Posthuman Worldbuilding in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the Techno/ Natural Divide
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Posthuman Worldbuilding
in Nalo Hopkinson’s
Midnight Robber: An
Exploration of the Techno/
Natural Divide
Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras © Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras, 2021
Universidad de Salamanca
Abstract: This article draws heavily on Francesca Ferrando’s Philosophical Posthumanism (2019)
to analyse the ways in which the contrast between ‘techno-driven’ and ‘nature-driven’ civilisations
in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber (2000), while initially seemingly portrayed in accordance
with roughly canonical science fiction tropes, can be made to show the tension at the perceived
fracture between technology and nature (and, in a parallel fashion, discourses of progress and
backwardness) that has been a staple of classic science-fiction writing. A posthuman critical
perspective on Hopkinson’s worldbuilding, with its blend of mythology, fantasy and science fiction,
serves to provide a new outlook on sf as a literary genre. Hopkinson’s novel also serves to
illustrate how a posthuman discourse on these themes (nature, culture, mythology and science),
through the application of Haraway’s ‘naturecultures’ (2003) and the turn towards non-Western
epistemologies, provides much-needed nuances to explore these topics in relation to postcolonial
speculative fictions.
Keywords: posthumanism, science fiction, fantasy, Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber
1. Introduction well as garnered commercial success. Her
fictions have not only been popular with
Jamaican-Canadian author Nalo readers but have also received much
Hopkinson is one of the most acclaimed critical acclaim and scholarly attention
contemporary English-speaking black for the way she weaves her Caribbean
science fiction writers. She has been heritage into her work, creating
recently named the 37th Damon Knight countercultural decolonizing science
Grand Master (SFWA, 2020: n.p.)—a fictions that foreground subject positions
lifetime achievement award conferred by typically marginalized in Western sf by
the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers non-white, non-heterosexual, female
of America Association—and her short authors. The explicit engagement of
stories have consistently featured in Hopkinson’s writing with queerness and
science fiction and fantasy anthologies as race has often resulted in its being
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Posthuman Worldbuilding in Nalo Hopkinson’s
Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
analysed as a site of resistance against a the presence and agency of black bodies in
genre that has historically been science-fictional imaginaries beyond
dominated by white, male authors and stereotype, tokenism or de-humanization.
has predominantly featured white, male- The Afrofuturist vindication of black
centred narratives (Rutledge, 2001). At epistemologies is one of the reasons that
the same time, this has complicated the in my view help pose critical
definition of her work as classic science posthumanism as a framework from
fiction, because her novels borrow from which to explore the intricacies and
and weave together such diverse sources multiplicities inherent to black science
as cyberpunk, mythology, folklore, fiction. Insofar as critical posthumanism
magical realism and fantasy in the defines itself as post-dualistic and is
configuration of hybrid, politically cognizant of its debt to non-Western
engaged narratives. This has led a epistemologies in its self-configuration as
number of critics to approach her work such (Ferrando, 2019: 60-61), it is possible
from the lens of Afrofuturism. Indeed, to use it as a tool to explore the crossing
many have considered her a and blurring of boundaries in Afrofuturist
quintessential or foundational figure of fiction, using interstitial cyborg
the genre, among which Marleen S. Barr methodologies (Haraway, 1991) to bring
(2008), whose anthology Afro-Future to light the same interstitiality of black
Females, tracing the development of women’s Afrofuturist tales (Thomas,
Afrofuturism through female science 2020: n. p.). This fundamental
fiction, already includes and studies characteristic of Afrofuturism, and
Hopkinson’s narratives. Afrofuturist fiction written by women in
As defined by Mark Dery (1994: 180), particular, is already present from its
under the label of Afrofuturism falls any earliest iterations, for instance in the
“[s]peculative fiction that treats African- works of Octavia Butler, where she
American themes and addresses African- creates “worlds that uncannily reflect
American concerns in the context of reality and deflect and undermine it and
twentieth-century technoculture.” the same time by generating subjects who
Afrofuturism “profoundly challenges ideas improve on the available human models”
about science, technology, and (Spillers 2008: 4), and question, in so
knowledge,” which is why “many doing, a uniform and exclusionary
Afrofuturist texts do not fit neatly into conception of the human as an embodied
the conventions of science fiction and subject.
