Together, the essays in the issue represent essential reading on Afrofuturism, covering topics from the late-19th- to early-20th- century antecedents of the movement to the revolutionary possibilities created by an Internet community of color. The Afrofuturism special issue of the journal Social Text ( Nelson 2002) represents a watershed moment in the development and theorization of Afrofuturism. Dery 1994 coined the term Afrofuturism and offered an early introduction to and definition of the movement. However, a number of key works do provide effective introductions to the movement’s tenets, aesthetics, significance, and history. Although the movement has certainly exploded in recent years, especially since 2000, its intellectual and aesthetic underpinnings can be traced back to mid- and late-19th-century African American novels that imagined alternative realities and communities for black people.īecause the movement is relatively young, there have been, to date, few comprehensive overviews of Afrofuturism.

It often does so by exploring both the potential and the pitfalls of technoculture and posthumanism. More broadly defined, Afrofuturism reimagines not only new forms of temporality but also new black experiences and identities via science and speculative fiction or other artistic and intellectual means. However, Afrofuturist works do not always look to the future but, rather, often unsettle notions of linear time. Afrofuturism can also imagine dystopic worlds to come, with contemporary injustices projected into, and often intensified in, the future.

It also offers speculation about a world wherein black people are normative. Afrofuturism comprises cultural production and scholarly thought-literature, visual art, photography, film, multimedia art, performance art, music, and theory-that imagine greater justice and a freer expression of black subjectivity in the future or in alternative places, times, or realities. Afrofuturism refers to a flourishing contemporary movement of African American, African, and Black diasporic writers, artists, musicians, and theorists.

Afrofuturism by Ytasha L. Womack