Making a Case for W.E.B. Du Bois as a Proto-Afrofuturist
Du Bois encompasses both the mundane and the fantastical aspects of Afrofuturism in the praxis of his life’s work.
The term Afrofuturism evokes a stellar litany: musicians Sun Ra and George Clinton along with novelists Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany. While in its early 1990’s debut, Afrofuturism was predominantly in the literary sphere, Afrofuturism’s mid-2000’s resurgence has shifted to the visual arts. Today, elements of Afrofuturism surface in multiple venues: in music videos, academic texts, and within museums and art galleries. With musicians like Janelle Monae and FKA Twigs creating vivid and immersive music video imagery and films like Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) dominating the superhero box office, this Black fantasy/sci-fi genre has firmly made its mark in visual arts pop culture.
Visual artist and writer Martine Syms positions her film, The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (2015), as a critical analysis, urging Black artists and activists to reshape, redefine and recreate the mainstream norms of Afrofuturism. Syms suggests a viewpoint of Afrofuturism that mutes the fantastical ventures into outer space and otherworldly, high-tech phenomena. Instead, she retools Afrofuturism to encompass the more “mundane” advancements Black people are making here on Earth, to further themselves in envisioning a more equitable space for Black livelihood in the future.
Responding to Syms’ call, I make the case for positioning writer, activist, and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) as a proto-Afrofuturist. Du Bois encompasses both the mundane and the fantastical aspects of Afrofuturism in the praxis of his life’s work. Although the term Afrofuturism wasn’t coined until 1993 by writer and critic Mark Dery, all facets of Du Bois’ work align with the mission of Afrofuturism. I enjoy that the term can still be loosely defined, uninhibited by mandated institutional conventions of what it can and can’t be, because to me, Afrofuturism can be seen in nearly anything, and it can be timeless. But for the sake of definition, I believe Afrofuturism to be an embodied ideology serving as a means of healing from the oppressive systems of the present by reimagining what home, comfort, and peace could be.
“Futurism and Afrofuturism’s distinction is important in contextualizing the historical experience of Black people that serves as the basis of a movement…”
Afrofuturism as an art movement is inherently Western-based due to its geographical conception, however it strives to include a pan-African perspective. Many academics address this, including professor and author Sofia Samatar’s “Toward a Planetary History of Afrofuturism” (2017) doing the work of “[providing] a framework for analyzing contemporary works … [and arguing] for the inclusion of African artists in the discourse of Afrofuturism” (Samatar). Whereas some African, sci-fi writers such as Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor rightfully prefer to distinguish “Africanfuturism” from Afrofuturism, stating that the former is “specifically and more directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view as it then branches into the Black Diaspora, and … does not privilege or center the West” (Okorafor). It is necessary to call attention to this factor of a movement whose mainstream representation is often based in or produced within a Western worldview.
Within the arts, Futurism is intrinsically intertwined with the avant-garde movement, both coded by period, geographic location, and style. It erupted out of Italy with artists operating within a more sociopolitical framework than previously seen. Futurism allowed for its more popular associated acts, Dada and Surrealism, to thrive with theoretical context and support. However this is not to draw parallels between the actions or beliefs of Futurist artists of the early 20th century. Similar to Feminism (predominantly white-female) versus Womanism (intentionally Black/feminists of color), Futurism and Afrofuturism’s distinction is important in contextualizing the historical experience of Black people that serves as the basis of a movement: “envisioning a future where Black people are free from society’s long-standing oppression of Black and Brown people, often through escape, reimagining, or the possibility of life on another planet” (Cheatam). This same notion is a constant indicator of intent in the embodiment of Du Bois’ sociopolitical activism, social design, and written work.
Du Bois’ strong footing in sociology was one of the major avenues used in establishing an Afrofuturist mindset on factual, social science-based praxis.
W.E.B. Du Bois was born just five years after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Situated in the North, his birth state of Massachusetts provided him with the kind of intellectual freedoms that would foster his later political actions. This subtle beginning of a turn in history granted Du Bois the opportunity to achieve some of his major accomplishments like becoming the first Black person to earn a PhD from Harvard University. Du Bois’ moved to the South first in 1885 to attend Fisk University then again in 1897 to begin his career teaching at Atlanta University, providing him with the opportunity to study the sociology of Black uplift occurring in Georgia, a phenomenon that was enabled by intensely unified Southern families. Du Bois’ activist work predates the more recognized Civil Rights Movement in American history, but lays much of its foundation with contemporaries such as Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) and Marcus Garvey (1887–1940).
