The evolution of Nigerian speculative fiction

Ezeiyoke, Peter Chukwunonso (2024) The evolution of Nigerian speculative fiction. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

The thesis challenges the dominant canonicity of Nigerian literature which is overshadowed by texts that accord with the ‘writing back’ paradigm favoured in postcolonial criticism. This paradigm has led to the occlusion of other modes of narrative from the Nigerian canon. For instance, as William Slaymaker points out, despite ‘the rich oral nature narratives in black African and diasporic traditions’ there is ‘indifference or even resistance to ecolit and ecocrit among the canonized scholars and writers within black Atlantic cultural communities’ (1999:1100-1101). Slaymaker argues that the reason for this indifference to other modalities, inclusive of ecological literature, is that ‘[f]or the generations of writers and scholars formed by colonialism and postcolonialism; by liberation, independence, and civil rights movements; and by various struggles to overcome political, cultural, and linguistic domination, surfing the Green Wave is for those with the luxuries of board, wet suit, and lots of time and energy’ (1999: 1101). This thesis argues that it is not that African/Nigerian literature has no concern for ecolit, futurism, posthumanism, and other such speculative themes, because of an overriding need to confront colonialism, but that the canon of Nigerian Literature has not, historically, promoted these concerns. I show how this canon was formed by the American Empire from the 1960s through the influence of The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). These interventions by America led to the exclusion of literary narratives that were not explicitly concerned with colonial discourse. This research takes as its case study Nigerian Speculative Fiction as an important example of a modality that has been historically excluded from the literary canon. The thesis examines important twentieth-century precursors of the post-millennial ‘boom’ in Nigerian Speculative Fiction, reading texts that were omitted from the Nigerian literary canon developed in the 1960s. Through these readings I demonstrate the range of concerns explored by Nigerian SF and argue that its narratives exceed the binary implicitly sustained by the texts that write back to the West. I show how the binaristic paradigm of ‘writing back’ foregrounds the power of the West even while it aims to subvert it. My readings of these early SF texts also reveal that the current proliferation of the genre is an evolution of a pre-existing tradition. Finally, the thesis offers new readings of contemporary Nigerian SF that move beyond the binaries implied in a writing back paradigm, considering the ways in which Nigerian Speculative Fiction imagines futures otherwise to the past and present conditions imposed by capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. A key benefit of the research is its combination of the analysis of recent fiction and criticism with a historical overview of the development of Nigerian SF, an under-researched area.