Afrofuturism is a cultural and intellectual movement that envisions futures shaped by the histories, struggles, and imaginations of the African diaspora. Coined in the 1990s by critic Mark Dery, the term describes a lineage of Black artistic practices that combine science fiction, speculative technology, ancestral memory, and political liberation. Afrofuturism asks how Black experience, so often erased or marginalized in dominant visions of the future, can instead become its center.
The movement draws from a wide field of references. Sun Ra’s cosmic jazz and his mythic claim to be from Saturn offered one of the earliest Afrofuturist expressions, blending music, performance, and philosophy into a space-age vision of liberation. Octavia Butler’s speculative novels imagine alternate histories and futures where power, kinship, and survival are contested in profoundly new ways. Contemporary artists like Janelle Monáe, Arthur Jafa, and Alisha B. Wormsley extend the tradition across music, film, and visual art, weaving together technology, identity, and cultural memory.
Afrofuturism reframes the future as a terrain of possibility for those historically excluded from it, turning science fiction into a method of cultural repair. By blending ancestral knowledge with speculative worldbuilding, Afrofuturism insists that other worlds are not only possible but already in the making, seeded in sound, image, and story.
Image from Bandcamp Daily.
