In “Fur­ther Con­sid­er­a­tions on Afro­fu­tur­ism” (2003), Kodwo Eshun intro­duces the con­cept of ‘coun­ter­future’. He argues that this con­cept is a nec­es­sary, yet lack­ing coun­ter­part to that of ‘coun­ter­mem­ory’. The prac­tice of coun­ter­mem­ory aims to com­pen­sate for past vio­lence and destruc­tion by writ­ing the sto­ries of (oppressed) minori­ties into main­stream accounts of his­tory. While Eshun sym­pa­thizes with this eth­i­cal com­mit­ment, he argues that these attempts to plu­ral­ize the past will remain in vain — and are even coun­ter­pro­duc­tive — as long as the future is con­ceived as single.

Eshun does not con­ceive the future as rad­i­cally open. Nowa­days, it has become a space that is under a con­stant threat of being colonized:

“In the colo­nial era of the early to mid­dle twen­ti­eth cen­tury, avant­gardists from Wal­ter Ben­jamin to Frantz Fanon revolted in the name of the future against a power struc­ture that relied on con­trol and rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the his­tor­i­cal archive. Today, the sit­u­a­tion is reversed. The pow­er­ful employ futur­ists and draw power from the futures they endorse, thereby con­demn­ing the dis­em­pow­ered to live in the past. The present moment is stretch­ing, slip­ping for some into yes­ter­day, reach­ing for oth­ers into tomor­row.” (Eshun 289)

He dis­tin­guishes three groups of cul­tural objects through which this col­o­niza­tion takes place: math­e­mat­i­cal for­mal­iza­tions, sci­ence fic­tion, and hybrid forms between them. As long as these pro­jec­tions are uncrit­i­cally received, these pro­jected images of the future appear to be the causal result of the present. Eshun there­fore pro­poses three chro­nop­o­lit­i­cal prac­tices that try to counter the col­o­niza­tion of the future: a the­o­ret­i­cal prac­tice that crit­i­cally reads these pro­duced futures, an artis­tic prac­tice that con­structs alter­na­tive images of the future, so-​called coun­ter­futures, and finally an arche­o­log­i­cal prac­tice that ana­lyzes past counterfutures.

Strangely enough, Eshun observes, that his­tor­i­cally there has been a taboo on cre­ative reflec­tions on the future exactly by the pro­po­nents of countermemory.

Because the prac­tice of coun­ter­mem­ory defined itself as an eth­i­cal com­mit­ment to his­tory, the dead, and the for­got­ten, the man­u­fac­ture of con­cep­tual tools that could ana­lyze and assem­ble coun­ter­futures was under­stood as an uneth­i­cal dere­lic­tion of duty. Futur­o­log­i­cal analy­sis was looked upon with sus­pi­cion, wari­ness, and hos­til­ity. (Eshun 288)

Through its reluc­tance to engage the future, the prac­tice of coun­ter­mem­ory unwit­tingly for­ti­fies the exist­ing power relations

The fol­low­ing anal­ogy might help to clar­ify Eshun’s argu­ment. The func­tion of the future in his­tory, I would argue, is iden­ti­cal to that of a van­ish­ing point in paint­ing. While a van­ish­ing point makes it pos­si­ble to com­bine dif­fer­ent ele­ments in a sin­gle scene, this het­ero­gene­ity does not con­sti­tute mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives. On the con­trary, it cap­tures these diverse ele­ments in a sin­gle image and includes them in a sin­gle point of view. The plu­ral­iz­ing of ele­ments depends on a fix­a­tion of the per­spec­tive. Under­stood like this, a van­ish­ing point is not an ele­ment in the scene – not even a spe­cial one – but an oper­a­tion. One that simul­ta­ne­ously has a total­iz­ing and a plu­ral­iz­ing effect.

The future con­ceived as a sin­gle point func­tions in exactly the same way. It actu­ally enables the inclu­sion of mul­ti­ple sto­ries in a sin­gle his­tory. With­out a plu­ral­ized account of the future, coun­ter­mem­o­ries do not offer alter­na­tive views on his­tory; they only con­tribute to an all-​encompassing vision.

Para­dox­i­cally, though, open­ing up the future can only occur by crit­i­cally inves­ti­ga­tion objects from the past. Eshun thereby cre­ates a new cat­e­gory of cul­tural objects. That of past images of the future: coun­ter­futures. It would be a mis­take to con­fuse this new cat­e­gory with that of utopia (or dystopia for that matter).

Sci­ence fiction

What actu­ally hap­pens, is that Eshun sim­ply reverses the tem­po­ral­ity. Whereas in the prac­tices of coun­ter­mem­ory, the past is plu­ral­ized by fix­at­ing either the present or the future, he pro­poses to do exactly the oppo­site. The future is plu­ral­ized through the fix­a­tion of an (not the) image of the past.

“The field of Afro­fu­tur­ism does not seek to deny the tra­di­tion of coun­ter­mem­ory. Rather, it aims to extend that tra­di­tion by reori­ent­ing the inter­cul­tural vec­tors of Black Atlantic tem­po­ral­ity towards the pro­lep­tic as much as the ret­ro­spec­tive.” (Eshun 289)

In order for this prac­tice to func­tion, how­ever, it is nec­es­sary to con­stantly shift between oper­a­tions that invoke coun­ter­mem­o­ries and those that pro­duce coun­ter­futures. Oth­er­wise, it remains impos­si­ble to plu­ral­ize per­spec­tives on his­tory. Eshun implic­itly argues for a plu­ral­ity of oper­a­tions. As long as a sin­gle oper­a­tion dom­i­nates prac­tices – in this case eman­ci­pa­tory ones – can­not avoid total­iza­tion, in spite of its good inten­tions. Total­i­tar­i­an­ism resides on the level of oper­a­tions rather than content.

This text is a (very, very early) draft. Please do not quote from it!