Afrocentricity in AfroFuturism: Toward Afrocentric Futurism

INTRODUCTION

Defining Our Future on Our Terms

Aaron X. Smith

I have been blessed to teach one of the largest elective classes on my campus at Temple University. One day, a student in my Tupac Shakur and the Hip-Hop Revolution course came up to me after I had given an energetic lecture and said, Professor, what’s the significance of Tupac for us today? I paused, looked at the student, and asked, Were you present for the previous lecture? (as his question was a slight variation of the question discussed during that class). The student, almost shyly said, I missed that class. My thought, however, was that this student really needed a substantive answer in order to move on, so I held off rushing to an interview to maximize this teachable moment. I said to the student, Studying Tupac helps us know where we have come from so that we can know where we need to go. Everything about the life and legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur is the merging of the past, present, and future. He thanked me and left for his next class, and luckily, I was still able to make my interview. This work, like that artistic-political legacy, reflect permeance and transcendence simultaneously, like AfroFuturism.

What I am interested in is the flow between AfroFuturism and its evolution to Afrocentric Futurism. I know, for example, as we shall see in this volume, that Afrocentricity played a representative role in the creation of AfroFuturism, but I also want to know how the speculative future is aided by the Afrocentric philosophy. Mark Dery is credited with being one of the first to use the term AfroFuturism (Anderson & Jones, 2016, p. viii). However, Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones (2016, p. vii) understand that a form of AfroFuturism is speculative fiction that treats African American themes and addresses African American concerns in the context of 20th century techno-culture-and, more generally, African American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future.

This definition of AfroFuturism has continued to expand and be interpreted and expressed through a myriad of writers, artists, scientists, and other visionary creatives. Perhaps the most significant reexamination of Dery’s use of the term was conducted in 2016, with the publication of AfroFuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness, edited by Anderson and Jones. In this work, Anderson and Jones detail the evolution of the phenomenon of AfroFuturism. What is presently called AfroFuturism was originally a techno-cultural perspective accompanying engagement in a form of cultural production, originating in practices in Black urban dwellers in North America after World War II (Anderson & Jones, 2016, p. viii).

Anderson and Jones critique Dery’s definition as not being rooted in certain elements of the 150-year history that contributed to the phenomenon of AfroFuturism. I critique existing scholarship on AfroFuturism for too often relegating Afrocentricity to the role of an equal influence among many rather than a foundational component in the roots and expansive future of this field of study. Just as Afrocentricity centers the African within her/his own historical and cultural reality, AfroFuturism will gain/grow exponentially through centering Afrocentricity in the agency-rich reshaping of the world around us, through the lens of the children of the diaspora as subject rather than the object.

Later in his introductory remarks, Anderson and Jones define AfroFuturism 2.0 as he delineates the concepts: "AfroFuturism 2.0 is the early twenty-first century technogenesis of Black identity reflecting counter histories, hacking and or appropriating the influence of network software, database logic, cultural analytics, deep remixability, neurosciences, enhancement and augmentation, gender fluidity, posthuman possibility, the speculative sphere, with transdisciplinary applications and has grown into an important Diasporic techno-cultural ‘Pan African’ movement (Samatar 2015)" (Anderson & Jones, 2016, p. x, emphasis added). The question I attempt to answer with this volume is, How can an Afrocentric methodological approach to AfroFuturism effectively remedy the disproportionate influence of Eurocentrism in many Black speculative spaces while revealing a more historically accurate and exponentially greater transformative liberatory epistemology?

In order for AfroFuturism to launch into the next generation with powerful, culturally grounded, Pan-African intentionality, the Afrocentric method must be properly implemented in the understanding and development of the phenomenon. Despite mentions of the work of Molefi Kete Asante and other Afrocentric scholars, Anderson and Jones describe a fourth dimension of AfroFuturism (the social sciences dimension), which I firmly assert requires a deeper academic dive into this dimension, particularly as it relates to the potential for a richer understanding of AfroFuturism through the implementation of the Afrocentric method. "Afrocentricity is a quality of thought or action that allows the African person to view himself or herself as an agent or actor in human history, not simply as someone who is acted upon. It provides a perspective from the subject place, not from the margins of being victims or being an object in someone else’s world" (Asante, 2007, p. 7, emphasis added). One of the primary distinctions that many of the contributors to this text exhibit (in contrast to much of the previous writings on Black futurity) reflects the implementation of the Afrocentric paradigm in the process of rooting, analyzing, and predicting the future of AfroFuturism. The transformative potential of grounding existing elements of AfroFuturistic dialogue and creativity within the Afrocentric paragon will provide further avenues of historical connectivity and intellectual and cultural substantiation, as well as potential for the creation and re-creation of various modes of existing and expressing as African people throughout the diaspora.

