The Aquatic Turn in Afrofuturism

Abstract

The recent efflorescence of fictional writings and artistic works examined under the rubrics of Blue Humanities (Mentz 2009), Critical Ocean Studies (DeLoughrey 2019), Hydro-Criticism (Winkiel 2019), or New Thalassology (Horden and Purcell 2006), testify a recent cultural shift from the land to the sea. In this article, the hydrosphere is analysed in two female Afrofuturist works – Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014) and Wanuri Kahiu’s short film Pumzi (2010) – to address the global capitalist order and to imagine an aquafuturist multispecies aesthetics that springs from the countermemory of the Middle Passage and its undersea myths