Paper short abstract:

New challenges facing the African continent and its future have created a feeling of despair. Recent African francophone literary works are, however, presenting hopeful futures through speculative fiction. Which approach can have a tangible impact and create a shift towards practical hope?

Paper long abstract:

The feelings of hope and despair have always been conveyed in African francophone literature. During the 1990s, for example, many authors based their novels on their respective political climate and either depicted a society in worse condition or countered their present by suggesting an alternative structure where the leadership offered substantial solutions to the people’s issues. These texts show that hope presented in speculative fiction can be useful to rethink current situations that affect African nations. As such, hopeful narratives with successful politicians and prosperous nation-states offered an alternative critical framework during a period where the transition from colonisation to independence did not garner the desired results. In the 21st century, the sentiment of despair has shifted, given the different challenges, and has thus generated a new form of hope. This paper considers how the feeling of hope continues to inhabit African francophone literature by adapting to the changing realities in Leonora Miano’s Rouge impératrice (2019). Firstly, I argue that through the text’s diachronic structure, decolonisation is the proposed approach to dreaming practically about the continent’s potential by decentering Western hegemonic systems. Secondly, I argue that the opposing views of the various characters living in Katiopa highlight the complexities of said pragmatism and the difficulty of satisfying the collective, as the population is by no means monolithic. By offering a practical way to envision Africa’s future, hope remains a tangible feeling and becomes a tool to create a critical framework within speculative fiction.