Decolonising Speculative Fiction in South Africa

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#21

Decolonising Speculative

Fiction Postcolonial Studies Association Newsletter June 2018

#21 Table of Contents

Editors’ Introduction. Isabelle Hesse and Edward Powell. 4

Articles

Living and Dying Countries: Ecocide, Consciousness & Agency in First 7 Nations Futurism. Mykaela Saunders.

Indian Fantasy Fiction in English and the Post-Millennial Moment. E. Dawson 10 Varughese. ‘Runaway Cyclone,’ Or: The First Bengali Science Fiction Story. Christin Hoene. 13

‘Now I prefer to get to the heart of the matter, to not use metaphor’: Hassan Blasim and Iraqi Science Fiction. Sinéad Murphy. 16

Filipino Futures: An Introduction to Philippine Science Fiction. Vida Cruz. 19

Cultural Heritage, Future Vision. Mark Bould. 23 Speculative Liberty ‘with a Slant’: Decolonizing Sovereignty through Irony in Vizenor’s Treaty Shirts. Cathy Covell Waegner. 25

Decolonising Speculative Fiction in South Africa. Alan Muller. 30

The Twisted Mirror: The Postcolonial in Dean Francis Alfar’s ‘L’ Aquilone Du 33 Estrellas.’ Roy Tristan Agustin.

PSA Funding Reports A Brief Report on the PSA Convention 2017. Sibendu Chakraborty. 36 On Zapatismo and the Technological Character of Technology. Rodrigo Liceaga Mendoza. 38

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 2

#21 Table of Contents

Book Reviews

Genre Fiction of New India: Post-Millennial Receptions of “Weird” Narratives, by 40 E. Dawson Varughese. Reviewed by Sambuddha Jash.

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan. Reviewed by Andrew Stones. 42

Iraq+100: Stories From a Century After the Invasion, edited by Hassan Blasim.

Reviewed by Annie Webster. 44

Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, edited by Grace

L. Dillon. Reviewed by Rebecca Macklin. 46

PSA News CFP Next PSA Newsletter (#22) 48

PSA Membership 49 Notes 50

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 3

Editors’ Introduction Isabelle Hesse and Edward Powell

We are very excited to write Okorafor won the World recovering histories of SF the editorial for our first special Fantasy Award for her 2010 beyond its hegemonic issue of the PSA newsletter – novel Who Fears Death: look Eurowestern branch, while also Decolonising Speculative out for HBO’s forthcoming reinventing the genre itself by Fiction. We had a fantastic adaptation, to be produced by drawing upon other cultural response to our CFP and George R.R. Martin. The resources and historical received a number of great success of Marvel’s 2018 film experiences; and a subsequent contributions that explore the adaptation of The Black Panther reactionary pushback from the topic of decolonising was unexpected but hugely dominant group. This will speculative fiction (SF) – what encouraging, as Afrofuturism sound all too familiar to that means, how it is happening, found mainstream appeal.[2] scholars of postcolonial and why it should be of interest literature and culture. to postcolonial“Vivamus critics. porta And yet, the producers of Star est sed est.” Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) But there are more SF, of course, isn’t written only were met with thousands of fundamental reasons why the by white people: this has been accusations of promoting decolonisation of SF might be the case ever since the genre’s ‘white genocide’, simply for of particular interest to emergence during the height of casting John Boyega and Lupita postcolonial studies. Consider European imperialism. All too N’yongo in starring roles.[3] Graham Huggan’s description often, though, the history of Meanwhile, the Hugo Awards of the field’s ‘capacity to white SF has overshadowed have faced ‘concerted undertake a critical exploration those of African SF, of South campaigns’ against nominations of the territorial imperatives of Asian SF, of South American SF, that are ‘overtly to the Left’.[4] colonialism, and its frequently and of the many Indigenous SFs. More generally, white SF speculative consideration of remains overrepresented in alternatives to these Beginning with Nalo Hopkinson literature, while in film, imperatives’.[5] The term and Uppinder Mehan’s ground- television, and other visual ‘postcolonialism’ itself – so breaking anthology So Long media, white protagonists maligned for misrepresenting Been Dreaming (2002) the last continue to dominate. the neocolonial present – is twenty-five years have seen speculative, invoking a increasing attention among The reduction of literary possibility that remains academics, cultural history to the contributions of unrealized. Like SF, then, gatekeepers, and mainstream whites; the subsequent postcolonialism is concerned metropolitan audiences to SF overrepresentation of white not just with how the world written from beyond the small voices and imaginations, past currently is, but also what it space of white Euro- and present; a group of writers could be like. America.[1] 2011 saw a notable and critics contesting this milestone, when Nigerian- overrepresentation by Meanwhile, as Okorafor has American author Nnedi noted, SF ‘carries the potential to change the world. Literally. PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 It has changed the world’ [6]. 4

4 Many of the world-changing technologies developed over

Editors’ Introduction Isabelle Hesse anandd Edward Powell

to change the world. Literally. have engaged with notions of Olukotun’s novel After the Flare It has changed the world’ [6]. ecocide, consciousness, and (2017) presents a vision of the Many of the world-changing agency. future rooted in Nigerian technologies developed over cultural heritage. the last century were E. Dawson Varughese inspired by SF. The genre has examines SF in India, with Cathy Covell Waegner’s shaped the future, by shaping particular focus on the post- contribution turns to what we imagine the future to millennial novel and its Indigenous SF in a Native be, or what we want it to be – relationship with Indian American context, with a and thus, by extension, the mythology and fantasy. specific focus on irony in Treaty Utopian desires that drive Shirts, Gerald Vizenor’s technological innovation and Christin Hoene’s article speculative novel on the social change. Decolonising SF explores how the first Bengali fortunes of the Constitution of ensures that the futures the SF work – Jagadish Chandra the White Earth Nation genre helps produce aren’t Bose’s short story (CWEN). marked by a grossly unequal ‘Niruddesher Kahini’ (‘Runaway distribution of political, Cyclone’) – brings together Alan Muller considers how economic, and cultural power science fiction and magical the last year has seen SF in that favours whites. realism. South Africa becoming less white; and Roy Tristan The contributions to this Sinéad Murphy considers Agustin examines Dean special issue take up the theme how Iraqi SF images the future Francis Alfar’s short story ‘L’ of decolonising SF in various through the example of a Aquilone Du Estrellas’ (‘The ways: some recover the recent anthology edited by Kite of Stars’) in light of histories of SF beyond its white Hassan Blasim – Iraq+100: postcolonial theory.

Eurowestern branch; while Stories from a Century After the The book review section others consider what futures Invasion (2015) – which is also includes reviews of both and alternative presents Indian, reviewed by Annie Webster in general theoretical works as African, Filipino, and Indigenous the book review section of this well as creative anthologies. SF imagine, and how they differ newsletter. Sambuddha Jash’s discussion to those imagined by focuses on E. Dawson Eurowestern writers. Vida Cruz gives us an Varughese’s Genre Fiction of overview of the state of New India: Post-Millenial Mykaela Saunders’s article Philippine science fiction, with a Receptions of “Weird” Narratives gives an overview of SF in an particular focus on its post- (Routledge, 2016), followed by Australian Indigenous context, colonial and post-imperial three reviews of recent and discusses how recent texts history; while Mark Bould anthologies in the field: have engaged with notions of discusses how Nigerian- Andrew Stones shares his ecocide, consciousness, and American Deji Bryce thoughts on Nalo Hopkinson agency. Olukotun’s novel After the Flare and Uppinder Mehan’s So Long PSA Newsletter #21 (2017) presents a vision of the 5 June 2018 Been Dreaming: Postcolonial E. Dawson Varughese future rooted in Nigerian 5 Science Fiction and Fantasy examines SF in India, with cultural heritage. (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004);

and Uppinder Mehan’s So Long Beyond (2013); We See a Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (2016). Science Fiction and Fantasy Speculative Fiction Anthology [2] Milena Mikael-Debass, ‘How (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004); (2013); and Iraq + 100: Stories “Black Panther” is Bringing Annie Webster discusses from a Century After the Invasion Afrofuturism into the th Hassan Blasim’s Iraq+100 (2015). Jessica Langer’s Mainstream’, Vice News, 7 (Comma Press, 2015); and Postcolonialism and Science February 2018 Rebecca Macklin reads Fiction (2009) was an early [https://news.vice.com/en_us/ar Grace Dillon’s Walking the engagement with empire and ticle/437d9j/how-black-panther- Clouds: An Anthology of race in contemporary SF in film, is-bringing-afrofuturism-into- Indigenous Science Fiction literature, and videogames; the-mainstream] (University of Arizona Press, around the same time, John [3] Ira Madison III, ‘Some 2012) for us. Finally, this issue Rieder’s Colonialism and the White Guys Are Boycotting also includes reports from Emergence of Science Fiction Star Wars: Episode VII Because It Sibendu Chakraborty and (2008) traced SF’s origins to Promotes ‘White Genocide’’, Rodrigo Liceaga Mendoza, the colonial adventure stories Vulture, 19 October 2015 both of whom received PSA of late-nineteenth-century [http://www.vulture.com/2015/ 10/some-white-guys-are- funding in 2017. writers like H. Rider Haggard. More recently, Eric D. Smith’s boycotting-stars-wars-vii.html] Happy reading! Globalization, Utopia and 4] Anon., ‘Hugo awards Postcolonial Science Fiction: New shortlist dominated by References Maps of Hope (2012) discusses rightwing campaign’, The the Utopian import of Guardian, 26 April 2016 [1] Over the last twenty-five contemporary SF from the [https://www.theguardian.com/ years, various anthologies have peripheries of the world- books/2016/apr/26/hugo- collected SF from beyond system. Various periodicals awards-shortlist-rightwing- Europe, North America, and have also broadened the SF campaign-sad-rabid-puppies] Australasia: Dark Matter: A debate beyond Anglophone [5] Graham Huggan, Century of Speculative Fiction metropolitan writers, especially Interdisciplinary Measures: from the African Diaspora (2001) Science Fiction Studies, which has Literature and the Future of and Dark Matter: Reading the featured special issues on Postcolonial Studies (Liverpool Bones (2005); Cosmos Latinos: An ‘Global Science Fiction’ (March UP, 2008), p. 15. Anthology of Science Fiction from 2000), Slipstream (March 2011), [6] Okorafor, ‘African Science Latin America and Spain (2004); Afrofuturism (July 2007), SF and Fiction is Still Alien’, Nnedi’s Afro-Future Females (2008); globalisation (November 2012), Wahala Zone Blog, 15 January Walking the Clouds: An Anthology Chinese SF (March 2013), and 2014 of Indigenous Science Fiction Indian SF (November 2016). [http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2014 (2012); AfroSF (2013) and Meanwhile, special issues on /01/african-science-fiction-is- AfroSFv2 (2015); Mothership: African SF have featured in still-alien.html] Tales from Afrofuturism and Paradoxa (2013) and The PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 6

Articles Living and Dying Countries: Ecocide, Consciousness & Agency in First Nations Futurism Mykaela Saunders

Situated within the expense of Country’s health, described as alien and considerable body of creative and the narrator Kaden bands unwelcoming by the Settlers, material that is set in a future together with her wider who introduce invasive species Australia, only a small body of community to save the island. of plant and animal to this literary work has been Country is conscious through transform Earth into authored by First Nations water spirits – Aboriginal resembling their home planet. writers [1]. These works ancestors who have returned Paddy, the only identifiably include Archie Weller’s 1999 into, and now embody, Aboriginal character, implies novel Land“Vivamus of The Golden Cloudsporta, Country. They express desire that ‘Country chooses who can Alexis Wright’sest 2013 sed novel est.”The for protection, curiosity, an live there, it punishes those Swan Book, Ambellin understanding of history, and who don’t belong’ [3]. Country Kwaymullina’s young adult Tribe fears for the future. These is then represented as a post- series, Ellen van Neervan’s ancestral beings are racial consciousness that no 2014 short story “Water” from instrumental in the longer sees colour, but Heat and Light, and Claire G. community’s cohesion and fight welcomes all of humanity as Coleman’s 2017 novel Terra for the future of Minjerribah. Native. The harshness of the Nullius [2]. This essay is Larapinta, one of these spirits, landscape is the key to the concerned with how the future seduces Kaden. Their Natives’ survival under the of Country is represented in relationship may symbolise the Settlers’ genocidal regime, as these worlds, specifically the union of human and non-human the Settlers are unsuited to ways that the authors imagine that the narrator’s ancestors living in such a hot and dry Country as both living and once lived and breathed, but climate. Country then becomes dying in accordance with that she has become instrumental in the Native Aboriginal beliefs about the disconnected from through resistance: Country is same. From the patterns that colonial processes. weaponised to destroy the emerge I’ll extrapolate a set of Settlers, and then used as genre trends in this small but The latest addition to this field protection against further growing body of work. is Terra Nullius by Claire G. invasion. Coleman. It is set around 2041 In “Water”, set in a pre- in unspecified parts of Australia Alexis Wright’s 2013 dystopia apocalyptic 2027 in urban during an apocalypse, which is The Swan Book takes place a Brisbane and Minjerribah brought about by the invasion few hundred years into the (Russell Island), Aboriginal and subsequent colonisation of future. This is a world of floods people are about to be Earth by extraterrestrial and drought, and therefore set segregated to the island at the Settlers. The landscape is during an apocalypse. There is

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Articles Living and Dying Countries (continued)

no word of the causes of these is cocooned within the eucalyptus climate change. Nuclear war runaway effects global warming, tree after her rape. is mentioned as a cause of just a brief mention of ‘when the environmental and social world changed…’, which is the The Tribe series is set 300 years destruction. In this world, first line of ‘Dust Cycle’, the first after ‘The Reckoning,’ an global warming has dire chapter of the novel proper [4]. apocalyptic event which itself lasted consequences for all tribes, Although we get a sense that for 100 years, although there is no and country. Country is not climate change was the cause and mention of how far into the future characterised nor is it the effect of the book’s global this occurred. The earth’s plates explicitly conscious, although chaos, the apocalypse is vague, have shifted and now form one the Ilkari tribes read the multi-faceted, global, and large supercontinent. The weather and other natural unspecified in time. We are told Reckoning’s environmental collapse phenomena as messages and of all kinds of catastrophic forced humanity to reconfigure the portents. Melanoma, for weather, and governments way people live with each other and example, is the name of the collapsing“Vivamus like dominoes. Itporta is set with Country. The Tribe live in goddess whose kisses result mostly on a swampest insed the middleest.” symbiosis with a forest sanctuary in skin cancer. The Keepers of Australia which is lush and called the Firstwood. Country is of the Trees are an ancient green, within a concentration conscious, existing in multiple Aboriginal race who practice camp/prison compound. In the dimensions, and Ashala’s ancestor, a version of culture very swamp, the community still hunt, Grandfather Serpent makes himself similar to our pre-colonial fish and gather, and Country is known to her and speaks for ancestors. The Keepers of alive as the weather and waters Country. Country also the Trees utilise Traditional respond. The other major setting communicates with Ashala and Ecological Knowledge in is a huge, Gotham-like coastal others through dreams, spirits and their caring for Country city that is overpopulated, the voices of other animals. As the practises. As the Keepers of polluted, frequently flooded and Tribe are a group of rebel Illegals the Trees are perfectly chaotic. There is still magic who have escaped broader society symbiotic with Country, they under the buildings and concrete, and banded together, their may be read as the human and the waters seem to have a mutations may have manifested as expression of Country in this consciousness. Portals to the Country’s response to the novel. Dreaming world can be accessed suppressed Balance of Life. In this even in this urbanised area, and world, the Illegals’ superpowers are Ecocide is a major theme in the protagonist Oblivia Country’s way of arming people to these futuristic worlds. The communicates with the swans fight for its needs, just as the spirits apocalypse is of unspecified and the weather. In all settings, in “Water” have done. origin in The Swan Book, but Dreaming stories permeate the is more specific in “Water”, present, and totems feature The post-apocalyptic Land of the Terra Nullius, Tribe, and Land heavily in this story – especially Golden Clouds is set in Australia of the Golden Clouds. Tribe Oblivia’s swans. Country also 3000 years into the future and is a and Land of the Golden Clouds heals Oblivia’s trauma, when she warning of the runaway effects of are both set so far into the