My recognition of the numerous ways AfroFuturism emphasizes African agency and a reimagining of the world and the universe from an African/diasporic perspective lead me to interrogate the connections between AfroFuturism and Afrocentricity. This investigation has culminated in the production of a body of Afrocentric scholarship, which takes a more in-depth look at the tensions created by the historical and cultural dislocation of African peoples and consciousness as it relates to the AfroFuturistic project and projections.

Dislocation can prove exponentially problematic when attempting to envision a future through a borrowed or superimposed methodological lens, which is unknowingly light years behind other means of expressing and engaging, despite the more sophisticated methods having been labeled primitive, reprobate, or obsolete by conquerors, colonists, and revisionist historians. In name and linguistic structure, there are similarities between Afrocentricity and AfroFuturism. The foundational dominant narrative that both seek to break free from links both terms comparatively. AfroFuturism can be seen as a reaction to the dominance of White, European expression, and a reaction to the use of science and technology to justify racism and White or Western dominance and normativity (Lewis, 2018, para. 2).

The utilization of technological advancement for the maintenance of European domination over the people of the African diaspora adds further layers of depth and nuance to the existing conversations around technology, futurity, and the importance of African agency coupled with Afrocentric consciousness. As a result of the foundational contributions of Afrocentricity on countless aspects of modern Black art, film, writings, and other manifestations, I found it prudent to describe this particular iteration of study and expression of Futuristic thought and creativity, as Afrocentric Futurism. It is the study and implementation of the early ancient Kemetic technogenesis of pioneering, cutting edge African cosmologies, creativity, and culture from an African/diasporic-centered perspective.

This foundational historiography and worldview center past, present, and future African expression, identity, evolution of thought, and civilization. Afrocentric Futurism analyzes phenomena through the foundational lens of Kemetic science, philosophy, spirituality, and related methodologies. The process of transformative forward thinking, which utilizes foundational lessons of the past, is an age-old tradition that is essential to the inception and evolution of what is commonly referred to as Africana studies. This work is designed to help readers better understand AfroFuturism within the larger context of Africana studies and how each relates to Afrocentricity. Africana Studies is an academic extension of what Cedric Robinson has called the Black radical tradition. This tradition is notable for emerging out of a pre-existing constellation of African intellectual work, shaped by millennia of migration, adaptation, and improvisation. Through the central acts of translation and recovery, Africana Studies seeks to theorize on the basis of long-view genealogies of African intellectual work (Carr, 2011, p. 178).

AfroFuturism, like other more recent fields that fall under the umbrella of Africana studies, must defer chronologically and, to some extent, methodologically to the seminal components of the field, such as Afrocentricity. The Afrocentric paradigm has helped to make many of the subsequent, innovative, intellectual outgrowths possible within this imaginative, transformative space. This book seeks to remind scholars in African studies [and beyond] that the Afrocentric idea has been the guiding paradigm of the discipline and it not only needs to be defended, but Afrocentric scholarship needs to be vigorously pursued (Alkebulan, 2007, p. 410). Afrocentricity will not become an invisible, unrecognized, and underappreciated steppingstone in the process of Black self-determination and redefinition, which it must be thoroughly credited with encouraging and informing. Afrocentricity has helped to make much of this empowering, speculative AfroFuturistic thought possible through introducing new perceptual paradigms and literally creating numerous spaces within and outside the academy where new intellectual creative frontiers are forged.

