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How Did They Come to This?: Afropolitanism, Migration, and Displacement
Ist Teil von
Research in African literatures, 2018-06, Vol.49 (2), p.125-146
Ort / Verlag
Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2018
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Literature Online (LION)
Beschreibungen/Notizen
In a comparison of three recent novels, this article examines representations of migration within the “new African diaspora” that explore divergent experiences within that global space. In particular, it argues that the “Afropolitanism” held up in two of the novels as an emerging avenue of African agency to transcend the strictures of nationalism in fact represents a position of privilege granted within the framework of nation-state power. By putting these novels in conversation and juxtaposing characters on both sides of that privilege (legal and illegal, wealthy and impoverished, liberated and displaced), this article elucidates the degree to which these portrayals of migration recognize and interrogate the power structures inherent in immigration policies that help to create such differential experiences. Though not directly challenging the value of Afropolitanism, the article calls for careful examination of its conditions and possibilities—who has access to its agency, under what structures of privilege, and to what consequence for those excluded?