“Fucked in the Head and Liking It”: Atomik Aztex, Postcoloniality, Psychosis of Civilization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Atomik Aztex by Sesshu Foster is widely regarded as a paradigm of postcolonial intervention in the genre of the science fiction novel and alternative histories. This article marks a departure from such readings by positing the novel as a study of psychosis in the postcolonial subaltern. Through the employment of psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan with reference to Angelo Bravi’s concept of the “psychosis of civilisation,” this article contends that the novel’s narrator-protagonist Zenzon experiences symptoms of psychosis that result in hallucinations of alternate realities. Through the ideations of Dipesh Chakraborty, Ashis Nandy and Walter Mignolo, the article posits Zenzon as a postcolonial subaltern through his failed attempts to trace a postcolonial history beyond the colonizer’s epistemologies. Finally, the article traces the emergence of a subjectless subject from the position of the postcolonial subaltern, who, overwhelmed by his psychotic condition, revels in his subalternity through an avowal of his psychosis.