AFROFUTURISM AND ARAB FUTURISM
Reflections of a Present-day Diasporic Reader
Lama Suleiman
Larissa Sansour | A Space Exodus | Courtesy of the artist
Edited by Communication scholar Reynaldo Anderson and leading Africana
Studies professor Charles E. Jones, Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of
Astro-Blackness, is a collection of essays that examines Afrofuturism as
a genre of Afrodiasporic cultural production, and as a framework for
analysis and critique from within various fields of Black technocultural
studies. In undertaking such an examination, the authors and contributors
seek to define what they call Astro-Blackness, “in which a person’s Black
state of consciousness, released from the confining and crippling slave or
colonial mentality, becomes aware of the multitude and varied possibilities
and probabilities within the universe.” 1
Having a somewhat remote interest in science fiction (mostly as
contradicting affinities either towards consumerist escapism or anarchist
imaginations), Afrofuturism 2.0 proves to be not only an educational
experience, but a necessary provocation of questions on Pan-Arab culture,
which may be read through various Palestinian states of being – whether
present, absent, or imagined.