The Aquatic Turn in Afrofuturism: Women and Other Critters in Nnedi Okorafor’s "Lagoon" (2014) and Wanuri Kahiu’s "Pumzi" (2010)”.

The recent efflorescence of fictional writings and artistic works examined under the rubrics of Blue Humanities (Mentz 2009), Critical Ocean Studies (DeLoughrey 2019), Hydro-Criticism (Winkiel 2019), or New Thalassology (Horden and Purcell 2006), testify a recent cultural shift from the land to the sea. In this article, the hydrosphere is analysed in two female Afrofuturist works – Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014) and Wanuri Kahiu’s short film Pumzi (2010) – to address the global capitalist order and to imagine an aquafuturist multispecies aesthetics that springs from the countermemory of the Middle Passage and its undersea myths.