Apocalypse Reimagined: Visions of Decolonial Hope and Holistic Environmentalism in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014)

Abstract

This paper explores Lagoon (2014), an Africanfuturist novel by Black American author Nnedi Okorafor, as a reworking of apocalyptic rhetoric that reconfigures Christian eschatological hope from a decolonial perspective. Dominant Western conceptions of hope—historically influenced by philosophical traditions deeply indebted to Judeo-Christian theology—remain wrapped up in anthropocentric and individualistic bias. Yet, since the late twentieth century, postcolonial and decolonial scholarship has shown a growing interest in the redefinition of hope through alternative, non-Western epistemologies. Thus, this study aims to explore how Lagoon subverts the biblical text of Revelation to challenge classical notions of hope by decentring hegemonic discourses and imagining, in turn, decolonial futurities. To do so, the textual analysis is framed through the lens of hope studies and decolonial theory, while incorporating insights from ecocriticism, posthumanism, and speculative fiction. Ultimately, this paper argues that Lagoon can be read as a secular eschatological utopia appropriating apocalyptic rhetoric to instil hope for a renewed and posthuman future where planet solidarity is achieved through epistemic plurality—including Western and non-Western systems of knowledge—and the cooperation between human and non-human entities.