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Articles Living and Dying Countries (continued)

Environmental and Country’s response to its own Disappearance of Ember Crow,

social catastrophes are killing is performed in each vol. 2, The Tribe Series world in different ways. In (Newtown, N.S.W: Walker mostly orchestrated Books Australia, 2013); The Terra Nullius, Swan Book, and Foretelling of Georgie Spider, vol. by white people and Land, Country is given agency settlers, and if they 3, The Tribe Series (Newtown, through the actions and voices N.S.W: Walker Books are resolved, it is only of animal and plant emissaries, Australia, 2015); Ellen van through Aboriginal and weather events. In Neervan, "Water," in Heat and community cohesion. “Water” and Tribe, Country is Light (St Lucia, Qld: University explicitly characterised through of Queensland Press, 2014; reprint, 2017), Claire G. entities who express distress at future that the world Coleman, Terra Nullius (Sydney: ecocide, and actively care about Countries are unrecognisable, Hachette Australia, 2017). the First Nations protagonists. but the causes of ecocide still [3] Coleman, Op. Cit., p.121. In the Aboriginal world-view, linger in “Vivamushuman memory. Landporta [4] Wright, Op. Cit., p.6. Country is conscious, and this of the Golden Clouds features est sed est.” precept is reflected in all five self-determining communities works to different degrees. Mykaela Saunders is a Koori that have emerged after the and Lebanese-Australian writer apocalypse; Western-style who belongs to the Minjungbal- governance is still the norm in References Nganduwal community in Swan Book, “Water”, Terra [1] Brian Attebery provides a Tweed Heads. She’s currently Nullius, and Tribe, although good overview of the state of undertaking a Doctor of Arts there are pockets of civil Aboriginal representation in degree in the creative writing program through the University resistance working to science fiction and fantasy, up until 2005 in his article of Sydney, where she also undermine these structures in lectures in Indigenous Studies. the latter three. Annihilation of “Aboriginality in Science Fiction," Science Fiction Studies Her doctoral project is Country is correlated with 32, no. 3 (2005) . First Nations called Goori-Futurism: Envisioning colonial rule; Mother Nature in authors only began to write the sovereignty of Minjungbal- turn breaks everyone’s hearts, back and publish speculative Nganduwal country, community, even those who love her most. fiction from the 1990s, with and culture through speculative fiction. All five worlds feature this Sam Watson’s fantasy The

problem at their centres. Kadaitcha Sung (Penguin Group USA, 1990). Environmental and social [2] Archie Weller, Land of the catastrophes are mostly Golden Clouds (Allen & Unwin, orchestrated by white people 1999); Alexis Wright, The Swan and settlers, and if they are Book (Giramondo Publishing, resolved, it is only through 2013); Ambelin Kwaymullina, Aboriginal community The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, cohesion. vol. 1, The Tribe Series (Newtown, N.S.W: Walker Books Australia, 2012); The

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 9

Articles Indian fantasy fiction in English and the post-millennial moment [1] E. Dawson Varughese

Speculative fiction in bhasha the novel explores Kerala’s The post-millennial literatures has a rich history enduring fascination with myth, domestic market in and has typically concerned folklore, and the yakshi which in genre fiction in English itself with folkloric or Hindu Malayali cultures at least, is an has been flooded with epic inspiration [2]. Devaki alluring female who entraps and mythology-inspired Nandan Khatri’s Chandrakanta kills or leads men to their novels. (1888) is often cited as an early death. In more recent times,

fantasy novel in modern Hindi Manoj Das (acclaimed writer in Missing Queen, Ashwin fiction due to its predominant English and Oriya: Cyclones; A Sanghi’s[3] The Krishna Key, as fairy-tale aesthetic. Khair and Tiger at Twilight), Ruchir Joshi well as many other novels in Doubinsky (2015) have (The Last Jet Engine Laugh), Ravi this genre published in the last suggested“Vivamus that Indian porta Shankar Etteth (The Tiger by the decade, variously anchor their speculative fictionest in sed English est.” River; The Village of Widows) and storylines in Hindu Indian epic dates to the early 1900s with Anil Menon (Half of What I Say) narratives. This body of fiction ‘Sultana’s Dream’ by Rokeya have all been described as evokes a range of cultural (and Sakhaway Hossain (2015: 228), authors of ‘speculative’ fiction. religious) reader receptions although a tradition of within and outside of India, speculative fiction in Bangla was Post-millennial mythology- some of which read these established by writers inspired fiction novels as fantastical (see Jagadananda Roy and Jagadish The post-millennial domestic Dawson Varughese, 2016). In market in genre fiction in Chandra Bose in the late 1800s. the last few years, as the genre In a similar vein although nearly English has been flooded with fiction book market in English a century later, Lokenath mythology-inspired novels, within India has become ever Bhattacharya’s Bangla novel spear-headed by authors like more saturated with Ashok Banker, Amish Tripathi, Babughater Kumari Maachh (The mythology-inspired fiction, Virgin Fish of Babughat) from and Ashwin Sanghi from the novels that move beyond the 1972 is easily identifiable as a first decade of the noughties. ‘mythology fantasy’ storyline dystopian-speculative novel, as Marketed as ‘mythology’ or have appeared. My recent work the story is set in a nameless ‘mythology-inspired’ fiction, has been interested in this ₹ detention camp where human such paperbacks retail at 250 production of Indian fantasy in beings are reduced to an to ₹300 and are sold in book English which is not (or less) animal-like status as the captors stores, at train stations, recognisable by the tropes and provide only for the detainees’ airports, and through India’s style of the mythology-inspired physical needs. In the late online platforms such as fiction that has been so 1960s, Yakshi (1967) was Infibeam, Amazon.co.in, and prevalent in the market in the published, written in Malayalam Flipkart. Amish Tripathi’s ‘Shiva post-millennial period to date. by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan: Trilogy’, Samhita Arni’s The

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Articles Indian fantasy fiction in English (continued)

Beyond ‘mythology’ ‘community’ on the outskirts of mythical. In doing so, Ardra Recently, novels such as Dark the city - and thus the familiar invites the reader to consider Things (2016) by Sukanya world of 1920s Bombay is what is ‘real’ and what is Venkatraghavan, published by skewed and distorted until at ‘fantasy’, serving as a meta- Hachette India, Savage Blue times, it is almost commentary on the genre itself. (2016) by Vikram Balagopal, unrecognisable. Despite this In The Liar’s Weave (2017), it is published by HarperCollins distortion of locale, The Liar’s the space of the forest located India and The Liar’s Weave Weave (2017) is anchored in a beyond the salt pans on the (2017) by Tashan Mehta, sense of Indianness, not least outskirts of Bombay and the published by Juggernaut Books, via its fixation with an community of the hatadaiva – demonstrate – I suggest, – a individual’s astrological chart, the ill-fated, ‘people whose nascent trend that moves away but also through the Parsi futures are disastrous, so ours from Indian“Vivamus (Hindu) mythology porta identity that runs throughout may be good or balanced’ and epic inspirationest sedfor the est.” the novel. (2017: 65) – that constructs a creation of a ‘fantastical’ All three novels exemplify the sense of ‘worlds’, because what narrative. Rather, the novels of fantasy genre according to is ‘possible’ in Vidroha is Venkatraghavan, Balagopal and Clute and Grant (1999) insofar ‘impossible’ elsewhere. Mehta create fantastical as when they are ‘set in an narrative worlds anchored in otherworld, that otherworld A global trend? Indianness (of various kinds), will be impossible, though Istvan Csicsery-Ronay (2012) and these worlds are devoid of stories set there will be suggests that the increasing Hindu deities, their adversaries, possible in its terms’ (1999: frequency of speculative and the overall familiar 338). This is particularly fictions, borne from outside the narrative scapes of post- apparent in Savage Blue (2016) traditional Euro-American millennial, mythology-inspired in which many worlds are paradigm, is to be expected. fiction. created, all ‘impossible’ in their Indeed, the advent of distinct own individual ways. From Indian fantasy voices (in English) Both Dark Things (2016) and black snow to stone giants, circulating amongst those of Savage Blue (2016) concern from the Insectoids to the mythology-inspired fiction is themselves with worlds other swamp world, all the worlds of both timely and significant. than Earth and yet, when Earth Savage Blue (2016) function Venkatraghavan, Balagopal, and is mentioned within the within their own narrative, Mehta’s works explore storyline, it is conceived of making what happens in them ‘fantastical’ Indias in which through an Indian world view possible. In Dark Things (2016), technology, science, and and set of sensibilities. Mehta’s the protagonist, Ardra knowledge can be thought of The Liar’s Weave (2017) is set in questions the limits of what she through a framework that is early 20th century Bombay but perceives to be the universe, devoid of manifest Hindu (epic) the location is disrupted by the what she knows to be true, and tropes. This type of imagining is space of Vidroha – a forest and thus what she assumes to be powerful given these novels’

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Articles Indian fantasy fiction in English (continued)

[2] Dastan-e- Amir Hamza (of millennial receptions of ‘weird’ the Lucknowi tradition) is an narratives New York, London: exception to this rule, given Routledge. that its inspiration lies in the life - James, E. and Mendlesohn, F. of an uncle (eds) (2014) The Cambridge of the Prophet Muhammad. Companion to Fantasy Literature Interestingly, Dastan-e- Amir Cambridge: Cambridge Hamza displays ‘fantasy’ tropes University Press. as defined by contemporary - Khair, T. and Doubinsky, A. theorists (2015) ‘The Politics and Art of Image courtesy of (such as James and Mendlesohn; Indian English Fantasy Fiction’ in Vikram Balagopal Attebery) despite its age (as a U. Anjaria (ed) A History of the printed source it was Indian Novel in English (potential) global dissemination circulating in Lucknow in the Cambridge: Cambridge circuits,“Vivamus such as HarperCollins porta late 1880’s). University Press. For more on the Lucknowi - Venkatraghavan, S. (2016) India and Hachette who have est sed est.” dastan culture(s), see M. Dark Things New Delhi: published Savage Blue (2016) Farooqui (2000) ‘The Simurgh Hachette India. and Dark Things (2016) Feather Guide to the Poetics of respectively, and Juggernaut Dastan-e E. Dawson Varughese’s Books’ commitment to e- Amir Hamza Sahibqiran’. research examines the publishing. The novels briefly Annual of Urdu Studies. 15: encoding of Indian post- millennial modernity through discussed here envisage a very 119–167. [3] Although Ashwin Sanghi popular literary and (visual) different kind of imagined considers his writing as being artistic expression. She Indianness than that of conspiracy-inspired rather than publishes on genre fiction, mythology-inspired fiction, and mythology-inspired. graphic novels and narratives, in thinking of these novels as domestic Indian book cover post-millennial, globalized References design, and public wall art; a ‘products’, they chime with - Attebery, B. (1992) Strategies central theme to her research is (evolving) ideas of Indianness. much of young, urban India’s of Fantasy Bloomington and Her most recent book is ever-expanding outlook. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. published by Palgrave, entitled

- Balagopal, V. (2016) Savage Visuality and Identity in post- Notes Blue New Delhi: HarperCollins millennial Indian graphic [1] Some aspects of this piece India. narratives (2017). An are more fully elucidated in: - Csicsery-Ronay, I. Jr. (2012) independent scholar, she Dawson Varughese, E. ‘Post- What do we mean when we divides her time between the millennial “Indian Fantasy” say “Global Science Fiction”? UK and India. She was a Visiting fiction in Reflections on a new nexus. Fellow at the University of English and the question of Science Fiction Studies 39(3): Delhi (English, 2017; Sociology, mythology: Writing beyond the 478–493. 2018). See her work at: “usual suspects”’ in The Journal - Dawson Varughese, E. (2016) www.beyondthepostcolonial.co of Commonwealth Literature, 7th Genre Fiction of New India: post- m December, 2017 (online).

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 12

Articles ‘Runaway Cyclone,’ Or: The First Bengali Science Fiction Story. Christin Hoene.

According to The Encyclopedia story competition that was scientists. It is only in the of Science Fiction's entry on organised, somewhat peculiarly, second part of the story that Bengal, the “most significant by an Indian hair oil company. the mystery is lifted by a work of sf, and undoubtedly The condition for all entries personal account of a balding one of the best works of Bangla was that the stories had to man, who is on a ship in the sf in the formative stage, is the make reference to the middle of the cyclone shortly highly subversive attack on company’s most prominent before it makes landfall. colonial repression, product, Kuntal Keshari Thinking that his last moment ‘Niruddesher Kahini’ [‘The (Kuntaline in the 1896 version), has come, he remembers that Story of the Missing One’] by which in Bose’s story features his daughter has packed him a ‘Acharya’“Vivamus Jagadish Chandra porta prominently as the deus-ex- bottle of Kuntal Keshari. He Bose (1858-1937).” Born in machina that saves Calcutta also remembers a scientific British India, Boseest was sed an est.” from impending doom by an article that he recently read internationally renowned approaching cyclone. Bose won that describes how a film of oil scientist, public intellectual, and that competition. 25 years on water calms the surface. polymath who was mostly later, in 1921, he republished The man throws the bottle of known for his work as a an expanded version under the hair oil over board, which physicist and his research on new title “Palatak Toofan”, immediately calms the waters. electromagnetic (millimetre) translated as “Runaway The cyclone disappears, and waves (then called Hertzian Cyclone” in a 2013 translation disaster is avoided. waves) until his contributions into English by Bodhisattva were curiously forgotten and Chattopadhyay, which was Several things are remarkable he became known instead for published in the online about this story when we look at it as a work of science his work on the physiology of magazine Strange Horizons [1]. plants. Bose was also the fiction, on the one hand, and as president of the Academy of The story is about a cyclone a work of colonial literature on Bengali Literature for several that threatens to hit Calcutta the other. The story is in two years; he delivered the and cause extreme destruction. parts. Part one mainly charts Presidential address at the Newspapers warn of the the impending appearance literary conference held at impending catastrophe, citing followed by the sudden Mymensing on 14 April 1911; the latest readings by the disappearance of the cyclone as and in 1896 he wrote what is Meteorological Department. described through the lens of arguably the first Bengali But on the appointed day, the western scientists and English- cyclone fails to appear, much to language newspaper articles. science fiction story. the astonishment of the Everyone is equally puzzled by Bose wrote “Niruddesher newspapers, the Meteorological the cyclone that should have Kahini” as an entry for a short Department, and western been but never was. In part

