Toward a Comparative Futurism

Mahan Moalemi
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10.05.2022

This essay explores the plural notion of “ethnofuturisms” by employing a comparative approach. The cultural and political vicissitudes of “futurist” tropes are traced in literary and audiovisual creations that engage with the national, ethnic, and/or racial contexts of the Middle East, African diaspora, East Asia, and former Eastern Bloc. As the starting point of an ongoing research project, the essay ends with reflections on the uneven distribution of access to the means of futurity and the challenges posed by the navigation of common and conflictual futures worldwide, as well as preliminary discussions of an expanded frame of comparison that considers cyborgian ethnicity as embroiled in the formation of cosmic and xenic cultures.

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