Energized by what I had read from Fikile Nxumalo and Stacia Cedillo, I started to re-visit well-known Afrofuturist medias I had encountered before, but with new eyes. I was ready to start actively deploying them in my environmental work.

So, I started writing down ideas of how I would do so.

Suddenly, the music and mythos of the Detroit duo Drexciya held potential for both education around Trans-Atlantic social and religious history, but also a segue into thinking about pollution of oceans, waterways, etc. that have increased alongside the entrenchment of black struggle under capitalism, the state, and imperial/settler colonialism.

Similarly, the world and imagery in the short film Pumzi by Wanuri Kahiu began to hold potential for thinking about water scarcity, technology, militarism, authority and labor.

Also, if we’re thinking about Syms’ Mundane Afrofuturism, I began to think more about speculating on the (possible) ‘environmentalism’ of everyday Black cultural life and experience (I’m looking all that tupper-ware in my cabinets and them plastic bags full of plastic bags, y’all know what I mean, come on…)

Taking trips through these diverse trails of thought within Black Studies (especially Black radicalism), journeys kick-started by the aesthetic practices of Afrofuturism, and centered on environmental thinking — a certain tripartite experience of learning began to consolidate.

Because of this, I have started to come up with scientific and historical research questions, inspired by my Afrofuturist engagement with scholarship.