Traveling Outside of Time: Speculative Futurism and Environmental Justice

Abstract

Subash Limbu’s recent science fiction film Ningwasum (2022) interrogates the contours of memory and futurity in relation to pressing concerns of climate change and indigenous rights. The experimental mode of the film provides a platform to question the linearity of time and its association with a teleological model of history that leads to a seemingly inevitable future. What happens, the film asks, when different ways of imagining the future lead to alternative trajectories. In this paper, I am interested in how the film responds to some of the foundational principles of colonial law and governance. For example, I examine how using the Limbu language in the film challenges Thomas Macaulay’s claims in his “Minute on Indian Education” that the English language is uniquely capable of conveying ideas of science and modernity. At the same time, I also consider the film’s representation of the Adivasi (first people) Yakthung community and its relationship to the postcolonial state. Drawing on theories of Afrofuturism that Limbu identifies as providing inspiration for the film, I frame the film’s political, artistic, and legal interventions within a global movement to interrupt predictable futurities.