Afrofuturism as Blochian Utopia

Below is a heavily abridged version of the thesis I wrote for my undergraduate degree in Philosophy at The George Washington University. I wrote on the Blochian merits of Afrofuturism, using the 2018’s Black Panther as a case study.

Introduction

In The Utopian Function of Art and Literature, Ernst Bloch warns readers of the attack on art and artists who do not belong to the socialist realist tradition. He criticizes a new group of socialists, who he refers to as “Vulgar Marxists” and “Red Philistines,” that aims to remove works of fiction, poetry, philosophy, and other forms of imaginative art from society, as he writes, “such [art] and subject matter confine reality mainly to what has become real for the proletariat these days, and neither acknowledges any historical remains nor any dream...it [demands] the sacrifice of all imagination whatsoever.” As Bloch explains, the Vulgar Marxists threaten to suppress these media, subsequently suppressing free will, wishful thinking, and rendering the uncovering of future utopian ideas near impossible. However, Bloch asserts that insofar as we are allowed to create imagiative, escapist art and fantasy, we can continue to access latencies, as in untapped utopian possibilities, and tendencies, as in not yet existing future utopian ideas, in our societies. While Ernst Bloch was responding to the rapid rise to power of a 20th century group that demonstrated a dangerous ideology, his idealistic notions of a free and hopeful future, as well as his warnings against strictly realist art, are still important. A similar contrast can be found in the modern and relatively new philosophical traditions of Afrofuturism and Afro-pessimism. While the former serves as a medium through which artists, musicians, writers, and performers can illustrate a future that often manifests as science-fiction where Black people are no longer disenfranchised, the latter ideology is based in the denial of a viable future in which white supremacy and institutionalized oppression can be dismantled. By drawing the connections between Bloch’s emphasis on creative art and Afrofuturism, using Marvel’s 2018 film Black Panther as an example, as well as comparing the Vulgar Marxist realist art to Afro-pessimism, I aim to argue that Afrofuturism serves the function of idealistic art for People of Color when imagining and creating Utopia.

Afrofuturist art depicts futures in which Black people are able to fully engage in technology, politics, space exploration, time travel, and more; they have a place in fictional utopian landscapes that have historically ignored them or, worse, solely painted them as villains and antagonists. Many forms of Afrofuturist art utilize the history of slavery, oppression, and racism that has plagued the Black experience in the West as a means through which Black people of the future have developed forms of survival and resourcefulness that allow them to excel. In contrast, Afro-pessimists asserts that, without the total dismantling of numerous major institutions that serve to oppress Black people, such as the prison-industrial complex and judicial systems, there cannot be a future that can transcend the centuries of trauma experienced by Black people through the slave trade, white supremacy, and institutional oppression. These two approaches to the future for Black people are diametrically opposed, and can be viewed as modern manifestations of Bloch’s posed conflict between fictional art and concrete realism. While Afrofuturism exists as a way for Black people to reimagine and pave the road for a better future, Afro-pessimism is emblematic of the cruel realist exposure of plight and oppression that Vulgar Marxists believed were the only right form of expression.

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I will primarily be using Marvel’s 2018 addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther, as a modern and mainstream example of Afrofuturist art. Not only was it the first modern superhero movie of its size to feature a predominantly Black cast, it brought to life an imagined community of Black Africans that were able to develop a high-tech utopia untouched by White colonialism and institutional oppression. Black Panther is a great example of an Afrofuturist world set in a film universe generally taken up by White people, fighting White villains, with White sidekicks, and occasionally with the help of a person of color in a secondary or complementary role. Viewers see beautiful images of Wakanda, an isolated haven for Black Africans that values justice, peace, nature, education, and technology. However, with the introduction of the film’s antagonist, Erik Killmonger, audiences are made to acknowledge the negative effects of Wakanda’s isolationist attitude. Killmonger forces the Wakandan elite to consider the disenfranchisement and oppression of Black people all around the world, accusing them of turning a blind eye to slavery, racism, poverty, and drug abuse, as he proclaims to them, “[there are] about two billion people all over the world that looks [sic] like us, but their lives are a lot harder...Wakanda has the tools to liberate 'em [sic] all.” The crux of the film is Wakanda’s king, T’Challa, having to reconcile his nation’s role in perpetuating this harsh reality. Erik Killmonger contrasts T’Challa, as he rejects the Wakandan king’s idealistic view of the world, preferring to focus on strife, violent solutions, and pessimism. However, instead of resorting to Killmonger’s brutal course of action, T’Challa uses the technology and wealth of resources available to Wakanda as a means of elevating those oppressed. This is in line with Bloch’s emphasis on using societies’ utopian potential to drive the future forward. As audiences of all races watch Black Panther, they are exposed to a piece of art within which their notions of Utopia and the future of Black people can be challenged and expanded.