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 13

Articles ‘Runaway Cyclone’ (continued)

two we learn about the real and confirmed by that scientific properties of the hair oil are as cause of the cyclone’s journal the protagonist had much scientific in their effect as disappearance: the bottle of recently read. The origin story, they are supernatural in their hair oil thrown overboard to however, further mystifies the origin. Merely relying on calm the waves. hair oil and renders this story a science and thus failing to see peculiar hybrid of science this bigger picture, the western What is striking is that this fiction and magical realism. On scientists are partially blind to resolution seems scientifically the science fiction side, there is the whole truth of the matter. sound – after all, the the cyclone as a natural protagonist had just read about phenomenon, the expert This attack on western the effects of oil on water in a opinions, and the effects of oil scientists echoes throughout scientific journal – and on water. On the magical Bose’s non-fictional writings, completely improbable at the realist side, we have the circus, particularly in the numerous same time: one single bottle of the bald lion, and the circus speeches that he delivered hair oil “Vivamusto calm a cyclone? porta This director that prays at the feet from the 1910s to the 1930s at adds a supernatural dimension the inaugurations of of a Sanyasi, who in turn offers to the scientificest one sedthat is est.” universities, the opening of his him a hair oil whose formula compounded by the origin came to him in a dream. own research institute in story of the hair oil that Bose Calcutta, and on other includes in the 1921 version of occasions. Bose was an both elements – the the story. In this later version, interdisciplinary scientist from an English circus director once science and the magic India and worked at a time travelled to India, but upon – are integrated and when neither interdisciplinarity arrival his lion lost its mane due mutually dependent, nor scientists from India were to sea-sickness. In dire straits, rather than mutually particularly highly regarded in the man prays at the feet of a exclusive. the west. Throughout his life, Sanyasi, who in turn offers him It is also interesting that both Bose had to battle the colonial a bottle of Kuntal Keshari and elements – the science and the prejudice that Indians were says that the formula had come magic – are integrated and inept at the natural sciences to him in a dream. The hair oil mutually dependent, rather because of their predisposition cures the lion and makes its than mutually exclusive. The towards the metaphysical. This mane grow back within the western scientists quoted in was plainly racist and untrue week. the story fail in their ability to for Bose, who proved the account for the cyclone’s prejudice wrong by sheer This origin story complicates sudden disappearance, and success. our reading of “Runaway their failure is one of the Cyclone” as a work of science In his speeches, Bose also imagination. As far as they fiction. After all, it does not add rhetorically undermines the know, there simply cannot be a to the scientific element of the validity of the premise that a rational explanation for the story, which is, at least within vivid imagination is bad for phenomenon. And strictly the context of the story, sound scientific pursuit, by first speaking, there is not. The

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 14

Articles ‘Runaway Cyclone’ (continued)

acknowledging that this Notes Christin Hoene is the “burning imagination” is indeed [1] According to the editors, Leverhulme Early Career intrinsic to the Indian mind, and Anil Menon and Vandana Singh, Fellow in the School of English and the translator, Bodhisattva at the University of Kent and a by then arguing that it is Chattopadhyay, this is the first Researcher in Residence at the beneficial rather than translation of Bose’s story into British Library. Her current detrimental for scientific English. work focuses on depictions of thought, because it opens up sound and sound technology in the mind for a “clear vision” of Works cited colonial literature and on the what is possible (1986, 69). “Bengal.” The Encyclopedia of history of the radio in the “The excessive specialisation in Science Fiction. http://www.sf- context of the British Empire. encyclopedia.com/entry/bengal. Her book Music and Identity in the West”, on the other hand, Accessed 13 Apr. 2018. Postcolonial British South-Asian “has led to the danger of our Literature was published by losing sight of the fundamental Bose, Jagadis Chandra. Bose Routledge in 2015. truth that“Vivamus there are not porta Speaks. Eds. Dibakar Sen and sciences but a single science Ajoy Kumar Chakraborty. Calcutta: Puthipatra, 1986. that includes all”est (45). sed Thus, est.” the scientists’ inability to account ---. “Runaway Cyclone.” Trans. for the runaway cyclone is not Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay. a failure of science as such; it is Strange Horizons, 30 September a failure of the western 2013. http://strangehorizons.com/ficti approach to science. on/runaway-cyclone/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 15

Articles science and speculative fiction Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim has in Iraqi writing, one embodied ‘‘Now I prefer to been described as 'perhaps the by the work of authors such as best writer of Arabic fiction Sinan Antoon, Ahmed Saadawi, get to the heart of alive' [2]. He is one of a and Lu’ay Hamza 'Abbas, as number of authors of Arabic well as Blasim. Contrary to the the matter, to not science fiction whose realist prose which has popularity in English translation dominated Iraqi fiction since use metaphor’ [1]: is soaring: Blasim's The Iraqi the '1950s generation' [5], Hassan Blasim Christ And Other Stories (2013) these authors reach 'beyond won the Independent Foreign mere realism and enter a and Iraqi Science Fiction Prize in 2014 – the first surreal world' [6]—using time in its history that the prize fantastical modes of writing not Fiction was awarded to an Arab, and to abandon reality, but to Sinéad Murphy to a short story collection. estrange and critique it. There seems little consensus, however, as to the precise kind The fraught relationship of fiction Blasim is writing—as between the real and the author Robin Yassin-Kassab fantastical appears to be pivotal which to ‘read the nation’. says plainly, 'Blasim's work is so to the popularity of Blasim's Another reviewer asserts that unusual it's hard to place' fiction. Rachel Cardasco's ‘science fiction is one way of [3]. Most recently, Blasim review of Iraq +100 is reflecting on human society and edited and contributed to Iraq paradigmatic of the reception naturally the cultural +100: stories from a century after of Blasim's work in English- background of the author lends the invasion (2016): its blurb language forums. Cardasco a unique flavour to stories’ [8]. observes that the narratives deplores that 'our news This suggestion that the cultural within exhibit ‘a range of reports tell us nothing about context ‘flavours’ the genre approaches—from science the Iraqi psyche', stating that reinforces a misguided notion fiction, to allegory, to magic 'English-language readers are that non-Anglophone science realism’, converging in ‘a new fortunate to have this fiction is derivative rather than aesthetic for the “Iraqi collection of speculative fiction generative, and that it largely fantastical”’ [4]. These tentative by Iraqi authors in translation, consists of straightforward inverted commas gesture to an since we can now catch a adaptations of ‘Western’ emerging trend towards glimpse of the vibrant science fiction. This is imaginations at work both these authors reach reinforced by the comparators within that country and abroad' which populate reviews of 'beyond mere realism [7]. Such reactions to Iraq +100 Blasim's work. In the space of and enter a surreal reveal a curious dichotomy, one back cover, The Iraqi Christ world'—using wherein the anthology is lauded is described variously as fantastical modes of for its formal experimentation ‘Bolaño-esque’, ‘Borgesian’, and writing not to and unusual narrative ‘Gogol-like’, likenesses which abandon reality, but strategies, while at the same speak to the discomfiting, to estrange and time garnering prestige for its surreal, and magical-realist critique it. capacity as a vehicle through qualities of Blasim’s writing. A

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 16

Articles Hassan Blasim and Iraqi Science Fiction (continued)

writer for the Independent–the mapped across languages, Arabic science fiction the sponsor of the aforementioned cultures, and geopolitical periphery of this 'genre system', fiction prize–likens Blasim's boundaries. even while it features the style to that of Irvine Welsh, genre's recognisable tropes and Franz Kafka, and William S. To understand how such devices. Boroughs [9]. attitudes towards Arabic science fiction persist, I turn to What we see in Blasim's work The lexical mélange which John Rieder's conception of is a reappraisal of this dynamic, gathers around texts such as 'science fiction and the other by which science fiction itself is Blasim's could be considered genres usually associated with employed as a trope through symptomatic of science fiction so-called genre fiction' as which to express a 'new itself; defining the genre has comprising a 'mass cultural aesthetic of the “Iraqi proven evasive. Decades after it genre system' [12]. This fantastical”'. If ‘the generic was uttered, Damon Knight's system, Rieder argues, is character of a text is precisely flippant “Vivamusobservation that porta 'distinct from the preexisting what is repeated and 'science fiction is what we point classical and academic genre conventional in it’ [14], then to when we sayest it' [10] sed est.” system' [13] and is best what is identifiable in Blasim's continues to be invoked in understood by its association fiction is the use of narrative scholarly criticism. Jerry Määtta with large-scale commercial strategies which represent the acknowledges that definitions production practices. That the 'Iraqi reality itself as monstrous of science fiction ‘are rarely boundaries of science fiction and irrational' [15]. Blasim's free from apologia, rhetorical remain a moveable feast can be work is populated by fantastical maneuvers and markings or ascribed, Rieder poses, not to characters in surreal settings, annexations of bordering a desire for precision in the but is also saturated with literary genres’ [11], going on distinction of one genre from memorable dates, real place to suggest that a science another, but to 'effects of names, and actual historical fictional text is more readily prestige attached to positions events. The unifying motif identified by its paratext – the in the contemporary genre across the Iraq +100 anthology, elements which gesture to the system'. One such 'effect of for instance, is the setting of a intended or supposed social prestige' in modern Western future Iraqi city: function of the text. Although artistic practices is the violation this perspective largely leaves of generic boundaries, rather The cities featured here – considerations of narrative than adherence to them. In Baghdad, Basra, Ramadi, Mosul, style and form aside, it helpfully English-language criticism, the Suleymania, Najaf – are all foregrounds the material conferral of prestige on wildly different places, in fiction conditions in which these texts Blasim's fiction on the basis of and in reality, but are united by are written, published, and its experimentation with the tragedy of modern Iraq – received. Narratives such as generic boundaries is clear. To the tragedy of a people that is Blasim's circulate in an simultaneously read his fiction desperate for just a solitary increasingly globalised literary as a straightforward national draught of peace [16]. marketplace which is unevenly allegory, however, is to confine

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 17

Articles Hassan Blasim and Iraqi Science Fiction (continued)

In Blasim’s formulation, ‘the [4] Iraq + 100: Stories from System. Connecticut: Wesleyan city’ takes on a kind of double Another Iraq. ed. Hassan Blasim. UP, 2017. 1. signification, as a symbol of the Manchester: Comma Press, [13] Ibid. 24. 2016 [14] Ibid. 20. various large urban areas in [5] See Caiani, Fabio, and [15] Bahoora, Haytham. which the very real devastation Catherine Cobham. The Iraqi 'Writing the Dismembered of the 2003 invasion was felt, Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts. Nation: The Aesthetics of and simultaneously, as the Edinburgh University Press, Horror in Iraqi Narratives of imaginary space in which a 2013. 19-21. War'. Arab Studies Journal 23. 1 future Iraqi nation is [6] Irving, Sarah. '‘The Iraqi (Fall 2015): 184-208. 188. envisioned, in schematised Christ’: An Unsparing, [16] Blasim, Hassan, Unforgiving Depiction of the ‘Foreword’. Trans. Jonathan form. Human Condition'. Arabic Wright, in Iraq + 100: Stories Literature in English (online). 4 from Another Iraq. ed. Hassan Blasim's writing is largely Jan 2013. Blasim. Manchester: Comma focussed on the 2003 invasion [7] ‘Review: Iraq +100 Ed. Press, 2016. v-x; x. and the “Vivamus'many afterlives of porta Hassan Blasim’. Speculative Sinéad Murphy is a part-time violence' in its wake. He Fiction in Translation online. 26 PhD candidate in the contextualises esthis work, sed est.” Oct 2017. [8] Pranay, Parab. 'Review: Iraq Department of Comparative however, as an intervention + 100 Is a Fascinating Literature in King’s College into a much longer history of Collection of Science Fiction London. Her research is an colonial dispossession and Set in 2103 Iraq'. Gadgets 360 AHRC LAHP-funded project destruction in Iraq—a form of online. 10 Nov 2016. on contemporary Arab speculative fiction in English. cultural production which [9] Tonkin, Boyd. 'Iraq's 'Irvine Her primary research interests pushes back against ‘the long Welsh' wins the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The include science and speculative litany of invaders that have Iraqi Christ'. The Independent fiction, contemporary Middle descended on Mesopotamia online. 23 May 2014. Eastern literature, postcolonial and destroyed its treasures’. [10] "Science Fiction theory, and theories of Adventures" 122, qtd. in Clute comparative and world References and Nicholls, eds. The literature. Her work has been [1] Quoted in Sarah Irving, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. published in Science Fiction 'Hassan Blasim: I’m Not London: Orbit, 1999. 314 Studies journal, The Literary Interested in Preserving ‘The [11] Määtta, Jerry, ‘Commercial Encyclopedia, UCD's Beauty of the Arabic Language’'. Market-Arrangement: Defining postgraduate journal Emerging Arabic Literature in English Science Fiction.’ Foundationvol Perspectives, and various online (online). 12 Dec 2012. 37 no 103 (Summer 2008). The platforms including Arabic [2] Yassin-Kassab, Robin. paratext of science fictional Literature in English (arablit.org). 'Beirut 39: New Writing from narratives is, he argues, ‘so Her article on 'Science Fiction the Arab World, edited by distinct when it comes to and the Arab Spring: The Samuel Shimon'. The Guardian science fiction that it might be Critical Dystopia in online. 12 Jun 2010. worthwhile to try to demarcate Contemporary Egyptian Fiction' [3] Yassin-Kassab, Robin. ‘The and define the genre using only (published in Strange Horizons) Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim – its marketing and image’. has recently been nominated review'. The Guardian online. 20 [12] Rieder, John. Science Fiction for a British Science Fiction Mar 2013. and the Mass Cultural Genre Association Award for non- fiction.

