Okorafor’s organic fantasy: an Africanfuturist approach to science fiction and gender in Lagoon.

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