ACLA, Utrecht July 2017 

Comparative Afrofuturisms

 “Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction.” – Walidah Imarisha

Black speculative fiction envisions a radical rethinking of not only the future, but also the present and past, often destabilizing binaries of all kinds. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the social justice potential within the transformative narratives and practices of various Afrofuturist art forms. Much Afrofuturist cultural production links imagination and liberation, seeking to “build a future where the fantastic liberates the mundane.” This panel seeks to explore the creatively transformative literatures of Afrofuturism in multiple locations, spaces, and times, aiming to engage a wide range of questions about comparative Afrofuturisms.

As Robin D.G. Kelley has noted, effective social justice movements link imagination to “critical analysis of the mechanisms or processes that not only reproduce structural inequality but make them common sense, and render those processes natural or invisible. The Black Radical Imagination is not a thing but a process.”

How do comparative Afrofuturisms build or inform transnational (or allonational) social justice movements?

How do comparative Afrofuturisms represent technologies, their limitations, and/or potential reconfigurations? The recent “Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination” exhibit at the Schomburg library noted “technology does not have to be an object. It also refers to systems, processes, planning methods, applied knowledge and any designed aspect of a culture that can be used by mankind for various tasks. Therefore, race, religion, literacy, and other cultural constructions can also be seen as a technology.”

How does the concept of diaspora enter into Afrofuturist narratives? What conversations about the nation-state, migration, exile, or citizenship emerge in the speculative work of Black-European, Nigerian-American, or Caribbean-Canadian writers, for example?

How do comparative Afrofuturisms represent a politics of love (for the planet, for life, for justice, for the future)?

How do comparative Afrofuturisms construct nonlinear time? How do these narratives challenge traditional concepts of time, history, and the future?

What are the ways that comparative Afrofuturisms invite us to rethink gender, the category of the human, the natures of utopia/dystopia, the future of the planet?

Submissions engaging these and any related questions are welcome. Submit through ACLA website: http://www.acla.org/comparative-afrofuturisms