The scientific work consisted of producing literary analysis of contemporary Franco- and Anglophone African diasporic fiction. The results indicate that the concept of cosmopolitanism can be successfully applied to diasporic African literatures. However, the meanings and manifestations of cosmopolitanism vary a lot according to the socio-cultural status of the traveller figure.
Privileged “business class cosmopolitanisms” are shaped by a relative ease so as to transgressing cultural, national, and linguistic boundaries. Yet, African elite travellers cannot escape discriminatory practices based on racial biases. This affects negatively their claims of being at home in Europe. Texts portraying privileged cosmopolitanisms often adopt an ironic tone which underlines the discrepancy between the members of the mobile elite and the underprivileged mobility poor. Privilege tends to enable critical distance to cultural tokens and fixed national identities. Such (self-)criticism is a key aspect of a cosmopolitan attitude.
Pragmatic, grass-root forms of cosmopolitanisms are present in narratives depicting Afroeuropean mobilities with an irregular aspect, such as clandestine migration. Here, cosmopolitanism is frequently perceived as a survival strategy in a new environment; the capacity to cross cultural, social, and linguistic boundaries in order to “manage” form the core of popular cosmopolitanisms. The analysis suggests that these forms of cosmopolitanism are particularly fragile.
Failures of cosmopolitanism inform the mobilities of “unwanted” African travellers such as asylum seekers and refugees. Their mobilities and attempts of being at home in Europe are compromised by their difficulties to cross topographical and symbolic borders. Such mobilities expose the limits of the idea(l) of a genuinely cosmopolitan Europe.
The results were/will be disseminated through scientific journal articles and conference presentations:
The articles produced during the project:
• “Cartographies of Paris: Everyday Mobilities in Michèle Rakotoson’s Elle, au printemps and Alain Mabanckou’s Tais-toi et meurs.” Resubmitted (2 May 2019; minor revisions) to The Journal of Urban Cultural Studies.
• “Clandestine Migrant Mobility, European Peripheries, and Practical Cosmopolitanism in Fabienne Kanor’s Faire l’aventure. Recommended for publication after minor revisions in Francosphères.
• “Globalisation, Mobility and Labour in African Diasporic Fiction.” Routledge Handbook of African Literature. Ed. Moradewun Adejunmobi & Carli Coetzee. London: Routledge, 2019. Invited chapter. 47-59.
• “Zombified Mobilities: Clandestine Afroeuropean Journeys in J.R. Essomba’s Le paradis du nord and Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 31.1 (2018): 120-134.
• “Failing Border Crossings and Cosmopolitanism in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Online First, 3 Sept (2018): 1-15.
• “Anxious Mobilities in Accra and Beyond: Making Modern African Subjects in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story.” Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society 49.2 (2017): 307-328.
Ten papers were presented at the following conferences:
• Fictions of Europe: Imaginary Topographies and Transnational Identities across the Arts. Vrije Universiteit Brussels, 27-28.3.2019.
• Darkness. Island Dynamics, Longyearbyen, Norway, 15-16.1.2019.
• Annual Conference of the Australian Society for French Studies: Environment & Identity. University of Western Australia, Perth, 5-7.12.2018.
• Voyage and Cosmopolitanism: From the Island to the World. University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal, 25-26.10.2018.
• Adeffi 20th Anniversary Annual Conference États presents, états futurs: French and Francophone Studies in the 21st Century. University College Dublin, Ireland, 19.-20.10.2018.
• BoMoCult/CULTCHANGE: Methods, Approaches, Ethics. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 4.-5.10.2018.
• Borders & Crossing Travel Writing Conference. Juraj Dobrila University, Pula, Croatia, 12.-16.9.2018.
• Annual Conference of the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies: Regional, National and Global Identities in the Francophone World. University of London, 17.-18.11.2017.
• Borders and Crossings: Travel Writing Conference. University of Aberystwyth, UK, 10-12.7.2017.
• Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe. Sixth Biennial Network Conference. University of Tampere, Finland, 6.-8.7.2017.
