Equitable futures: Afrofuturism’s critical world-building potential for management education

Abstract

How can management education integrate Afrofuturism’s critical world-building practices to challenge oppression and (inter-related) identity-shaping categories, such as gender and race? In this article, we introduce the intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic movement of Afrofuturism as a vehicle to foster emancipatory learning. We posit that Afrofuturism mobilizes world-building inspired by Afrocentric perspectives that are of particular value for management learners to: (a) interrogate in an intersectional way multiple identity-shaping sources of oppression, (b) experiment with non-linear approaches to time that offer an ingenious lens to examine identity issues, and (c) to capitalize on the emotional connections and rich multi-modal learning offered by transmedia storytelling. Our work advances the agenda of critical management educators by offering a radical proposal for learners to address existing systemic inequalities and re-imaginative alternative organizational, emancipatory futures.