofuturism, the links above will take you to places where you can get started. This is not, repeat not, a fad; it will not pass like last year’s Hot New Thing, nor is it a clever novelty like the mashup of zombies and Jane Austen. Afrofuturism is nothing less than a powerful reimagining of culture, a shift of paradigms. I very much hope that readers who are better informed and more authoritative will add to this conversation over the next few weeks. These are exciting days of growth, and their writers deserve coverage, support, and debate.
The Name of the Rose Group Read starts June 18, 2018.
I’ll start in a couple of weeks with some general overviews of literary theory and the basics of semiotics. Like the appositive phrase, it sounds intimidating but really isn’t. Much of what gets clouded by philosophical/literary verbiage is remarkably common-sense. All of which means that, if I can figure it out, you can too.