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- Convenors:
-
Renzo Baas
(Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Gilbert Shang Ndi (Bayreuth)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Climate change
- Location:
- Room 1199
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel looks at African SF texts that focus on ecological distasters and possible solutions from an African perspective.
Long Abstract:
We hereby invite interested panelists to submit their abstracts to our panel. on "Speculative Futures: Ecological Catastrophies in African Science Fiction". Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" gained new relevance during the Trump regime with its prophetic message of an autocrat in the White House and the ecological catastrophes under his reign. It is as much a story of mass migration as it is about the dangers of climate denial. These sentiments have been echoed as early as Abdourahman Waberi's novel "In the United States of Africa" (2006) and later, Wanuri Kahiu's film "Pumzi" (2009). African artists and writers have long engaged with a future influenced by climate change and have offered their narratives of survival and hope.
This panel looks to uncover some of the strategies offered by these artists and writers and places them in conversation with current climate developments on the continent (drought relief, water retention, aide programmes). With most of the discourse around climate change being dominated by the global North, we hope to add to this discourse from an African localised perspective.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that African museums and theatres would be better patronized by locals if they meaningfully contribute to addressing topical issues such as climate change. It proposes a model with which both institutions can create awareness on climate change through the services they offer. This model is applicable in other contexts.
Paper long abstract:
Museums and theatres are important cultural institutions with enormous benefits for the communities they serve. As custodians of a people’s cultural heritage (both tangible and intangible), their importance cannot be overemphasized. While development of the people is one of the cardinal points of both intuitions, African museums and theatres are yet to record much successes within communities they serve unlike their Euro-American counterparts. Perhaps, this is mainly because the museum and theatre concepts are western hence, the typical African does not see the need to visit and subsequently, benefit from the range of services they offer. It is in this light that this paper argues that African museums and theatres would be better patronized by locals if they meaningfully contribute to addressing topical issues such as climate change. Furthermore, it explores ways the Borno State Museum and Open Air theatre can tap into the potentials of each other for mutual benefit. It is important to mention that both intuitions stand beside each other in Maiduguri, the Borno State, capital. The paper adopts qualitative research methodology; Focus group discussions, interviews and review of scholarly articles for data collection. Among the assumed findings of this paper is a model that creates room for theatre audiences to be better informed about climate change and its attendant adverse effect through music, dance and drama; as well as ways the museum can create awareness on climate change through the ethnographic collections in their care. The model is transferable in other contexts such as conflict and gender equality.
Paper short abstract:
This paper deals with South African underground hip-hop and its imaginations of futurity and alternative worlds grounded in lived experiences of its haunting past of erased histories and dystopic realities.
Paper long abstract:
South Africa with its horrific past of prototypical concentration camps, the Herero genocide in neighboring Namibia (then Deutsch-Südwestafrika), and complete racial segregation during the high apartheid era all serve as one of many resources of lived experience for the process of constructing imaginaries of the future. This paper aims at tracing these speculative aspects within hip-hop’s song lyrics. Embedded in a long tradition of Hip Hop culture since the early 80’s in South Africa, particularly the underground community, such as the Iapetus Records collective, has put forth speculative imaginaries of futurity grounded in past and present experiences of alienation and oppression that allow for a contextualization of hip-hop within a broader scope of Black speculative fiction and African futurism. Kodwo Eshun’s concept of sonic fiction serves as a conceptual framework to conceive of hip-hop as creating otherworlds that break down Western conceptions of time as linear chronology and deal with temporality as a perpetual presence of the ever-now. Understood that way, this might open up a way of reading these texts as a warning of both the pending ecological disaster and dystopic tendencies of global technocracy, while inherently demonstrating a critique of the concept of the Anthropocene.
Paper short abstract:
I explore how Dila's science fiction proffers insights into the intersection between environmental disaster and disease outbreaks in contemporary Uganda. I argue that Science Fiction delineates the causes, coping mechanisms and myths about environmental-related pandemics in the public sphere.
Paper long abstract:
Uganda, like most countries on the African continent, has in the recent past grappled with existential pandemics such as AIDS, Marburg, Cholera, Ebola, and currently the Covid-19 pandemic. All the above-mentioned disease outbreaks have often unleashed unimaginable suffering on Uganda’s population. This is perhaps why Ugandan scholars and public intellectuals — especially its writers such as Mary Karooro Okurut, Moses Isegawa, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Austin Ejeit — have used fiction to offer insights into the various contours of these contagions. For example, in their interrogation of one of the worst pandemics to hit the Ugandan society — AIDS — a host of writers have centred a cautionary tale motif and verisimilitude to show how behavioural change can effectively combat disease outbreaks. This article builds on this substantial Ugandan archive of plague writing by focusing on one genre of Ugandan writing — Science Fiction — that has not received much critical attention for its exploration of pandemics. This paper explores how three Ugandan science fiction short stories proffer insights into the intersection between environmental disaster and disease outbreaks in contemporary Uganda. I argue that Dila uses Science Fiction to effectively delineate the causes of, how to cope with and the myths that circulate about these catastrophic occurrences in the Ugandan public sphere.