
Afrofuturism Can Help the World Mend - pattusk
https://www.wired.com/story/how-afrofuturism-can-help-the-world-mend/
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filleduchaos
If by "the world" the author means the US, then sure. But nearly every time I
engage with Afrofuturist work, it's as though there's a constant tiny
disclaimer running through my head: "No actual Africans were consulted in the
creation of this work". I'm not really sold on the global relevance of such
locally minded narratives.

To be clear, I don't mean that _individual_ Africans or recent African
emigrants don't work on these projects (although they're often missing that
way too). It's the way the genre tends to completely ignore the very present,
very vibrant, very alive contemporary continent, treating it as though it was
some dead bygone thing to excavate for scraps of inspiration. The narratives
tend to not think of the implications for those of us who, you know, _live
here_ at all. Black Panther and its Wakanda are particularly egregious in this
regard.

Nnedi Okorafor describes her work as (and is rather militant about it being
called) Africanfuturist rather than Afrofuturist for this reason - in her
words, as an author she is concerned with what is and can/will be, not what
"could have been".