One of Du Bois’ earliest political actions towards mundane Afrofuturism involves challenging Booker T. Washington’s 1895 “Atlanta Compromise”. The two had “[sharp disagreement] on strategies for black social and economic progress” (Frontline). The Atlanta Compromise was essentially an agreement that would maintain the status quo of exploiting Black labor through political disenfranchisement in exchange for the right to basic education and fair legal rights. This agreement served the exact meaning of its phrasing: a compromise. Washington, though a strong advocate for Black people, settled for less in securing a future of equitable Black livelihood with the stipulated terms “that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination” (Lewis).
Du Bois took a less passive approach, rejecting the bare minimum civil rights that the Compromise offered. His resistance towards accepting the existing conditions of Black folks also presents itself in his challenge of the widely accepted scientific racism of the time. Changemakers in the social sciences, as well as applied sciences, promoted the theory of Black intellectual inferiority supposedly based on factual data and supported by “Darwin’s survival of the fittest concept” (Feuerherd). Du Bois used statistics to refute claims of the inferiority of Blacks and to reject its White supremacist roots:
“He cited U.S. census records to prove that black Americans were increasing in number and less prone to suicide and mental illness than whites. He noted that, while nineteen percent of lynching victims were accused of rape, it was black women who were the most endangered by sexual attack from white males. And significantly, he argued that racial scientism was a closed system, not open to new data, and so its proponents were in fact unscientific” (Feuerherd).
Du Bois’ strong footing in sociology was one of the major avenues used in establishing an Afrofuturist mindset on factual, social science-based praxis. And his career at Atlanta University fostered much of the work that began to position him within the written and visual arts that resulted in his creation of an unprecedented statistical social design used to display Black uplift. Commissioned to create work for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, France, Du Bois chose the topic of Black Southern progress with the intent of defying the very foundations of the audiences’ understanding of Black people and identity through science and data.
The Paris Exposition attracted millions of visitors. Those who perused Du Bois’ display were provided a counter-perspective to the universal narrative of Black degradation through slavery and subsequent race relations. This and other early data visualizations by Du Bois such as, The Georgia Negro: A Social Study and A Series of Statistical Charts Illustrating the Condition of the Descendants of Former African Slaves Now in Residence in the United States of America, along with photographic proof of proud and accomplished Black individuals and families helped to establish the onset of a worldwide, new course of thought about the intelligence and sociopolitical aptitude of Black people (The W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts). Du Bois’ data included graphs that compared data such as Black families’ wealth in assets and the literacy rates of Black people, directly after slavery versus in Du Bois’own time period.
Exactly one hundred years ago this year, Du Bois was writing from the same tech-driven framework we use to operate big data today.
I am positioning Du Bois as an Afrofuturist precisely because Du Bois sought every opportunity to fight the status quo in envisioning a world where Black people were not only seen as equals, but also recognized for their accomplishments. The success of his display at the Paris Exposition granted him the opportunity to showcase this work a year later at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. There, he was able to share his findings where it would be most influential and beneficial to the Black families featured in his data and photographs: within the sightline of American policy and lawmakers.
Likely in the wake of Afrofuturism’s recent resurgence, Du Bois’ unpublished manuscript The Princess Steel, originally written between 1908–1910, was published in 2015. This sci-fi short story joins many of his other fiction works, including The Comet (1920), of the same genre. These speculative, futuristic narratives most clearly solidify Du Bois’ place within both the mundane and the fantastical Afrofuturism. Set in 19th century New York City, The Comet bridges disparities between race and class to tell a story about a white woman and Black man who are left as the only two local survivors after an asteroid impact. This story gives us an idea of the race relations and new kinds of interactions that may occur in a near-apocalyptic scenario.