Many of these new frontiers have deep roots in previous eras of innovation. The rich connections to the African past and the most innovative modern technology cannot be overstated. For example, this Afrocentric chronology reveals the origins of the binary code, which governs computer technologies (Platts, 2018; McIntyre, n.d.), and neurology: "In the realm of neurosurgery, ancient Egyptians were the first to elucidate cerebral and cranial anatomy, the first to describe evidence for the role of the spinal cord in the transmission of information from the brain to the extremities, and the first to invent surgical techniques such as trepanning and stitching (Fanous & Couldwell, 2012, abstract, emphasis added). Alongside alchemy (Roberts, 2019), posthuman potentialities (Cockburn et al., 1998), and other realities, Afrocentric Futurism is a self-defining liberation movement, which manifests an independently driven future through the utilization of lessons and connections to the traditions and deep structures of the ancient African past. Afrocentric Futurism is an effort to further anchor, connect, and reconnect contemporary consciousness and our Futuristic innovations with the immovable power of our African culture and past and future potential as a methodological hedge of protection against cultural appropriation, which often leads to whitewashing of African history. A more accurate term for its name would be erasure" (Anderson & Fluker, 2019, p. xi). The synthesis between Afrocentricity and AfroFuturism serves to bolster the defensive capabilities of each on the battlefield of ideas and the struggle for the independence of Black redefinition and self-determination. The weapons of this war are numerous and none more important than the other from a wholistic, interconnected, communal, Afrocentric perspective.

Our creations—our visual, digital, performative art, our stories, poems, plays, our musical compositions and sonic contextualizations, our fashion and architectural design, our medical, scientific breakthroughs, our philosophical, cultural innovations and paradigms shifts, our artistic activism—all of it serves as an undeniable witness to our survival, to Black genius, Black art, Black innovation in a world that would deny its existence, then turn around and claim it as its own. (Anderson & Fluker, 2019, p. xi)

As we move forward into the world created in large measure by Futuristic thought, the preservation of African traditions is critical. The shoulders we stand on must continuously be acknowledged in order to be most powerfully guided by ancestral forces and to utilize the lessons of the past. A leading voice in the field, Ytasha Womack, expressed homage to those who cracked the limiting literary lenses of patriarchy and racism in her crucial work AfroFuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture (2013). AfroFuturists are not the first women to do this. Fine artist Elizabeth Catlett, author Zora Neal Hurston, and anthropologist/choreographer Katherine Dunham, among others, used imagination, art and technology to redefine Black and female expressions (Womack, 2013, p. 101). Similarly, AfroFuturists are not the first speculative thinkers to engage in similar forms of redefinition through innovative and imaginative creativity. Scholars like John Henrik Clarke, Frances Cress Welsing, Cheikh Anta Diop, Molefi Kete Asante, Maulana Karenga, and Ama Mazama have used imagination, theory, and methodology to redefine diasporic existence. It is of vital importance that we know our past as we move forward and the benefits of the transformative potential of truly knowing ourselves.

Knowledge of the Afrocentric Self as a Conquering Compass for Futuristic Thought

The critical importance of knowledge of self was a message engraved prominently on the walls of ancient African temples over five thousand years ago (later attributed erroneously to Socrates). African self-awareness represented the spiritually conscious roadmap to finding the kingdom of heaven (note that inscribed on the Temple of Amun-Mut-Montu is the kingdom of heaven is within you; and whosoever shall know thyself shall find it), connecting with your God force within, as well as the stars above. These admonishments express the imperative of knowing one’s past in order to know one’s path.

A large portion of AfroFuturistic expressions and thought center technology in a traditionally Eurocentric sense; examples include metallics, computers, space travel, and the merging of humans and machines (technological singularity, neuromorphic computing, and neurotransmitters). Many of these expressions leave some AfroFuturist thinkers more aligned with Elon Musk than the African polymath Imhotep. This current conundrum regarding the recognition of the liberatory potential of technology when analyzing progress from the perspective of the oppressors of African people brings to mind a line from a scene in the movie Black Panther in which the character Killmonger accuses, Your technological advancements have been overseen by a child who scoffs at [African] tradition (Coogler, 2018).

