Paper short abstract:

Short Abstract Afrofuturist literature and Cinema have a wide range of aesthetics thereby enabling both Art forms to tackle socio-political issues. This paper asserts that the Afrofuturist oeuvres of African filmmakers have allowed them to envision new paradigms for Africa’s future.

Paper long abstract:

During the colonial period, nineteenth century western scientific discourse of race particularly its attribution of racial characteristics to biological differences such as skull and brain size, facial angles, or genes led to the creation of negative stereotypes of savagery, barbarism and excessive sexuality. I will then argue that these negative theories of race severely disrupted Africa’s future by examining ideas from the works of the African philosopher, V.Y Mudimbe contends that western scientific discourses on Africa was directly responsible for the development of ‘ marginal societies, cultures, and human beings’. It within this context that the paper will analyse ideas from the Afrofuturistic literary and cinematic oeuvres of the African filmmaker Ousmane Sembène such as The Black Docker and Black Girl to illustrate how his successful deployment of the aesthetics of African oral traditions ( storytelling, music and characterisation) and his alluding to diasporic connections enabled his viewers, particularly the disenfranchised people of African descent to re/construct counter-histories and re/imagine counterfutures for Africa and the African diaspora. The paper will then focus on the legacy of the revolutionary African filmmaker and writer by contending that his oeuvres have influenced the works of a new generation of African writers and filmmakers who use their works to conjure up new visions for Africa and African diasporic culture and identity.