actually borrow from other speculative A philosophical or critical
genres” (Faucheux, 2017: 563). As a posthumanist approach should not be
genre, Afrofuturism displaces taken uncritically, however. As Ferrando
predominantly white forms of knowledge notes, “[i]n order to postulate a post- to
that have historically shunned black the human, the differences which are
intervention, such as the “hard” science constitutive to the human […] have to be
on which traditional science fiction is acknowledged” (2019: 25). Post-dualism
principally based (Shawl, 2018: n.p.). cannot, in this case, equate to colour-
Afrofuturist texts seek to move towards blindness. Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber
and represent eminently black forms of and, I would argue, black speculative
knowledge creation that also vindicate fictions in general can be used to make
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Posthuman Worldbuilding in Nalo Hopkinson’s
Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
the case for a black critical posthumanism insights from both Afrofuturist and
that takes the post-dualistic and affective posthumanist philosophies to explore
ethos of philosophical posthumanism and some of the ways in which such processes
applies it to the construction of fictional may be said to be taking place in Nalo
worlds that are not only cognizant of the Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber (2000).
whitewashed history of science fiction but This novel narrates the story of Tan-Tan,
remediate the racial and epistemological whom we meet as a young girl on planet
gap left in their wake. This project would Toussaint, colonised by Caribbean people
highlight the insufficiencies of the at an unspecified time in the past in an
humanist rational project with regards to attempt to forge a better life for
its multiple subalterns—again, in our themselves.
case, queer, female, and black—and Toussaint’s citizens depend heavily on
develop a hybrid subjectivity that centres the use of technology: every house has a
around them. This is not an virtual assistant or house eshu, and
unprecedented project (cf. Lillvis, 2017) citizens themselves have their own eshus
and neither is it, I believe, necessarily at implanted at birth. With these, they are
odds with other posthumanist approaches connected to a vast network that includes
to black speculative fiction that may focus all inhabitants in Toussaint and which is
on other aspects of interest to posthuman controlled by Granny Nanny, an artificial
theory. Among these approaches, I am intelligence set up by the Marryshow
particularly interested in that which Corporation, which, in turn, holds
borrows a page from the transhumanist supranational governmental control.
book to examine the ways in which our After Tan-Tan’s father, Antonio,
relationship with technology is both accidentally kills his wife’s lover in a duel,
racialized and gendered, and speaks to he is given a chance at escaping life
the continuation of systems of oppression imprisonment by Maka, a pedicab driver
that disproportionally affect black who had provided Antonio with the poison
subjects. In this case, it bears noting that that ultimately killed his enemy. Maka
I myself, following Ferrando (2019) and entrusts Tan-Tan with a device capable of
others, define transhumanism as a overriding the prison’s security protocols,
separate project from that of critical which she manages to get to her father,
posthumanism, insofar as be sneaking into the police car as he is
transhumanism is heir to the project of arrested. With Maka’s help, then, Antonio
humanism; so, unlike critical takes Tan-Tan and both flee across
posthumanism, it is still embedded in its different dimensions to New Half-Way
hierarchies, which it does not seek to Tree, which, unlike Toussaint, has an
contest. If anything, transhumanism astounding ecological diversity, and
creates new techno-centred hierarchies where exiles from Toussaint are sent in
that, because of the current unequal lieu of serving time for their crimes.