Viewing the notion of Futuristic technology from a European compartmentalized standpoint could drastically limit the analytical scope of the investigation. When a culturally dislocated Futuristic lens is utilized to cast an AfroFuturistic vision, problems with practical relevance, historical accuracy, and potential benefits toward African liberation can arise. This illustrates the imperative for an Afrocentric Futurist voice to be included and centered in the larger AfroFuturism conversation. The value of the Afrocentric methodology has been championed by scholars (Asante, Karenga, James Conyers, and others for decades). According to Asante:

"[The] Afrocentrist is concerned with discovering in every place in all circumstances the subject position of the African person.… Asante further argues that Africans who are operating from a Eurocentric perspective are dislocated. They are removed from their own cultural center, which has been replaced with a Eurocentric understanding of how they are in the world.… If a person is dislocated, then they are operating from a marginal place or within the confinements that their oppressor has outlined. (Conyers, 2018, p. 290)

Cultural and historical dislocation can contribute to degrees of self-hatred, which may result in the perversion of purpose for technological advancements and the adverse utilization of African innovations against the Afrocentric growth and development of the masses of African people. For these reasons, the distinction between AfroFuturism and Afrocentric Futurism may at first appear less significant. The nuance, when accurately delineated, has some connections to the more polarized, foundational, analytical, cultural, and methodological debates concerning Eurocentric versus Afrocentric education.

Afrocentric Futuristic Theory Leaps Away from Eurocentric Domination

Rather than grounding the imagination of counter-futures in Eurocentric philosophical and political arguments, Afrocentrism is grounded in a variety of inspirations: technology (including Black cyberculture), myth forms, indigenous ethical and social ideas, and historical reconstruction of the African past (Lewis, 2018, para. 4). This differentiation between Eurocentric and Afrocentric thought can be expressed as looking inward versus looking outward for the most advanced technologies and answers concerning the universe and our future. Afrocentric views of nature as the highest technological superstructure and the human body as its crowned cosmic jewel of symbiotic, synergistic sophistication deserves greater attention. Even when ancient Africans were looking to the heavens and charting the stars, there remained a clear connection between the earthly and celestial beings. This interplay is evidenced through the merging of stars and human imagery, creation stories about beings from the heavens coming to Earth, and the architectural reflection of solar configurations manifested through an in-depth study of the great pyramids. Rather than a Christopher Columbus-styled, conquering exploration view of space as the great unknown, the ancient African interpretation of intergalactic connections appears to deal more with notions of a great reflection of self and a great return.

This contrast of concepts may explain the contentment toward nature and related reverence for the natural order in its untampered state, differing greatly from the engagement with nature expressed historically from the European standpoint, which constantly seeks to subdue, subvert, or improve upon nature rather than emulate the evidence of boundless genius present in even the most cursory observations of natural laws and related realities. Absent the Afrocentric values of the self and the body, we increasingly encounter tales of human-computer interaction (HCI), which underestimate the sophistication of the human body, while focusing more consistently on the ways outside technologies can enhance the body and life rather than the importance of the technology of the body and nature and how it relates to the cosmos. Something as seemingly basic as drinking water can be viewed as a technological wonder when viewed through the complex lens of detoxification. "During the detoxification, waste that has been stored and disposed tissues are dumped into the blood stream and lymph [sic] and then sent to the liver and kidneys for processing and elimination" (Idizol, 2007, p. 393).

Viewing humans as the highest technological manifestations in history and engaging the future with that reality ever present in our mind’s eye could produce drastically different visions for our collective future. Afrocentricity, communal thinking with esteem for nature and a connection and reverence to the ancestors, should be at the foundation of building the world anew toward the goal of full liberation for African people. Mentioning, referencing, and even drawing connections between AfroFuturism and African history, culture, and traditions differs greatly from centering our creative visions, Black speculative thought, scholarship, and other advancements within the Afrocentric paragon. Our future can be most powerfully and beneficially manifested through a knowledge of self and the implementation of Afrocentric culture rooted in ancestral connections.

