Scope and usage of Afrofuturism

I have some concerns about our page on Afrofuturism, but I'm not familiar enough with the genre to make any corrections or determine if a wick check is necessary.

Our page description asserts:

...and I'm reasonably sure some editors didn't read that when adding examples (e.g. Halo, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, The Evitable Conflict.) In addition, my general impression is that afrofuturism has a few more specific qualities, in descending order of my personal confidence:

• It is focused on the viewpoints of African characters, whether native or diaspora.
• Afrofuturism has a view of technology which is not 'disenchanted', similar to Magical Realism and unlike post-Enlightenment Europe. ("In non-Western culture, the mystical coexisting with the mundane is normal. That is a specific point of view; you take it and move it into the future, and you have science fiction with mystical elements in it." - Nnedi Okorafor) It may represent UFO abduction or posthuman AI as mystical experiences, or societies where high technology exists alongside or as an effect of traditional religions and folk practices (and, often, actual gods and heroes).
• Unlike many works of Magical Realism, Afrofuturism has a fairly neutral-leaning-optimistic view of advanced technology, justifying the -futurism part of the title.

These are true of all the works on the page I would most confidently call afrofuturist (Black Panther, The Ear, the Eye and the Arm, Sun Ra, Parliament Funkadelic), but notably I don't know which of them are true of the three authors the term was originally coined for (Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Steven Barnes). Consequently, I'm fairly sure that there are erroneous examples but I don't know how many - maybe my intuition that District 9 or Blaster Knuckle shouldn't count is just wrong.

What do?

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Well the thing with those examples is they do actually involve Africa itself. The Halo example is referring to the game directly set in a futuristic Africa. The Alpha Centauri example meanwhile is because one of the playable factions is a MegaCorp owned and run by Africans.

It's worth mentioning though that modern academic circles are more split of late as to whether Afrofuturism works should count just for directly take place in Africa itself or not, with certain critics calling for a split to be defined as "Africanfuturism" for works that do. Perhaps it might be time to update the page?

Edited by crystalevo on May 3rd 2023 at 8:12:41 AM

I definitely think someone should update the page and that I do not feel qualified to be that someone. However, whether it's simply set in Africa doesn't seem like enough either way - Nnedi Okorafor, whom I quoted regarding the genre's technological mysticism, is, I believe, the one who coined "africanfuturism" in the first place.

(Halo, based on the description, is only set briefly in Africa and centres no characters with any meaningful history or cultural ties there, but I haven't played it. Alpha Centauri, on the other hand, I can confirm is literally "black people in space" - Morgan Industries isn't owned by Africans, it's owned by Nwabudike Morgan, and like all the other factions on Planet it explicitly distinguishes itself by a shared ideology rather than culture or nationality.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on May 3rd 2023 at 4:37:10 PM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

The Audio Log story in Halo 3: ODST actually DOES have a full Afrofuturism style story about the adventures of a Kenyan Girl named Sadie trying to survive the events of the game (and it's justifiably considered the best part of that whole game). So, a bit humorously, Halo technically does count, at least in that one storyline.

But yeah, I find the genre and it's history fascinating, but I don't think I'm quite fully qualified for updating it fully.

Which makes that a shining example of why I'm reluctant to make any changes myself. :P I know enough about the genre's history to feel like it was written by someone first introduced to the term through the hype for Black Panther ^note which lined up when I just checked the page creation date, amusingly enough but not enough to suggest any particular improvements.

I did just kill a wick that was labelled as a subversion because future Africa was not a utopia.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on May 3rd 2023 at 5:24:55 PM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Should Neo-Africa stay a redirect?

Sounds more like New Neo City.

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But anyway, are we sure this is a genre? Or is it just a pattern that's got a name but we don't have all its pieces as tropes?

To which I say, "Different from Mundane Made Awesome how?"

What even is a genre? I thought we had a definition somewhere, but I'm not sure.

Edit: somewhere in here? I talked about it for some reason: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16593897850A72039600&page=1#25

Edited by Malady on May 3rd 2023 at 9:48:04 AM

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It's certainly been recognised as a genre in recent years, especially with the success Janelle Monáe and Black Panther. The criteria outlined in OP does sound viable, and I'm not sure where the Mundane Made Awesome comparison comes from? Nnedi Okorafor's quote lays out why it's different from that.

Yea Afrofuturism is absolutely a genre that's especially gaining a lot of attention, and yeah it's not Mundane Made Awesome. From the works I've read (mainly Delaney), the creators often utilize highly mystical symbolism and tropes as a means of reclaiming traditions and cultural mythos that are usually ignored or demonized by western media (or at least that's how Delaney and those inspired by him typically write it, I'm sadly not as versed in Okade's work)

Ignored is a bit different than demonized. Got some examples? I gotta sleep.

Gonna end with:

Those are quite different comparisons?

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ō_ô "Enchantment" has nothing to do with Mundane Made Awesome. It's a sociological term attempting to describe the perceived shift in worldview that occurred as western cultures devalued religion and mysticism as sources of knowledge in favour of science and rationalism. If you act as though spiritual forces don't have a presence in the material world, existing in some 'higher reality' or not at all, then you have been disenchanted, supposedly. (There's a contrary argument that secular society has never been truly disenchanted, and in practice largely treats its new sources of revelation as divine as its old deities, but the distinction isn't relevant here. Nnedi summed up the part that is quite well.)

And afrofuturism is an accepted genre term in academic discussion rather than something we came up with, so all we can do is try to accurately document it.

Yes, I chose them that way to demonstrate just how broad the concept is.

[edit: switched out a potentially misleading example for a more general one]

Edited by Noaqiyeum on May 3rd 2023 at 6:41:30 PM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

The only example that seems grossly out of place on the page is Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin. It's got no connections to Africa or Speculative Fiction to speak of. It's mostly a work of adult animation that explores blaxploitation tropes.

