Talk:Afrofuturism

message: In order for Afrofuturism to be chosen by the Wikipedia community to become a featured article, I am interested in collaborating with anyone to make it meet featured article citeria. --Loremaster 03:50, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  To become a Featured Article 

message: There is way too much quotation in this article. Something like a third of the article is a single extended quote. - Jmabel | Talk 01:23, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree. We can work on that. --Loremaster (talk) 21:11, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Too much quotation

message: One of the criteria for a featured article is that it has images that follow the image use policies and other media where appropriate, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly. That being said, we need to find images that best represent Afrofuturism. If you find any, please post a link to it here so we can discuss it first. --Loremaster (talk) 22:40, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: We're pitifully short on appropriate images. These are the only even vaguely appropriate ones I see.
File:George Clinton in Centreville.jpg|George Clinton
File:Yahya Abdul-Majid photo-lightened.jpg|Yahya Abdul-Majid (of Sun Ra Arkestra)
File:GJ7.jpg|Grace Jones (but this is not a very good photo).
What I'd really like is a late 1970s P-Funk photo, if anyone with the rights would release one. - Jmabel | Talk 06:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

text: Thanks. I think such images might be appropriate for the Music section but I wouldn't favor them for the lead section. I think an image of Morpheus from the Matrix series  might be best. --Loremaster (talk) 18:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I added it. Now I'm interested in this scan of a comic book page about Green Lantern being confronted with racism on Earth: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/110/272717721_071f1c8845.jpg What do any of you think? --Loremaster (talk) 21:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't that copyrighted? - Jmabel | Talk 23:40, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It is but there are conditions according to which you could still use it. --Loremaster (talk) 01:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images Needed 

message: Tricia Rose interview on Studio 360 about Afro-futurism. Citable, good stuff. - Jmabel | Talk 07:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. --Loremaster (talk) 17:26, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tricia Rose on Afro-futurism 

message: I gather that George Clinton's "Mothership" thing was some sort of reworking of some Nation of Islam theology, but I don't know much detail. Anyway, there might be a direction worth pursuing in NOI influence on Afrofuturism. I'm sure there is an academic paper out there somewhere that would make this connection. A Google search on "Nation of Islam" + afrofuturism is suggestive, but I don't have time to follow it up right now. - Jmabel | Talk 07:08, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the idea of exploring Afrofuturism and black theology. --Loremaster (talk) 17:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Mothership Connection 

message: I'm definitely no expert on Afrofuturism, but the musician Future Man seems to fall into this category pretty well. Obviously the name and ethnicity alone don't place him in the realm of Afrofuturism, but his general aesthetic, particularly in his live shows, is based on this general idea of the future, particularly as it relates to instruments and his particular genre of jazz music. Just a thought. I'll leave it up to somebody who's more well-versed than I. 74.228.64.159 (talk) 13:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future Man? 

message: I'm adding my name under the section devoted to visual artists because: I contributedto the original mailer and I'm a visual artist who works with themes that relate to the subject of afrofuturism.  Thanks, Reid Harward  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wordburst (talk • contribs) 21:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  adding my name under the section devoted to  visual artists 

message: I am not really sure if "afrofuturism' is not just redundant multiplication of already existing 'cyberpunk'.
Whole article is made up over just few sources which barely coined the term, and do not even pretend to 
make any permanent use of it, nor they make enough good rationale for creating new neologism.
I agree though that in context of cyberpunk 'afrofuturism' could be considered recognizable branch of it, 
however rather by "post-mortem" labelling (which doesn't nessesairly mean it is any good either).
It just seems as 'cyberpunk among blacks' , which also raises racial/nationalistic concerns.
So, again, do 'afrofuturist' artists want to be recognized as nationalist/racist, by creating such 'genre' of art/subculture?
Or do they want to be recognized as whoever they are with whatever message they are, using 'weapon' of cyberpunk? 
There are many outsider artists (of various nationalities, and skin colour) which border with their messages with 'afrofuturists' , and personally i think one should rather work out finding common denominator inbetween them.
I would refer to 'hacker manifesto' here strongly aswell.  
I do not want to dimnish the meaning of clash of cyberpunk with african culture, and perhaps term 'afrofuturism' could label this phenomenon alone ofcourse, i just want to point out how this article can easily loose it's neutrality if will be held in current tone. 
Fact that artists do express their identity through art doesn't mean this art circles around their legacies. 
This is especially questionable with american artists, i.e. from Detroit, who doesn't really seem to imprint any nationalistic messages through their art, instead elements of african culture are expressed by them just as mere fact , among other things which are of their concern, and medium is just one of many.
83.18.229.190 (talk) 01:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: In the interview/essay where Dery coined the term 'afrofuturism,' [AF] Samuel Delaney objects rather vociferously to the notion that cyberpunk adequately addresses Afrodiasporic concerns. 
and? one opinion does not make a fact.
Trying to label it as a subdivision of cyberpunk is also sort of nonsensical, in that many of the seminal AF works predate cyberpunk (some, like Sun Ra's jazz, by a margin of a few decades). 
uhm no, it may not have been coined cyberpunk but asimovs works surely qualify
To be honest, I'm also not sure why you would group this under cyberpunk? AF is a much more diffuse aesthetic (including music, poetry, etc.), whereas cyberpunk is almost exclusively a literary movement (with some minor forays into film). 
again, wrong. it includes music, visual art, interactive art, etc etc etc
And the aesthetic/thematic overlap is pretty tangential -- AF doesn't typically offer a megacorporate dystopia or focus on hackers/information tech... While some individual works might address those concerns, it's not really a defining feature of the genre.
that is a very, very limited view of the genre. it's like you read one or maybe two books and decided they were all like that. 
I agree that the article is a bit vague at the moment -- I'll try to work on a cleanup over the weekend. But your questions about artist intent are sort of off the mark -- afrofuturism isn't, for the most part, a label artists have applied to themselves. Rather, it's a label applied by critics/scholars to identify a cultural movement with significant thematic/aesthetic overlap. Strundle (talk) 06:19, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  relation to cyberpunk? 

