Abstract

In African speculative fiction, there can be found examples of texts that touch on (neo)colonial displacement, uprootedness, and alienation. Through evoking the familiar Other—the nonhuman animal, the hybrid, or even the monster—these texts both portray an (ongoing) shared trauma and express a quiet refusal of narratives of separation and hierarchy. Here I examine how this “uneasy” kinship is critically embraced and operates in the short story “When the Levees Break” by Edwin Okolo (2022). Second, I explore David Uzochukwu’s “black merfolk” in the photography series Mare Monstrum/Drown in My Magic (2016–ongoing), to illustrate how what I am calling the third position is assumed. The third position can be described as a deliberate, resilient, and persistent process of place-making, creating a home for the displaced with the nonhuman, the human, and the Land itself. Born out of exclusion and dehumanization, the third position then takes on a life of its own, creating a specific, historicized way of coming to what Joan Gordon calls the amborg gaze. Finally, I discuss how both these texts keep the promise of the animal, insisting on expansion, utopian spark, and creating zones of possibilities.