global distribution of technology as well Although Antonio ostensibly seeks a new
as the biases in its operation and life in his flight to New Half-Way Tree,
development, arguably not only soon the patterns of abuse which had
perpetuate but widen existing been at play in his family life at
inequalities. Toussaint re-emerge. Antonio sees Tan-
The aim of this article, then, is to use Tan as an extension of his wife in
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Posthuman Worldbuilding in Nalo Hopkinson’s
Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
Toussaint and repeatedly rapes her until, division between the ‘natural’ and
one day, Tan-Tan kills him in self- ‘technological’ worlds as represented in
defence. She is then forced to leave the Midnight Robber by analysing the two
human settlement at New Half-Way Tree planets at each side of the dimension veil,
and explore new ways of living in the wild New Half-Way Tree and Toussaint. My
outskirts of the planet, creating a persona analysis through the next pages identifies
for herself, that of the Robber Queen, who New Half-Way Tree as the nature-
embarks on a quest to fight for the oriented world and Toussaint as
underdog and right the wrongs of the technologically driven. This analysis,
unjust governmental systems of New however, must always be prefaced by the
Half-Way Tree. acknowledgement that a critical
In the pages that follow, I look at the posthuman methodology such as that on
contrast between the ‘natural’ and which much of my study is supported is
‘technological’ worlds in Hopkinson’s wary of the existence of a blanket binary
novel, a divide that is precisely between the natural and the
represented by the different planets in technological, if it acknowledges that
which the story develops. I draw on there is such a thing as ‘the natural’ and
contemporary radical philosophies, ‘the technological’; these caveats will be
namely critical and philosophical addressed further on. In this section, I
posthumanism, and new materialism, to understand the technological,
explore some of the ways in which the particularly, in terms of the digital, which
contrast between the ‘natural’ and in this case generally accounts for
‘technological’ worlds of Nalo Hopkinson’s information technologies, and, more to
Midnight Robber may be interpreted, and the point, the software and programming
how these different although connected technologies on which they rely.
strata create fictional worlds within the Within a consideration of how
novel that are representative of the informatics pertains to the worlds of
complexities of black science fiction. More Midnight Robber, immediately salient in
than twenty years past the original date the planet Toussaint is the fact that this
of publication of Midnight Robber, these is a world where the singularity has
interconnected layers of meaning and happened. The singularity, as defined by
criticism still offer critical ways of Vernor Vinge in his influential 1993
engaging with the challenges of homonymous paper, is “the imminent
technology for the bodies that neoliberal, creation by technology of entities with
white-centred and patriarchal greater than human intelligence” (12).
governmentality places under the Although, according to Vinge, the
category of the subaltern—and, more singularity may be achieved in a number
generally, of addressing the technocratic of ways, its most prevalent representation
reality of contemporary Western societies. in science-fiction narratives, which has by
now reached the status of one of the
genre’s tropes, is “[t]he development of
2. Toussaint: Technology and the computers that are ‘awake’ and
surveillance state superhumanly intelligent” (1993: 12). In
Midnight Robber, the singularity is
Broadly speaking, we can establish a presented in the form of the AI known as
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Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
Granny Nanny, which oversees any and In the figure of the pedicab runners,
all activities in the planet by way of its the ability to bypass surveillance is
implantation at birth in the citizens of simultaneously linked to a rejection of
Toussaint through an “earbug” that technology and proficiency in it. The
connects them to Nanny’s network. We technological expertise that allows them
are told that, after Granny Nanny was to override Granny Nanny’s earbug
developed, one day programming is contrasted with the
traditional forms of living that they
[S]omething start to go wrong. It get to choose to engage in. These include doing
where the programmers would ask Nanny the “back-break” labour (8) that has been
a question, and she would spew mako bloks eradicated in Toussaint— as it is now
of pure gibberish. […] She brain didn’t intelligent machines that perform any
spoil, it just get too complex for Eleggua physically strenuous work—and living in
[the code in which she was written] to “headblind” (9) houses, that is, analogue
translate the concepts she was or low-tech compounds lacking in digital
understanding no more; after Nanny was domestic technologies such as robots or
seeing things in all dimensions. virtual assistants of different sorts. Most
(Hopkinson 2000b: 51) notably, pedicab runners rely on
traditional forms of knowledge that
The awakening of Granny Nanny to a include and are made possible by the use
greater understanding of the world beyond of paper and writing, or “[c]ode that
what was provided in her code initiates a Nanny couldn’t automatically read” (51).
