Clashing Ontologies in African Science Fiction: The Posthuman Condition, Technological Alterity and Identity Crisis in Sarah Lotz’s Home Affairs

Abstract

This article investigates the convergence of technological advancement, identity formation, and postcolonial critique within African science fiction, with particular focus on Sarah Lotz’s short story Home Affairs. It examines how the incorporation of robotics and artificial intelligence into bureaucratic structures engenders profound identity crises for both human and non-human agents. As machines begin to occupy roles traditionally filled by humans, the narrative emphasises the emotional, existential, and philosophical disorientation experienced by individuals confronting their diminished sense of agency and self-worth in an increasingly automated world. The story portrays a reality in which human characteristics are not only replicated but distorted by machines, complicating the conditions of co-existence and destabilising established ontological distinctions. Through thematic analysis, this study situates Home Affairs within wider discourses of postmodern alienation, analysing how technological otherness disrupts social hierarchies and reconfigures normative human-machine relationships. The robotic figures in the narrative function as allegorical embodiments of neo-colonial power—displacing, regulating, and depersonalising—while remaining unburdened by the moral responsibility borne by historical colonisers. By engaging African science fiction’s critical engagement with global capitalism and its discontents, the article foregrounds how automation-driven job displacement triggers not only material precarity but also a deeper crisis of identity and authenticity. Drawing on postcolonial theory, it explores how Lotz critiques a technophilic future that paradoxically undermines the very populations it claims to empower. Ultimately, the story offers a cautionary meditation on the socio-cultural and psychological ramifications of unregulated technological integration in postcolonial African contexts.