Dystopian dreams from South Africa: Lauren Beukes's Moxyland and Zoo City

Abstract

The central theoretical concept underpinning this article is Lyman Tower Sargent's notion of the ‘critical dystopian’ novel, which is not nihilistic, but which disrupts easy binarist classifications, and incorporates elements of opposition to oppression, as well as hope for a more egalitarian future. I examine critical dystopian dreaming as portrayed in two novels by Lauren Beukes, Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010), both set in South Africa, and I connect the concerns explored within these novels to the current mood of the South African nation. Moxyland, which employs techniques of the dystopian, cyberpunk and slipstream, delineates a technological, materialistic alternative society which mirrors and intensifies the structural violence of the present. Zoo City was the recipient of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, a British award presented to the best science fiction novel published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. In this dystopian text, billed as a ‘muti (or indigenous medicine) noir’ novel, Beukes interestingly indigenises the concept of the animal daemon which she adapts from Philip Pullman.