Afrofuturism and the law: A manifesto

Afrofuturism seems to be everywhere these days. It's front and center in the award-winning fiction of N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor. It's in the pop music of Janelle Mona´e and Outkast and Erykah Badu, and in the jazz of Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington and Sons of Kemet. It's even in folk music, through artists like Jake Blount. It's in the art of Wangechi Mutu and Nick Cave. It's certainly in the blockbuster films 'Black Panther' and 'Wakanda Forever', to say nothing of smaller independent films like Neptune Frost and, for that matter, television series like 'Watchmen' and 'Lovecraft Country'. There's even a resurgence of interest in earlier Afrofuturists. In 2020, Octavia Butler's novel 'The Parable of the Sower' debuted on the 'New York Times' best-seller list nearly three decades after it was first released; her novel 'Kindred' was recently adapted for television, and other adaptations are on the way. 'The New York Times' recently profiled her in one issue, while the 'New Yorker' profiled the Afrofuturist Samuel Delany in another. Other indicators of Afrofuturism's continuing influence? In 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened an Afrofuturist period room as an ongoing exhibit. Jennifer Vanasco, A Wondrous Afrofuturism Period Room Opens at the Met Museum, GOTHAMIST (Nov. 6, 2021), https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/wondrous-afrofuturism-period-room-opens-metmuseum [https://perma.cc/A9J9-HZ9L]; Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, MET, https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/afrofuturist-period-room [https://perma.cc/77KE-WU2K] (last visited May 13, 2024). In 2022, Carnegie Hall presented a city-wide Afrofuturism festival. The Metropolitan Opera recently added an Afrofuturist staging to Anthony Davis's opera 'X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X'. From March 2023 through August 2024 in the nation's capital, the National Museum of African American History and Culture boasted as its special exhibit "Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures." The District of Columbia even has an Afrofuturism-themed restaurant, Bronze. And of course, there is this special 'Georgetown Law Journal' Symposium Issue, 'Afrofuturism and the Law'.