Objects want to have a purpose

Abstract

The use of material objects and elements animated with the capacity to transmute human experience across space and time recurs as tropes in African science fiction (SF) writing. Such components of the presented SF narrative world establish temporal, spatial and discursive thresholds that frame the narrative, often substantially influencing the character of the entire text. As interfaces that transcend the boundaries of human fixity and corporeality, the active role of nonhuman materials enables SF writers to imagine alternate dimensions of experience, critique of symbolic constructions of the body as well as explore of questions of space and identity. This chapter examines the uses of animate materiality in African women SF through a comparatist reading of Lauren Beukes' Zoo City and Lesley Arimah's “Who Will Greet You At Home?” It traces the origins of speculative practice in these works to the synthesis of technologies of modernity, folklore and myth in the works of authors like Fagunwa, Tutuola and Okri, arguing that these figurations straddle the intersection of traditional African worldviews and the SF genre. The chapter concludes that through animate materiality, African women SF not only engages with conditions of mediation and transformation that underscore the evolving nature of female agency and subjectivity in Contemporary Africa but also reimagines what it means to be human in our age.