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The mythical society of Wakanda in Black Panther is the perfect amalgam of science fiction, fantasy, and tribal tradition.  As a work of Afrofuturist art, the film serves its purpose: it elevates Black art, culture, and potentiality. Black Panther’s cast is almost entirely made up of Black performers, its soundtrack is curated by Kendrick Lamar, its characters are balanced and human, a much-needed change from the played-out tropes of Sci-Fi (male heroism/stoicism, female helplessness or callous power), and it resonated with a vast audience made up of people of color who had largely never been fairly represented in this film’s contemporaries. 

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Beyond entertainment, Black Panther carries a fruitful ideological surplus packed with images of technology, art, and social structure that could be viable with the proper resources, and that is the point! The fostering of the uninterrupted growth of the nation of Wakanda is a staggering rejection of socialist realism. While it is a fantasy, it is one based on the intuitive sense that the mainstream portrayals of people of color in Sci-Fi are almost entirely bleak and without hope. 

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In “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” Kodwo Eshun characterizes Afrofuturism as “a program for recovering the histories of counter-futures created in a century hostile to Afrodiasporic [sic] projection.” Afrofuturism espouses new expressions of philosophy, religion, technology, art, performance, science, and more; it is an entire restructuring of modern conventions that largely have been founded upon the oppression of people of color. It reconsiders, reimagines, and reinvents institutions that ignore the plight of oppressed groups. Central to the genre is construction of “laying the groundwork for a humanity that is not bound up with the ideals of white Enlightenment universalism, critical theory, science or technology.” Afrofuturist art sees the potential for such promising futures and expresses them in rich and exciting details. It serves to engage, spread hope, and remind people of color that there are alternate futures that do not include the perpetuation of racist oppression.

On the other hand, Afro-pessimism accepts the ingrained oppression that people of color undergo and refuses to accept that there cannot be any solution that elevates them other than to completely dismantle all of the social, political, and cultural institutions established by colonization. Erik Killmonger, the villain of Black Panther, expresses this after recounting the decades of hardship he has undergone as a Black man in America. Having completely given up on hopeful idealism and nonviolent resolution, he proclaims:

I know how colonizers think, so we're gonna use their own strategy against 'em [sic]. We're gonna [sic] send vibranium weapons out to our War Dogs. They'll arm oppressed people all over the world, so they can finally rise up and kill those in power. And their children. And anyone else who takes their side. It's time they know the truth about us! We're warriors! The world's gonna [sic] start over, and this time, we're on top. The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire.

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Mainstream Sci-Fi fails to inspire a world not occupied by the coded fears and aspirations of white people, specifically white men. Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks provides a historical critique of the effects of colonialism on the identity of the oppressed and the influence of cultural products. Fanon explores the construction and perpetuation of a disturbed collective psychopathology of Black people who live in colonized spaces. Not only is the oppressed subject vulnerable to accrued trauma from the people around him, s/he is also constantly exposed to imagery in her/his education and popular culture that stand to reinforce negative portrayals of her/his identity for the sake of a “formation and crystallization of an attitude and a way of thinking and seeing that are essentially White.” Fanon begins by examining the stories, cartoons, and curricula with which Black children grow up, asserting that the growth of negative self-perception begins on a massive scale. Black and White children are raised hearing the same tales of White explorers that portray Black people as uncivilized and inferior. While Fanon wrote on the stories of his time, these tropes can still be seen in modern Sci-Fi. He explains that a Black child will initially “[identify] himself with the explorer, the bringer of civilization,” as s/he is conditioned in White society to associate that image with goodness. Meanwhile, the child is simultaneously exposed to stories that portray non-Whites as savages. Afrofuturism serves as a remedy for people of color around the world who only see themselves negatively portrayed in the future of humankind, as their future stories are told by people who have experienced diaspora and oppression in the present, real world. Thus, they are represented as they should be: free.

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In his 1974 film, Space is the Place, Sun Ra, the twentieth century jazz musician heralded as the patron saint of Afrofuturism, says, “we’ll set up a colony for black people here. See what they can do on a planet all their own, without any white people there. They would drink in the beauty of this planet. It would affect their vibrations, for the better, of course. Another place in the universe, up in the different stars. That would be where the alter-destiny would come in.” Afrofuturism does just this: artists create mythical stories that put Blackness in a positive central role, imagining a world untouched by colonialism and racist oppression. The genre occupies Sci-Fi and more; it is a multimedia movement with roots in music, art, film, literature, poetry, dance, and more. It embodies everything Ernst Bloch could hope for in an artform.

For Bloch, art served a great purpose in constructing and upholding utopian ideals. As grounded in history as Afro-pessimism is, I would imagine that Bloch would still reject it, as it only focuses on the plight of the oppressed, doing nothing to elevate and inspire them. Afrofuturism is a modern and relevant example of Bloch’s idealism about the possibilities of utopia, and, as such, it should be encouraged and fostered as long as we are committed to thinking of and building a future in which people of color are given the means to construct manifestations of afrofuturism in technology, society, philosophy, and more, and are liberated from institutional racist oppression.