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 18

Articles Filipino Futures: An Introduction to Philippine Science Fiction Vida Cruz I. most books in the local (Incidentally, according to You can’t talk about Philippine bookstore chains are from the Victor Fernando Ocampo’s science fiction without bringing United States, too. article, these two examples, as up history, whether of the well as Arnel M. Salgado’s genre or the country. So is it any wonder that the Kidnapped by the Gods (1995) earliest samples of Philippine and Eliza Victoria’s Project-17 The Philippines is a young science fiction have undeniable (2013) are so far the only nation compared to much of Eurowestern influences Filipino science fiction novels in the world. It became (Ocampo 2014)? the wide body of Philippine independent from Spain only science fiction. The rest are 120 years ago, the Japanese For example, Mateo Cruz short stories.) only 73 years ago, and the Cornelio’s 48-page novel Americans only 72 years ago. Docktor Satan (1946) is an R.L. But even this early on, the Though Spain had a hold over Stevenson-esque tale starring a concerns of American science much of the archipelago for chemist racing to find a cure fiction (at least the pulp and over 300 years – many for his mother’s terminal dime novel kind) and Philippine Philippine cultures and illness. He concocts a medicine science fiction diverge. languages have distinctly that turns him into a horned, Spanish DNA – it was arguably red-eyed demon and murders What drives the plots of the the Americans who succeeded his fianceé before he is killed by former is the characters’ in culturally dominating the the police. needing to explore lands that Philippines, the most don’t belong to them, to make westernized country in Asia. Another early science fiction something of themselves no work is film director Nemesio matter the cost (Anon. 2016). Today, American English is one E. Caravana’s novel Ang Puso ni These are perfectly of the national languages. It is Mathilda (1959), translated as encapsulated in the three used in most signages and The Heart of Mathilda. In this categories of SF dime novel taught in schools. The school story – a mix of Mary Shelley, narratives: system is a holdover from the H.P. Lovecraft, and Alfred The Invention story, one brought over by the Hitchcock – a surgeon gives his featuring teenaged boy American missionaries in the newly-dead lover a heart genius heroes who 1900s – in fact, it has become transplant that revives her but triumph over their even more American of late gives her more canine traits. It elders and ‘savages’ with due to transitioning to the K-12 is later revealed that the heart the help of technology curriculum. Most cinemas play belonged to the surgeon’s The Lost Race story, American movies, many shops beloved bulldog Mathilda. featuring Christian play American pop tunes, and adventurers who felt

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Articles Filipino Futures (continued)

What drives the plots of The Borgen Project reports Philippine science fiction, Even in social science fiction, that, while the Philippines’ however, are the the concerns differ. George poverty rate has been characters’ relationships Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four decreasing over the years, it and the struggle to (1949) and Ray Bradbury’s was at 21.6% in 2015. preserve those. Fahrenheit 451 (1953) are Meanwhile, 12.1% of Filipinos in concerned with government a country of around 105 million justified looting Big Brotherism and censorship. are living below the poverty treasures from the idols In contrast, Gregorio Brillantes’ line (Suansing 2017). of Pre-Columbian short story “Apollo American peoples Centennial” (1981), while “Fortitude” by Eliza Victoria, The ‘Marvel’ story, in written as a commentary on found in Science Fiction: Filipino which protagonists the reign of the late dictator Fiction for Young Adults (2015), encountered strange, Ferdinand Marcos, zeroes in on features a young girl living in an alien worlds and the difficult journey via carabao abandoned and overgrown advanced technology of a poor family to the neighborhood, dreaming of Very fitting of the literature of celebration of the 100th joining her brother, who works that period, as the United anniversary of the 1969 lunar on the settled planet of States had just conquered the landing. In this story, the Fortitude. lands of Native Americans, dictatorship was never brought purchased a tract of land from down and the Philippines’ In 2017, there were 2.3 million the French, and wrested the biggest island, Luzon, has Filipinos working all over the colonies of Cuba, Guam, and become a protectorate of the world – that’s 2.3 million the Philippines away from Spain United States. The story itself people separated from their (https://www.encyclopedia.com encapsulates the common families, often for years, /history/educational- Philippine fear that the working long hours in magazines/guam-puerto-rico- developing nation will be left occasionally unjust conditions. and-philippines). behind by the rest of the world – technologically, economically, The same YA anthology carries What drives the plots of what have you. “The Ceres Girl” by Lakan Philippine science fiction, Umali, in which a young girl however, are the characters’ II. faces the struggles of growing relationships and the struggle Science fiction discusses up without her mother, who is to preserve those. Even when possible futures while mirroring a nurse for an American the plot turns on trying to eke our present concerns. So then, company on an asteroid called out or fight for a better life, what are the present concerns Ceres. there is always a heavy of Filipinos? Let the statistics emphasis on that better life paint a picture. The Philippines, a biodiverse being for one’s family. tropical country, has also weathered 274 natural

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Articles Filipino Futures (continued)

calamities in the last 20 years, archives, Victor Fernando making it the world’s fourth The lack of infrastructure also Ocampo tells the tale of Earth’s most disaster-prone country makes the capital of Manila the last librarian, a Filipino, beaming (Quizmundo 2012). third worst in terms of traffic in all of humanity’s works into Southeast Asia (Anon 2017). space before monsters overrun Kim Sarabia’s “Jeepney Blues” its last library in “Resurrection from the same anthology deals There are a lot more Filipino 2.0.” This story can be found in with a permanently storm- concerns that I couldn’t find his short story collection The flooded Philippine archipelago statistics for, but which have Infinite Library and Other Stories and a teenage boy surviving been crystallized in local (2017). day-to-day on a floating science fiction. jeepney. Similarly, there are plenty of Being a very sociable people, it other social, environmental, In terms of infrastructure is no surprise that some technological, economic, and development, the Philippines Filipino stories deal with robot political concerns for which ranked 106th out of 140 companions, loneliness, and there are stories that have yet countries in the 2015-2016 grief. “The Romeo Robot” by to be written, or that I have World Economic Forum Global Raymund P. Reyes and not read. These include Competitiveness Report – this “Surrogate” by Daniel Carlos religious wars, racial tensions, despite an increasing population Tan – both from Science Fiction: Manila’s worsening traffic and high economic growth Filipino Fiction for Young Adults – situation, sluggish internet (Anon. 2017b). are sterling examples of this. speed, and a lack of myriad The title character from Dean other infrastructure projects. This lack of infrastructure, such Alfar’s “Hollow Girl: A However, upcoming local as farm-to-market roads and Romance” (2005) also deals anthology titles include Kathang irrigation systems, also with these themes from the Haka: The Big Book of Fake contributes to food loss – robot’s point of view. News, Disaster: Pinoy SciFi, and specifically, 296,869 metric tons Pook at Paglikha: Philippine of wasted rice for the year The dirty, deceitful world of Science Fiction & Fantasy 2008. Terrible, considering how Philippine politics is also given a (meaning, “place” and millions of Filipinos cannot even delightful twist with clones in “creation,” respectively). Who afford to eat three meals a day Paolo Chikiamco’s “Carbon” knows what stories we’ll find in (Rodriguez 2014). Bio-plasticine (Philippine Speculative Fiction vol. these books? millet (BPM) is miraculously 5, 2010). being turned into the real thing III. in order to feed a society that And with so many works of Given everything I have read – can no longer eat real food in literature and oral tradition though I definitely haven’t read “Milagroso” by Isabel Yap being lost to time or lying everything there is – it seems (2015). undiscovered in dusty old that Filipino visions of the

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Articles Filipino Futures (continued)

future unanimously contain Anon. (2017) ‘Metro Manila has disaster-prone-country-new- sustained social and familial ties. 3rd worst traffic in Southeast study-shows) But these visions are also bleak. Asia – study’. In: rappler.com [website], 30th November Rodriguez, Fritzie (2014) ‘PH Dystopias, a stagnant society, [https://www.rappler.com/busin food wastage: Think twice and dwindling resources run ess/190016-metro-manila- before wasting your meal’. In: amok in Philippine science traffic-southeast-asia-study-bcg- Rappler, 20th March fiction. Does that mean that uber] (https://www.rappler.com/move even if society breaks down, -ph/issues/hunger/53419-food- we’ll be all right so long as we Anon. (2017b) ‘Philippines – wastage-ph) have our communities? Infrastructure’. In: export.gov [website] 7th December Suansing, Bella (2017)

(https://www.export.gov/article ‘Philippines’ Poverty Rate: Rural However, it seems that Filipino ?id=Philippines-Infrastructure) Communities Still Left Behind’. young adult science fiction is In: The Borgen Project , 9th August overwhelmingly positive in its Ocampo, Victor Fernando R. (https://borgenproject.org/philip point of view. Since time (2014) ‘A Short and Incomplete pines-poverty-rate/) immemorial, Philippine culture History of Philippine Science has often emphasized that its Fiction’. In: The Infinite Library Yap, Isabel, (2005) ‘Milagroso’. and Other Stories [web blog], 5th In: tor.com [website], 12th youths are the hope for the May August future, and Philippine YA (https://vrocampo.com/2014/05 (https://www.tor.com/2015/08/ science fiction does impress /05/a-short-and-incomplete- 12/milagroso-isabel-yap/) this upon its target market. I, history-of-philippine-science- for one, cannot wait to see fiction/) Vida Cruz is 2017 Writers of what the future of Philippine the Future winner. She Perez, Josie B. (2018) ‘Total attended the 2014 Clarion science fiction will bring. Number of OFWs Estimated at Science Fiction and Fantasy 2.3 Million (Results from the Writers Workshop in San References 2017 Survey On Overseas Diego, as well as numerous Alfar, Dean Francis (2005) Filipinos)’. In: Philippine Philippine national writing ‘Hollow Girl: A Romance’. In: Statistics Authority website, workshops. Her fiction is notes from the peanut gallery 27th April published or forthcoming th [web blog] 8 December (https://psa.gov.ph/content/total in Writers of the Future vol. [http://deanalfar.blogspot.co.uk/ -number-ofws-estimated-23- 34, Lontar: The Journal of 2005/12/archived-fiction- million-results-2017-survey- Southeast Asian Speculative hollow-girl-romance.html?m=1] overseas-filipinos) Fiction, Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up to No Anon. (2016) ‘Dime-Novel SF’. Quismundo, Tarra (2012) Good, Expanded Horizons, In: The Encyclopedia of Science ‘Philippines is 3rd most disaster- Phantazein, and the Philippine th Fiction [website] 10 February prone country, new study Speculative Fiction series of [http://www.sf- shows’. In: Philippine Daily anthologies. When not writing, encyclopedia.com/entry/dime- Inquirer, 16th October she draws and claws at her novel_sf] (http://globalnation.inquirer.net/ towering TBR pile. Tweet her 52858/philippines-is-3rd-most- @laviecestmoi.

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 22

Articles Cultural Heritage, Future Vision Mark Bould In Nigerian-American Deji about the sf that has emerged these performers, stand at the Bryce Olukotun’s After the Flare in such quantity and quality ambiguous threshold – to (Los Angeles: The Unnamed from Africa and the diaspora in borrow a little Derrida – of Press, 2017), the sequel to his the new millennium.[1] A l’futur, the attempt to lock debut Nigerians in Space (2014), stylized replica of a down the future to a specific an unprecedentedly massive masquerade. A flamboyant path as power and markets solar flare takes out electricity caricature of a performative extend themselves forward in grids, and ensuing cyberwarfare identity. A copy of a copy that, time, and of l’avenir, the destroys the internet and other at both levels of simulation, unknowable future, which communications systems. With contains critical and creative cannot be known precisely a balkanised US (and others) difference. It represents a because it is the future, not yet rendered globally irrelevant, collision neither of modernity locked down, full of potential. only the fledgling Nigerian and tradition, nor of space programme – with help Anglophone sf and African lore, Figurations of uncertainty, from India – is able to put but a locally articulated contradiction, and fluid identity together a mission to retrieve transnational modernity – just recur in the novel. There are, an astronaut stranded on the like Joyce or Starbucks – and a for example, small creatures International Space Station, the locally articulated transnational cyborgised into surveillance orbit of which is fatally techno-fantastical imaginary – devices, including an insect deteriorating. At the centre of just like Heinlein or Apple. ‘evolved in nature to imitate a the Nigerian space agency’s leaf’ which is now ‘a computer Kano complex is In Yoruba mythology, Gẹlẹdẹ is imitating a bug imitating a leaf’ a ten-meter-tall bronze the daughter of Yemọja, the (148). On the replacement to spaceship, a stylized replica once-barren mother of all the crashed internet, people of the Masquerade – the òrìṣà. When Gẹlẹdẹ, her can have several identities, each ship being built to rescue brother Efe, and their of which is tweaked so that its Masha Kornokova – respective spouses also prove avatar physiologically matches, festooned with black- incapable of reproduction, they and thus ‘belongs’ to, a painted ziggurats and repeat the dancing ritual their particular ethnic or national Gelede masks peering into mother had undertaken and, group. Protagonist Kwesi new realms of time, the like her, become fertile. The Bracket is a light-skinned cultural heritage of Nigeria spectacular Gẹlẹdẹ ritual, Nigerian American who forged into a colossal which celebrates mothers, relocates to Nigeria – not sculptural vision of the older women, female ancestors, returns, because he has never future. (16) and female deities – while also Figurations of This intriguingly nested image – placating witches – is uncertainty, seemingly a throwaway piece of performed by pairs of men contradiction, and scene-setting – cries out to be cross-dressed as Gẹlẹdẹ. Both fluid identity treated as a metaphor to think the rocket and its replica, like recur in the novel.

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Articles Cultural Heritage, Future Vision (continued) been there before – to work couldn’t forget your own – wear on the rescue mission. He history’ (56). And histories that sari top- objects to being called oyibo, have been forgotten, or suits and which means ‘white man’ (66), suppressed, can be recovered – Kente and he has ‘never [been] even if ‘All archeology is [also] wrappers. confused for white … at least destruction’ and we ‘ruin not until he came to Nigeria’ history with every breath we Cultural (90). His unofficial driver, Max, take’ (260). heritage offers to call him ‘Yankee’ forged instead, but Kwesi says no: The novel ends with an into a vision of the future. because he prefers hockey to epilogue set a decade after the baseball, and thus the Rangers events of the novel. Drawing References to the Yankees, and because he on its hard-earned expertise ‘in [1] Critical literature on African American sf and afrofuturism is is from Boston (the reasoning monetizing the extraction relatively well established now, behind the latter is unclear, but process’, combined with but African and other might be about refusing a successful anti-corruption afrodisaporic sf has only Confederate designation for policies and a concomitant shift recently begun to attract Northerners). He just wants to to ‘rigorous contracts and attention. A basic historical be called by his name, but Max consummate transparency’ overview of African sf can be in turn objects because Kwesi (282), and again with Indian found at https://markbould.com/2015/02 is ‘an Ashanti name’ and he is assistance, Nigeria has /05/african-science-fiction-101/, ‘not from Ghana’ (66). Later, established a colossal space and Nick Wood blogs about when Kwesi’s phone is station at one of the five the history of South African sf compromised, he is told he can Lagrange points – where the at no longer use the ‘default Earth and the Moon’s http://nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz. identity’ of Yankee, to which it respective gravitational effects The best place for the was set, and he should switch provide the centripetal force neophyte reader of African sf to begin is undoubtedly to Kalibari. ‘I can’t just be required for it to maintain its omenana, the first African sf myself?’, he asks (149). No, he position relative to them both is told by Ini, who believes she without needing fuel – in order magazine, which can be found was only ever considered for to mine asteroids brought into free at https://omenana.com. her job in security because she cislunar space. The Compound, applied using a male identity: as the space station is known, is Mark Bould is Reader in Film ‘You’ll have to shed your surrounded by the River – the and Literature at UWE Bristol. Yankee roots, but you may find thirty kilometre long ‘twisting He is the just-retired founding that … can work to your helix’ (292) of the asteroid editor of the Science Fiction Film advantage’ (149). processing system – which is and Television journal, and co- traversed by shuttles called editor of the Studies in Global However, as After the Flare canoes. As in Nigeria, the local Science Fiction monograph makes clear, ‘You could switch currency is the cowrie. And the series. His most recent books your tribal identity online – if astronauts – Naijanuats, rather are Solaris (2014), SF you could get online – but you Now (2014) and Africa SF (2013). PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 24

