The exploration of the different possibilities of the future has been monopolized by one of the many cultures of the world; a cultural tradition, one among many, but hegemonic, has built the possible imaginaries that the passage of time has in store for us. The Western tradition has created in our imagination a wide range of worlds and environments that constitute that unknown terrain that we call the future. Through audiovisual construction, through fiction constructed by novels, short stories, movies, video games, cartoons, series, and even by statistical prediction models, a small range of possible futures has been molded in our minds. Although there are many of these Western cultural products that visit the shifting dunes of the future, they actually fall within a rather narrow spectrum of possibilities: in general, with their very interesting exceptions, they deal with a hyper-technological future or an apocalyptic future where the West is still the protagonist. In these worlds, the hegemony of Western languages remains intact and the idea of the other continues to be built from the same places of enunciation. The future is spoken predominantly in English in the same way that the West has also narrated the past predominantly in this same language, has done so many times that it seems perfectly acceptable and natural to us that, in American films that reach almost the entire world , Jesus or the Roman emperor Julius Caesar speak in English even though that is clearly false. The semantic environments of the future and the past are configured from the base of an English-speaking society. We have naturalized both the shadow of the West projecting itself on the past and we are naturalizing its projection on the future. It seems that, outside the menu that the West serves us, it is difficult for us to imagine the ingredients of the future from other linguistic, social or political frameworks.
The future, and not only the past, then becomes a space to promote anti-colonial processes, since we are already inhabiting futures colonized beforehand since the creation of imaginaries. One of the fundamental elements is to challenge the idea of a future where technology has solved many of humanity’s problems and its development has created products that now only belong to the realm of science fiction. The creations of technology have become merchandise and their commercialization demands a monstrous amount of natural inputs that is already unsustainable. These material inputs come from the exploitation of the territories of historically oppressed peoples. In addition, the exploitation of minerals, fossil fuels and natural resources necessary for technological development raises more than reasonable doubts about the feasibility of that hyper-technologized future that the West has created for us in our imagination. Is it possible to sustain the idea of a future commanded by technology on a planet on the verge of climatic collapse? Is it possible to continue capitalist technological development when the natural inputs for its mass production are running out? Predicting a scenario in which the future of humanity is rather de-technological seems increasingly sensible and more likely.
Given that futuristic creations have then become a space for ideological dispute and a place from which to articulate resistance against the oppressive systems of the present, it is essential to multiply these creations and create diverse futurisms from the peoples, languages and voices that have generally been confined to the past and to tradition. Seizing future territories from current colonizers becomes necessary. One of the most important bets within this framework of considerations has undoubtedly been the Afrofuturist movement that has raised new possibilities of imagining the future that for a long time had been only white, capitalist and, above all, English-speaking. Afrofuturism has raised subversive creations that create complex and different futures for the Afro-descendant population from different artistic disciplines and aesthetic approaches. Little by little, this spirit has also begun to influence the emergence of other futurisms that dispute the narrative construction of what we call the future with the West.
In the discussions I have had with different creators of indigenous peoples in Mexico, I have been able to realize that Futurism is already being developed from a multiplicity of languages, disciplines and voices. Those who make visual arts, graphics, music or literature in indigenous peoples are visiting the lands of the future more frequently in their creations, reinterpreting tradition not only in the light of the present but also in the light of the future, they are peering into those landscapes of the imagination about the time to come. Given the germination of these discourses and narratives and ideas, I predict that soon the artistic creation of indigenous peoples and communities will turn to futurism to make a radical critique of the present. Could we speak of an indigenous futurism? I think not, rather, it is likely that they are multiple Futurisms, Mixe Futurisms, Zapotec, Mixtec or Nahua Futurisms to mention just a few; they will be futurisms that break with the idea that all the diversity of native peoples can be confined to the “indigenous” category, I suspect they will be futurisms in which the construction of the indigenous as a cultural monolith will be dynamited. From the past and tradition, the creators of indigenous peoples have questioned the present and have inserted themselves into what we call the contemporary world, the same is already beginning to happen with the future. The future will no longer be just one and in the face of the climatic debacle that is about to happen, this task becomes more necessary than ever.
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