This essay explores the plural notion of “ethnofuturisms” through a comparative lens. The cultural and political vicissitudes of “futurist” tropes are traced in literary and audiovisual productions that engage with the national, ethnic, and/or racial contexts of the Middle East, African diaspora, East Asia, and former Eastern Bloc. As a point of departure for further research, the essay ends with reflections on the uneven distribution of access to futurity and the challenges posed by the navigation of common and conflictual futures worldwide, as well as preliminary thoughts on an expanded frame of comparison that considers emergent ethnicities as embroiled in the formation of cosmic and xenic cultures.
Earlier versions of this essay were published in the accompanying publication to Cosmological Arrows, an exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, August 2019, and presented at The Twilight Symposium: Science Fiction Inside Colonialism organized by e-flux journal in collaboration with La Colonie in Paris, February 2019. It has been republished on The Whole Life platform, an online project by Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, May 2022
Toward a Comparative Futurism
