Entry · catalog no. 9207
Afrofuturism
/ /ˌæfɹoʊˈfjutʃəɹɪzəm/ /AF-roh-FYOO-chur-iz-um
noun · United States (term coined 1993) · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
A movement in literature, music, film and art that places Black people in imagined futures and alternate worlds, and uses science-fiction imagery to speak about the Black past and present.
“Her album is full of Afrofuturism: spaceships, ancestors and funk.”
Origin & Attribution
The word was coined by critic Mark Dery in the 1993 essay 'Black to the Future', a set of interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate and Tricia Rose, published in the South Atlantic Quarterly (later in Flame Wars, 1994). It named work that already existed: Sun Ra's music, the novels of Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler, and the funk mythology of Parliament and Funkadelic. The practice is older than the word, and Black artists and scholars have since shaped its meaning.
1993
Mark Dery publishes 'Black to the Future'
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
United States (term coined 1993) · 1990s
Spoken by
Black writers, musicians, artists, scholars and fans
$AFROFUThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising33 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
65/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1993
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Mark Dery, 'Black to the Future', South Atlantic Quarterly (1993)
book
■
+ Cite a sourceEncyclopedia of Science Fiction, 'Afrofuturism'; secondary
web
See also