AFROFUTURISM EXPLAINED

For a long time, fictional worlds that depicted future universes lacked Black and Brown people. Afrofuturism emerged as a reaction to the lack of Black and brown people seen in science fiction books and movies. This movement combines historical fiction, digital fabrication, and Afroinspired imagery to imagine a future where problems concerning the African diaspora are solved without Western influence. Afrofuturism has its roots in music, literature, and the visual arts but has since evolved to include an infinite number of creative forms. At its core, however, the movement is about embracing the narrative that black people can be the heroes in their own stories and reclaim the narratives surrounding their existence. This research uses Ytasha L. Womack’s book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture as a foundational text to unpack the building blocks of this movement (Womack, 2013).

Afrofuturism deals with the major themes of otherness, feminism, reclamation of culture, Utopian imagery, and the digital landscape. The ideas of otherness in the Afrofuturism movement stem from the belief that the way that Black people are treated in America could be comparable to how alien abductees are treated. The Transatlantic Slave Trade illustrates the narrative that black people were stolen from their land and now are forced to assimilate into American culture while still being othered because of their race. For this reason, the earliest onset of the Afrofuturism movement saw black creators trying to formulate spaces where they could feel safe. They looked beyond planet Earth to find these spaces. This fascination with Black people trying to carve out space for themselves be it on Earth or as “aliens” on other planets, led critic Mark Dery to investigate the reasons why there were only a few African American Science fiction writers.

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In his essay “Black to the Future,” Mark Dery points out that the unimaginable realities created in Science Fiction almost directly coerlate to the way African-Americans have been forced to live.

He writes “African-Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements…moreover, the sublegitimate status of science fiction as a pulp genre in Western literature mirrors the subaltern position to which blacks have been relegated through American history” (Dery, 1997). With this discovery, Mark Dery coined the term Afrofuturism which he defined as an investigation into science-fictional realities where African-American culture is examined in the context of newly emerging technology. He used this term to describe the conversations that were being had around blackness, science fiction, and the Cyberculture springing up in the 1980s and 1990s. Mark Dery and his colleagues Kodwo Eshun, Greg Tate, and Mark Sinker were among the first few thinkers to engage the dialogue that built Afrofuturism (Womack, 2013).

Music had a major influence on the emergence of Afrofuturism because it created an avenue for new technologies and imagery to be explored. Artists such as Jimi Hendrix began using reverb on his guitar which up until this point was unheard of. According to Womack, the movement saw music that “[embodied] the times but literally sounded out of this world” (Womack, 2013 p. 55). Some of the notable Afrofuturist soundtracks include Sun Ra’s Space is the Place”, Parliament’s “Mothership Connection”, and Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland”. “Space is the Place” by Sun Ra is considered one of the most important musical pieces in Afrofuturism because it began to define an aesthetic for the movement. “Space is The Place” follows Sun Ra, a being from outer space, who returns to 1970s Oakland, California to convince young Black people to return to outer space with him. After competing in a card game with the satanic overlord, holding a concert for the World, and almost being assassinated by the FBI, Sun Ra carries victory and saves his people in the nick of time (Northwest Film Center, 2019).

“Space is the Place” by Sun Ra

Parliament’s “Mothership Connection”

Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler

Sun Ra in his film “Space is the Place”

Marshall Allen of Sun Ra Arkestra in concert

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“THE IDEA OF USING SCI-FI AND SPECULATIVE FICTION TO SPUR SOCIAL CHANGE, TO REEXAMINE RACE, AND TO EXPLORE SELF-EXPRESSION FOR PEOPLE OF COLOR, THEN, IS CLEARLY NOTHING NEW. THE BLACK VISIONARIES OF THE PAST WHO SOUGHT TO ALLEVIATE THE DEBILITATING SYSTEM AND END THE RACIAL DIVIDE USED THESE GENRES AS DEVICES TO ARTICULATE THEIR ISSUES AND VISIONS.” - YTASHA L. WOMACK

Both Sun Ra and George Clinton used music to push the boundaries of musical technology at the time to create new sounds and channel imagery that allowed black people to place themselves in the Cosmos. The messages prevalent in Afrofuturism not only spread quickly through music, but the popularization of the Internet sped up this process.

The inception of the Internet allowed Afrofuturism to reach a larger audience because it facilitated an easier way to engage in these kinds of conversations. Alondra Nelson launched an AOL listserv in the 1990s where college students could gather to discuss space, technology, black culture, and art with science fiction as the lens through which the topics were being examined (Womack, 2013 p. 18). Nelson used this listserv to connect with more people who were interested in discovering the ties that science fiction shared with Black culture in America. The conversations in the listserv uncovered that in the history of African writing and art, there existed an embracing of the supernatural as a way to challenge existing power structures. These power structures ranged from Colonialism and White Supremacy to Racism and Sexism. However, they were often explored through the world of Science Fiction. Afrofuturism still holds Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Science fiction writer Octavia Butler as figureheads of the movement.

The fictional world exaggerates real-world problems in an attempt to expose the true nature of these issues. For example, the film District 9 tells the story of an alien species nicknamed “The Prawns” who appear in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982. The humans place them in refugee camps in order to provide them with the basic needs of survival. There is minimal government effort directed towards the upkeep of this settlement, and it eventually begins to deteriorate.

A member of the alien population from the film District 9

The alien invasion scene from the film District 9

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“IMPROVISATION, ADAPTABILITY, AND IMAGINATION ARE THE CORE COMPONENTS OF THIS RESISTANCE AND ARE EVIDENT BOTH IN THE ARTS AND BLACK CULTURES AT LARGE.” - YTASHA L. WOMACK

28 years later, the refugee camp is an eyesore and the government tasks the Munitions Corporation with forcefully evicting the alien population. In addition to this forced eviction, the aliens are also ostracized, looked down upon, and generally not welcomed amongst the locals (Chisholm, 2009).

This is all reminiscent of how black South Africans were treated during Apartheid. District 9 was based on real events that took place in South Africa’s District 6 neighborhood during the time of Apartheid. District 6 was a thriving community of about 55,000 non-white people. The community was described as a cultural hub until the 1940s when the South African government declared it a ‘White’s only’ area. This is when they began to demolish homes and implement the forceful relocation of all South Africans in the neighborhood who were not white. The neighborhood became a famous example of the suffering that apartheid inflicted on South Africa as a nation hence the reason that movies like District 9 began to find ways to tell its story. Using Science Fiction to tell this story put into perspective the massive injustice that people who were perceived as different, or even alien, endured in District 6. This practice of using fiction as a means to critique society rings true in a lot of Afrofuturist works to date (District six, n.d.).

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Map of District 6

District 6 prior to February 11, 1966 when it was declared a “White’s Only“ area