Wangechi Mutu | Non je ne regrette rien | 2007
However, critics have raised doubts on whether Afrofuturist sci-fi has as
much to do with Africa as it does with Western cyber cultures,
technocapitalism, and power structures. In fact, non-diasporic African
futurism remains steadily absent throughout the whole book. Whether
such futurism is emergent or not, its lack of mention indicates that the
African/diasporic historical rupture might be greater than the attempt to
reconcile Pan-African cultural production under an Afrofuturistic
microscope.
The question of a truly Pan-African futurism remains an issue for future
negation. Yet, Afrofuturism, as both theory and practice leaves a
thoughtful inkling in the mind of the present-day diasporic reader, by
evoking inferences regarding history and alternate futures in a Pan-Arabist
context.
From a Palestinian readership perspective, Afrofuturism conjures echoes
of lived experiences and collective memories that relate to (but do not
parallel) Afrofuturistic threads such as the apocalypse that has already
happened, the unattainable return to the normal, power regimes of
colonialism, racism, marginalization, displacement, and collective identities
of self-victimization. But Palestinian narratives of loss, dispossession, and
catastrophe have to be seen as part of wider Arab narratives and from
within a Pan-Arabist perspective.