Geographies of African Futures

Authors

  • Matthew Eatough Baruch College, City University of New York
  • Irikidzayi Manase

Keywords:

science fiction, African literature, futurology, strategic planning, infrastructure, alien

Abstract

If recent work in African literature is any indication, the future may be a more present concern across the continent than at any point since the independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Following the critical and commercial success of Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death (2011) and South African Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City (2011), speculative fiction has entrenched itself as one of the most vibrant, innovative, and substantial bodies of work within the wider field of African fiction. The essays contained in this special issue investigate how such works of speculative fiction have become one of the main vehicles for the elaboration of new literary geographies. Faced with the uncertainties of the present neoliberal conjuncture and with emergent challenges to it, works of speculative fiction can construct imaginative templates to serve as cognitive maps for new, potentially more equitable forms of social organization.

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Published

2022-10-31

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2022)

Section

Special Issue Introduction

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