Oops Upside Yr Head: Black Speculative Fiction, Authenticityand the Political Metaphysics of Stick Fighting in Olufemi Terry's "Stickfighting Days"

Abstract

The question of authenticity is at the center of discussions about identity politics today, and some authors feel this can be limiting. Recent trends in literature coming out of the Black diaspora challenge the concept of authenticity in literature, but do so from an identity politics perspective, especially in the works of what scholar Reynaldo Anderson has identified as Black speculative art. This paper examines Olufemi Terry's story "Stickfighting Days" as a work of Black speculative fiction, one that questions the concept of authenticity using the violent sport of stick fighting as an allegory for Western domination of colonized peoples, the enduring Hobbesian state-of-nature, and the nihilistic philosophy of John Gray. The article explores the way art and sport, as competitive enterprises, are related, and examines the story as a work of resistance itself. I argue that the story, as an allegory written from a non-white perspective (the author's), operates as a speculative work that not only critiques Western colonialism and Hobbesian philosophy, but also the concept of authenticity in an African writer. It is through his use of the speculative allegorical technique that Terry is able to include so much in a story about how art is sport, sport is art, and both are essentially potential means of resistance.