Pumzi; the labyrinth of futureS

Abstract

ABSTRACTFuture signifying a space-time yet to come (re)shapes the cultural specificites and, thus, is mutated into more than a sheer temporal indication and, inevitably, engages semantics, practices, objects, and objectives; equally impacting and forming meaning and matter. As such, Pumzi is a 2009 sci-fi short movie by Kenyan film director Wanrui Kahiu. Her 20-minute movie is a noteworthy literary instance, which meticulously depicts the salient complications of the future in contested and nebulous nets of futureS. This (con)text aesthetically stages the polyphonic future, thus futureS, while shedding light upon tangles and entanglements of past, present, and future which ultimately renders a labyrinth-like characteristic to the concept. In doing so, and in a dialogue with Pumzi, these questions arise: How is the plurality of the future discerned and depicted in Pumzi? To what ratio do futureS interact and negotiate with one another? And lastly, what is Black about futureS in Pumzi? In parallel fashion, I deploy Susan Arndt's account on the concept of futureS and FutureS in order to accentuate the intrinsic polyphony and multiplicity within the term and to be able to discern between future as category of practice and category of analysis respectively. Moreover, I mobilize the theoretical outlines of Wendell Bell to literary studies so as to better diagnose the ground upon which futureS in Pumzi are imagined – including the wide scope of possibility, probability, and/or preferability. The Black poetics of Pumzi and some of the Black visions of and for future are then discussed in the final section.