Sonic fictions: Afrofuturistic readings of Piotr Szulkin's The War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981) and Łukasz Barczyk's Unmoved Mover (2008)

Abstract

Enlightenment and colonialism introduced chronopolitical othering of the colonised as the people remaining in the past, the past of the colonisers. This thinking remade temporal categories of the past and the future into spatial ones, presenting some lands as located in the past in comparison to other, superior ones that represent the future of the humanity. This definition of the future and the past is taken up by Afrofuturism and its conception of the future and the past as being both spatial and temporal. Afrodiasporic culture emphasises the futurism of slavery seen as alien abduction. For Afrofuturists, spaceships already landed and what is perceived as the future is actually the hidden past. From this comes the idea of multi-layered rather than progressive time and of the future as being always already present. British Afrofuturism moves away from sci-fi metaphors of slavery towards focus on on-going colonisation of capitalism. Afrofuturist conception of multi-layered time and internal colonisation of capitalism is used here to analyse the legacy of Poland's transformation from socialism to capitalism in two Polish films: Piotr Szulkin's The War of the Worlds: Next Century (Wojna światów: Następne stulecie, 1981) and Łukasz Barczyk's Unmoved Mover (Nieruchomy poruszyciel, 2008).