Learning From Wakanda: Five Innovations to Afrofuturism for Black Creators
After years of waiting, we can finally feast on the going-back-for-seconds, Pan-African jambalaya of Black excellence that is Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther. Not only will it join the rarefied ranks of billion-dollar blockbuster feature films, but it jumpstarts the simmering genre of Black science fiction, which had largely been left to the cinematic wayside since the 1990s.
As a ’90s baby, I confess nostalgia ultra to that epic first generation of Black superhero films: Spawn, Shazaam, Blankman, Meteor Man. But Black Panther feels more grand and unprecedented: almost like Disney/Marvel got an elaborate infusion of Nigerian-wedding-level of Black excellence, whereas the others now feel like jumping the broom. Why?
Maybe it’s the star-studded ensemble cast, whereas the others had one or two luminaries. Maybe because Black women are finally portrayed as the bad-asses that they are: warrior princesses, world-class infantry, and majestic beings who often channel their power into Black patriarchs, rather than as exotic props. It is biased by the fact that I had the honor of being featured in the New York Times (NYT) for my shameless embrace of T’Challa costumes through cosplay. Blame it on the vibranium.
But celebrations notwithstanding, I have convictions about what this moment means. Going to see the movie and interacting with fans only reinforced that.
“So, you here to see Black Panther too?” a middle-aged man asked me as I was waiting on the bartender next to him at the Howard Hughes Theater.
“You know it, man! Been waiting too long for it. You?”
“Yea man,” he answered apprehensively, “But we got all these folks hyped about this fictional stuff. There’s a movie about the actual LA Black Panthers called 41st & Central screening today too.” There seemed to be disappointment in his voice, a subtler form of judgement.
“Really? Never heard of it,” I confessed.
“Yea they finally got the money together to screen it in some places, you know.”“Well, I hear that. But this could also open the doors for more Black movies too,” I reassured.
“Yea that’s true too,” he added, almost like he forgot an errand, “I sure hope so.”
Slight hateration in this soirée aside, I hear his deeper point at this family affair. Where does a film like this — and Afrofuturism moreover — really get us outside of box-office bragging rights and escapism? Thankfully, this is a question I have been thinking about for years.
Is Wakanda the End of Afrofuturism as I Knew It?
Afrofuturism is the banner under which almost any visionary alternative, particularly high-tech, gets looped. I understand that impulse and largely agree with it. But Afrofuturism has many meanings and flavors. In the States, it has developed in waves, which I am still learning about, especially as scholars connect work over 100 years old like W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Princess Steel (1908). While Black Panther is being discussed as Afrofuturist, I think is best understood as a hybrid variant of a larger Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM).
In a 2015 BSAM Manifesto, a creative collaborative defined it as:
“a creative, aesthetic practice that integrates African diasporic or African metaphysics with science and technology and seeks to interpret, engage, design, or alter reality with a re-imagination of the past, the contested present, and act as a catalyst for the future.”
Thus, there is no unitary way to see this practice and it only continues growing in its complexity.
As Dr. Reynaldo Anderson, Co-Editor of Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness, notes in a VICE interview, “BSAM is a loose umbrella term represented for different positions or basis of inquiry” and Afrofuturism 2.0 (AF 2.0) is just one of them. AF 2.0 has several disciplines: Black Quantum Futurism, African Futurism, Afrofuturismo, and Afrofuturista. BSAM broadly includes Astro-Blackness, Afro-Surrealism, Ethno-Gothic, Black Digital Humanities, Black Science Fiction, the Black Fantastic, Magical Realism, and the Esoteric as part of BSAM.
Wakanda appears to be a more complex symbol than AF 1.0 could account for with its obsession on issues of the color line (i.e. exclusion), living behind the veil (i.e. invisibility), and the digital divide (i.e. under-development). As we reflect on Black Panther’s rolling success, AF 2.0 would be remiss if we fell prey to three archenemies:
1) cultural amnesia,
2) linearity, and
3) externalization.
We can afford none of this in this next wave. Instead, Black Panther’s Wakanda illustrates the power of a historically-inspired, politically-engaged turn in the speculative world that could root fantastical stories in our everyday, inherited self-determination.
“The royalty inside [our] DNA,” as Kendrick Lamar would say, that has enabled our surreal survival in a world bent toward our oppression must be taken seriously. Wakanda is an example of how this reflexivity can not only unleash movements but also make hella money.
Afrofuturist Archenemy #1: Cultural Amnesia
Wakanda is alluring in how it incorporates contemporary, aspirational versions of our diasporic heritages. For those who call it futuristic, I ask: do we really know our African history? I am not asking this just because it is Black History and Futures Month.
Few of us Black Americans have taken our African Ancestry test (which is a Black-owned company, by the way). Some of us may have pieced together our family trees. Less of us have been inside a Black bookstore. A minority of us practice the 50-year old tradition of Kwanzaa. Our self-awareness is uneven.