Articles developing [2]. In a reversal of Indigenous/postcolonial sf Speculative the “first contact” paradigm, a flourishes on “highly reversal prevalent in much unlikely” modes in ways Liberty ‘with a Indigenous sf [3], Treaty Shirts that mark it as different shows seven Anishinaabe from what might be Slant’: narrators attempting to save labeled “mainstream” the Constitution of the White speculative fiction Decolonizing Earth Nation (CWEN) from Sovereignty eradication by hegemonic totemic, and literary thrusts of forces. The exiled band of the CWEN, this allegiance through Irony in narrators flees with their signaled by their wearing of the abrogated constitution to the grimy and ghostly “treaty Vizenor’s Treaty totemically and historically shirts” that have not been significant island of Manidooke washed for two decades, ever Shirts. Minis, a nexus of since the CWEN was Cathy Covell Waegner Indigenous/colonial implemented (in the novel) in entanglements in a 2014. The satirical narrative geographically liminal space A work of Indigenous offers imaginatively creative between Canada and the speculative fiction with an alternatives to the politics of United States. Can these actual written constitution as exclusion, exploitation, and renegade exiles establish a protagonist? Highly unlikely! subjugation. It admits decolonizing, utopian but viable And yet empowerment of the banished self-government on this Indigenous/postcolonial sf through such startling acts as slippery isle? flourishes on “highly unlikely” embracing ghosts past and

modes in ways that mark it as future, ranging from North The experimental postmodern different from what might be American beaver slaughtered novel Treaty Shirts deliberately labeled “mainstream” for European fashion in the ends before the reader can speculative fiction [1]. Treaty 17th century to toxically formulate a response to this Shirts (2016), the latest work of deformed fish, from broken final question; Vizenor’s radical fiction by the “elder” of Native treaties to rejected discourse of irony pokes sharp American Studies, Gerald constitutions. barbs at (post)colonial master Vizenor (Anishinaabe, White narratives of all stripe, including Earth Nation), set in 2034, the policies of the official With regard to genre, the irony chooses just such an White Earth Nation leaders of Treaty Shirts emphasizes a improbable protagonist. Ever who have, in their corrupt unique form of topical since his first speculative – and casino culture, internalized the speculation, since the real- at that time scandalous – novel crippling capitalist attitudes of world CWEN was authored published in 1978, Vizenor has the 2034 Federal government. principally by Gerald Vizenor encouraged the process of The potential success of the and was approved through decolonizing Native sovereignty rag-tag band of CWEN referendum by 80% of the and cultural production, with rescuers is less important than White Earth voters, although it Treaty Shirts demonstrating that their loyalty to the democratic, has yet to be implemented, and this process is still ongoing and has indeed been seriously

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Articles self-determination. The many The chapters speak to each Decolonizing non-reservation citizens were other as they revolve around Sovereignty granted representation, and five key events – three banishment is prohibited. historical and two speculative – through Irony “Restorative justice” (chapter that “perform” (de)colonization (continued) 15, article 4) is called for, with in constantly adjusting spaces. emphasis placed on, as CWEN The independent-thinking, co-author Jill Doefler puts it, asylum-seeking narrators are thwarted [4]. This new “healing and restoring balance colorfully nicknamed Archive, projected constitution for all parties involved”, as Moby Dick, Savage Love, Gichi strengthening self-governance is opposed to “retributive justice” Noodin, Hole in the Storm, intended to replace the [5]. A far-reaching and not Waasese, and Justice Molly somewhat revised version uncontroversial feature of Crèche. The nonagenarian (1964) of the 1934 constitution CWEN is the definition of sopranist Chewy Browne joins prepared by federal citizenship not through “blood them with her dancing functionaries for six quantum” but through linear chickens, although she sings Anishinaabe bands largely descent. Some of the influential rather than narrates. The expressing privileges granted “Vivamus porta neologisms from Vizenor’s nicknames take on significance, and regulations controlled by impressive body of theory have because in Anishinaabe culture the U.S. government.est sed As the est.” worked their way into the and in this novel, they are main writer of the CWEN in CWEN text, such as earned names rather than conjunction with Constitutional “survivance” and “continental imposed ones. In their Convention meetings from liberty.” Readers familiar with respective chapters, these 2007-2009, Gerald Vizenor Vizenor’s novels and essays are idiosyncratic figures refer attempted to combine certain not surprised to see that the metafictionally to previous political structures from the CWEN protects “academic, Vizenor novels as well as to the U.S. Constitution, above all the artistic irony” and “literary book Treaty Shirts in the past separation of powers into expression” as a citizen’s right tense. But in the present tense legislative, executive, and [6]. the narrators convince the judicial, with a list of rights. reader of their unbroken These rights include The novel is structured commitment to working Anishinaabe cultural dialectically, with each chapter toward ever-developing notions imperatives such as the narrated in 2034 by a different of sovereignty with a importance of story and the exile (although the first and last productively playful establishment of advisory chapters are told by the same component, or, as Molly bodies reflecting traditional renegade), each narrator metaphorically puts it in Anishinaabe decision-making offering his/her own connection with their puckered processes: Community perspective on the CWEN, island sanctuary, Native “liberty Councils, a Council of Elders, own totem, and own – often with a slant” (33). The attempt and a Youth Council. Vizenor inherited – mode of activism, as to undermine the still-reigning proposed a system of well as each encoding some colonial settler-mindset of negotiated sovereignty with the autobiographical component of greed, ecosystemic destruction, state and federal governments the author of this novel and of and disrespecting, dislocating, but prioritizing White Earth the CWEN, Gerald Vizenor. or even eliminating exposed

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Articles the waste caused by careless As other Indigenous bands Decolonizing industrialization can result in struggle to validate Sovereignty the mutancy of those deformed constitutions embodying new fish that narrator Moby Dick forms of fairer sovereignty, through Irony calls “global migrants” – an Treaty Shirts’ discursively (continued) image that can be related to the ingenious enfolding of past, human global migrants fleeing present, and future conditions from poisoned and destroyed provides a possible model and a populations requires such homelands. This apocalyptic warning. In Vizenor’s unsettling activism as “Panic scenario is intensified by the speculative novel, the site of Hole” radio broadcasts, sci-fi dire economic plight of national utopian refuge for the “holoscenes” projected onto governments in 2034, which in outlandish asylum-seekers the night sky, dogs trained to Treaty Shirts has led to brings us back full circle to the bark at the absence of irony, Washington’s abrogation of ghosted beginnings of the and, yes, inventive constitutions treaty rights and White Earth’s westward-moving fur trade of [7]. CWEN in order to take over unprincipled monetary gain. Although focusing on a specific the lucrative casinos on Native Can the renegades’ utopian community“Vivamus and a specific porta reservations. Indeed, the global impulse, the activating of ethics constitution addressingest sed est.” markets which were fed by and imagination to strive for particular issues of sovereignty, North American fur pelts in the optimal justice and reciprocal Vizenor’s Treaty Shirts has global 17th century continue to suck sovereignty, break the circle of and global-future ramifications. up the rich resources of less hegemonic exploitation? In The “native association” (9) industrially developed global- both local and transnational formed by Justice Molly Crèche South countries in the 21st postcolonial contexts, to support the CWEN has, with only nominal regard for confrontational political according to Treaty Shirts, a sustainability. The increasing strategies based on stubborn membership of 3,000 individuals international technical and self-serving fixity have spread all over the world. A far surveillance has reached White proved to be of limited less positive development than a Earth in 2034: technical objects effectiveness in sustainably community of diasporic citizens for control and surveillance resolving problems of is the omnipresence of were “everywhere” (20) on the governance and sovereignty. uncontrolled consumer trash largely rural reservation – Why not give novelist and and infelicitous weather drones, digital cameras, aerial constitution writer Gerald developments: “commercial monitors. Like the 19th-century Vizenor’s envisioned and debris forever awash in the newspaper printed by Archive’s envisaged ethics of “liberty with oceans” and “global turns of the indomitable ancestors on the a slant” a chance? weather” (87) signal a White Earth reservation, centuries-long violation of Vizenor’s novel is glocal, both Native reciprocity with the publications “clearly revealing a environment demonstrated in cosmopolitan perspective on the creation stories and native politics and the cultures inherited attitudes of the mino- and problems around the bimaadiziwin [8]. The toxicity of world” (115).

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Articles Newns, eds.), Agnieszka [8] Molly Crèche defends Podruczna (2018) offers a animal rights as part of the Decolonizing perceptive discussion of this Anishinaabe philosophy of mino- Sovereignty reversal in connection with bimaadiziwin, explicitly science fiction’s generic legacy mentioned in the CWEN, through Irony of the colonial project. The which translates approximately second section of Grace as ‘living the good life,’ including (continued) Dillon’s anthology of Indigenous respect and reciprocity for science fiction (Walking the non-human animals and the Clouds, 2012) is titled natural world. Notes “Contact” and presents texts in [1] In her introduction to the which the action of conquest Works Cited influential 2004 volume So Long disguised as discovery of the Attebery, Stina. “Speculative Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Other is countered. Constitutions: Gerald Vizenor’s Science Fiction and Fantasy, Nalo [4] In 2014 officials were Treaty Shirts.” Los Angeles Review Hopkinson has energetically elected to the Tribal Council of Books (November 26, 2016). and famously epitomized who oppose the CWEN, https://lareviewofbooks.org/arti “writing back”-approaches for particularly because eliminating cle/speculative-constitutions- decolonizing postcolonial blood quantum would bring in gerald-vizenors-treaty-shirts/#! speculative fiction; she and her too many new members, co-editor“Vivamus Uppinder Mehan porta straining the White Earth and Bauerkemper, Joseph. “The have collected “stories that federal services (see Glass- White Earth Constitution, take the memeest of colonizing sed est.” Moore and Uran for details, Cosmopolitan Nationhood, and the natives, and, from the opinions, and further the Fruitful Ironies of Relational experience of the colonizee, objections). Sovereignty.” Transmotion 1:1 critique it, pervert it, f*** with [5] Doerfler in Vizenor and (2015): 1-22. it, with irony, with anger, with Doerfler, eds. (2012), 93. humour, and also, with love and [6] See Lisa Brooks (2011) for a Brooks, Lisa. “The Constitution respect for the genre of science thought-provoking discussion of the White Earth Nation: A fiction that makes it possible to of the importance of naming New Innovation in a think about new ways of doing “irony” as a right. She sees this Longstanding Indigenous things” (8-9). as a productive way to permit Literary Tradition.” Studies in [2] Vizenor’s first novel was dissent, arising from the Native American Indian Literatures 23:4, originally published as Darkness oral storytelling tradition of Special Issue on Constitutional in Saint Louis Bearheart by Truck ironic tricksterism. Criticism, Ed. James Mackay, Press, 1978 (a somewhat [7] In a consideration of Winter 2011: 48-76. revised version was issued in interplanetary colonization in 1990 as Bearheart: The Heirship speculative fiction and the Carlson, David J. Imagining Chronicles by University of rhetoric of actual projects to Sovereignty: Self-Determination in Minneapolis Press). See settle Mars, Rachel Rochester American Indian Law and Waegner 2017 for a discussion (2018) points out that the Literature. Norman: University of the functions of the traditional model of settler- of Oklahoma Press, 2016. deliberately grotesque violence colonialism still serves as a - “The Constitution of the in this (post)apocalyptic novel. foundation. She also discusses White Earth Nation.” Gaa- The full title of Vizenor’s 2016 the genre of the “locus-colonial waabaabiganikaag/Constitution of novel is Treaty Shirts: October novel” that centers place in a the White Earth Nation. 2034 – A Familiar Treatise on the counterdiscourse telescoping http://www.thecwen.com/cwen White Earth Nation. history, present, and future. [3] In New Directions in Diaspora Treaty Shirts could perhaps be Dillon, Grace, ed., Walking the Studies (Sarah Ilott, Ana counted as such a novel. Clouds: An Anthology of Cristina Mendes, and Lucinda Indigenous Science Fiction.

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Articles London and New York: Transmotion 3.2 (Fall 2017), 1- Decolonizing Rowman & Littlefield, 2018 29. (forthcoming). Cathy Covell Waegner Sovereignty taught American Studies at the Uran, Shaawano Chad. “Why I University of Siegen in through Irony Do Not Support the Proposed Germany until her retirement (continued) White Earth Nation in 2013. She obtained degrees Constitution.” shaawano.com from the College of William & Tucson: Arizona University http://shaawano.com/index.php/ Mary (BA) and the University Press, 2012. politics/71-why-i-do-not- of Virginia (MA, PhD). Waegner Glass-Moore, Adrian. “White support-the-proposed-white- has published on, among Earth’s New Constitution, earth-nation-constitution others, William Faulkner, Toni Approved Two Years Ago, Is Morrison, Gerald Vizenor, and Stalled.” Inforum. 16 November Vizenor Gerald. Bearheart: The Stephen Graham Jones, and 2015. Heirship Chronicles. Minneapolis: (co-)edited volumes on http://www.inforum.com/news/ University of Minneapolis Press, diasporic ethnicities, 3883402-white-earths-new- 1990 (originally published as transculturality and constitution-approved-two- Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart immigration, as well as years-ago-stalled by Truck Press, 1978). mediating “Indianness.” Recently she contributed to a Hopkinson,“Vivamus Nalo, and Uppinder porta ------. Treaty Shirts: October volume arising from a PSA Mehan, eds. Soest Long sedBeen est.” 2034 – A Familiar Treatise on the conference: New Directions in Dreaming: Postcolonial Science White Earth Nation. Diaspora Studies: Cultural and Fiction and Fantasy. Vancouver: Middletown, CT.: Wesleyan Literary Approaches, edited by Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. University Press, 2016. Sarah Ilott, Ana Cristina Mendes, Lucinda Newns. Podruczna, Agnieszka. ------and James Mackay. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, “Mythology of the Space “Constitutional Narratives: A (forthcoming). Frontier: Diaspora, Liminality, Conversation with Gerald and the Practices of Vizenor.” Centering Anishinaabeg Remembrance in Nalo Studies: Understanding the World Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber.” through Stories. Ed. Jill Doerfler, In New Directions in Diaspora Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Studies: Cultural and Literary and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Approaches. Ed. Sarah Ilott, Ana Stark. East Lansing: Michigan Cristina Mendes, and Lucinda State University Press, 2013. Newns. London and New York: 133-148. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018 (forthcoming). ------and Jill Doerfler. The White Earth Nation: Ratification Rochester, Rachel. “Speculative of a Native Democratic Diasporas: Hari Kunzru’s Constitution. Introduction by Historical Consciousness, the David E. Wilkins. Lincoln: Rhetoric of Interplanetary University of Nebraska Press, Colonization, and the Locus- 2012. Colonial Novel.” In New Directions in Diaspora Studies: Waegner, Cathy Covell. Cultural and Literary Approaches. “Consuming, Incarcerating, and Ed. Sarah Ilott, Ana Cristina “Transmoting” Misery: Border Mendes, and Lucinda Newns. Practice in Vizenor’s Bearheart and Jones’s The Fast Red Road.”

