[English review] "Eugénie Grandit", a step toward diasporic afrofuturism ?
After my immersion in the fabulous world of podcasting 3 years ago, I think that audio drama was the next logical step. I'm not talking about audio books, but audio dramas like the plays or radio soap operas of the 1940s-1960s. About twenty US audio dramas later, including the excellent “Bronzeville” and the magnificent “Moonface”, a French audio fiction finally triggered my enthusiasm: “Eugénie Grandit” [t/n: “Eugénie Grows Up” .
Written by Ketty Steward, this fiction was released online in December 2019 on the France Culture website as part of its "Science fiction: myths of the near future" trilogy.
2043, France. Eugénie, 15 and a half, feels more and more alienated from her world. Her discovery of her superhuman abilities exacerbates her questions about the circumstances of her birth...
As soon as I heard the title, I thought of “Eugénie Grandet” by Honoré de Balzac. A letter of difference. And what a difference! Apart from the fact that the main character is a young girl and that the story takes place in France, there is no common point between the two fictions. After three listenings, “Eugénie Grandit” sounded like an inventory of the current situation of our society but also opened the field of possibilities to change things.
Consequences of our present
2043. If all goes well, I should still be alive. So it's a near future. I'm from the generation of Eugenie's parents. The one who will remember the wait-and-see attitude when it came to environmental emergencies that were debated at the end of the last century. The one who will have to get used to a radical change in her lifestyle and way of consuming while big corporations will continue to exploit us. The generation for whom mental health should no longer be a taboo... And in “Eugénie Grandit”, we get a glimpse of the solutions to these issues. Without spoiling you, let’s say that these solutions described by Ketty Steward are quite plausible and they question the humanization of technology through artificial intelligence.
Consequences of our past
A few days ago, Netflix released “The Witcher”, a medieval fantasy series. A tweet appeared on my Twitter feed. The person was denouncing the presence of a dark knight... In 2019, thinking about Black people in medieval Europe without a subordinate status is still a difficult concept to accept for some people, whereas dragons and other fantastic creatures do not pose any problem for their imagination. And the representation of Black people in science fiction is one of the issues of Afrofuturism. The France of 2043 where Eugénie was born and grew up in remains a France where racism exists. The weight of the legacies of the colonial past is present from the very first minutes with a reminder of the Martinican origins of her parents who are from the diaspora. But just in case the listener may not have paid attention, Ketty Steward has marked out the story with indications to leave no doubt about what is at stake around Eugénie's Black identity. Black people will appreciate the description of situations that are so familiar to us when we enter spaces where we are not expected.
For which future ?
During this 52-minute episode, we get to hear about a French society of a near future that sounds awfully similar to the current French society. That’s why I can’t say that “Eugénie Grandit” is a dystopia... Or are we already living in dystopia? Eugénie's awakening is about her identity but also her understanding of a system of which she is a part of. It’s difficult to talk about the ending without giving you spoilers, so I will talk about the future of representation. What future for the representation of Black people in French science fiction literature? I make a distinction between Afrofuturism and Caribbean futurism, but listening to “Eugénie Grandit” reminded me of a third field: diasporic futurism. I know that diasporas are included in Afrofuturism, but I find that it means erasing their specific problems, not to mention the fact that if a character is from the Caribbean, its cultural environment is not exclusively Afrocentric... In short, I know this isn’t the place to discuss vocabulary. It’s not necessary to precisely define “Eugénie Grandit” genre in order to discuss issues of representation. As in the film “Battledream Chronicle” (Episode 1 of my podcast Karukerament), Eugénie Grandit explores a future where a Black character takes control of its destiny. And, you know what’s the best part? This character is a woman.
May this decade bring us more Black heroines. In science fiction and everywhere else.
You can read the original French review here.