series of attempts to make her “gibberish” The prospect of a life within Toussaint
understandable. This project, led by but outside of the system is then tied to
Marryshow of the Marryshow Corporation elaborate forms of code production at each
that shall govern over Toussaint, is side of the digital spectrum that
ultimately successful and saves the AI’s circumvent the expectations of Granny
memory from being deleted. Through the Nanny, which, although super-intelligent
translation of her new language into by singularity standards, is nevertheless
“nannysong,” Granny Nanny is able to bound to her programming. In the
persist as the overruling Toussaint fascination of some of the characters at
intelligence, although the version of her the chance of a life outside the AI’s
language accessible to the population is oversight, we see how the matter-of-
“basic” compared to her real communication factness of the AI’s control over the life of
capabilities (52). Only a small community of their citizens has standardized modes of
pedicab runners, descendants of a living that make possible the continued
programmer clan, are able to access a oversight of Granny Nanny, and immerse
greater number of commands through their their subjects in a technological feedback
better knowledge of nannysong. This loop which goes, for the most part,
affords them some privacy, that “most unquestioned. Therefore, in spite of the
precious commodity of any Marryshevite” utopian drive at the heart of Toussaint,
(10), as it means that they can use Granny life on the planet still grapples with the
Nanny’s programming language to old privacy-security debate, which
momentarily carve some space away from questions what may be an optimal
the AI’s oversight. amount of control of the technocratic state
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Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
that ensures the safety of their citizens by look at the implications of Granny Nanny
their more or less wilful surrender of data as a female-coded, black AI. Race and
and so of unimpeded action. As gender cannot be wholly separated in this
Hopkinson acknowledged in an interview analysis as Granny Nanny is named after
Nanny of the Maroons, an 18th-century
It isn't perfect; the person who invented Jamaican leader who successfully led the
the system saw the high level of benign Windward Maroons against the British
surveillance as an acceptable trade-off for and would go on to found one of the most
the kind of safety and high quality of life important black settlements in Jamaica.
that the people would have. There are no While many critics have read Hopkinson’s
poor people on Toussaint, and no wage Granny Nanny “as a role model of Black
slaves. And though Granny Nanny female empowerment that subverts
perceives all, she doesn't tell all, unless she patriarchal images of the enslaved Black
thinks it's an issue of someone's safety. It woman” (Martín-Lucas 2017: 112, original
really does feel like being mothered, and capitalised initials) I agree with Martín-
sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes Lucas that there is a strong case for a
it's a smothering thing. (Hopkinson, 2000a: more nuanced interpretation of the AI, as
n.p.) it still works “within the structure of the
corporation and the violent genocide of
There are many things to unpack in indigenous populations this produces”
the author’s commentary. The fact that (112). Although the subversive potential
there are no poor people in Toussaint, for of Granny Nanny is not to be
instance, does not mean that there is no understated, Hopkinson’s Nanny also
disenfranchisement, nor a social brings to light the intrinsic violence
hierarchy. Although ultimately within any coloniser system.
