Today, we will listen to a thinking session I had with students where we engaged ideas around an argument I presented that suggested: Afrofuturism is an ancient idea that expresses itself as an African/a freedom principle. It is an articulation of a constellation of deep African/a ideas and practices of what I called Africa’s Ancient Future [a nod to Wayne Chandler’s Ancient Future]. Through historical and ancestral memories of magic; use of spiritual technologies; intentional philosophies of life; heretical temporality; creative nonlinear knowledge production; and a symbiotic connection with nature and the universe, Africa’s Ancient Future is articulated through a freedom principle which implies a constant struggle to delink one’s collective self from now moments, reconciling past moments, in order to create future moments. Seeking ways to express one’s humanity in resistance to forms of oppression, by moving through spaces of carcerality with fluidly. Primarily because time is understood ‘differently’. Or I should say correctly. What was of importance to our interrogation of the time concept was an exploration of its arrested expression as a Western European construct. The dominant temporal ticks used to mark the flow of human experience/s are mapped from distorted perceptions of a limited reality, perceptions that were born from a specific historical and ancestral cultural worldview…then forced upon the world through enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, language, and cultural violence. The argument as presented, then and today, suggests that in order to understand Afrofuturism/African Futures as an intellectual/theoretical frame or lens through which to recognize the place of Africa in a future as a very ancient idea. I argued that we must map provocations of human expressions [forms of resistance] at various moments to be rooted in the deep cultural fabric of African/a people, an interdependent relationship between the material and spiritual as an epistemic frame through which we can see all African/a ways of knowing reassert itself on a global stage as the progenitor of all human knowledge. Communities, the peoples that inhabit the geographical spaces referred to as continental Africa have always been acutely aware of the future…the cultural practices in current religious forms and functions are rooted in a deep African spiritual understanding/worldview. This is not a profound acknowledgement. However, the future, the concept of the unseen, a moment that is to come, is prevalent and vital to highlight. The relationship to land, the universe, and ancestors are centered around an understanding of the seamless interconnectedness of past, present and future…and we have a duty and responsibility to maintain it in balance…which is and can be important to apply as a sociopolitical organizing principle [this is another point and foundation for another program altogether]. African/a forms of knowing and ways of being are about the formation of the collective being. But it is important to highlight, nonetheless. Especially if we situate this argument in discourse around sociopolitical and economic relations to highlight the limits of rights discourse, which are currently rooted in individualist notions where duty and responsibility can be negated by the rule of law birthed in the [re]conceptualization of the human as a justification for the maintenance of private property. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Image: Madonna - by MANZEL BOWMAN (@artxman; support here: https://manzel.biz/ & https://society6.com/manzelbowman)