Okorafor’s organic fantasy: an Africanfuturist approach to science fiction and gender in Lagoon.
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Date
2021
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Abstract
SThis dissertation critically examines Nnedimma Nkemdili (Nnedi) Okorafor’s novel Lagoon
(2014a) in terms of how it exemplifies Africanfuturism. I will explore how Okorafor
conceptualises her own genre – Africanfuturism – in contradistinction from western speculative
fiction as well as from Afrofuturism. To explore Lagoon’s experimental form, I adapt Francis
Nyamnjoh’s convivial theory (2015) to estrange postmodernism from its western context,
providing an African critical vocabulary to describe Lagoon’s experimental ‘postmodern’
narrative style. I also apply Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg ([1985] 2016a) to explore the
gendered and ecocritical dimensions of the novel. The cyborg provides a useful analytical tool and
lexicon for exploring pluralistic gender identities as it represents an ‘other’ identity which “can
suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to
ourselves” (Haraway, 2016a). This dissertation explores how Lagoon challenges western cultural
hegemony and recentres Africa in the global imaginary by taking the traditional tools of science
fiction (advanced technology, magical powers, ‘first contact’ narratives) and subverts or
reappropriates them to suit the goals of Africanfuturism. I focus on the plurivocal, fragmented
structure of the novel and argue that Okorafor includes these elements to celebrate perpetual
incompleteness and the reliance of the individual on the collective, rather than the superiority of
individual subjectivity. For Okorafor, ontological ‘incompleteness’ (as propounded by Nyamnjoh)
is the recognition of the self’s capacity for growth and new connections/understandings of our
relationship to the natural world rather than a terminal point of development or a signal for
nihilistic despair. My employment of Donna Haraway’s theorisation of the cyborg identity and the
chimeric nature it propounds helps explore the gendered aspects of the novel. I also seek to link
the concepts of ecological degradation and the patriarchal oppression of women to one of the
broader goals of Okorafor’s Africanfuturism, which is to create a space for literature which is free
from the oppressive binary codes of western imperialism. Lastly, I highlight the broader
significance of Africanfuturist narratives in a post-colonial literary context, and comment on the
broader ethical and political implications of Okorafor’s Africanfuturist project by discussing the
potential of speculative fiction and Africanfuturism
Description
Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu- Natal, Durban.