supervised by Granny Nanny and the Granny Nanny both denounces and
Marryshow Corporation, some form of perpetuates a legacy of violence that is
local political organisation far from the stored in traditional science fiction tropes
utopian egalitarian dream still persists, (Sorensen, 2014: 277) and that, arguably,
and the ostracizing of pedicab runners is is perpetuated by the transhumanist
representative of how the emancipatory projects of the Marryshow Corporation’s
power of the digital has not been fully techno-state. For the implementation of
realised but has instead configured Granny Nanny and of the technological
technology as the new frontier: if infrastructure that allows for the relative
advanced technologies have enabled the ease of life in Toussaint, the planet had to
possibility of life in Toussaint, in be stripped of its original environmental
imposing themselves they have also landscape and so of its ecological
created a number of naturalised others diversity, which creates the first point of
that cannot or do not wish to conform to division between Toussaint and New
the new techno-standards. Naturalised, Half-Way Tree and establishes the first
sexualised and racialised others are the otherised subject within transhuman
by-product of the perpetuation of standards, nature: “New Half-Way Tree is
humanistic value hierarchies that turn how Toussaint planet did look before the
into biopolitical differentiation markers, Marryshow Corporation sink them Earth
so, in this context, it is also worthwhile to Engine Number 127 down into it like God
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Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
entering the woman; plunging into the persona of the Robber Queen that gives
womb of soil to impregnate the planet the novel its title. Because adhesion to
with the seed of Granny Nanny” the Granny Nanny network is not
(Hopkinson, 2000b: 2). The seeds of voluntary, the perpetuation of state
Granny Nanny, in this case, are digital: control via technological surveillance
the nodes of a surveillance web that spans necessitates of the violation of the bodies
the entire planet and cover not only the of its citizens; as has been noted, bodies
physical but the mental bodies of its both physical and mental, for the
citizens. The metaphor of impregnation artificial intelligences implanted at birth
and the use of biological processes to (the eshus) appear in the ‘mind’s eye’ of
describe the implantation of the network individuals. Impregnation and the
clashes with the artificial nature of the ‘smothering’ motherly conceptualisation
latter. This dissonance parallels that of of Granny Nanny also perpetuate
the fact of colonisation, which ostensibly damaging gender and familial dynamics,
creates a better world—for the which are also a fixture of the novel both
colonisers—at the expense of defacing the in Tan-Tan’s abusive relationship with
planet, and these parallels ask what other her father and in his dysfunctional
dissonances or compromises are made in marriage to Tan-Tan’s unconcerned
the actualisation of the colonisers’ mother Ione. Granny Nanny, as the
utopian dreams. For as much as Granny embedded and embodied panopticon1 in
Nanny “creates a discursively egalitarian the lives of their citizens and the ultimate
community […] unmarked by racial measure of state control since it is
difference and freed from a life of labor” inseparable from the materiality of its
(Fehskens, 2010: 138), the inception of subjects, becomes fully realised in the
Toussaint is founded in the putting into playing out of these familial dynamics.
action of unequal power dynamics that The totalising state and technological
subjugate both citizens and the earth to project culminates in Tubman, Tan-Tan’s
the discourses of techno-thanatological
machinery. —————
The sexual vocabulary used to describe 1 “Panopticon” refers to Jeremy
the simultaneous processes of colonisation Bentham’s (1995) conception of a circular
and the establishment of Granny Nanny building designed to allow for close monitoring
of all residents (whether inmates, patients,
is also evocative of non-consensual
pupils, etc.) from a structure at its center, so
intercourse. With her choice of words, that all could be kept in view at any given
Hopkinson is able to connect colonialism time. Most famously, it has been reelaborated
as an important science-fiction trope to by philosophers Michel Foucault (1995) and
the real histories of colonisations, which Gilles Deleuze (1990), who have used
pass through the exploitation of women Bentham’s panopticon as an image to describe
and land to bring to fruition the colonial the ways in which societies are able to exert
dream. These, incidentally, foreshadow discipline and control through means of
surveillance. Scholar Shoshana Zuboff (1995,
the repeated rape of the novel’s
2019) in recent writings has more explicitly
protagonist, Tan-Tan, by her father linked these means of surveillance to the rise
Antonio, which becomes a climactic point of capitalism and advanced digital
in the novel as it leads to Tan-Tan’s technologies, which more accurately describes
killing of her father and her adopting the Nalo Hopkinson’s Granny Nanny.
