Imagining a desi future

ABSTRACT

Afrofuturism is an academic and popular discourse interrupting whitewashed imaginations about the future – a future in which racialized identities are a liability. Borrowing from Afrofuturism, desi-futurism is defined as the application of a desi lens to a futuristic artefact, and a critical perspective interrupting whitewashed imaginations of a technologized future with the experiences of the past-present to write desi versions of the past, present, and future. This essay will discuss desi-futurism in the context of the body, space, and time with Krrish 3 and other popular culture examples as artefacts. Like Afrofuturism, desi-futurism disregards post-race speculations about the future, and departs from European Modernity that created the Cartesian body, linear time, and a white dominated space. The author insists desi-futurism is a tangent to Afrofuturism and not a deviation because these ethnic and racial imaginings collectively challenge European epistemologies that dictate minoritized identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Afrofuturism
• desi futurism
• Krrish
• science fiction
• South Asia
• technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Identity refers to the historical stabilisation of race in static categories, whereas identification is the manipulation of those static categories for political purposes (Silva 15-16).

2. The categories of brown and desi are quite complex to separate into disparate groups. For example, Karen Leonard (53) writes about the formation of Indian (specifically Punjabi) and Mexican families in California in the early 1900s. The progenies of these Punjabi-Mexican families are brown, desi, Latinx, and South Asian and delineating such intimate relations is an unnecessary task.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan A. D’Souza

Ryan A. D’Souza (he/him/his) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication at University of South Florida. His research interests include desi popular culture, post-colonial media studies, and Black and Brown futures. He credits his involvement with desi-futurism to Dr Aisha Durham’s class on Afrofuturism.