Trans-corporeally entangled black body: Nnedi Okorafor's Africanfuturistic speculative fiction Binti Novella Trilogy

Nekha Fathima Sulficar ()

International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 307-322

Abstract: This paper examines trans-corporeal entanglements in Okorafor's speculative Africanfuturistic fiction, the Binti Trilogy. Okorafor's novella narrates the journey of Binti, a Himba girl who traverses through the galaxies, facing various bodily mutations and cultural transformations. Through these changes, she realizes her interconnectedness with the environment, technology, and society. The entangled body of the female protagonist breaks the binaries that give rise to discrimination and undermine Black female bodies. Binti embraces changes that alter her identity and physical nature, dissociating her social position as a Himba girl. This study employs close textual analysis using Stacy Alaimo’s theory of trans-corporeality to investigate the fragile and frequently precarious nature of Black female bodies and the societal and psychological problems that trans-corporeal mutations entail. Binti provides a powerful Africanfuturistic lens combined with Black feminist and intersectional ecofeminist perspectives to examine how Okorafor’s fiction depicts identity as fluid, relational, and materially embedded in the Black female bodies. The analysis reveals that Binti’s altered body destabilizes binary categories of human/alien and natural/technological by depicting the bodily change as a form of adaptive agency rather than loss. Such transformations resist colonial, patriarchal, and ecological exploitation, presenting the Black female body as an active site of negotiation between tradition and futurity.

Keywords: Abject bodies; Africanfuturism; Black body politics; Black female body; Identity; Nigerian fiction; Post-human; Speculative fiction; Trans-corporeality. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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