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son by her father, as Tubman is the first state. This vocabulary brings to mind
individual to be connected to Granny Giorgio Agamben’s work on the figure of
Nanny without the need for prosthetics. the homo sacer (1998). Agamben describes
Tubman, who has not received the ear the homo sacer in contemporary societies
implant connecting him to Granny as an individual condemned to a bare life
Nanny, can nevertheless communicate outside state protection and
with her, and so his body becomes “one acknowledgement, and yet considered
living connection with the Grande Anansi within the state’s political organisation
Nanotech Interface” (Hopkinson 2000b: insofar as their ban from the state
328). Potentially, Tubman inaugurates a articulates the state of liminality to which
lineage of individuals who, unlike Tan- the biopolitical modern state submits its
Tan in New Half-Way Tree, cannot escape subjects and so makes generally
control of the artificial intelligences to applicable the exception that allows the
which they are subject, and so initiates homo sacer to exist. As the planet of the
the move from a cyborg existence to a one disenfranchised and the dominion of
of complete digital embodiment. naturalised others since it retains the
ecological diversity lost in the colonisation
of Toussaint, I propose a analysis of New
3. New Half-Way Tree: Necropolitics Half-Way Tree in terms of its relationship
and naturecultures with Toussaint by means the exclusion of
its citizens from it, and in terms of the
New Half-Way Tree is said to be the perseverance of nature against the
“mirror planet” of Toussaint, where “we ecological effacement of Toussaint.2
send the thieves-them, and the Like Toussaint, New Half-Way Tree
murderers” as well as “the drifters, the also opens up questions of surveillance
ragamuffins-them, the ones the think the and state power. New Half-Way Tree,
world must have something better for
them, if them could only find what part it —————
is” (2). For, although Granny Nanny had 2 I am grateful to my reviewers for
ostensibly been designed with some pointing out that there is indeed a connection
flexibility in mind, “to tolerate a variety of to be made between the different distribution
human expression, even dissension” (10), of political systems in Nalo Hopkinson and the
similar power politics in Ursula K. Le Guin’s
there still seem to be behaviours that
The Dispossessed (1974). Colonialism is of
warrant expulsion from Toussaint’s course a pervasive theme in the history of
Garden of Eden. For what is supposedly a science fiction to which often underlies a
realised utopia, it is striking to see how strong utopian current (i.e., searching new
expectations of a better future, which worlds that may serve as political laboratories
echo the novel’s diasporic roots as well as for social improvement strategies). As has
traditional science fiction narratives and been noted, however, in Hopkinson this is
the trauma of colonization, seem to also approached from an explicitly Afrofuturist
perspective; as other scholars have pointed out
be perceived as a threat. Furthermore,
and have extensively analysed, the planet
those who are shunned to New Half-Way Toussaint and the AI Granny Nanny, as other
Tree are euphemistically spoken of as the elements in the novel, are named after
“departed” (19), equating death to a life important figures of the African diaspora, and
lived outside of the confines of the techno- the colonized become the colonisers.
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Midnight Robber: An Exploration of the
Techno/Natural Divide
however, stands as the necropolitical3 figures that are exiled from Toussaint,
counterpart of Toussaint’s techno- but rather is unwillingly transported to
biopolitical logic. These necropolitical New Half-Way Tree by following her
logics function in great part from the father, still Granny Nanny takes it upon
standpoint of the government of herself to recover her subject. The fact
Toussaint, but they are also natively that Tan-Tan is an unsuspecting homo
operative in New Half-Way Tree. Junjuh sacer makes her inhabit a doubly
Village, the human settlement where marginal position, within and without the
Tan-Tan and her father eventually system both in her former and current
establish themselves, is ruled by a homes. This becomes further complicated
bloodthirsty sheriff whose “rules don’t as she violates the hospitality of her hosts
have no mercy” (Hopkinson 2000b: 169) in New Half-Way Tree after Tan-Tan
and who condemns trespassers to murders her father. Her act of violence
physical punishment and death by makes her carry “a double shame […]: she
hanging. Although, as a planet of homini is a banned figure in the human and
sacer, New Half-Way Tree should fall douen worlds [the world of New Half-Way
outside of the scope of the biopolitical Tree]” (Fehskens 2010: 147). The murder
powers of Toussaint, its inclusion—by its of Antonio and Tan-Tan’s later accidental
exclusion—in Toussaint’s state power revealing of the settlement where she was
allows for a measure of Granny Nanny’s living under the protection of the douen, a
oversight to continue in New Half-Way bird-like alien species native to New Half-
Tree. In the novel, Tan-Tan is transported Way Tree, force her to live an uprooted
to New Half-Way Tree not by virtue of her existence.