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Articles Decolonising Speculative Fiction in South Africa Alan Muller

In comparison to 2015 and which is a futuristic book published in Finland in 2016, 2017 was a quiet period consumerist dystopian novel 2016. for South African speculative where all of humanity, around fiction with only a handful of the age of 18, comes of As I write this contribution on texts appearing throughout the ‘hemorrh-age’ and suffers a 19 April 2017, the African year. With the literary award stroke that destroys the Speculative Fiction Society has season for 2017 approaching, language centre of the brain. As announced its shortlist for the three speculative novels have a result, each person is fitted 2018 Nommos award for been longlisted for the Barry with a language patch implant novels published throughout Ronge Fiction Prize (formerly that allows them to speak and 2017. This includes Gavin the Sunday“Vivamus Times Literary porta write again. The catch, Chait’s Our Memory Like Dust, Award), one of most however, is that each patch is Deon Meyer’s Fever (originally prestigious andest certainly sed the est.” commercially branded and the published in Afrikaans as Koors country’s wealthiest literary language of its wearer is in 2016), and Masha du Toit’s award. Marcus Low’s dystopian scripted by copywriters and The Real – incidentally all three novel, Asylum follows Barry lexically reflects the brand of post-apocalyptic and dystopian James as he is detained in a the patch they wear. The third in feel. While definitely exciting quarantine facility in the Great novel longlisted for the award news, it is unsurprising that all Karoo after an outbreak of is Paige Nick’s Unpresidented South African authors on the nodular lung disease that is which is a near-future satire shortlist are white – another reported to have killed most of that imagines the life of former testament to the pervasive the population of South Africa. president Jacob Zuma in 2020 Low is himself an expert in having served his sentence for historically, epidemiology so the novel is of fraud and corruption well researched and has been charges. Despite the quality of speculative fiction reviewed in a 2017 issue of these novels it remains to be in South Africa has Journal of Public Health Policy. seen if they will make the been produced Writing in light of South shortlist as no speculative almost exclusively Africa’s current crisis with drug fiction has yet won the award. by white writers resistant tuberculosis, David Sticking with awards of the and filmmakers. Banta described the novel as year, Lauren Beukes’ highly whiteness of the speculative both “timely and important as acclaimed Zoo City, although mode in South Africa. it presents a human story published in 2010, won the But what does this have to do behind untreatable infectious Helsinki Science Fiction with decolonizing speculative disease”(Banta 386). Another Society’s 2017 Tähtivaeltaja fiction? The answer is quite of the novels to be longlisted is Award for best science fiction simple: very little. The awards Tammy Baikie’s Selling LipService line-up is hardly surprising

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Articles Decolonising Speculative Fiction in South Africa (continued)

since, historically, speculative post-2033. While the narrative Kwasukela Books, founded by fiction in South Africa has been resists the idea of having a Wade Smit in 2017, focuses on produced almost exclusively by protagonist proper, it revolves literature written in isiZulu. Of white writers and filmmakers. around Mer, a god that comes enormous significance is the The whiteness of speculative to Three-Rock (Earth) and fact that their first publication is fiction is something I have takes on the form of a woman, an anthology of speculative myself done extensive research and Sapien, a Durban local who fiction titled Izinkanyezi Ezintsha on, beginning with the earliest meets Mer and is swept up into (New Stars). The collection, examples of speculative fiction a neo-colonial war. published entirely in first set in, and then originating isiZulu, includes both from, Southern Africa – H. The year also saw a established writers and new Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s considerable change in this voices and is, to my knowledge, Mines in“Vivamus 1885. porta status quo with the emergence the first book-form piece of of bold new voices from speculative fiction published in However, I believeest thatsed 2017 est.” is underrepresented groups and one of South Africa’s 11 official a watershed moment since the in languages other than English languages other than English or face of South African or Afrikaans. Although initially Afrikaans. speculative fiction becomes appearing in 2016 in English, progressively less white. the superhero graphic novel This linguistic progress has not Khulekani Magubane’s The Sirius Kwezi came out in isiZulu and been limited to literature. The Squad: Earth’s Last Defence isiXhosa translations in 2017. 2017 BRICS (an association of (2017), a science fiction novel While these translations five major emerging national set in contemporary Durban, currently include only issues 1- economies: Brazil, Russia, India, revolves around the young 3, they are likely to include the China and South Africa Film Menzi who turns out to be a entire series in the near future. Festival held in Chengdu, China Nommos left on Earth to serve It is problematic that a graphic saw the debut of Jahmil XT as its defender in case of attack. novel of this kind featuring the Qubeka’s 20 minute short film, Drawing on Dogon mythology, country’s first black superhero Stillborn, which follows the western science, and should first appear in English android Nobomi SX1 as she pseudoscientific conspiracy but, seeing as almost all tries to uncover the cultural theories, The Sirius Squad publishers in South Africa past of the now extinct humans impresses with its dynamism. function exclusively in either that created her. With dialogue Khaya Maseko’s Mashu oMusha English or Afrikaans, it seems entirely in isiXhosa, the film is was also published in 2017 and almost inescapable without first the first South African science this futurist science fiction overhauling the country’s fiction film not in English. The novella, likewise set in Durban Anglocentric publishing narrative, audio and visuals of (there must be something in industry. Thankfully, there are the film are outstanding and its that Indian Ocean air), takes young and upcoming publishers symbolism of past/future and place in an unspecified time that are working to change this. organic/synthetic is intertwined

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Articles Decolonising Speculative Fiction in South Africa (continued)

in ways that undermines the all alternative presents and futures 2017. - Mkize, Loyiso. Kwezi: too common juxtaposition of to the fore. tradition and culture as the References Collector’s Edition, Issues 1–3. Cape Town: David Philip enemies of progress. - Baikie, Tammy. Selling Publishers, 2016. LipService. Aukland Park: Jacana Media, 2017. - Mkize, Loyiso. Kwezi: So what then does the future of - Banta, David. “Book Review: Collector’s Edition, Issues 4–6. South African speculative Asylum.” Journal of Public Health Cape Town: David Philip fiction look like? 2018 is but a Policy, vol 38, 2007, pp 384-386. Publishers, 2016. young’un, so pickings are yet - Beukes, Lauren. Zoo City. - Mkize, Loyiso. Kwezi: slim but Imraan Coovadia’s A Aukland Park: Jacana Media, Collector’s Edition, Issues 7–9. Cape Town: David Philip Spy in Time is due out in July 2010. Publishers, 2017. and looks set to be a poignant - Chait, Gavin. Our Memory Like Dust. London: Doubleday. - Nick, Paige. Unpresidented: A contribution to intersections of “Vivamus porta 2017. Comedy of Errors. time, space, andest race sed in So uthest.” - Coovadia, Imraan. A Spy in Bookstorm, 2017. African literature. I suspect that Time. Cape Town: Umuzi, - Stillborn. Directed by Jahmil the next few years will bring 2018. Qubeka, X. T. Yellowbone about even greater change in - Dlamini, Thandiwe, Lizeka Entertainment, 2017.

speculative fiction with Maduna andWade Smit.

publishers like Kwasukela Izinkanyezi Ezintsha. Cape Town: Kwasukela Books, Alan Muller is a Junior Fellow Books and creators like 2017. at the Bayreuth International Qubeka, Magubane and Maseko - du Toit, Masha. The Real. Graduate School of African working to bring unique Cape Town: Masha du Toit. Studies (BIGSAS). His doctoral 2017 thesis focuses on speculative - Haggard, H. Rider. King fiction in a South African Solomon’s Mines. Cassell and context, with a selection of Company, 1885. texts by local authors since - Low, Marcus. Asylum. 2010. His research has been Johannesburg: Picador featured in Journal of Literary Africa, 2017. Studies and Current Writing: Text - Magubane, Khulekani. The and Reception in Southern Africa. Sirius Squad: Earth’s Last Most recently, along with Defence. umSinsi Press, 2017. Olivier Moreillon and Prof - Maseko, Khaya. Mashu Lindy Stiebel, he has served as oMusha. Grahamstown: co-editor for a volume of Khaya Kaseko. 2017. scholarly essays titled Cities in - Meyer, Deon. Fever. Flux: Metropolitan Spaces in Translated by K.L. Seegers, South African Literary and Visual London: Hodder and Texts. Stoughton, 2017. - Meyer, Deon. Koors. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau,

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 32

Articles The Twisted Mirror: The Postcolonial in Dean Francis Alfar’s ‘L’ Aquilone Du Estrellas.’ Roy Tristan Agustin

Dean Francis Alfar’s short In brief, “L’Aquilone Du encountering all sorts of story, “L’Aquilone Du Estrellas” Estrellas” is about a young creatures, both human and was originally published in the woman, named Maria Isabella divine. Eventually, they finish first volume of the Philippine du’l Cielo, who falls in love with the list and return to the city to Speculative Fiction Anthology. a young astronomer as she sees find the son of the kitemaker Alfar’s story is one of fantasy, him cross the street. She averts (the original kitemaker has long set in a fictional world, whose the death of the astronomer since died) and, though he is main city is called “Ciudad and decides that she must meet incredulous, finds his father’s Meiora.” The story repeatedly him. She asks a butcher’s boy designs and builds her kite. references names and terms about the astronomer’s Maria finally flies to the stars, which are easily recognizable to identity, who tells her that the thrilled at the idea of finally Filipinos as slightly altered man only has eyes for the stars, being seen, to the sadness of Tagalog terms. However, in this which he and his family name. the butcher’s boy who has world, these terms are made to Undeterred, she decides that always loved her. The story appear foreign, local Filipino she must then rise to the stars, ends with an implication that, words and locations are made so that he may see her and as she rises to the stars, Maria exotic by italicizing them in the meet her, sure that this is all passes away, not knowing that text, which, when applied to a she needs to win him over. She the astronomer she was so term, ordinarily connotes that decides to see the best excited about had long retired, this term is not local. As the kitemaker in the city, who sets and he was blinded by story exoticizes the local, it about giving her an impossible cataracts. simultaneously presents other list of items which he will need The terminologies used in the names for locations which are to create the kite that will story are what makes it a Hispanicized, a technique that carry her to the stars. Despite curious work. The words Alfar could be a reference to the warnings that the task is uses sound Hispanic but are colonial history of the country. impossible, she goes off on her not correctly spelled. Take, for Alfar twists the postcolonial in quest, accompanied by the example, the name of the city this case, perhaps in an attempt butcher’s boy, who decides to in the story, Ciudad Meiora. to be ironic, as he presents a join her on her quest. Ciudad is, clearly, Spanish for fantasy story which appears to The quest takes her sixty years city. But Meiora is not a Spanish be set in a place that is the to complete, and in the word. However, Meiora sounds Philippines, but it is a process, she travels to many like the Spanish mayor, or Philippines that has embraced exotic lands. She and the major. Thus, “Ciudad Meiora” its colonizers, rather than butcher’s boy go on many can be read as “major city.” rebelled against it. adventures, learning a myriad The word is not Spanish, but it number of skills as well as does sound Spanish. This is

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 33

Articles The Twisted Mirror (continued)

significant because most “Lupang Hinirang” or the His mixing of several European Filipinos do not speak Spanish Chosen Land. Other Filipino languages, and the alterations but are very familiar with how locations are exoticized by in grammar and spelling, point it sounds, as Tagalog uses spelling them as if they were to an act of pastiche, Jameson Spanish terms. The work of more Polynesian in character. uses the idea of pastiche to “decoding” a Spanish-sounding Palawan, for example, is spelled describe an aesthetic that he term would not be too difficult. as “Palao’an.” Siquijor is found present in works Another example is the word “Siqui’jor.” Calamian is “Islas produced during the “Qalesa,” a reworking of the du’l Calami’an.” The mythical Postmodern, or Late Capitalist Calesa, a horse-drawn carriage. Tikbalang, a creature who has as he termed it, period. This The story, however, does not the head of a horse and the conception of pastiche was just use Spanish. When Alfar body of a man, is called the based on the fragmentation of describes the kitemaker, he “Tiq’Barang.” One can see the postmodern subject, while calls him someone “famed clear aesthetic choices in how freed from modern throughout“Vivamus Ciudad Meiora porta and Alfar alters the spelling of psychopatholgies, was also environs as theest Master sed Builder est.” terms; the European is made devoid of a sense of subject or of aquilones, cometas, more “Castillian” in individualism. Thus, individual saranggola, and other artefactos appearance, the local more style disappears and instead of voldadores.” (Alfar) This quote “islandic.” the social norms of the contains three different words modern period, the Most of the terms are easily for “kite.” The first two are postmodern subject is faced recognizable to a Filipino Italian and Spanish, which are with “codes,” or, as Jameson reader, who will see the italicized. The third one is puts it, “a field of stylistic and familiar in the altered names Filipino, which is not. discursive heterogeneity and places. It is, however, the without a norm.” (Jameson 16) The work of exoticization also main setting, and the point of Thus, pastiche is not merely involves locations. Alfar alters origin of the characters, that imitation of a unique style, but the spelling of Filipino prove intriguing. Ciudad a humorless parody, one which locations. In the story, the Meiora is portrayed as a misses the very point of being “world,” or overall setting of progressive, modern place, yet the story is a place called it is also part of an “empire.” Hinirang, which is the Filipino Given the Philippines’ history term for “appointed” or as a colony of an empire, what “chosen.” Thus, the world is a discourse does Alfar make by “chosen” land, which can refer creating an alternate to its being a product of Alfar’s Philippines that never rebelled? imagination (a land that he Alfar’s work presents a world “chose” to create) or it can where both the European and also be an allusion to the the local are made exotic. Philippines; the Philippine national anthem’s title is (c) Ray Hutchinson https://bit.ly/2wrtBfp

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 34

Articles The Twisted Mirror (continued)

parodic, instead, it practices the Alfar’s story presents an locale; an appropriate setting mimicry with no sense of example of a hybrid for non-realist story. mockery or satire. Thus, story, one that because of the collapse of the References resembles and “high-modernist ideology of - Alfar, Dean Francis. dissembles; a work that "L'Aquilone du Estrellas or The style – what is unique and is recognizable, but not Kite of Stars." Alfar, Dean unmistakable as your own familiar. Francis (ed.). Philippine fingerprints, as incomparable as Speculative Fiction Anthology, your own body…the producers Volume 1. Pasig: Kestrel of others indicate that the of culture have nowhere to Publishing, 2012. postcolonial experience is turn but to the past: the - Jameson, Fredric. something that can be explored imitation of dead styles…” Postmodernism, Or The Cultural in a speculative fiction work. Logic of Late Capitalism. (Jameson 16-17) Alfar’s work Alfar’s story presents an Durham: Duke University uses the “style” of high fantasy example of a hybrid story, one Press, 1991. by creating“Vivamus terms which seem porta that resembles and dissembles; unfamiliar or exotic sounding, est sed est.” a work that is recognizable, but much like how in many works not familiar. The world is not Roy Tristan Agustin is an of fantasy names are made to Filipino, but it speculates on a instructor of English and sound uncommon. Similarly, Literature in Ateneo de Manila history that every Filipino is Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings University in the Philippines. He aware of. There are strains of trilogy goes to the extent of completed his M.A. in polyphony and polysemy in inventing entire language Literature and Cultural Studies these altered terms, and the in 2017 with a thesis focusing systems to emphasize the polysemy can be ambiguous. on Philippine Speculative difference Middle Earth has The fantasy in the story is the Fiction. He remains curious with our own world. However, sense that it presents both the about Speculative Fiction and in the case of Alfar, the its sub-genres, as well as West and the East as strange variation in the terminology graphic fiction, film, and new and desirable. The mirror, in seems to present something media. He is a husband, a Alfar’s story, faces both ways, father, a martial artist, an more than just a desire to but, in the tradition of fantasy, author, and a teacher. He is 46, present a “different” world. it twists both reflections, which he thinks is a good young The exoticization of local revealing a mutually exotic age. words, and the Hispanicization

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 35

PSA Funding Reports A Brief Report on the PSA Convention 2017 Sibendu Chakraborty

