Bifurcated futures: Generic discontinuity and speculative form in the post-2008 African novel
Maurits PJ, Waller T (2024)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2024
Journal
DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2024.2416482
Abstract
Through a comparative reading of Tade Thompson’s Rosewater and Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, this article highlights an emergent trend in African fiction whereby writers have combined speculative aesthetic forms with a new geopolitical awareness of Africa’s changing position in the capitalist worldsystem. Highlighting plotlines in which Africa becomes the centre of global events, it traces a parallel movement between the emergence of a foreseeable end to USA hegemony and the liberation of speculative energies in post-2008 African fiction. The speculative texts of Thompson and Serpell encode this ambivalent futurity at the level of aesthetic form through the use of fictional strategies such as generic discontinuity and cyclical time. By capturing the reiterative cadence of capitalist history and envisioning a possible relocation of power to a new world-systemic core, these texts aesthetically register the terminal crisis of late neo-liberalism as a bifurcated moment of possibility and uncertainty.
Authors with CRIS profile
Peter Maurits
Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik, insbesondere nordamerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Involved external institutions
Ireland (IE)How to cite
APA:
Maurits, P.J., & Waller, T. (2024). Bifurcated futures: Generic discontinuity and speculative form in the post-2008 African novel. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2024.2416482
MLA:
Maurits, Peter J., and Thomas Waller. "Bifurcated futures: Generic discontinuity and speculative form in the post-2008 African novel." Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2024).
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