Similarly The Princess Steel takes place in the New York city of Du Bois’ time, amongst the skyscrapers and national industrial development. Told through the lens of a honeymooning couple and a kooky old sociologist, the story examines both race and gender relations within the historical context of the capitalist and colonialist steel mining industry. Du Bois employs a narrative technique that resembles a medieval form of storytelling and conquest, most explicit through his use of Old English. A striking concept that Du Bois invents for the story is that of an instrument which is able to see the “Great Near” — that which is neither the “Far Great” (a reference to the telescope) or the “Near Small” (a reference to the microscope).
Both inventions, the telescope and the microscope were impactful as sociopolitical change-agents throughout history. Similarly, the “Great Near” positions itself as a device able to see cultural phenomena as moments that are large, or great, in their social scale and both physically and mentally near in their consequent impact on their immediate surroundings. In The Princess Steel, Du Bois crafts an allegorical critique of the social constructs that he fervently works against in his real life. As I look back at these works, I am struck that exactly one hundred years ago this year, Du Bois was writing from the same tech-driven framework we use to operate big data today.
Just as popularly established science fiction writers like Octavia Butler and musicians like Sun Ra have been credited with influencing the concept of Afrofuturism, so too we must include Du Bois in our discourse on Afrofuturism.
Many career-based labels have been assigned to W.E.B. Du Bois throughout his lifetime and posthumously including “sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer, and editor.” While many great artists have been categorized by the movements they are associated with writers and critics have neglected Du Bois’ unwavering commitment towards the future of Black peoples. It is important to note here that while this reasoning may seem clear to many now, the title of “sociologist” has been historically discredited from him and has often needed defense precisely because of who the research benefited. For this reason, much of Du Bois’ work as well as his global impact has been intentionally obscured by those who wish to stifle Black social, financial, and emotional wellness.
It is in this regard that I claim a space for Du Bois as a proto Afrofuturist. Moving forward, we must make space to attribute to him this claim that is profoundly supported by his biography and even more so in the wake of the publication of The Princess Steel. Just as popularly established science fiction writers like Octavia Butler and musicians like Sun Ra have been credited with influencing the concept of Afrofuturism, so too we must include Du Bois in our discourse on Afrofuturism.
In his political work, his scholarship, and his creative output, Du Bois took active steps to change the public narrative surrounding Blackness through tools previously used to enforce a narrow perception of Black people, most clearly enacting the practice of mundane Afrofuturism. These efforts have collectively functioned as a hinge to better Black livelihood, a praxis that can be directly linked to Du Bois convictions that I categorize as “Afrofuturist” in what I believe to be the most politically urgent interpretation of the term as relevant to our times.
Safiyah Cheatam is a Baltimore-based conceptual visual artist, digital storyteller, and sci-fi enthusiast. Through printmaking and site-specific installations, she addresses and/or challenges her interpersonal, institutional, and environmental relationships. Safiyah uses the lens of Afrofuturism to produce narrative podcasts and hold community arts facilitations.
References
Cheatam, Safiyah. (2019). “Golden Record: Take Two”.
Croce, Paul. (2001). W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Comet”. Darkwater; Voices from within the Veil. New York :Schocken Books, 1969.
Du Bois, W. E. B., Brown, A., & Rusert, B. (2015). The Princess Steel. PMLA, 130(3), 819–829.
Feuerherd, Peter. (2019). “W.E.B. Du Bois Fought ‘Scientific’ Racism”. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/w-e-b-Du Bois-fought-scientific-racism/
KCET (Producer), & Syms, Martine (Director). (2015).The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto. [Motion Picture]
Lewis, David. (2009). W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography 1868–1963. New York City, NY: Holt Paperbacks.
Okorafor, Nnedi. (2019). “Africanfuturism Defined.” Blogspot. Retrieved from http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2019/10/africanfuturism-defined.html
Samatar, Sofia. (2017). “Toward a Planetary History of Afrofuturism.” Research in African Literatures, 48(4), 175–191. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/reseafrilite.48.4.12
Taylor, C. (1981). W.E.B. DuBois’s Challenge to Scientific Racism. Journal of Black Studies, 11(4), 449–460. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784074
The W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts, Witney Battle-Baptiste, Britt Rusert. (2018). W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. Hudson, New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
(1998). The Debate Between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. The Two Nations of Black America. Frontline. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/debate-w-e-b-du-bois-and-booker-t-washington/