Altruism and Agency: Fictional Representations of Albino Vulnerability in Elias Mutani’s Human Poachers

Abstract

This article examines Elias Mutani’s Human Poachers (2016) to assess how the body of child character with and without albinism is culturally assigned specific meanings by exploring how the author configures and reconfigures the agencies of a child character with albinism. I specifically examine how the children’s novella develops the motifs of philanthropic or benevolent figures to represent individual and child scout’s altruistic efforts that create the (im)possibility of an albino child character with agency. I further consider whether and how the narrative’s representation of charitable efforts proves that well-meant intervention successfully provides protection and empowerment that enable the character with albinism to achieve agency. I argue that Human Poachers represents philanthropy as a necessary intervention to protect, empower, stimulate and afford agency to the child character with albinism. However, the text has moments of representation where altruistic efforts by characters without albinism signal discourses of protection which bear ambivalent meanings for the agency, empowerment, and personhood of the character with albinism. Such depictions can potentially perpetuate the continued discrimination and the typecasting of people with albinism, representing them as less agentic.