Abstract

The science fiction novel Triangulum (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2019) by Masande Ntshanga challenges both the association of the queer with the urban and the use of the city as symbol for the future in science fiction. The verisimilitude of the life of a queer teenager in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa—a type of rural queer existence not often depicted in literature—is represented in the novel. While the unnamed narrator of the novel does eventually, like many queer characters, leave her rural background behind in order to move to Johannesburg, the Johannesburg of the future is portrayed in dystopian terms. In this novel the future that the city symbolises is the result of extractive and exploitative capitalism. This vision of the future is rejected as unsustainable and unethical. In order to enable another, more hopeful future, the narrator has to return to the rural and embrace ways of living which, like the rural, are associated with the past. The novel's advocacy of a return to pre-industrial Africa can be considered anti- or decolonial, since it complicates and ultimately rejects Western conceptions of temporality and progress. It can also be considered in terms of José Esteban Muñoz's argument that a queer utopia is necessary to prompt political action in the present (Cruising Utopia. New York: New York University Press, 2009). Like Muñoz, Triangulum rejects a future which consists of a reproduction of the present; instead, it holds out hope for a radically different utopian future.

摘要

科幻小说《三角》Masande Ntshanga（开普敦：Umuzi，2019）挑战古怪与城市的联系以及城市作为科幻未来的象征的使用。小说描述了南非东开普省农村酷儿青少年的生活真实性（一种文学中很少提及的农村酷儿存在）。尽管这部小说的这位未具名的叙述者确实像许多古怪的角色一样，为了留在约翰内斯堡而离开了乡村背景，但未来的约翰内斯堡却以反乌托邦的方式描写。在这本小说中，城市象征的未来是剥削和剥削资本主义的结果​​。这种对未来的看法被认为是不可持续和不道德的。为了创造另一个更充满希望的未来，叙述者必须回到农村，接受与过去相关的生活方式。该小说主张重返工业化前的非洲，可以说是反殖民的或殖民主义的，因为它使西方的时间性和进步概念复杂化并最终遭到拒绝。也可以根据何塞·埃斯特万·穆尼奥斯（JoséEstebanMuñoz）的论点来考虑，认为乌托邦对于当今的政治行动是必要的（巡航的乌托邦。纽约：纽约大学出版社，2009年）。像穆努兹一样，Triangulum也拒绝包含复制现在的未来。相反，它为彻底改变乌托邦的未来寄予希望。