Soil Meets Soil: Organic Fantasy, the Chthulucene, and the Decomposition of Whiteness

• In Event: Decomposing Whiteness, Indigenous Soil, Intimacies, and Stolen Childhoods

Abstract

Decentering whiteness requires freedom to dream of a society that does not yet exist. Recent calls in education scholarship front the emancipatory potential of black speculative fiction, texts of science fiction and fantasy that entertain black futures, as the conduit for decolonial imagination. This paper takes up this call by utilizing “organic fantasy” in the children’s fiction of Nnedi Okorafor as a critical lens for decolonizing scholarship in educational studies. I place Okorafor’s work in conversation with Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, illustrating how organic fantasy unearths the colorblindness in Haraway’s eco-solutions. I argue that Okorafor’s visions do more than decenter whiteness. Her organic fantasy initiates the process of decomposing whiteness, a necessary step for Haraway’s proposals to work.

Author

• Bevin L Roue, Auburn University