**February 4th, 2024
Tevun-Krus #119 - AfroFuturism 2**
We first tackled AfroFuturism in 2020 for TK76. Now we're taking on the subgenre once again! AfroFuturism combines traditional African art, architecture, cultures and values (and that of the Af...
February's in the air, and there's so much to share! With one month down from the twelve, this is the time to plunge into the gruelling. Some determination and a song, and we're in here for a futuristic genre! So... follow along.
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Coined by Mark Dery in his essay "Black to the future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose," in 1994, this term has been a part of black popular culture way long before the African diaspora combined science, technology, with philosophy. In a way, Afrofuturism is the means by which Black people create and develop new concepts to build a future of our own. For those who've just stumbled upon this genre, exploring Afrofuturism might come across as a daunting task. This article delves for those who desire to wet their feet into the expanse of the Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism genre seas.
For the interested, Africanfuturism--term coined by Nnedi Okorafor, "is concerned with visions of the future, is interested in technology, leaves the earth, skews optimistic, is centered on and predominantly written by people of African descent (black people) and it is rooted first and foremost in Africa".
Afrofuturism, on the other hand, as defined by the scholar Ytasha Womack is "an intersection of the imagination, technology, the future, and liberation".
There are many similar threads running between these two genres. The first (and main distinction) would be that while Africanfuturism is rooted in Africa, Afrofuturism includes and celebrates not only the Africans in African society, but also African Americans in western society.
In her book "Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture", Ytasha L. Womack, defines it as "an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation", followed up with a quote by the curator Ingrid LaFleur who defined it as "a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens". There was also Kathy Brown, who paraphrased Bennett Capers' 2019 work in stating that Afrofuturism is about "forward thinking as well as backward thinking, while having a distressing past, a distressing present, but still looking forward to thriving in the future". Others have said that the genre is "fluid and malleable", bringing together technology, African culture, and "other influences".
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