The African American author and filmmaker Ytasha Womack defines Afrofuturism as “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation.” Afrofuturist creative works produce cultural, aesthetic, political, and philosophical perspectives on the intersections between the African diaspora and science and technology. These works move fluidly among music, film, literature, fashion, art, and design. Works by Afrofuturist creators, such as Janelle Monae, Wanuri Kahiu, Kerry James Marshall, Cyrus Kabiru, Manzel Bowman, and Tahir Carl Kamali, among others, decolonize Black identities from imperial and exploitative origins. Afrofuturism provides a vehicle for liberating narratives and imagining ways of being distinct from Euro-centric narratives of technology and domination. “Afrofuturism allows black people to see our lives more fully than the present allows—emotionally, technologically, temporally and politically.” As an open and expansive cultural sensibility, Afrofuturism creates space for new subjectivities outside the dominant economic logics of slavery, the subjection to oppressive property laws, the exclusionary political and social tactics, and the ongoing economic inequalities experienced by African people living in a postcolonial world.
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