Description du projet
Étudier la tradition littéraire afro-européenne
Les écrivains africains, afro-européens et de la diaspora africaine ont créé une tradition littéraire noire innovante qui entretient avec l’Europe des relations uniques. Malheureusement, cette tradition n’a reçu que peu de reconnaissance en raison du manque de recherches menées dans le domaine des études littéraires. Le projet AFROPEA, financé par l’UE, entend combler cette lacune en adoptant une nouvelle approche comparative et spécifique à la littérature, qui remet en question la dépendance réactive et contrebalance la perspective anglo- ou francocentrique. Le projet utilisera l’appropriation transculturelle comme une lentille heuristique pour analyser les stratégies littéraires et les références aux logiques (néo)coloniales de la propriété, du patrimoine et de l’appartenance. AFROPEA s’intéressera aux langues européennes mineures et moyennes pour étudier les textes, ouvrant de nouvelles voies de recherche et élargissant la compréhension de la littérature noire en relation avec l’Europe.
Objectif
How is Europe imagined by African, African European, and African diasporic writers? The research project argues that there is a temporarily and spatially expansive, only partially known Black literary tradition engaging with Europe in subjective and aesthetically innovative ways. This tradition has not yet been studied from a perspective anchored in literary studies. The project proposes a new, literature specific, and comparative approach by employing transcultural appropriation as a heuristic lens. This will allow focusing on the following aspects:
1) On literary strategies of transcultural appropriation, i.e. on ways of imaginatively building Afropean worlds, shuffling hierarchies, reversing (neo-)colonialist discourse, rewriting modernity, and employing a rhetoric of property.
2) On literary references to (neo-)colonial logics of property, heritage, and belonging, i.e. on ways of revealing and questioning the European foundations that forced Black people into the position of being “appropriated” or excluded from claims of ownership since colonialism and slavery.
The goal is to develop a new perspective on Europe-related Black literature that challenges the reactive dependency and balances the Anglo- or Francocentric orientation associated with the framework of “writing back”. This will be achieved by studying texts written in minor and midsize European languages; depicting middle, eastern, and provincial parts of Europe; revealing gray areas beyond dominator vs. dominated; disclosing “forgotten” colonial histories; and addressing Europe as a unity.
The scholarly impact is threefold: 1) The focus on a Black, multilingual, heterogeneous Europe will revise research on Europe in comparative literature. 2) The literature specific methodology will bring a missing disciplinary perspective to African European studies. 3) The utilization of an explicitly transcultural, theoretically refined concept of appropriation will challenge ongoing scholarly and cultural debates.
Champ scientifique
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- social scienceslawhuman rightshuman rights violationshuman trafficking
- humanitieslanguages and literatureliterature studiesliterary genresessays
- humanitieslanguages and literatureliterature studiesliterary theoryliterary criticism
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligenceheuristic programming
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Institution d’accueil
10117 Berlin
Allemagne