Is Everything Afrofuturist?

By Uche Anomnachi

Working as an intern with the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, I had the chance to listen in on an exchange between a visiting artist and John Englebrecht (the director of Public Space One under which the Center operates). The conversation stemmed from an introduction to the work and mission of CAS –residencies designed to support the work of artists of color—and reflected the artist’s hesitation in being identified with the possible misnomer “Afrofuturist.”

It seems, as this one artist put it, that “everything is Afrofuturist now.” An understandable frustration: it feels like the title is inescapable for black artists in the 21^st century. While not strictly true, this feeling might be a natural reaction to the proliferation of the label. What was once a fringe movement advanced by those who defined it has a little less edge when represented in the halls of the Smithsonian or Disney’s catalog. But whether or not Afrofuturism is cool, is not what is at stake when we think of the generalizations made of Afrofuturism recently. What this exchange, and many conversations since, glimpsed for me, is a spirited debate over the amorphous boundaries of the term Afrofuturism and a chance to explore the role an organization like CAS plays in setting the terms of that conversation.

The term Afrofuturism has always been somewhat imprecise. The term is a retronym which means it was coined to address an already extant and growing body of literary work that occurred to cultural critic Mark Dery as a distinct phenomenon in science fiction writing. Works under this phylum responded to the overwhelming whiteness of the science fiction canon with black characters and stories across the past present and future. Out of these speculative origins, coherent sets of themes began to coalesce around the idea of Afrofuturism. Extra-terrestrial racial origins, fantastical and allegorical oppression, absurd expressions of racial terror, and meditations on generational time (to name a few) emerged as common themes in the growing body of literary works considered Afrofuturist, but also appeared as themes that could be and had been expressed in almost any medium.

Onlookers would like to say Afrofuturism in visual art, poetry, dance, and new media expresses one core philosophy. This is perhaps captured in Alisha Wormley’s series “THERE ARE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE.” The question of how this seemingly obvious statement can undergird a movement as expansive as Afrofuturism returns us to the stakes of the conversation.

Locating the null proposition–that there are not black people in the future—verges on genocidal. We find it often in fervid assertions of a white future, or other claims to the future that seem to be incompatible with the persistence of black people. Necessarily missing from these accounts of the future is black art.

Is every work of art completed with or through CAS “Afrofuturist?” Certainly, the team shares a fondness for the art of speculation and works that mobilize the themes listed above. Many of the artists who have moved through the space might proudly wear the label. But if we erect boundaries capable of excluding black artists from the category of Afrofuturist artists, I have come to realize, the work done at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies remains dedicated to proliferating black art into the future, combatting the presumptive eradication of black artists from the category of those allowed to create.

One final return: to the mission of CAS that inspired the conversation that inspired this writing.

“The CAS wants to rethink and challenge what an arts practice that revolves around Black futurity looks like. We believe that’s only possible when arts organizations commit to fully supporting the work being done by Black artists.”

Maybe everything is not Afrofuturism; but Afrofuturism is best understood as an ethos developed as the null proposition to an assumption that black people (and art) will not or cannot persist. The idea, as it is beautifully contained by the Center for Afrofuturist Studies appears as a bulwark against the passive encroachment of white supremacy—one wide enough to include almost anything. And as long as the space exists, it holds the potential to foster productive dialogue between practitioners and scholars working to evade and hone the definition.