Luna's fourth Call for Papers, Ties That Bind: Love in Fantasy and Science Fiction will be released on Saturday the 1st of August. Here is a chance to discover the 11 brilliant papers you will find in the book.
Today, we would like to introduce you to Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso (Nigeria). MA at Swansea University in Creative Writing; writer of fiction and non-fiction, editorial member at Internation Authors.
Presenting the paper: "Tragic Lovers and the Question of Choice and Fatalism in Elechi Amadi’s ‘Concubine’ and the ‘Orchestra of Minorities’ by Chigozie Obioma"
Ezeiyoke says:
Most often when critics discuss Africa literature, it is always through the lens of postcolonial theory. This is good but it limits other possibilities of encounters in the literature. What I did in my essay is a suggestion of other ways to read these narratives. I did this by inviting readers to read the Speculative novels I analyzed as valid philosophical texts. And not just as literature which aimed to abrogated and appropriated the discourse of the metropolitan which post-colonial theory proposed.
Abstract:
Speculative literature is full of tragic lovers. In Greek mythology, we read about Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus, whose wife died on their wedding night, travelled to the underworld to rescue her. Alas, his triumphant story of rescuing her from Hades ended tragically when he failed the bailing condition Hades gave him. The doomed love between Winston and Julia, in George Orwell’s 1984, was of a different nature. It showed how one’s humanity could erode little by little when subjected to tortuous tyranny. And it raises the question of which one succeeds: love or self-preservation? The Concubine by Amadi followed a similar path to Orpheus and Eurydice, of men trying to save a doomed love. An Orchestra of Minorities, by Obioma however, was different. It followed the story of a man who falls in love with a woman who later falls out of love with him; the man by then had become obsessed with her, and that was a recipe for disaster. But there is a close link between the tragic love in Concubine and that in the Orchestra of Minorities, in the sense that both lovers were doomed to tragic ends by circumstances surrounding them and by mechanisms beyond their control. These two novels raise a pertinent question: do lovers who think themselves in charge of the direction of their love really have a choice, or are they either doomed or fated for blissfulness by sheer forces beyond them? This essay, while exploring the worldview and the cosmology found in Igbo Metaphysics upon which the novels were based, will critically examine the roles of freedom and determinism in regard to who, and how, one gets bonded to as a lover, even when the road is a tragic one. Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso is a Ph.D. candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research focuses on the impact of postcolonial theory on the evolution of Africa Speculative Fiction. A collection of his short story, Haunted Grave and Other Stories was published by Parallel Universe Publication. For Luna Press Publishing: The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction (2018).
Ties That Bind: Love in Fantasy and Science Fiction
is now in pre-order!