Afrofuturism fails

It’s not news to anyone to say that black cultural, political, and socio-economic life in America has undergone a renaissance of sorts. An upwelling of fervor, dreams, insights, rage, creativity, vision, and determination have all marked the increase of black visibility in the public arena. And yet, this new reality, a cyclical reappearance of unapologetically black social currents in the media, in the streets, and in the public imagination are all born from the profound contradictions we have been forced to acknowledge. Two terms of America’s first black president alongside ritualized police murders of black-life, a rise of white apologism for an accumulating white supremacist violence that destroys black bodies. We saw a dramatic increase in deportations, the emergence of drone warfare, and an economic crises that prompted a new wave of political movements against inequity, followed by an uprising of black lead direct actions and black revolt. It is in these various contexts that the visibility of blackness is more present than ever before. The opportunities for expression, the platforms for protest, and the historically significant struggles we find ourselves within have inspired and ignited showcases of black life — real as well as creatively re-imagined. It is not a coincidence that this era has given birth to a resurgence of Afro-Futurism.

Afro-Futurism is the practice of constructing new ways of existing, retrieving the past ancestry of the black diaspora, inventing styles of presenting ourselves in the world, and projecting our visions of how we would like to see ourselves in the future. There are a number of figures who stand out in our collective memory as highly imaginative and sharply perceptive of what was their reality. Octavia E. Butler and Sun Ra are a few who have passed away only to have new generations engage and ultimately embody their work today. Despite this stirring in the cultural life of black americans, there exists a significant gulf — a distance between intentions and practices in this movement and I would like to focus my attention on those differences. In doing so, I hope to uncover some salient lessons and distinctions that lay beneath the surface of Afro-Futurism.

An indisputable element of Afro-Futurism is its aesthetic. It is this difference from the normal — what we might otherwise expect to be created or adorned by black people — that comes focused into view in such a way that suggests that it has arrived from the future. This element alone is what people are most likely to see, grasp in passing, and consume as art. It’s relatively easy to replicate if one is interested purely in the profit to be yielded from its commodification. These are the nods we see celebrities make in set stages, album covers, films, and the like. To sift out the intention and impact of Afro-Futurism from its aesthetics, there are two simple questions that prove useful:

What is the future being presented?

How do we get there?

Depending on the particular conjurer of Afro-Futurism, the utility of their vision can vary widely from others. An “afro future” can be a site of grief as much as it can be a site of hope. In summoning the figures of black ancestry, we situate our present in the context of who brought us here, honoring their past struggles, sacrifices, and joys. The perspective that comes with this sort of time-travel can aid efforts to appreciate what is in front of us today, and it can embolden us to pursue a greater life. Whether one dimension outweighs the other or balances in union together of course determines whether or not we witnesses to afro-futurism grow complacent or more courageous in the face of the status quo.

It what is commonly viewed as the opposite of the past, the futures of afro-futurism can be spaces of mourning over the goals that feel locked away from the realm of possibility today. Inversely, they can be an insightful warning or a positive suggestion for what can be or must be done today. Stated a different way, Afro-Futurism is a portal into black desires that have yet to be manifested or actualized. Now some possible political consequences become more clear as we pass over some of the intentions behind the speculative nature of Afro-Futurism. I wish now to place some Afro-Futurist media under a magnifying glass so that we can answer the two instructive questions I mentioned above.

Following the very recent Black Panther Movie release, the excitement around this blockbuster spectacle has been at its peak. The representation of black people in so visible a medium has generated a crossover appeal for Disney’s Marvel Franchise. The cast, the soundtrack, the black history evoked by its very title all draw from the cultural wellspring of black culture that has been generated over the past several decades.

At the same time, what is the future Black Panther presents us? We have Wakanda, a fictionalized black african nation that’s become the most advanced in the world. This is based on the premise that one fictional precious metal, Vibranium, was never ruthlessly extracted by exploiting wakandans, allowing them to remain untouched by white supremacy. It follows from these circumstances that Wakanda was granted with an opportunity to actualize a vision of black self-determination that produced inconceivable wealth, technology, and a preserved patriarchal monarchist hierarchy. The story is a reinvention of co-opted and dismantled black power that is a fictional doppelganger for the fate of the real-life black panthers, as the main conflict is about imperialist powers meddling with Wakandan affairs and social movements. If we peel away the impossible embellishments of the fictional story, the premise is simply that Africa would not be destitute were it not for Colonialism, Slavery, Capitalism, and Imperialism.

So how do we actualize Wakanda? We cannot. War, Slavery, Genocide, Global Imperialism ravaged Africa and fractured the diaspora permanently, changing the trajectory of every African nation. The black diaspora is ensnared globally within imperialism and there is no Wakanda to protect us. Not all of us can be wealthy. We are largely outgunned within and outside our respective nations. We have only ourselves. For these reasons I posit that the Black Panther Movie is a commodification of Afro-Futurist grief, and it grieves for those who define black liberation as the freedom to amass wealth and wield a nation state in our modern age of Globalism. It presents us with a media commodity that we want to consume because we so rarely see ourselves empowered in reality and in media. As we watch, we get exciting entertainment and time to reflect on our historic victories and losses as the film not-so-subtly reinforces the current state of affairs.