having effectively committed a crime, but This instability is mirrored in the
by her attempt to rescue her father from duplicity of Tan-Tan’s character, who is
life imprisonment, affording him a chance both Tan-Tan the human and the
of living “he life in he own terms” (66). As mythical Robber Queen, a persona which
Tan-Tan is not one of the antagonistic she takes on after the killing of her father
through which she dissociates herself
————— from her traumatic past experiences and
3 Necropolitics is a term coined by seeks to impart justice. In this double
Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe existence, her body is both a site of
(2003). Mbembe builds from Foucault’s notion
empowerment—as she takes on a heroic
of biopolitical power to assert that sovereignty
resides not only in controlling the bodies of persona of the Trinidadian carnival that
citizens, but in controlling the possibility of connects her both to the thriving
their very existence, i.e. determining who can Jamaican cultural heritage and the Black
live and who must die. Mbembe also links pride that could be freely experienced in
these concepts to the state of exception and the streets of Toussaint—while
the state of siege, which are likewise crucial to simultaneously allowing her to stand for
Agamben’s definition of the homo sacer. I see the dispossessed, and oppression, being as
both Foucault’s biopolitics, Mbembe’s
she is made to bear her father’s child and
necropolitics and Agamben’s homo sacer as
related phenomena that allow us to form a
perpetuate with him also the techno-
complete picture of the ways in which thanatological legacy of her native planet
governmental practices police completely, but both through the violence inherent to the
from different angles, the bodies of subjects. rape and in birthing a child that is
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Techno/Natural Divide
inescapably connected to the surveillance [and] came back from the dead as jumbies
technologies that policy life and colonise with their heads on backwards” (93).
bodies and planets. Among the douen stands out Chichibud,
It is important to think about how all Tan-Tan’s friend and protector, offering
systems of oppression in Toussaint find her a place of shelter after the murder of
resonance in New Half-Way Tree. As her father forces her flight from Junjuh,
Fehskens (2010: 141) argues, Antonio’s where “murder must always get repaid
“repeated attempts to turn Tan-Tan into with murder” (151).
another Ione [his wife in Toussaint], via A posthuman critical framework can
sexual violation and molestation, on New aid us in addressing how Hopkinson
Half-Way Tree domesticates that criminal creates New Half-Way Tree as a
space into a new version of his home in counterpart to the heavily technologized
Toussaint.” If, in Toussaint, Granny and environmentally barren Toussaint.
Nanny was able to represent forms of For this, I draw on Donna Haraway’s
colonial and techno-engendered violence, work, particularly her conception of
it is also worth noticing that these “naturecultures” (1991), which
domesticating violences include inextricably links the social and the
environmental violence, from which the natural in the formation of ecologies and
worlds of Midnight Robber seem to find a so puts into question, among others, the
respite in New Half-Way Tree. Because natural/artificial, cultural/environmental,
advanced technologies have not arrived at technological/ecological binaries. The
New Half-Way Tree, nor could the grasp blurring of dichotomic separations is also
of Granny Nanny reach it prior to the a central feature of philosophical
birth of Tubman, New Half-Way Tree has posthumanism. Martín-Lucas, in her
safeguarded the ecological diversity that critical posthumanist analysis of
seemed to have also characterised other Midnight Robber, has argued that
planets in the novel’s system. This is a Chichibud “gives voice to a posthuman
planet where “the mongoose still run critique of the anthropocentric humanist
wild, the diable bush still got poison obsession with hierarchical taxonomy”
thorns, and the mako jumbie bird does (2017: 111). Characters like Chichibud,
still stalk through the bush” (Hopkinson, then, exemplify the blurring of ontological
2000b: 2). Thus, the conservation of boundaries that is at the heart of an
ecology is also tied to the preservation of ethical posthumanist reading of
magical, folkloric elements such as Hopkinson’s novel. At the same time, a
talking non-human, natural species (as worldbuilding that rests on black folklore
opposed to the artificial intelligences of and magical imaginings and which exists
Toussaint) that vindicate black tradition within a context of ‘hard’ science fiction
and experience. Among the most relevant (i.e. departing from and exploring the
figures in these black folkloric ecologies, consequences of technoscientific
we might mention the douen, a bird-like developments) questions a purely rational
alien species living in the planet conception of science: among other
Toussaint of whom Tan-Tan had only factors, “[t]he fine line between analogy
heard of in her nursery stories, that […] and genuine animal-person cross-
painted them as “children who’d died overs in [Hopkinson’s] ceremonial worlds
before they had their naming ceremonies also separates rigorous ‘scientific’
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taxonomies” (Dillon, 2007: 33). With imaginary that attacks black bodies and
regard to the construction of new configures them as the subaltern of
taxonomies, and although there are many existing power structures.
