Otherworldliness and Gender Inequalities: Postmodern Reading of Nawal El Saadawi’s Love in the Kingdom of Oil

Abstract

This study interrogates otherworldliness and speculative figures in the representation of immediate social realities in Saadawi’s Love in the Kingdom of Oil. While a number of studies exist on the novel, they neglect Saadawi’s use of otherworldliness and speculative figures to express gender disparities in settings pervaded with religious fundamentalism. The modernist novel has the propensity to address existing realities of life with scientific exactitude, and readers either find it difficult to understand works within the bounds of speculative fiction or contemptuously dismiss them as mere fantasy.

Some modernist critics describe works by speculative fiction writers as so utterly fantastic that they do not address realities of life.This analytical study was carried out on an African novel to cross-examine the effect of otherworldliness and postmodernist forms on exploration of social realities in African fiction. Three novels by African writers (both pioneer and contemporary) were read. Saadawi’s Love in the Kingdom of Oil was purposively sampled because it is more fervent about speculative figures. The study adopted a qualitative narrative analysis design. Data from secondary sources enabled the theoretical comprehension and qualitative analysis of primary texts. The study proceeded through close textual reading of the primary and secondary texts, while Atwood’s version of speculative fiction served as a theoretical base for interpretation. It was found that rather than express wanton fantasy, some writers in the Global South employ speculative figures and otherworldliness to explore socio-political realities in their settings.