At the outset I would like to recent Aboriginal productions paper. My paper went on to express my heartfelt gratitude seeks to incorporate both the meaningfully add to these to the Postcolonial Studies global and the local. In other politics of representation of the Association for partially funding words, a passage to marginalised in terms of my trip from Kolkata to transnationalism critically envisaging a definitive step London with £250, which informs the postcoloniality of forward by upholding the ethics enabled me to present my Aboriginal theatre with a of cosmopolitanism in paper titled “Problematising notion of scrutinising the depth negotiating between Indigenous Australian Cosmopolitanism: A of the theatrical praxis. What and Australian identities. Discourse on Australia’s connected my paper with the Postcoloniality with reference two other papers in the session A few other sessions really caught my attention and to Aboriginal“Vivamus Theatre” at theporta was the Australian context. provided ample food for PSA Annual Convention held at While Michael Griffith spoke the School of Advancedest sed est.” on the ‘politics of visibility’ as thought. Deepika Marya’s Studies, University of London represented in the depiction of “Globalizaion and the Politics of th th Resistance”, Giulia Maria from 18 -20 September, 2017. Aboriginal peoples in settler Since the theme of the colonial contexts, Az-Zubidy’s Olivato’s “The DNA Journey convention was ‘Globalisation’, discourse went on to and Globalization”, Sourit Bhattacharya’s “Fashion Victim: the postcolonial negotiations consolidate his arguments, with economic, political, focusing on the alternative Postcolonial Diasaters and cultural and historical factors representations of Middle Resistant Art-work” and Christinna Hobbs’ “The that opened up new areas of Eastern migrants related to the contingent discourses between complexities of their lives and Aesthetics of Nationalism and the global North and South their relationship to Australia Global Modernity in Nordic Postcolonial Literature” came to be reflected in many and their homeland. The paper papers presented at the went on to critique deserve special mention. Some convention. My paper engaged dysfunctional models of the of the most fascinating panels with recent attempts at viewing inclusion of migrants in the included “Postcolonial Australian Aboriginal theatre as national space that are Disasters: Globalization, a celebration of complicit in simultaneously Conflict, and Representation” cosmopolitanism rather than as marginalising and alienating and “Postcolonial Comics: a mode of instrumental protest them. Griffith’s paper, while Graphic Narratives as against dehumanization and very subtly reflecting on the Globalising Form.” The postcolonial functions of genocide, hinting at its politics of visibility/invisibility of oppositional postcolonialism. the Aboriginal peoples/settlers, comics emerged strongly The syncretic as well as opened up the scope for across all kinds of political, economic, linguistic, cultural representative significance of inspecting the representations performative indigeneity in of migrants in Az-Zubidy’s

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 36

PSA Funding Reports PSA Convention Report (continued)

I certainly feel that term in 2002 to describe our Sibendu Chakraborty is my attendance at the current geological era. The Assistant Professor of English at convention will term encapsulates both the Charuchandra College, Kolkata, India. He completed his technologically driven power positively help me Doctoral thesis in the nourish an experience acquired by the human species Department of English, based on the rigorous and its potentially lethal University of Calcutta, and was critical thinking and consequences for everyone awarded the Australia India engagement of the else. By derecognizing the Council Fellowship (Junior) in presenters and the implied neutrality of the term 2012 to work on Australian ‘human,’ Braidotti located the Aboriginal theatre. He has attendees. published many scholarly grossly hierarchical, hegemonic articles and was awarded the representations of the human prestigious Haskell Grant for and geographical borders as a species whose uniqueness is presenting his paper at the globalising“Vivamus form. porta now challenged by a American Comparative combination of scientific Literature Association’s Annual The keynote address by Sharae progress and global economic Conference, held at Brown Deckard titledest “The sedSecond est.” concerns. The convention, in University, USA in 2012. His Scramble for Resources: research interests include my opinion, was exemplary in Neoliberal Extractivism and Whiteness Studies, Aboriginal including many dimensions of World Literature” very aptly Theatre, South Asian Diaspora the postcolonial with a critical set the tone for the and Postcolonial Studies. His eye on recent socio-political, article titled, “Locating convention. Rosi Braidotti’s cultural and economic changes. Indigenous Sovereign Spaces: keynote address titled I certainly feel that my Race and Womanhood in “Posthuman, all too human” Romaine Moreton’s Poetry” attendance at the convention opened up the discourse of was published in Claiming will positively help me nourish locating posthuman critical Spaces for Australian Women’s an experience based on the theory at the convergence of Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, rigorous critical thinking and 2017), edited by Devaleena Das anti-humanism and anti- engagement of the presenters and Sanjukta Dasgupta. anthropocentrism. In other and the attendees. I want to words, while anti-humanism thank the organizing committee engages with the critique of the (especially Dr. Anshuman humanist ideal of ‘Man’ as the Mondol and Dr. Esha Sil) for indisputable representative of organizing and running such a the human, anti- successful convention. anthropocentrism denounces species hierarchy and paves the path for ecological justice. Braidotti used the term ‘anthropocene,’ following Nobel Prize winning chemist, Paul Crutzen who coined this

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 37

PSA Funding Reports and orientation of technology On Zapatismo and The presence and use of (as a generally assumed reality), technology is generally taken I sought to interrogate the the technological for granted as part of everyday sense of naturality of life in urban and increasingly character of technological mediation, mainly technologically mediated digital technologies and the contexts. While the notion of technology internet, through a series of technology itself is rarely encounters and conversations The internet and the questioned regarding what in Chiapas, Mexico. constitutes its technological multiplicity of forms of Approaching different character, the internet has experiences (and even realities) living with technology almost everywhere acquired a and forms of living with sense of neutrality and Rodrigo Liceaga Mendoza technology, specifically the use naturality as an inevitable fact of the internet in contexts of contemporary life. Revisiting where technological mediation what technology means in is not taken for granted, meant experiences (recalling the times of pervasive digital an opportunity to revisit what Zapatista motto of ‘a world connectivity appears as technology means as an where many worlds fit’ as a sign something“Vivamus increasingly porta assumed and inevitable reality. of respect for diversity) and the challenging in manyest placessed est.” Furthermore, it presented an grievances committed against across the world. Mexico is no opportunity to explore what them in the name of capital, as exception, although it presents the implications of stabilising its well as establishing solidarity a huge opportunity to do meaning and use could entail with those worlds, has been a otherwise. for different political praxes all crucial motivation for using the internet. The collective use of Mexico as a nation comprises a over the world. the internet has thus great diversity of cultures and Chiapas is a southern state of maintained a shared political forms of life. Besides the Mexico, where inequality European ascendency there are meaning and orientation within proliferates and where the 68 indigenous peoples living in the framework of the Zapatista rebellion emerged, organisation. However, above this country, which, although becoming highly visible on the and beyond this, there is a rich never fully recognised and international stage in 1994. This collective experience and listened to as nations rebellion has been paradigmatic memory that diffuses the (communities with their own for their use of information collective identity, language, technological character of what technologies, mainly the we may understand as traditions, knowledges, legal internet, in gathering support, forms and forms of technological objects. coordinating actions and organisation and diffusing information against After spending a few weeks of representation)have endured capitalism and the neoliberal sharing conversations, throughout the existence of the agenda. Strategic skills and perceptions, thoughts and country as a state community. savvy use of the media have imaginations about the internet Over the months of January proved fundamental for the with Zapatistas and members and April 2018 and as part of Zapatista organisation. Being of Mayan communities of an endeavour to further informed about other worlds’ different age, gender and explore the political meaning language, the category of

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 38

PSA Funding Reports This multiplicity, if community appear as thoughtfully considered (as On Zapatismo and the variegated depending on opposed to a digital divide technological geographic, topographic, agenda), opens up a economic and social conditions. threshold for revisiting the character of Among members of the inevitability of technology technology Zapatista organisation it is the and the scope for a different same situation. However, the way to address the politics of (continued) reasons for and possibilities of technology and the internet using the internet and some technology itself appeared across different political other social media platforms inadequate to the context. praxes. are not the same as in urban Assuming the technological centres; the social imperative of character of technology and its considered (as opposed to a connectivity did not appear as predominant status, as a digital divide agenda), opens up an integral part of collective neutral category and pervasive a threshold for revisiting the life. Social reality in its reference in today’s social inevitability of technology and multiplicity of interactions does interactions, appeared as a the scope for a different way to not compel use of the internet highly impersonal operation. address the politics of “Vivamus porta as some basic feature of From those encounters, the technology and the internet everyday life, despite its at notion of somethingest sed est.” across different political praxes. times attractive appeal. In technological, of technology as between allegedly ‘modern’ Rodrigo Liceaga Mendoza is a set of objects within a tendencies of technological a PhD Candidate in Politics at category, elicited curiosity and innovation and the collective the School of Sociology, Politics required attention, turning time of face-to-face encounter and International Studies, visible the difference between University of Bristol. He and production, those assemblages of everyday received his Bachelor’s degree experiences appeared to be an interaction and its in International Relations from ongoing field of tension and the Faculty of Political and interpretation as part of a negotiation, underpinned by Social Sciences, National collective life. Then, the much more than a merely Autonomous University of common perception of utilitarian, optimistic or Mexico (Universidad Nacional technology, as a human action Autonoma de Mexico), and his essentialist signification of directed at a goal and which Master’s degree in objects as objects. From mere uses specific objects to achieve Communication and Politics by curiosity and distance to that same goal, was persistently the Metropolitan Autonomous strategic diffusion of University of Mexico displaced by what I perceived information and organisation, (Universidad Autonoma as difference in metaphysical the use of the internet and Metropolitana [UAM]). His and ontological referents, even social media platforms primary research interests are recalling a potential event of in critical approaches to express a multiplicity of mutual affection and experience technology, political philosophy groundings and interpretations among beings rather than mere and international relations. He other than the homogeneous instrumentalism. focuses in particular on how expansion of a developmentalist the internet affects political In terms of the internet, drive with digital technology as praxis in multicultural countries distinctions in its use among a necessity and accepted reality. like Mexico. members of the same This multiplicity, if thoughtfully

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 39

Book Reviews Genre Fiction of New India: Post-Millenial Receptions of “Weird” Narratives, by E. Dawson Varughese. Reviewed by Sambuddha Jash

Emma Dawson Varughese’s that carried aspirationally Vandermeer, and others. She book is a rich addition to the contingent ideas of ‘New India’. discusses the categories of repertoire of knowledge that It is within this cusp of ‘wyrd’ and ‘weird fiction’ she introduced through her aspirational value and through the different responses earlier publication Reading New international immediacy that they evoke within the minds of India: Post Millennial Indian Fiction we find the creation of a the readers, which are at the in English (Bloomsbury, 2013). different character of writing, same time fascinating and Varughese“Vivamus crafts an alternative porta which tried to destabilize the innovatively unsettling. The account of contemporary largely high-brow and book tries to free itself from Indian English writingest sed that is est.” ensconced notions pervading this ambiguity through critically informed by the the Indian English novel at the Varughese’s delineation of the changes noticeable within the time. Varughese identifies this term ‘Bharati Fantasy’, situating post millennial publishing form of writing as ‘genre it at the intersection of Itihasa landscape of India. The time of fiction’, a term that also has or history, myth, and the Indian the post millennial is located connotations of the scientific imagination. All these within the implicative spatiality ‘commercial’ and the ‘popular’ categories which have come of post-liberalization India within their respective down to us through their during the latter half of the connotative categories in the respective traditional 1990s. Varughese discusses the publishing world and the connotative history now global outreach that India readership. assume a different character achieved through liberalisation The second chapter traces the that reflects both measures like the adoption of a linguistic etymology of the contemporaneity and the suave free market economy and word ‘wyrd’ through its old globalising processes like the Norse origins, and establishes a Varughese crafts an establishment of call centres relationship with Varughese’s alternative account within the IT hubs of Noida and category of ‘Bharati Fantasy’, of contemporary Bangalore in India. The first which refers to a contemporary Indian English writing chapter of the book outlines strain of ‘mythology-inspired’ that is critically the creation of a distinct Indian fiction. She discusses the informed by the space that was fed with various connotations of the changes noticeable international branding and term ‘wyrd’ and analyses the within the post wished for greater definitions of ‘weird fiction’ millennial publishing representation of consumptive offered by critics like H. P. landscape of India. practices within every medium Lovecraft, China Miéville, Jeff

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Book Reviews Genre Fiction of New India (continued)

and Upanishads. Meanwhile, the sequestered only to the latter four writers negotiate academic and high-brow with different characters of the categories of literary Ramayana and Mahabharata, by expression. At the same time, depicting them within the Indian English genre writing has settings of the modern world. become the moment of This exercise of mapping fiction freedom from rigid canonicity within the category of ‘Bharati and the expression of the Fantasy’ responds to the ancient India in unconformity several formulations of ‘wyrd’ within the contemporary writings with which Varughese national biases. began the second chapter, some of which are namely Sambuddha Jash narrative skills of their authors “Vivamus porta ‘teratology’, ‘emphasis on weird Sambuddha Jash has completed which is entrenched at times presence’, ‘the numinous as a his Masters and M.Phil in within the author’sest deepsed est.” threatening force’ – all of English literature from personal conviction. The University of Delhi, India. which, in one way or the other, novelty of narration itself is a Presently he is pursuing his have been developed through moment of genre creation, PhD from the Department of various situations and since this form has hardly been English, University of Delhi. He characters by these eight is working on the growth of discussed within literary novel authors. Indian English genre fiction writing and their analytical What makes Varughese’s writing in the 90s decade and trajectories. analysis praiseworthy is her after. His work is based on the The third and fourth chapters sociological analysis of the critical acumen in reading unpack the connotations of cosmopolitan culture in various formative theories of ‘Bharati Fantasy’ further, as the globalised India and its the ‘wyrd’ and discussing it chapters are divided through impactful creation of readership through the dimension of spaces. His work interrogates the titles ‘Eternal Bhava’ and Indian English genre fiction this space which is located at ‘Modern-Day Sensibilities’. writing and the variety it offers. the cusp of aspirational They discuss eight different As noted in her conclusion, the necessity through which Indian authors: Amish Tripathi, English genre fiction is trying to present stage of Indian fiction is Shatrujeet Nath, Samhita Arni, negotiate with the global and full of possibilities with the Jagmohan Bhanver, Ashwin the local. He has presented plethora of writings that are papers in national and Sanghi, N P Choudhury, C C emerging every day. Her book international conferences. His Doyle, and Pervin Saket. The offers a fresh and significant areas of interests are African- first four writers are grouped contribution to analyzing this American literature, Cultural together within the category of Studies, Book History, Gender category within the context of ‘Eternal Bhava’ as they try to studies, and the Literature of Indian English writing, which for retain the origins of Bhava the Progessive Writers a very long time was drawing heavily from the Vedas Association.

