Papers by Kristine Kotecki
Research in African Literatures, 2020
African anticolonial texts have often grappled with the historiographical disruptions of colonial... more African anticolonial texts have often grappled with the historiographical disruptions of colonialism by either imagining an “authentic” precolonial past or by advocating a better future through a complete break with the oppressive past. These modes are not mutually exclusive, but few combine them as thoroughly as does author Nnedi Okorafor in her emerging oeuvre. I analyze Who Fears Death (2010), set in far-futuristic Sudan, and Lagoon (2014), set in near-futuristic Nigeria. These novels deploy the afterlives of both the precolonial and the anticolonial within the futurism of speculative fiction. Read together, they display a tension between desire for a revolution that totally rewrites the past and desire for a more symbiotic collectivity that incorporates past and future. The novels jumble up the developmental plot of teleological narratives, of which colonialism’s civilizing narratives are a subset, in favor of a mélange that brings otherwise suppressed plots and possibilities to the forefront.
In an interview on The Charlie Rose Show, Alejandro González remarked that his friend and fellow ... more In an interview on The Charlie Rose Show, Alejandro González remarked that his friend and fellow filmmaker Guillermo del Toro keeps a floor-to-ceiling library packed with everything fairy tale, fantasy, and magic. If for González this means his son would prefer to switch fathers, for film viewers it means that Del Toro' s intimacy with multiple and wide-ranging references in the fantastic has resulted in the richly layered El laberinto del fauno (2006), released in English as Pan's Labyrinth. In addition to drawing imaginatively on the Spanish civil war, the film alludes to texts in a variety of genres and media. It references fairy-tale films like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, literary fairy-tale characters like Karen from Hans Christian Andersen' s "The Red Shoes," and multiple versions of fairy-tale types like "Snow White" and "Little Red Riding Hood." It also contains echoes of mythological characters like satyrs and religious themes like the trinity. On the official website for Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro claims to pull widely from history, mythology, and fairy-tale studies, including the work of Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, Vladimir Propp, and Bruno Bettelheim.
Talks by Kristine Kotecki
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Papers by Kristine Kotecki
Talks by Kristine Kotecki