The critical dystopia : an in-depth exploration of the postcolonial perspective on dystopia

Abstract

Collective thinking is highly disparaged within the western dystopian tradition; however, this poses the question of how a collective society would write about dystopia, especially a society negatively impacted by western views. It is widely accepted that postcolonial dystopia merges utopian ideals with those of dystopia to create a third position. This is referred to as heterotopia or critical dystopia. This thesis aims to determine how African writers have used the dystopian tradition to their advantage, if they retained African ideals within a western tradition, and whether it has developed over time. More specifically, the thesis explores whether the novels fall under the tradition of critical dystopia or are instead closely assimilated with the western tradition. The critical dystopia is characterised by its highly political message, often using satire and allegory in order to effectively criticise a system. Chinua Achebe’s 'Anthills on the Savannah', Hama Tuma’s 'The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and other stories' and Nuruddin Farah’s 'Links' are analysed closely, and the author’s political opinions are taken into consideration. It can be concluded that Achebe and Farah share more with the west than Tuma does, however the authors all employ a significant amount of satire and allegory that allow their work to be classified as critical dystopia. Furthermore, there seems to be no consistent development in the use of dystopia over the years, instead it was the author’s own political opinion which dictated how the conventions were applied as they were highly influenced by the political climates within their native countries.