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Book Reviews So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan Reviewed by Andrew Stones

Released in 2004, Nalo Hopkinson remarks in her Instead of placing Hopkinson and Uppinder introduction: speculative themes (...) in Mehan’s edited collection of “Arguably, one of the most postcolonial contexts, the stories by postcolonial authors familiar memes of science collection frequently of science fiction and fantasy fiction is that of going to problematises questions represents an important foreign of form, knowledge, and intervention into the fields of countries and colonising the allegory when it comes to both science fiction studies and natives, and as I’ve said an encounter between postcolonial studies. “Vivamus porta elsewhere, for many of us, science fiction and Refreshingly, theest importance sed est.” that’s not a postcoloniality. given to genre definitions thrilling adventure story; it’s ethical crisis engendered by (‘science fiction’ vs ‘speculative non-fiction, and we are on the encounters with the Other fiction’ vs ‘fantasy’) is less so wrong side of the strange- enables one to imagine a than in some of the more well- looking utopian world (but rarely if known theoretical attempts to ship that appears out of ever on the Other’s terms), understand what speculative nowhere. To be a person of many of the stories in So Long writing does, such as Margaret colour writing science fiction is Been Dreaming divorce the Atwood’s In Other Worlds: SF to be politics of speculative fiction and the Human Imagination under suspicion of having from its erstwhile utopian (2011) or Darko Suvin’s iconic internalised one’s colonisation” aspirations. In ‘When Scarabs Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: [1]. Multiply’, Nnedi Okorafor On the Poetics and History of a (here writing as Nnedi Literary Genre (1979). Instead of Here Hopkinson alludes to one Okorafor-Mbachu) imagines an placing speculative themes of the collection’s central Afrofuturistic society which (such as futurity, technology, problems—the relationship succumbs to misogyny and utopia or the alien) in between science fiction and totalitarianism before the postcolonial contexts, the utopian thinking as a political return of its alien benefactors. collection frequently endeavour. Fredric Jameson, in In ‘The Forgotten Ones’, Karin problematises questions of his landmark study of the Lowachee recasts humanitarian form, knowledge, and allegory genre, notes that utopia and intervention by a future space- when it comes to an encounter science fiction are often faring humanity as existential between science fiction and historically indistinguishable [2]. violence—the descendants of a postcoloniality. As Nalo Whereas for many canonical lost colony, now subject to an authors of science fiction, the alien genocide, are no longer

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Book Reviews So Long Been Dreaming (continued)

the humans for whom a galactic science or speculative fiction by humanism attempts to speak. postcolonial writers has risen Hopkinson’s remark on science exponentially, such that a fiction’s colonial fantasies, sequel to the collection would therefore, has an inverse, in need to be at least twice the which the strange-looking ship length. In Australia, for is beset on all sides by hostile example, indigenous authors forces, and colonialism is such as Claire G. Coleman and instead a fantasy of self-defence. Alexis Wright are [1] Nalo Hopkinson, experimenting with speculative “Introduction”, So Long Been Tobias S. Buckell’s ‘Necahual’ fiction as a means to explore Dreaming, p.7. plays on this imagery as a [2] Fredric Jameson, apocalypse and dystopia as, in technologically-advanced unit of Archaeologies of the Future and the first instance, a historical colonial soldiers are rendered Other Science Fictions, London: reality for the victims of settler helpless by an alien virus, which Verso 2007. and other colonialisms. As [3] Fred Moten and Stefano the story“Vivamus vocalises in the patoisporta Coleman argues, when dystopia Harney, The Undercommons: of its creole human-alien est sed est.” becomes the historical Fugitive Planning and Black Study, protagonists. Fred Moten and condition of fantastic New York: Minor Stefano Harney relate how this Compositions 2013, p.17. speculation, ‘realism’ is reversal of coloniser and [4] Claire G. Coleman, unconvincing: “novels about the colonised is a feature of “Apocalypses are more than history of Australia are post- Hollywood cinema, where the the stuff of Fiction: First apocalyptic, because all Nations Australians Survived settler is surrounded by Aboriginal and Torres Strait One”, ABC News December dangerous natives: “Indeed, th Islander people alive today are 7 2017. aggression and self-defence are the descendants of people who http://www.abc.net.au/news/20 reversed in these movies, but 17-12-08/first-nations- survived an apocalypse” [4]. the image of a surrounded fort australians-survived-an- Perhaps it no longer makes is not false. Instead, the false apocalypse-says- sense to speak of ‘fantastic’ vs author/9224026 image is what emerges when a ‘mimetic’ fictions, since, for critique of militarised life is many Aboriginal and indigenous Andrew Stones is an Early predicated on the forgetting of writers of speculative fiction, Career Fellow at the Institute the life that surrounds it” [3]. their dystopia is a realism. In for Advanced Studies, To write speculative fiction University of Warwick, anticipating these questions, the under a postcolonial lens is to researching climate change stories collected here are vital self-consciously write for the fictions by postcolonial and to postcolonial theorists, life of the surroundings that indigenous writers. He will science fiction scholars, and complete his doctoral research science fiction intentionally fans of speculative fiction in in world literature and the forgets in the false image of its general. philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in encounter with otherness. April 2018, at the Department of English and Comparative In the years since its References Literary Studies, University of publication, the publication of Warwick. More information can be found at andrewstones.co.uk. PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 43

43 the present, or trying to delve into the past to reread Iraq’s Book Reviews former nightmares and glories’ Iraq+100: Stories In Iraq+100 (2016) ten authors [3]. However ten authors – of Iraqi origin respond to the some writing from within Iraq From a Century question: what will Iraq look and others in exile, some After the like in the year 2103? The writing originally in Arabic and premise for this anthology of others in English – agreed to Invasion. by short stories was devised by participate in this literary Hassan Blasim, an Iraqi author exercise, producing an Hassan Blasim. now living in Finland, whose anthology which departs from Reviewed by Annie own short stories have gained the retrospective personal significant attention in recent accounts and retellings of the Webster years, and by Ra Page, the ‘Iraq War’ that have emerged founder of Comma Press [1]. In over the past decade from both human mortality. Building on 2013, shortly after the tenth- coalition soldiers-turned- this literary genealogy in its anniversary of the 2003 U.S.-led authors and Iraqi writers. speculative nature, Iraq+100 invasion of Iraq, they invited These stories look instead to might therefore be best authors to ‘imagine Iraq a unlived futures. described as a genetic mutation hundred“Vivamus years after the US porta While the anthology departs of such writing traditions. occupation throughest shortsed est.” from traditions of historical fiction’ [2]. Although the writing in modern Iraqi The stories are set across Iraq collection is marketed on the literature, it also incorporates – Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, cover as the ‘first anthology of the country’s ancient literary Suleymania, Najaf – and present science fiction to have emerged history through references to a plurality of voices, some of from Iraq’, authors were free The Thousand and One Nights which are familiar figures in to choose any genre to imagine and even further back to The contemporary Iraqi fiction (a the country’s future. What Epic of Gilgamesh, texts which soldier, a writer, a refugee) emerged was an anthology filled might be understood as while others less so (an alien, a with a cacophony of troubled, precursors to fantasy fiction in statue, a hologram). Each haunted and disturbing voices their surreal accounts of writer plays with possible describing a spectrum of transformative journeys and political shapes of a future Iraq: absurd, surreal and fantastic contemplations of human from Anoud’s ‘Kahramana’ envisions futures. Out of Iraq’s current traditions of historical writing an Islamic Empire bordered by political fragmentation authors in modern Iraqi literature, it NATO-run Baghdadistan; piece together and remould an also incorporates the country’s Hassan Abdulrazzak’s ‘Kuszib’ imagined homeland. ancient literary history through confronts readers with an Iraq references to The Thousand and taken over by aliens who Blasim introduces the One Nights and even further delight in eating its human collection by describing how it back to The Epic of Gilgamesh, inhabitants while contemplating was difficult to persuade Iraqi texts which might be the ancient culture of ‘Baggy- authors to write about the understood as precursors to Dad’; Blasim’s own story ‘The future when they were ‘already fantasy fiction in their surreal Gardens of Babylon’ reimagines so busy writing about the accounts of transformative the ancient city as a centre for cruelty, horror and shock of journeys and contemplations of technological development in

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 44

Book Reviews suggestion that Iraq+100 will ‘Federal Mesopotamia’ both human be the first of a series governed by the Chinese who and an Iraqi following the same format; a have reconstructed the citizen, Nakba+100, which invites mythical metropolis as a series identity Palestinian authors to glass domes. Such disparate categories imagine their homeland in configurations of how Iraq not always the year 2048, is currently in might evolve are testament to represented progress. In its specific the constantly shifting as mutually speculative structure kaleidoscope of political inclusive in Iraq+100 therefore offers a violence that has permeated our own age. response to moments of the country’s recent history. political crisis that is Significantly, most of the stories unbound by temporality or These tales do not just in the collection were written geography. The new mode reimagine the political before the rise of IS in the of forward-looking fiction it structures of Iraq but also the region and their visions of the generates might help to personal experiences of its future articulate a hopefulness imagine a spectrum of future citizens:“Vivamus Zhraa porta that Iraq might move away futures throughout the Arab Alhaboby’s ‘Baghdadest sed Syndrome’ est.” from the violence that defined World. describes the experience of an the early years of the twenty- References architect losing his sight as a first century. Yet in his [1] Hassan Blasim’s own consequence of a genetic afterword to the collection, collections The Madman of Freedom Square (2009) and mutation caused by his Page reflects on the fall of Mosul to IS in 2014 and The Iraqi Christ (2013) are ancestors’ exposure to toxic also published by Comma describes how ‘the immediate substances during the twenty- Press. first century; Ali Bader’s ‘The reality of Iraq has since become [2] Hassan Blasim, Corporal’ follows an Iraqi more terrifying and ‘Foreword’, Iraq+100 edited soldier who fought against unpredictable than anything by Hassan Blasim coalition troops in 2003 while fiction could envision, even in (Manchester: Comma Press, the distant future’ [4]. This 2016), vi. secretly supporting the [3] Ibid., v. anthology was conceived during invasion, and who was killed by [4] Ra Page, ‘Afterword’, an American soldier and a political interstice, a brief Iraq+100 edited by Hassan returns to Iraq one hundred moment of optimism in Iraq’s Blasim (Manchester: Comma years later as a prophet only to recent history, which indicates Press, 2016), 176. face charges of terrorism; the unsettling speed with which Annie Webster is a Ibrahim al-Marashi’s ‘Najufa’ events in Iraq continue to develop, threatening to render doctoral student at SOAS, describes a member of the Iraqi University of London. She even recent imaginings of the diaspora travelling from Alaska holds a BA (Hons) in English to a futuristic Najaf with his future out of date. Yet the and Related Literature from grandfather who turns out to anthology contributes towards the University of York and be nothing more than a a gradually growing body of an MSc in Arab World hologram. Collectively, these science fiction and genre fiction Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral characters question what it more generally emerging across the Middle East. There is now a research explores the might mean in the future to be depiction of bodies in contemporary Iraqi fiction PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 45 and is funded by the 45 Wolfson Foundation.

Book Reviews Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, edited by Grace L. Dillon. Reviewed by Rebecca Macklin

In the six years since Walking the literature, such as the Clouds was published, the world remarkable Love Beyond Body, of science fiction has been Space, and Time: An Indigenous about themselves and one transformed. The genre, once LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology, published another, looking for points of firmly associated with “the in 2016. Walking the Clouds connection that reflect and increasing significance of the deserves recognition as the respect both specificity and 1 future to Western techno- first Indigenous anthology of shared concern.” Dillon’s cultural consciousness”(Wesleyan speculative fiction, the volume is framed by a clarion Anthology“Vivamus of Science Fiction, portaqtd in significance of which cannot be call of an introduction that is as expansive as it is impassioned. Dillon, 2), has estbeen reclaimedsed est.” by overstated. Incorporating postcolonial and Indigenous works from Native American, Her goal is to “open up sf to thinkers, who are using the genre First Nations, Maori, and reveal Native presence” and to imagine decolonial futures. The Aboriginal Australian authors, explore the Indigenous roots increasing global interest in this collection is notable for its within the genre, which have Indigenous and Afro-futuristic trans-Indigenous approach. The for the most part been effaced. narratives demonstrates that this anthology foregrounds She understands the act of genre, to draw on Dillon’s words, transcultural exchange and, in writing Indigenous science has “the capacity to envision this spirit, Dillon writes that fiction as a mode of resistance Native futures, Indigenous hopes, the title itself is an “homage to to Western hegemony: and dreams recovered by Afrofuturisms” (2): recognising highlighting the racialized rethinking the past in a new the parallel conversations that legacies of a genre that framework” (2). But, rather than are occurring across different “emerged in the mid- a recent development, speculative fields of decolonial thought. nineteenth-century context of fiction has always belonged to This act of looking outwards evolutionary theory and these cultures: as Dillon notes in across geographical, cultural, anthropology profoundly her introduction, “Indigenous sf and disciplinary borders comes intertwined with colonial [science fiction] is not so new – amidst what has been termed ideology”. With this context just overlooked” (2). the ‘transnational turn’ of established, Dillon adopts the Native American studies. This words of Taiaiake Alfred Walking the Clouds, the anthology recent development, observed (Kanien’kehaka) to ask: “What curated by Anishinaabe scholar by Cherokee scholar Daniel better terrain than the field of Grace L. Dillon, was published on Heath Justice in 2011, has seen sf to ‘engage colonial power in the crest of this wave. Dillon’s an increased number of the spirit of a struggle for volume paved the way for other Indigenous Studies scholars survival’”? (3) forays into Indigenous speculative globally, “reaching out, learning

PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 46

Book Reviews Walking the Clouds (continued)

The collection brings together observes, “It’s a dream, but it’s While some works are an impressive array of authors the truth” (Ortiz, 91). more easily from different cultural The chapters, consisting of recognizable as science backgrounds, writing in distinct fiction than others, all historical moments: from stories as well as extracts from longer texts, are organized challenge the reader’s canonical Indigenous authors, according to what Dillon understanding of the such as Leslie Marmon Silko genre and its (Laguna Pueblo), Simon Ortiz suggests are the major categories or tropes of conventions (Acoma Pueblo), and Gerald Indigenous science fiction: Vizenor (Anishinaabe), to each piece in the volume newer voices, such as Nalo Native Slipstream; Contact; evokes the creative potential Hopkinson (Taino/Arawak and Indigenous Science and Sustainability; Native and disruptive power of Afro-Caribbean descent) and decolonial imaginative Stephen Graham Jones (Piegain Apocalypse; and Biskaabiiyang. processes. And, as Dillon Blackfeet).“Vivamus While some works porta The final of these is an asserts, it is only through such are more easily recognizable as Anishinaabemowin word est sed est.” processes that decolonial science fiction than others, all connoting the process of futures can come into being. challenge the reader’s “returning to ourselves”. Foregrounding the need to understanding of the genre and Works Cited recover ancestral traditions in its conventions: particularly Dillon, Grace L. 2012. Walking through the foregrounding of order to heal and adapt to the the Clouds: An Anthology of Native traditions, temporalities, (post-)colonial or “post-Native Indigenous Science Fiction. and worlds; and the blending of Apocalypse world” (10), this Tuscon, The University of Arizona Press. Western science with idea shares much with the concept of decolonization. A Justice, Daniel Heath. 2011. Indigenous knowledge. Across clear example of Biskaabiiyang ‘Currents of Trans/national many of the stories, dreams Criticism in Indigenous Literary create space for traditional is the extract included from Studies’, The American Indian Silko’s Almanac of the Dead: a Indigenous knowledge to come Quarterly, 35.3, pp. 334-352. novel that calls unapologetically to the surface and provide Rebecca Macklin is a PhD access to new levels of for the overthrow of global Candidate in Comparative meaning. For example, in capitalism and the re- establishing of Indigenous Literature at the University of Ortiz’s ‘Men on the Moon’, the Leeds and 2017-18 Fulbright worldviews. Walking the Clouds, elder Faustin has a dream of a Scholar at the University of machine monster on the moon, too, Dillon suggests, is Cornell. Her research is on which is juxtaposed with suggestive of Biskaabiiyang, as it memory, space and resistance television images of the first enables “Native writers to in contemporary Indigenous North American and South lunar landing. Ortiz thus invites write about Native conditions in Native centered worlds African fiction. She is co-editor the reader to consider the liberated by the imagination”. of a forthcoming special issue ways that different forms of of Transmotion on ‘Native Produced across geographic, knowledge can be American Narratives in a communicated: as Faustin cultural and temporal borders, Global Context’ (Spring, 2019). (c)Twitter catur himawan: @Rebeccamacklin_ PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 https://bit.ly/2rZUOB8 47

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Notes

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PSA Newsletter #21 June 2018 50 The copyrights for all articles and images appearing in the newsletter belong to individual authors. 50 For permission to reproduce images or articles elsewhere, please contact the editors in the first