Looking Back to See Forward: The Sankofa Foundation of Afrocentric Futurism

If early African civilizations were ahead of our current conceptualization concerning architectural feats of complex, enduring grandeur (alchemy, astrology, Waset, Abydos, the Great Zimbabwe, etc.), then it stands to reason that our future may include numerous realizations that were previously understood yet lost along the evolutionary journey of civilized humankind. In this alternate understanding, our future could very well be a return in many respects. Perhaps best expressed as an updated, improved edition of a previous foundational African program that will be understood, accessed, and manifested through a culturally and chronologically connected understanding and proper appreciation of Afrocentric Futurism.

Before we take any more quantum analytical leaps into the dark unknown as it relates to Futuristic visions and potential of the direct descendants of the African diaspora, it is imperative that we further assert our agency from a historically and culturally sound, self-defining, Afrocentric context.

Thus, in the spirit and speech of the ancestors, I want to engage in the practice of sankofa, a patient and persistent research and reasoning that enables a critical recovery and reconstruction of the past in order to enhance our insight into the motion and meaning of African history as the ground of the present and the unfolding of our future (Tedla, 1995; Keto, 1994, 1995). (Asante & Karenga, 2006, p. 166)

This work is dedicated to the importance of African chronologies, self-awareness, and agency and the value of historical context in the shaping of our collective future. Although, this study in a methodological sense emanates from a more targeted historically contextualized vantage point. Many of the more general observations about the role of perspective and alternative understandings in the shaping of AfroFuturism have been acknowledged. The direct connections to Afrocentricity and the Afrocentric method, however, are typically mentioned in passing, as peripheral, alluded to briefly, or completely omitted despite the undeniable connections and analytical overlap between the two modes of thought and expression. It is crucial to recognize the internationally interconnected ramifications of colonization and globalism impacting AfroFuturism. AfroFuturism implicitly recognizes that the status quo globally—not just in the United States or the West—is one of political, economic, social, and even technical inequality. As with much other speculative fiction, by creating a separation of time and space from current reality, a different kind of ‘objectivity’ or ability to look at possibility arises (Lewis, 2018, para. 3).

Alternate Chronologies and the Manifestation of Alternate Realities

Afrocentricity emphasizes a new outlook and the value of taking an objective alternative view of traditionally Western/European influences on African thought and creativity. Historically, the predominant predictions of the future of humanity have come from the continent of Africa where two-thirds of human history had taken place before any migration to other continents ever occurred. The origins of humankind are often discussed in the context of African history, yet seldom is similar attention devoted to the complex technological realities that are involved in the story of Africa, existing as a Futuristic civilization for generations in comparison to other parts of the world:

Authorities in anthropology and archaeology concede that Africans were the first to discover iron, the element most useful to man. They learned how to extract iron from the ore that abounds in the interior of Africa and to refine it in furnaces, and blacksmiths throughout Africa worked the metal into useful tools. Other peoples learned to use iron only much later. In Africa, the Black was a discoverer and inventor in spite of his lack of contact with the so-called progressive parts of Asia and Europe. Scientists now give Africans credit for first discovering iron, developing stringed instruments, domesticating the sheep, goat, and cow, and learning about the planetary system. (Haber, 1970, p. viii)

Too often, complex science and modern technological advancements are juxtaposed, and any notion of ancient African existence and expression is typically deconstructed in historian circles of analysis. However, Western technological spaces are similarly plagued with these misconceptions. These perceptual impediments persist despite Africa being the home of the first civilizations and the first technologies. In fact, everything indicates that the Egyptians had arrived at some remarkable results in certain areas of astronomy (Sauneron, 1960, p. 152). The myth of Africa as a dark continent devoid of evolved concepts and creations contributes to the failure of some to access the Futuristic potentialities of previous African civilizations. The lie of this dangerous, dark continent states:

Africans, on this view, had never evolved civilizations of their own; if they possessed a history, it could scarcely be worth the telling. And this belief that Africans had lived in universal chaos or stagnation until the coming of Europeans seemed not only to find its justification in a thousand tales of savage misery and benighted ignorance; it was also, of course, exceedingly convenient in high imperial times. (Davidson, 1959, p. ix)

A prime example of this need for visionary realignment is elucidated through an exploration of the advanced deep sciences of the Dogon people of Mali in West Africa. The Dogon people have a rich and sophisticated astrological and astronomical infusion into the foundational aspects of their concepts of