examples of naturalcultural integration
that could be analysed in the novel, I
would argue that one of the most 4. Conclusions
significant symbols for naturalcultural
processes in Midnight Robber scholarship In my analysis of the uses of technology
are trees, which are a recurring image in in Midnight Robber, I have looked at how
the novel. Trees, as a mode of organising mechanisms of technocratic governance,
information that imbricates digital logics in particular the operation of an all-
with the vocabulary of biology and witnessing AI, complicate an
ecology, are representative of the emancipatory reading of what is to be
ubiquitous character of technology the initially interpreted as the fulfilment of a
inseparability of natural from social utopian dream of black enfranchisement.
ecologies. Trees are also homes and Because the technocratic Toussaint state
sheltering places, be it for the douens in is still heavily involved in the policing of
New Half-Way Tree than the pedicab its subjects and is born of the same
runners in Toussaint, and stand for ways violent colonising impulses, a biopolitical
of living that are connected to traditional reading of Granny Nanny in terms of its
practices and an ecological ethics surveillance operation acknowledges the
cognisant of the particularities of the perpetuation of hierarchies of control
Black folkloric experience. within systems that, though initially
In the novel, trees serve as community conceived to empower, ultimately are
spaces that house and enable subversion designed to oppress.
in many forms. It is telling, for instance, In doing so, it brings to the fore
that pedicab drivers seek to live in tree questions of the possibility of utopian
houses which directly oppose the high- actualisation, when the boundary
tech compounds in the rest of Toussaint. between utopia and dystopia is often
Similarly, the imbrication of the douen ambiguous. A similar case of diffuse
and their home trees, which the boundaries occurs in the case of the social
community is bound to protect and hide and natural organisation of New Half-
from the rest of the settlements in New Way Tree, where violence inside and
Half-Way Tree, signals a reverence for outside state structures threatens the
the natural environment that goes establishment of ethical relationships
against the exploitative logic that humans that allow for the institution of the
still employ in their strongholds in the congenial, reciprocal, transspecies bonds
planet. In keeping with a nonbinary on which the planet’s ecosystem is set to
posthuman logic, however, Hopkinson thrive.
also makes trees a threatening figure in Midnight Robber plays with echoes
Midnight Robber, since they also stand and parallels both in Toussaint and New
for the necro/biopolitical power of Half-Way Tree. The reverberations of
governments, as trees are the site of multiple marginalities—black, woman,
hangings that function as a warning for natural—against each other are not only
trespassers and take up the colonial a measure of the rhythm of the novel,
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Techno/Natural Divide
which has so fruitfully been analysed by of black and female bodies and the
Leif Sorensen (2014) in musical terms, extraction of natural resources—and
but also themselves a representation of new— like the establishment of practices
the necessarily non-dichotomous of state control and surveillance aided
character of Nalo Hopkinson’s fiction, and abetted by technological
whose science fictions betray a critical developments. This conception of science
posthuman sensibility. This is attuned to fiction recuperates histories hitherto side-
multiple individual and collective lined by its mainstream and vindicates
becomings as they are understood by marginalised epistemologies within and
posthumanist philosopher Rosi Braidotti without its narratives that highlight the
(2002), who, also in tune with the new vital importance of thresholds as well as
materialist thinking for which she is a their osmotic qualities, like those of
foundational figure and point of reference, Midnight Robber’s very own dimension
highlights the importance of states of veil.
change and flow in the configuration of
subjectivity against essentialist,
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