message: Is Samuel R. Delany included just because he's black, or actually because of specific characteristics of what he's written? -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole list is pretty funky (no pun intended) -- it seems to have grown into a rather random collection of cultural artifacts which are either produced by or show people of African descent. I'm not convinced that DS9, for example, is really an 'afrofuturist' text just because it has a black captain. But I suspect Delany was included because he was interviewed in the essay where Dery coined the term. He sort of makes a case for his own work (or at least his books after 1968) as afrofuturist in the same interview, although he doesn't employ that term himself. Strundle (talk) 06:22, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Samuel R. Delany

message: This page is not a joke and is actually the subject of a lot of theoretical discussion, especially in terms of feminism and cyber-feminism. If it seems like a joke, then maybe you have some suggestions for improving the writing style? I do think that more should be added about the theoretical arguments behind afro-futurism, it might make it seem like less a joke and more engaging than just lists of musical artists and literature. It is also interesting how much new pop stars are taking on afro-future-ist images. Beyonce and Janelle Monae are just two examples that are taking on cyborg images and spouting words with afro-futurist theoretical meaning. 
Hw10239 (talk) 03:12, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Responding to previous poster

message: In the next few weeks I'm going to try to work on cleaning up the existing citations, and adding in some newer and older ones (for example there's a new exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem that deals with Afrofuturism: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/11/news-from-space-exhibition/) and I think a lot of older scholarly articles out there, too. However, I'm not sure how to best incorporate material from the bibliography into the main text -- I think my strength is on the research end, rather than writing. AmandaRR123 (talk) 02:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed old refs, tracked down full cites and added them to the reflist and bibliography, and cleaned up some internal citation, so I'm going to remove the citation flags. AmandaRR123 (talk) 00:42, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation cleanup and newer references 

message: What is meant by 'black bodies'? Does this just mean 'black people'? Ben Finn (talk) 17:41, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I would think so, but with reference to the fact that their physical bodies are black-skinned and this affects their treatment in the world. A lot of feminism talks about "women's bodies". Equinox (talk) 19:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Terminology

message: Admittedly I have only briefly skimmed through this article but one thing that strikes me strongly is how American centric it is with a particular focus on the African diaspora (which implys people outside of Africa its self).  It's definition as currently present provides very little space for work from the African continent its self -and indeed features very little work from Africa- and indeed could also be interpreted as exclusionary of certain works by people from Africa who do might not fit the category of 'people of color.'  I feel this article from Africa is a Country is more balanced.--Discott (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: American centric

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Gayniggers from Outer Space (1992) is, uh, rather niche afrofuturism on the face of it, but good luck finding any citations. kencf0618 (talk) 23:04, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gayniggers from Outer Space 

message: Hi I believe Afrofuturism is specifically a creation of Black/ African Diasporic people NOT POC. I think it is important to be clear about this.
I think the introduction needs changing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:428:DD00:C03C:3DAF:C392:A8FD (talk) 22:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Afro Futurism  and POC? 

message: The history section of the Afrofuturism page is a little low in content. I will try to add some information to this. This focus will particularly be on the distinction earlier Afrofuturist influences like Ralph Ellison make between science fiction and Afrofuturism. I think this distinction is important and should be highlighted.
Jhgsmith (talk) 17:35, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing the History 

message: Also, just a thought while I'm here: would it be good to have a section of this page that lists artists by primary medium of choice, or talks about the history of Afrofuturism in different media more specifically? As is, the history section feels a bit all over the place, and would probably be more readable and useful in general if it were grouped by medium - e.g. if there were subheadings for Music, Literature, etc. Anyone have any thoughts about other ways of organizing this section that could potentially be valuable?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MyRoommateTotoro (talk • contribs) 07:04, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organizing by medium 

