Heterotemporality and Posthumanism in Alternative Futurisms

The Anthropocene concept as introduced by climate scientists has received a lot of criticism from humanities scholars for its projection of a unitary human subject or Anthropos and for its reliance on a linear conception of time. This article explores the potential of alternative futurist fiction, specifically from African and Indigenous Canadian contexts, to rewrite this Anthropocene narrative in more inclusive fashion. I argue that, through their use of polychronic narrative techniques and foregrounding of non-human actants, alternative futurisms do task the reader to interrogate the temporal and Western-centric presuppositions embedded in mainstream science and climate fiction. At the same time, the article cautions against hasty inferences about the capacity of alternative futurisms to fundamentally unsettle governing ontological or temporal categories. The article should thus be read as a plea for a more balanced approach to this fascinating new archive, which resists easy categorization in terms of received oppositions between Western and non-Western imaginaries and politics.