Afro-Surrealism

Afro-Surrealism or Afrosurrealism is a literary and

cultural aesthetic that is a response to mainstream
surrealism in order to reect the lived experience of
people of color. First coined by Amiri Baraka,[1] this
movement focuses on the present day experience of
African Americans. Much of Afro-Surrealism is based
on the manifesto written by D. Scot Miller, in which he
says, Afro-Surrealism sees that all 'others who create
from their actual, lived experience are surrealist... AfroSurrealism can be seen in music, photography, lm, the
visual arts and poetry. Notable practitioners of AfroSurrealism include Bob Kaufman, Krista Franklin, Kool
Keith, Samuel R. Delany, Roman Bearden and Deana
Lawson.

present day is a crucial to Afro-Surrealism.

Cinematographer Arthur Jafa expanded the eld of AfroSurrealism by experimenting with lm. Jafa introduces
the idea of the alien familiar, in order to represent the
Black experience and its innate surreal characteristics. I
want it to have something that I and my friends call 'the
alien familiar.' If a work succeeds in a way or is able
to conjure what a Black cinema would be or what this
hypothetical manifestation of this particular tradition in
the cinematic arena might be, it should be both alien because youve never seen anything quite like it, and at the
same time, it should be familiar on some level to Black
audiences.[4]
A Manifesto of Afro-Surreal was written by D. Scot
Millers and was published in 2009.[1] The manifesto
delineates Afro-Surrealism from Surrealism and AfroFuturism. The manifesto also declares a the necessity
of Afro-Surrealism, especially in San Francisco, California. The manifesto lists ten tenants that Afro-Surrealism
follows including how Afro-Surrealists restore the cult
of the past, and how Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving
to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.

Inuence

Afro-Surrealism came about after the initial rise in

surrealism in the mid-1920s, after Andr Breton wrote
the Surrealist Manifesto. Similar to the mainstream
version of surrealism, Afro-Surrealism was not a single
movement or style. Rather, it incorporated aspects of the
Harlem Renaissance, Ngritude and magical realism. Aspects of Afro-Surrealism can be traced to Martiniquan
Suzanne Csaires discussion of the revolutionary impetus of surrealism in the 1940s.[2]

3 Themes

Marvelous Realism, coined by the Haitian novelist

Jacques Stephen Alexis, can be seen as a precursor
to Afro-Surrealism. In his 1956 essay for Prsence
Africaine, he wrote, What, then, is the Marvellous, except the imagery in which a people wraps its experience,
reects its conception of the world and of life, its faith,
its hope, its condence in man, in a great justice, and
the explanation which it nds for the forces antagonistic to progress?[3] In his work, Alexis is seen to have an
acute sense of reality that is not dissimilar to traditional
surrealism. Suzanne Csaire, a Martinique writer, similarly wrote about the surreality of living away from the
Caribbean yet having ties to it.

3.1 The Everyday Lived Experience

Much of Afro-Surrealism is concerned with the everyday
life because it is said that there is nothing more surreal
than the Black experience. An example of this would
be a photo by Deana Lawson called Emily and Daughter.
According to Terri Francis, Afrosurrealism is art with
skin on it where the texture of the object tells its story,
how it weathered burial below consciousness, and how it
emerged somewhat mysteriously from oceans of forgotten memories and discarded keepsakes. This photograph
gures Afrosurrealism as bluesy, kinky-spooky.[5]

3.2 Haunting

Development

Afro-Surrealism is often described as having a sense of

a haunting welcoming. As Francis describes it, there is
a sense of disruption from the past in an otherwise ordinary or comfortable situation. An example of AfroSurrealism seen as haunting can be seen in Toni Morrisons Beloved, in that the dead baby comes back to haunt

Afro-Surrealism was coined by Amiri Baraka in his 1988

essay on Black Arts Movement avant-garde writer Henry
Dumas.[2] Baraka notes that Dumas is able to write about
ancient mysteries that were simultaneously relevant to the
present day. This idea that the past resurfaces to haunt the
1

REFERENCES

[4] Arthur Jafa, The Notion of Treatment: Black Aesthetics and Film, based on an interview with Peter Hassli
and additional discussions with Pearl Bowser, in Oscar
Micheaux and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era, ed. Pearl Bowser
et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 18.
[5] Francis, Terri (2013-01-01). Meditation. Black Camera 5 (1): 9494. ISSN 1947-4237.

Deana Lawson, Emily and Daughter, 2002

Sethe.[3] The past resurfacing in the present is key aspect

of Afro-Surrealism.

3.3

Present Day Realism

According Francis, the juxtaposition between the old and

the present day is what makes Afro-Surrealism so unique.
As Francis puts it, Surrealism here, the Afro-surreal, like
the marvelous discussed above, is actually a realism so
real, so contrary to the norms of publicized blackness,
that it represents a rupture, a radical break from ordinary
understanding such that the old feels newbecause it was
never known.[3] Although this movement is related to
Afrofuturism, it is dierent in that instead of focusing on
the future, Afro-Surrealism focuses more on the present
day.

References

[1] D. Scot, Miller. Call it Afro-Surreal. San Francisco Bay

Guarian. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
[2] Editors Notes. Black Camera 5 (1): 12. 2013-01-01.
ISSN 1947-4237.
[3] Francis, Terri (2013-01-01). Introduction: The NoTheory Chant of Afrosurrealism. Black Camera 5 (1):
95112. ISSN 1947-4237.

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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