message: "In the time before the term Afrofuturism was coined and popularized, there had been debate between writers and artists on whether or not their works constituted Afrofuturist media, or if these works were simply science fiction.[citation needed]Ralph Ellison, author of the 1952 novel, Invisible Man, comments on his surprise that he could even write something like this novel in which a black man in the American South whose color makes him invisible.[citation needed] Lisa Yaszek, a Professor and Associate Chair in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, comments in her essay Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, and the History of the Future, that this remark by Ellison marks the Afrofuturist genre as a kind of "fantastical" one.[2]"
There is no citation for the claim that that there was a debate on whether works were Afrofuturistic or science fiction prior to the coining of the term. A more definite statement would be that scholars tend to agree that Afrofuturistic texts emerged in the late 1950s . Additionally, the sentence regarding Ellison’s comment about Invisible Man is confusing. Having read the book and studied it in an academic setting, I know it is not the protagonist skin that makes him invisible. In fact, this sentence seems to suggest the protagonist is made literally invisible, which is not true. Rather, Ellison suggests that because of pervasive stereotypes black people are often not seen as individuals, but as their stereotypes. The sentence “comments on his surprise that he could even write something like this novel in which a black man in the American South whose color makes him invisible” does not convey that at all and is misleading, especially to people who have not read Invisible Man. In Yaszek’s work, I have found Ellison’s remark that “a piece of science fiction is the last thing I expected to write,” but this remark is different from how the author of this Wikipedia section interpreted (if this is the quote they are referring to). Additionally, the word “fantastical” cannot be found in Yaszek so I’m unsure why it is quoted. I did see that Yaszek use the word “fantastic” but that was in her discussion that she believed Ellison suggested there was something “fantastic” about Invisible Man in that it was more than just a science fiction novel. Therefore, it would be incorrect to cite Yaszek as saying she believed there was something “fantastical” about Ellison’s novel. 
Besides the lack of citations, the sentence about Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man does little to enhance a reader's understanding of afrofuturism. This article could be enhanced by removing this sentiment and directly showing the relationship between the novel and afrofuturism. Additionally, this article could benefit by going more in depth with Yazsek's examination of Invisible Man's relationship to afrofuturism. In the article cited, Yaszek does a great job demonstrating the relationship between Ellison's novel and afrofuturism, and this article could benefit from a 1-2 sentence summary of her ideas. I also think reading and summarizing some points from her article An Afrofuturist Reading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man could strength this article as well.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Heather Hopes (talk • contribs) 01:01, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ralph Ellison & Lisa Yaszek under "History" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I moved the section  "List of Afrofutruists" to the end of the article. That leaves the "History" section first, w SpiritedMichelle (talk) 02:20, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Layout  

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Although I am excited to see the effort to expand examples of Afrofuturism and Afrofuturist practices, I find the organization of this Afrofuturism page to be confusing. “History” as a section includes descriptions of music, visual arts, and literature, even though “Art,” film (“In film”), and video games (“In video games”) have their own separate sections. Consequently, I have taken one step that I hope will help begin the process of reorganizing: I added a section on literature, specifically. I have focused primarily on moving relevant information on Afrofuturist literature throughout the page into this section, but I have also added some clarifications and a few sentences mentioning Octavia Butler’s work, since her page has a subsection on her relationship with Afrofuturism. I believe adding this edit is important because the term Afrofuturism is often used in relation to Black literature, so for “Literature” not to be its own section seemed like an necessary oversight to correct.
Please feel free to add any necessary corrections or to reach out with any questions! Beingabookwyrm (talk) 02:57, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section on Literature 

message: I had a whole college class on Afrofuturism that covered from about 1900-1950. I should probably go look it up (old computer backups) and get some proper sources, but I know they exist.199.200.31.194 (talk) 04:16, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing history 

message: The is an important (and interesting) theme for fans of science fiction (like me) but the new ageisms, racist terms (whithey), and the contention of a race/feminist/social struggles are ok in political essays but not in Wikipedia articles.
Sometimes, the paragraphs are tiresome (long) diatribes against either men, white people, mass media and a long etcetera. these contributions are yes passionate yet inadequate for Wikipedia, as this is not a political forum.
It is extensively quoted but many time the quotes are non sequitur to the exposition. For instance, discussing Serena Williams involvement on Beyonce Lemonade we get a quote of an accolade to Serena but that is not relevant to Afrofuturism.
On a passing (painful) reading of this article there is a lot of quotes like the Serena's. 
The article requires a strong rewrite.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cesar.villanueva (talk • contribs) 18:17, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  It is not a joke, but the style is jokish 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: Please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject African diaspora#The trainwreck at Afro-Surrealism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:46, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The trainwreck at [[Afro-Surrealism]] 

message: — Assignment last updated by Scrappy2003 (talk) 22:48, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: ENG 333 American Ethnic Literature

message: How is it possible Sun Ra is not mentioned? He's practically the inventor of Afrofuturism. No Parliament/Funkadelic without him. I also wonder if the some of Elijah Muhammad's cosmology, particilarly the story of Yakub could be mentioned as an early example. 2603:7000:8400:1F0E:F1D0:46EC:F8A8:6D6C (talk) 05:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sun Ra should be in this! Also perhaps Elijah Muhammad