Life Is a Biological Risk: Contagion, Contamination, and Utopia in African Science Fiction

Given the centrality of utopia to the African literary and postcolonial imaginary, science fiction by African writers offers a unique opportunity to explore and critique the sociopolitical salience of imagined African futures. Through a close reading of three short stories in the AfroSF: Science Fic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cambridge journal of postcolonial literary inquiry 2016-09, Vol.3 (3), p.329-343
Main Author: Moonsamy, Nedine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African literature
Fiction
Mbembe, Achille (1957- )
Rhetorical figures
Salience
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Summary:Given the centrality of utopia to the African literary and postcolonial imaginary, science fiction by African writers offers a unique opportunity to explore and critique the sociopolitical salience of imagined African futures. Through a close reading of three short stories in the AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers Vol I (2012) anthology, I illustrate how generic science fiction utopias prove to be much too sterile when applied to an African context and thus do not amount to a viable and sustainable future. Making use of tropes of contagion, there is a clear desire to demonstrate that the human impulse is, in many ways, contrary to the objectives of neat utopias and these stories subsequently seek to “contaminate” the notion of utopia itself. Overall, I suggest that this is indicative of a shifting postcolonial landscape that needs to more carefully weigh the price of its utopias.
ISSN:2052-2614
2052-2622
DOI:10.1017/pli.2016.16