AFRICANFUTURISM IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN LITERATURE: THE CASE OF ‘PET’ BY AKWAEKE EMEZI

Abstract

This article is devoted to the literary analysis of Akwaeke Emezi’s ‘Pet’, the novel, as an Africanfuturist artifact of the contemporary literature of the Nigerian diaspora in the United States. Africanfuturism is considered in both political and methodogical opposition to Afrofuturism, and is understood as a critical artistic method that, within the framework of Black science fiction, recounts an alternative version of the future of African people. The scientific article describes the features of the implementation of science fiction subgenres in the literature of Nigerians, residents of Nigeria, and representatives of the Nigerian diaspora, and also substantiates their differences from traditional (European) fantasy narratives. By the case of ‘Pet’ by A. Emezi, which at many artistic levels goes against both the Nigerian and pan-European canons of science fiction, the markers of Africanfuturist criticism of the culture, the correlation between the magical (mythogical) and futurological as the main difference between Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism are shown.