# Afrofuturism *A contested critical label for Black speculative art that names some traditions accurately while flattening older Black science-fiction, musical, and visual practices if used too loosely.* > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: Arts & Letters · Status: In review · Revised: July 23, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/afrofuturism ## Questions this record answers - Who coined the term Afrofuturism, and what did it originally mean? - Did Black writers, musicians, and visual artists create Afrofuturist work before the term existed? - What are the risks of using Afrofuturism as a catch-all for Black science fiction or cosmic imagery? - How did artists and scholars resist or refine the label after it was introduced? ## Summary Afrofuturism is the name for a field of Black speculative art, criticism, and imagination, but the term itself arrived late and should not be mistaken for the beginning of the work it tries to describe. Mark Dery coined it in the early 1990s to name speculative fiction and technocultural signification by African American artists, while later scholars and institutions expanded it to cover a wider Black diasporic aesthetic. ## The archive's standing Afrofuturism has real usefulness as an archive term: it gathers a powerful body of Black art that joins technology, memory, and futurity into one critical conversation. But the archive treats it as a label, not a birthplace. The stronger record is older than the word, and the word becomes misleading when it is used to swallow every Black image of space, science, or the future. ## Origin and meaning Mark Dery introduced Afrofuturism in 1993 and defined it in 1994 as “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture,” later widening that frame to include “African-American signification” that uses technology and a “prosthetically enhanced future.” The term was created to name an existing set of artistic practices, not to inaugurate them. ## Older practice, later name Black writers, musicians, and visual artists had already been building speculative worlds before the word existed. The archive therefore must track when a work was actually labeled Afrofuturist and when the label was added afterward by critics, curators, or scholars. That distinction matters because retroactive naming can make older Black artistic lineages look derivative of a 1990s critical vocabulary. ## Why the label is contested The term can be useful because it links literature, music, visual art, and theory across the African diaspora. It becomes a problem when it is used as a catch-all for any Black science fiction, any cosmic imagery, or any artwork with a futuristic surface, because that flattens differences in purpose, style, and historical setting. Scholarship on the term shows both its breadth and its instability: some definitions stress African American science fiction and technoculture, while others expand it into a broader Black diasporic aesthetic. ## Writers, musicians, and visual artists The label is often associated with writers such as Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler, musicians such as Sun Ra and George Clinton, and visual artists such as Ellen Gallagher, but those associations reflect later critical framing as much as original self-description. The archive should preserve that chronology. It should also preserve resistance to the label, including artists and scholars who used adjacent ideas—Black science fiction, speculative art, Black futurity, or technocultural imagination—without accepting Afrofuturism as the only or best term. ## Editorial use The record should name Afrofuturism when the source record actually uses the term or when later scholarship clearly applies it, and it should say when that application is retrospective. Used carefully, the term helps map a major Black aesthetic tradition. Used carelessly, it turns a living archive of Black authorship into a generic style badge. ## Sources 1. Mark Dery, “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose,” *South Atlantic Quarterly* 92, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 735-778; reprinted and cited as the source of the term in later scholarship, including the Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction chapter “Afrofuturism,” Oxford University Press, 2014/2019 edition. 2. Lisa Yaszek, “Afrofuturism,” in *The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction*, Oxford University Press, 2014; and Nalo Hopkinson et al., “Afrofuturism in the Stacks,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, library/curatorial essay, 2023. 3. National Museum of African American History and Culture, “Afrofuturism Explained: A Conversation with Curator Kevin Young,” Smithsonian Institution, undated web feature; Tate, “Afrofuturism,” Tate glossary entry, accessed 2026. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-science-fiction - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-futurity - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sun-ra - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/octavia-butler - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/samuel-r-delany --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Afrofuturism," revised July 23, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/afrofuturism Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.