Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred as a Prototype of HistoFuturism

Abstract: Current theories of the future in science fiction (SF) are inadequate to understand the intellectual and affective dimensions of Afrofuturism because of their dependence on the concept of defamiliarization. As Kodwo Eshun argues, Afrodiasporic subjects do not need to defamiliarize the present because they “live the estrangement that science-fiction writers envision. Black existence and science-fiction are one and the same.” Afrofuturism completely reimagines the foundational theory of time as a linear phenomenon in such a way as to revise the definition of the future as an inevitable site of progress, specifically, as a site cut loose from the past. Such a view necessarily fails to account for historical and systemic conditions that produce disparities between groups in the present. This article offers a reading of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred as a model for theorizing Afrofuturism’s distinctive theory of the future.