Remember the Future You Cannot Imagine: Affinitive Futurisms and Unknowable Utopias in Ningwasum
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Authors
DiBona, Francesca California
Date
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Adivasi futurism , futurism , afrofuturism , fugitivity , science fiction , indigenous futurism , nepal , film , yakthung , memory
Alternative Title
Abstract
Is it possible for us to imagine a future founded on our inability to understand its difference from the present? As the folktales of the past ask to be reinvigorated for a decolonial future, it becomes necessary to go beyond linear movements of representation and explication, to imagine beyond the event horizon and form gaps between now and then that demand the creation of new memories. Subash Thebe Limbu describes his 2022 film Ningwasum as a work of Adivasi Futurism, taking inspiration from North American Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurism to create a fugitive future-imaginary, considering a world where escape, externality, and movement through time and space becomes possible for the Yakthung. Understanding Adivasi futurism as multiplicitous as the lineages of its inspirations, I analyze Limbu’s use of Afrofuturist and Indigenous futurist practices in his Adivasi future and focus particularly on his conception of time travel as “weaving time.” Thakthakma suggests that the Yakthung are not just imagining new ways to reach the future, but rather stretching the culture that is already in hand across a loom of possibilities, weaving time and tending to their own future existence. Moving beyond Limbu’s future imaginary, I then use concepts of memory and fugitivity put forward by Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, James Edward Ford III, and Jared Sexton — among others — to ask how the Adivasi Futurism of Ningwasum suggests new ways to use expository and visual media to imagine a future that refuses aesthetic and cultural objectification in order to ensure the unknowability of the future.