So let me be clear: Africa invented great cities just like it birthed humanity (shoutout to books like Africa’s Urban Past). Africa is mother to cobalt, the metal which powers the smartphone you’re likely using to read this, among many other natural resources that the West and East have “scrambled” to mine through (neo)colonialism. African and Black under-development are real, but it is a post-colonial phenomenon. But thanks to Euro-centricity, one-sided, omitted versions of our heritages dominate our psychosocial perceptions. While not our fault, responsibility for the problem still falls on us.
In Afrofuturism 2.0, we must resist creating from a place of ignorance, myself included. It is a slippery slope to chart a road trip — either mythical or mundane — to some grand destination when you barely know how you got to where you are now. Some Black speculative fiction is intentional about erasure (i.e. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man) and invisible omni-presence (i.e. ‘dark matter’ tropes), but this is a thoughtful choice.
However, a line in the sand must be drawn, especially for Quantum Futurists and Afro-Galactic enthusiasts, who fall prey to this “reset” reflex the most. I love Janelle’s song “Cold War,” but nah, I ain’t trying to be an “alien from outer space” or a “cyber[boy] without a heart or a mind.” And space is not the place, Sun Ra, especially now with 45 trying to sell our interstellar rights to the highest private bidder. Skrrt-skrrt. As a matter of taste, I fall back on surrealism over the fantastic.
Beyond me, this historical moment where we are exercising greater market power, cultural revisionism like this is not the most strategic imaginative practice to assert our own canonical traditions. My brother hates when I do this when, but, as a researcher, it is my job to connect ideas through reviewing prior work. Granted, I can access more exhaustive sources in the universities I have attended and currently work. But they don’t own it all.
Wakanda and its characters remind us that our cultural histories — from the Himba styles rocked by the elders to the Basotho blankets used as shields by the border guards — matter. But these vast, complex, under-appreciated assets will only belong in our fantasies of the future if we will it.
Afrofuturist Archenemy #2: Linearity
In Wakanda, in order to adorn the next Black Panther, both T’Challa and Killmonger must enter the ancestral plane and make sense of their paths. When they do, they realize, as Amiri Baraka once said, “The future is always here in the past.”
My second discomfort with AF 1.0 as it stood and is commonly discussed is that it not-so-implicitly reinforces an Anglo-Saxon notion of time as a linear process. Wakanda troubles that space-time concept elegantly. AF 2.0 needs to take the phrase “history repeats itself” as a principle worth more than a cute cautionary soundbite.
It is the Ghanaian idea of “sankofa,” a popular symbol from the Akin tribe on the West African philosophy. It does not mean that everything that has already happened will inevitably happen again. It just means that progress goes through some rotations as we propel forward; think of it like a wheel.
As we rotate, the entire idea of futures needs to be revised in AF 2.0. Some astute observers might ask me, “If we are using a circular conception of time, isn’t the ‘future’ the same thing as ‘past’?” I would agree with the premise of that pointed question, however, most of us do not see the idea of ‘future’ as pasts revisited (due to aforementioned whiteness). As any proper activist would, I must respond to the audiences’ preconceived notions and using their language to persuade.
I am not so purist in my commitment to a hopeful future that I will hold onto the word ‘future’ just to fit into some avant-garde mold. Something distinct is necessary to accomplish at least some of what I am urging us to attempt, as Wakanda does. I will get to that.
Afrofuturist Archenemy #3: External Validation
Countering the digital divide was a core political project that consumed Afrofuturism 1.0, rightfully. But with Wakanda, we see a world where African peoples possess the tools they need, thanks to an ancient alien endowment. Given their isolationism, these tools need to be redistributed and used more strategically, which Erik Killmonger made his mandate in his short reign.
I see this as a complicated commentary on how technology plays out in Black communities now. True, we do not always have the cellular infrastructure at the same levels in our communities, which limits Wi-Fi use on laptops. But we increasingly have phones and can learn to code on them. Blackness is not dependent on lack of technological access; it can be enhanced by literacy.
Wakanda signals this innovative shift toward both self-determination and linked fate (in that order) through technology, an ongoing source of contention between separatists and integrationists.
Prior to this, Afrofuturism, like white speculative fiction, has held a deep-seated commitment to various forms of external validation. It hypes up technology, gadgetry, and interstellar conquest as signs of advancement. Meanwhile, I’m scratching my head wondering, ‘How can we be entrusted with other planets when we trash our amazing Earth to date?’ I’ll wait on that answer.
Most troubling of all, this stance places Black lives in a deficit-laden future where we are still insecure and subjugated. Olivia Butler fell prey to this in Parable of the Talents. Afrofuturism of the Ytasha Womack-variety is less prone to these trappings. But in the beautifully-written RAYLA 2122, she still valorizes these intergalactic futures, decoratively using our past as names for her characters (i.e. Illmatic, Shakur). However, I am not aiming to be “post-Black” if that means decorating future life with symbols divorced of deep-seated knowledge of my people’s surreal abilities. Naw.
