A Re-enchantment of Science Fiction? Reading Okorafor's Work in an Animist Tradition

• Okorafor’s term Africanfuturism has been picked up by many in the speculative fiction communities and discussions about the term have often focused on what it has to say about the limits and possibilities of Afrofuturism as a category or social movement. In this paper, I instead center the animist tradition which is part of the “African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view” in which “Africanfuturism is specifically and more directly rooted” (Africanfuturism Defined | Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog). I do so through Harry Garuba’s argument in “Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, Culture, and Society” that a “re-enchantment” is occurring in African cultures where “the rational and scientific are appropriated and transformed into the mystical and magical” (267). This process “subverts the authority of Western science by reinscribing the authority of magic within the interstices of the rational/secular/modern” (271). Given how traditional histories of science fiction carve out a specific science fiction identity through inextricably linking the genre with this “Western science,” an Africanfuturism that draws on animist traditions, I argue, does more than simply incorporate fantasy elements. Rather, as I will explore in my readings, it challenges us to rethink the relation between the rational and the magical, between science and myth. In this way, it asks us to again rethink the stories we tell about progress and modernity, especially as these continue to underpin science fiction as a genre. A focus on animist logics also provides alternative ways of framing materialism that resonate with current theories in posthumanism and feminist materialism, but which cannot be subsumed by them. In this way, too, Okorafor’s work challenges Western genealogies of rational thought. My reading will focus on the Binti trilogy, but also engage with The Book of Phoenix and Remote Control. Works citedGaruba, Harry. “Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, Culture, and Society.” Public Culture, vol.15, no. 2, 2003, pp.261-285.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Literatures (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

speculative fiction

Africanfuturism

animism

science fiction

Engelska

English

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)