What I would like better clarification on is the opening line that says the genre combines Speculative Fiction with "the cultures and experiences of Black people around the globe," while including a note from Wikipedia that seemingly limits that to "themes and concerns of the African diaspora." I don't think these necessarily mean the same thing. The inclusion of films like Get Out (2017), Bright, The Brother from Another Planet, and Sorry to Bother You and others are more focused on exploring societal and racial issues within the United States, which seems wholly different from exploring facets of African culture itself.

I could be mistaken, but my impression is that, while a work of Afrofuturism doesn't necessarily have to be physically set in Africa, there still has to be a theme involving African culture, which is not the same thing as exploring the Black experience in Western civilization.

Edited by SeanMurrayI on May 4th 2023 at 5:56:55 AM

- "Disenchanted" seems to be too vague.

Like, this guy is using it like Measuring the Marigolds - https://twitter.com/scottfitzpatr13/status/1653826971317444636

While I'm thinking your Religion As Source Of Knowledge thing is a trope that we've at least circled around, if we don't directly have.

All Myths Are True or something...

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Afrofuturism was invented by African-Americans and is just as likely to focus on the experiences of them or other African diasporas. I agree that a lot of those don't count, but that's not why.

I think a big issue is that people, even in this discussion, are reading the name and guessing at what it means and not actually familiarizing themselves with what the Afrofuturist movement actually was. Calling Halo Afrofuturist is insane, and obviously just literally reading it as "future Africa".

Edited by TheMountainKing on May 4th 2023 at 11:28:53 AM

This confusion being discussed is honestly one of the main reasons why the Afrofuturism/Africanfuturism split has been becoming more common as it's genuinely confusing when it comes to discerning the difference between "Works about futuristic African Societies" and "Sci-Fi Works centered around African American Individuals" as it's been typically lumped together in most works.

The problem is also that neither of those definitions really describe Afrofuturism. The actual definition is kind of hazy, but it's not reducible to "scifi with black protagonists" or "scifi set in Africa", which the page examples seem too.

I mean, the thing is more that the genre term itself is still rather broad since it's still a relatively newer definition that creators are still expanding on and is split between many different styles. There's really not a precise point that determines when a work doesn't fully count or not, hence the recent academic arguments over where lines should be drawn.

Should we actually send this to TLP or TRS because it's currently too nebulous? Like the New Adult Literature draft?

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Yeah. There are things that were foundational to the definition and definitely count (Sun Ra) and things that defitnitely don't (Halo) but there's a lot that's debated. That's a problem with trying to classify this stuff the way Tv Tropes does.

Edited by TheMountainKing on May 4th 2023 at 2:42:00 PM

I don't think it needs total retooling when it's a firmly established genre, I think it just needs a updated definition.

Edited by crystalevo on May 4th 2023 at 11:44:33 AM

I think it's now too nebulous to edit. Since we are using an academic term, I don't think it's a good idea to choose sides in an academic dispute until there's some kind of consensus from them.

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

You seem to be trying to use other tropes as your entire interpretive framework for everything anyone says. Why? I think that approach is impeding your understanding. It has the result that the connections you're making are fairly shallow, based largely on the words used to name things rather than the concepts they mean.

Disenchantment is not "vague", any more than sexism is "vague" because its effects include everything from systemic discrimination to domestic abuse. However, we are also not trying to make a trope page for sociology terms right now, we are trying to define afrofuturism, and trying to thoroughly explain disenchantment is therefore incidental to this thread.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on May 4th 2023 at 10:54:48 AM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

"Everything anyone says"? I've not been doing that in other conversations, have I?

But anyway, if a genre cannot be defined in terms of at least hypothetical tropes, then by the nature of tropes being units of narrative meaning, that means that the genre under discussion has no narrative meaning?

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I called "Disenchantment" vague, because I'm more used to Alien Abduction as "pick you up, then put you back down", not "pick you up and leave with you", especially since most UFO abduction stuff are the narratives of people who have returned...

OP:

But anyway... Looking at the OP again...

• science fiction and fantasy that specifically draws on the aesthetics and history of African and black cultures.
• Afrofuturism has a view of technology which is not 'disenchanted', similar to Magical Realism and unlike post-Enlightenment Europe.
• Unlike many works of Magical Realism, Afrofuturism has a fairly neutral-leaning-optimistic view of advanced technology, justifying the -futurism part of the title.

Is it possible to have Wild Magic / no Sufficiently Analyzed Magic Fantasy as Afrofuturism? Or must it be a kind of scientific?

Edited by Malady on May 4th 2023 at 3:06:44 AM

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As I say in most convos about pre-established terms, though we are not Wikipedia, it's misguided at best for us to try to define pre-existing concepts without at least citing some actual scholarly work on these topics. Even if the concept itself is somewhat ill-defined, it's better for us to point to that debate than try to reinvent the wheel or put harder, more concrete parameters on it than what actually exists IRL.

All of this to say, for any redefine/rewrite, we should probably be pulling from credible outside sources on the topic.

Edited by amathieu13 on May 4th 2023 at 6:30:06 AM

That's the thing, it's not that Afrofuturism is bound to certain tropes, it's that the entire focus is on the narrative meaning of depicting African or African American characters examining or commentating on either futuristic tropes or cultures. The overall tech and magic level in the world is ultimately irrelevant to the core matter of whether the core characters and themes are explicitly African or Africian American Characters/Cultures.

Black Panther (2018) for instance is the most primary and popular example as it's not only a Superhero movie focused entirely on African Characters and a Futuristic Africian Society, but it's also entirely themed around the characters discussing the cultural significance and impact such a society have on the world itself.

How do you have Future without Tech / Magitech?

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