Five Wakandan Innovations for the Black Speculative Arts Movement: Towards A Politics of Triumph
I believe in the restated goals of AF 2.0 in the BSAM Manifesto, but I think it is missing a term that Wakanda helped me see: Afroretroism. It has been used before, namely by the speculative fiction author and martial arts enthusiast Balogun Ojetade, as he discussed his novels. But unlike Afrofuturism, no texts exist that elaborate on what Afroretroism means as a system of thought, let alone in relation to Afrofuturism.
I do not cast these critiques to romanticize some non-existent, Hotep, Pan-Africanism. There is no single balm for the generations of deep-seated divisions and resource-driven tribalism that has splintered Black Americans and Africans of various ethnicities. What I am espousing is a politics of triumph that might be gleaned from our histories as useful inspiration. Outside of Black speculative fiction, we already see these overtures in X-Men with Professor X and Magneto being not-so-subtle allusions to Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X.
Scaling up a politics of triumph in the BSAM requires our creators and artists to do at least five things.
First, tether Afrofuturist works to Black diasporic history, especially averted tales of conquest, perhaps under a new wing called “Afroretroism.” If we do not, we may risk getting amnesiac, ahistorical, reinvented wheelhouses of work that miss opportunities to educate our youth and those interested in Black perspectives.
Second, stop pimping out our pain. Inspire us with our possibilities, not impossibilities and inequities. If we are to be united in that intention to advance a sense of solidarity within the Black creative community (which is a high-key “if”), let us be clear about what builds community.
Community development happens best when you snowball your existing successes, account for your assets, and appreciate them in relevant, resourceful ways.
Afrofuturism often tries to re-position Blackness into a future that, frankly, the White spatial imaginary has already staked a majority claim on (i.e. Star Trek, X-Men, Star Wars, Blade Runner, etc.). This plays into a rigged game. Alternatively, Black Panther helps reset these rules while remixing the ones that still work for our good. That is harder work than acting like the future is some blank canvas or a doomed dungeon of disparity, as predecessors have often done with great flair.
Third, let us draw from an existing setting, a real world, but with a different set of choices governing its management and advancement. As part of my doctoral research, I wrote a short article in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Planning Theory and Practice (JPTP) that details how Afrofuturism has inspired Black communities to re-envision spaces in Los Angeles. It focuses on a design process borrowed from filmmakers called “world building.” The community world building process in the historically Black Leimert Park Village resulted in a short film “Sankofa City”, which screened at the 26th Pan-African Film Festival (PAFF), thanks to the leadership of director-producers Karl Baumann and Ben Caldwell.
Even though I helped co-design it, something different struck me about screening it in the community. This time, I noticed that, in depicting a future Leimert Park Village as a tech-enhanced “Sankofa City,” we were actually not speculating about an unforeseen, distant future. 2050 is only 32 years in the future. We were not talking about reinventing the place with some alien sensibility. The ancient idea of sankofa is simply being adapted for a 21st-century context. Perhaps an Afro-retro stance is more true to what we want and need.
Fourth, if we want Black speculative fiction to be politically powerful, let’s identify some real dates and fantasize about it. One of the key rules of activism is that you give your audience something in the short-term to do. Focusing so far into a linear, dystopic future untethers the audience from their current reality. We structure our own defeat by making present far-flung wins with politically-disengaged audiences. Sadly, this delivers the ironic opposite of escapism on a Negro like me; it actually makes me ask the depressing question, “Why try to improve a future system I will never experience?” I can’t be alone in feeling this way.
If not, Afrofuturism will continue to come off to me and others less-committed fans as well-intentioned escapism. To some, that escape is a useful coping mechanism, but I think it has the unintended consequence of stretching our cultural activism too thin with inconsistent blips of inspiration. Thus, it leaves a gaping hole between thought leaders and artists, both of whom ostensibly aim to build community.
Fifth and last, let’s organize efforts to practice retro-inspired Afrofuturism more systematically, audaciously, communally, and even spiritually. Institutions like the Midwest Black Speculative Alliance and the MECCA Convention (Midwest Ethnic Convention for Comics and Arts) have been holding down the Black nerd consumption space, but can we organize our cultural production differently?
For example, the annual Futurescapes contest and workshop held at the Sundance Resort is an inspiring model that we in the Afro-visionary community could adapt for ourselves. Futurescapes identifies an annual theme (i.e. “Blue Sky Cities” where air quality is improved) and unleashes their creators. We need that kind of focus and discipline. But let’s take the movement principles of our ancestors and apply it to the impending future of Black urbanism, another concept I am working on, visually and academically.
In summary, I think new rules could include the following five.
1. Stop ignoring history.
2. Stop pimping out our pain.
3. Pick nearer futures.
4. Build new worlds in existing settings.
5. Organize futurism around systemic issues.
While I can keep coming up with rules, I have questions for y’all. What are your rules for creating Black futures? How can we build something more likely to come off the page/screen and influence everyday lives? Would Afroretroism be useful language?
Comment below or e-mail Blackurbanism@gmail.com. We got work to do.
