Chronopolitics in a minor key: Afrofuturism and social death

Abstract

In this article, I map some of the philosophical implications of that collection of aesthetic practices grouped under the moniker of "Afrofuturism" since Mark Dery's first deployment of the term in 1993. In so doing, I advance several (inter)related theses. First, that aesthetic philosophy should look to Afrofuturism for a model of emancipatory political art, such as it supposes lost with the high modernism of the 20th century. Second, that an engagement with the culturally and commerically immanent modes of Afrofuturist production will help to realise Benjamin's dream, of an aesthetic philosophy no longer dedicated to the "aura" of bourgeois art objects. And finally, following Deleuze and Guattari, I claim that Afrofuturism opens up the space for reflection on a "minoritarian" politics, such as might replace traditional Marxist accounts of class antagonism and help us to reconceive the "resistance" so sorely needed today.