Chapter 3 - Speculative African Slaveries

Summary

Since the turn of this century, science fiction, fantasy, and horror have become cornerstones of African literature. This chapter looks at speculative fiction from across the continent that radically reimagines slavery, examining the ways writers have sutured questions of subjection and desired freedom into cyberpunk worlds, revisionist histories, invented mysticisms, and alien encounters. What, this chapter asks, is the function of the sizable body of African speculative fiction that imagines slaveries removed from the middle passage and chattel slavery in the Americas, including works with no clear historical analogue?