Paper short abstract:

The current historical conjuncture has caused a sentiment of the simultaneous loss of the future and the need for a better one. Here, we ask what is the role of hope and despair for creating a critical framework in the context of African speculative fiction, and what lies beyond these concepts?

Paper long abstract:

The future is contested. Human induced climate change threatens to make the planet unsuitable for “human life to flourish” (Kohler 2020). Fossil fuel companies make record profits, while global economies have become ever more precarious and austere, all contributing and compounding with new and existing refugee crises resulting from violent conflict and war. With a future, then, that seems always precarious, we ask: what is the role of hope and despair for creating a critical framework in the context of African speculative fiction, and what lies beyond these two concepts?

In our paper, we present an overview of how the concepts of hope and despair have been debated in recent literary and cultural theory, and we contextualize why this is important for the contemporary phenomenon of African science and speculative fiction. We aim to bring together theoretical and creative discussions on how these two concepts can be harnessed to imagine alternative futures, as well as outline the pitfalls that have been identified in earlier conversations about hope and despair.