{"id":604,"date":"2010-01-20T23:55:54","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T03:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/?page_id=604"},"modified":"2022-09-28T14:04:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T18:04:07","slug":"call-for-papers-nokoko","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/nokoko\/call-for-papers-nokoko\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers for the Journal Nokoko"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call for Submissions – CFP: Nokoko special issue<\/span>
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African Futures: Ambiguities, contentions, and connections in African speculative fiction and beyond.
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The terms used to describe uniquely African or diasporic literatures of the future are contested. In her article, <\/span>The Speculative Turn in African Literature <\/span>(2019), Michelle Louise Clark considers science fiction to have poorly served those who have felt excluded from the genre, yet terms like Afrofuturism are hardly universally applicable either. New categories to describe African diaspora literature have been created, rejected, taken up, or defended in both academic and more open literary spaces: In her 2019 essays titled \u201cAfrican futurism defined\u201d, Nnedi Okorafor\u2019s creation of the term African futurism makes a clear distinction between sci-fi and speculative fiction written from a continental vs. diasporic point of view. Yet Sean Guynes (2021) points out that Afrofuturism does not necessarily hold water for Caribbean and South America writers, or for Africans in the European diaspora. Clark (2019) identifies still other, more contextually-anchored categories including Black Speculative Arts Movement, Black Quantum Futurism, Afrofuturismo, Afrofuturista, Astro-Blackness, and Afro-Surrealism, to name but a few.
\nClark (2019) further notes that science fiction and speculative writing are longstanding features of African writing and cultural production. However, as Guynes (2021) points out, recent discussions around categorization, genre and labels have produced a wealth of new approaches, theories, and explorations into African futurity in literature. Futurity itself remains up for debate. Scholars like Amir Eshel, author of <\/span>Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past <\/span>(2013) have used the term to describe a general literary turn towards imagined futures and to describe \u201cthe potential of literature to widen the language and to expand the pool of idioms we employ in making sense of what has occurred while imagining whom we may become.\u201d Likewise, Guynes (2021) identifies futurity as engaging with a text or practice that draws upon the present to explore the possible nature of one\u2019s subjectivity in the future. Though definitions differ, debates over the concept share a belief that in the here and now, futurity offers imaginative space towards new tomorrows.<\/span><\/p>\n

The vast array of possibilities and discussions bring to mind an island emerging from the ocean, with yet unknown geography encircled by bubbling and raucous waters. We are at a unique moment in the history of African science and speculative fiction, one that defies narrow <\/span>canonization, embraces the ambiguities of the moment and acknowledges difference as a concept worthy of exploration. What is clear, is that these emerging genres do not pretend to weave new realities without context, history, or cultural politics. Nnedi Okorafor (2019), makes this clear in her definition of African futurism, a point of view that <\/span>\u201c<\/span>will tend to naturally have mystical elements (drawn or grown from actual African cultural beliefs\/world views, not something merely made up).\u201d As Nwankwo and Egbunike write in their introduction to <\/span>ALT 39\u2019s <\/span>issue on Speculative and Science Fiction, works by authors who are less well known internationally, and written in African languages, are being recognized as the inspiration for contextual, grounded and nevertheless speculative works by their contemporaries and their literary successors. Lastly, the possibilities of African science and speculative fiction extend beyond literature. Music, photography, film, dance, <\/span>and the fine arts have all been influenced by the debates around afro\/African futurism and no doubt are fomenting their own terms and philosophies to best articulate their visions.
\nThe goal of this special issue of <\/span>Nokoko <\/span>is to explore the still unfolding discussions around African science and speculative writing and fantasy. The special issue also seeks to examine where futurism rears its head in disciplines beyond Literature. We welcome:<\/span><\/p>\n