Surveilling the Black Womb: Dystopian Biopolitics and Posthuman Kinship in Womb City

Bikrambir Dhillon; Diksha Sharma

doi:10.25159/1753-5387/20147

Authors

Bikrambir Dhillon Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2045-7392
Diksha Sharma Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/20147

Keywords:

Africanfuturism, Tlotlo Tsamaase, feminist posthumanism, surveillance, biopolitics, reproductive justice, kinship

Abstract

Tlotlo Tsamaase’s novel Womb City is an Africanfuturist dystopia that stages the entanglement of biopolitics, surveillance, and reproductive control in a near-future Botswana. This article interrogates how the novel exposes the fusion of algorithmic monitoring with a market-driven artificial womb economy and how it imagines counter forms of kinship that resist this order. Through close readings of key scenes, the analysis shows how microchips, purity tests, and the Murder Trials render Black women’s bodies legible as data and capital, turning fertility into what Melinda Cooper names “life as surplus.” The study reads the text through feminist posthumanism and African feminist thought to argue that Tsamaase integrates Setswana cosmology with cyberpunk motifs in ways that provincialise Western theoretical frames. Nelah’s metamorphosis with Moremi’s ghost and Matsieng produces a composite subject that refigures autonomy as posthuman kin-making and reframes justice through ancestral affiliation rather than technocratic reform. By situating Womb City within contemporary Africanfuturist discourse the article demonstrates how Tsamaase expands feminist science fiction by interrogating surveillance and biocapitalism from a decolonial African vantage and by offering a contingent model of kinship that contests the racialised governance of life in the Global South.

Author Biographies

Bikrambir Dhillon, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology

Bikrambir Singh Dhillon is a research scholar currently pursuing his PhD while serving as an Assistant Professor at the prestigious Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology in Patiala, Punjab. Mr. Dhillon’s primary research focus revolves around the intriguing theme of Surveillance in Transnational Dystopian Fiction. A prolific contributor to the academic discourse, Bikrambir Singh Dhillon has presented his research findings at both national and international conferences and journals. His research interests span various interdisciplinary domains, including Governmentality Studies, Surveillance Studies, power dynamics, Cultural Studies, Literary Theory, Posthumanism, and the exploration of contemporary dystopian fiction. His multidimensional approach to academic inquiry underscores a keen awareness of the complex interplay between literature, society, and evolving technologies.

Diksha Sharma, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology

Dr. Diksha Sharma is an accomplished academic specialising in postcolonial and postmodern literature, gender studies, diasporic narratives, and subaltern studies. An alumna of Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, she has over 15 years of experience in academia, teaching at both college and university levels. Dr. Sharma has served at institutions such as Government Degree College, Theog, Shimla and Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala. Dr. Sharma is the author of two books: Shashi Tharoor’s Novels in the Context of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism and an anthology of poems, Blossoms. Her scholarly contributions and creative works reflect her deep engagement with complex cultural and literary themes.

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