Black to the Future

Robert O’Hara’s production of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X begins with a spaceship crashing into the Metropolitan Opera House, where it remains hovering above the stage for the duration of the opera. This scenic design is just one element of X that draws on the vocabulary of Afrofuturism: a mode of expression that envisions alternate, liberated futures for people of African descent, often through images and ideas associated with science fiction, technology, space and time travel, and utopia. While projecting a new, imagined horizon of progress beyond the confines of racial hierarchy, Afrofuturism also offers a reevaluation of—and draws inspiration from—historical cultures of the African diaspora.

Afrofuturism also shares important intersections with Black nationalist thought, a key throughline in Anthony Davis’s opera. Well before Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and Marcus Garvey, Black intellectuals were advocating for Black self-sufficiency, empowerment, and separatism. The physician, writer, and abolitionist Martin R. Delany, for example, not only published astronomical treatises but also advocated for African Americans to resettle in West Africa. In his serialized novel Blake; or The Huts of America (1859–62), Delany’s protagonist uses his knowledge of stars, constellations, and other celestial phenomena—along with his own “pocket compass”—to spread word of an imminent slave uprising across the American hemisphere, teaching fellow slaves his techniques of naturalist and astronomical observation as he makes his way from Mississippi to Cuba. In the early 20th century, African American writers showed increased interest in the possibilities and pitfalls of scientific innovation and time travel, producing such varied works as Pauline Hopkins’s serialized novel Of One Blood; Or, The Hidden Self (1902), W. E. B. Du Bois’s short story “The Comet” (1920), and George Schuyler’s satire Black No More (1931).

Music has played a central role in the development of Afrofuturist aesthetics, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century. With the advent of the postwar Space Race, the dawning of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and the growing popularity of both science fiction—think Star Trek and Star Wars—and musical genres like funk and disco, Black musicians made major Afrofuturist innovations. One prominent example is experimental jazz composer and bandleader Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount, who renamed himself after the Egyptian sun god. Claiming to have returned from Saturn on a mission to rid society of oppression, he formed his legendary ensemble the Sun Ra Arkestra, evoking the biblical symbol of Noah’s Ark, which seeks refuge from the storm in search of a better world. In their costumes, stage design, and artistic projects—notably the film and accompanying album Space is the Place (1974)—Sun Ra and his Arkestra drew on symbols from both ancient Egypt and modern techno-utopianism.

Another key contemporary contribution to Afrofuturist music is Parliament-Funkadelic (also known as P-Funk), the legendary funk music collective led by George Clinton. When the group toured in support of their hugely successful album Mothership Connection (1975), their elaborate concerts included a full-sized spacecraft called The Mothership, which was lowered onto the stage and accompanied by lights and pyrotechnics. Clinton would then emerge from the vessel—which is now on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.—as his alter-ego Dr. Funkenstein, bringing the power of funk to the crowd and transporting them to another universe. Inspired by the Blaxpoitation craze in contemporary film, this era also witnessed a proliferation of Black superheroes (and villains) in mainstream comic books like Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Black Racer, Bumblebee, Doctor Mist, John Stewart (Green Lantern), Shilo Norman (Mister Miracle), and Nubia.

The influence and popularity of Afrofuturism show no sign of abating. Consider the immense success of Marvel’s Black Panther films; musician Janelle Monáe’s albums The ArchAndroid (2010), Electric Lady (2013), and Dirty Computer (2018); contemporary writers like Nnedi Okorafor and N. K. Jemisin, who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in science fiction or fantasy three years in a row; and the recent TV adaptation of Octavia Butler’s foundational 1979 sci-fi novel Kindred (2022). Though it recounts the historical past, O’Hara’s staging of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X suggests how those engaged in struggles for human rights always speak from vantage of the future—conjuring a better, more just world that has already been glimpsed if not yet brought to fruition.