Kursinformation

“Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out […] imagine possible futures?” With this rather cautious question, critic Mark Dery first proposed the concept of Afrofuturism in 1994, “for want of a better term”. Thirty years – and three decades of vibrant black cultural production with some orientation towards “possible futures” – later, the answer to Dery’s question has to be an unequivocal yes. Not only have black imaginations of (counter-)futures gained high cultural visibility and critical acclaim, as the success of films such as Black Panther, the music of Sun Ra, and the novels of Octavia Butler demonstrate, but the term “Afrofuturism” has also come to stay, both in academia and beyond. In this seminar, we will engage with the theoretical underpinnings of Afrofuturism and discuss its overlaps with and differences from related concepts like Afropessimism and Afrotopia. We will also tie Afrofuturist cultural production to black British history and find out whether or not there is such a thing as a British vein of Afrofuturism (and if asking this question is even legitimate or relevant). “Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out […] imagine possible futures?” With this rather cautious question, critic Mark Dery first proposed the concept of Afrofuturism in 1994, “for want of a better term”. Thirty years – and three decades of vibrant black cultural production with some orientation towards “possible futures” – later, the answer to Dery’s question has to be an unequivocal yes. Not only have black imaginations of (counter-)futures gained high cultural visibility and critical acclaim, as the success of films such as ‘Black Panther’, the music of Sun Ra, and the novels of Octavia Butler demonstrate, but the term “Afrofuturism” has also come to stay, both in academia and beyond. In this seminar, we will engage with the theoretical underpinnings of Afrofuturism and discuss its overlaps with and differences from related concepts like Afropessimism and Afrotopia. We will also tie Afrofuturist cultural production to black British history and find out whether or not there is such a thing as a British vein of Afrofuturism (and if asking this question is even legitimate or relevant). We will discuss various examples of Afrofuturist film, art, narrative, and music.