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From migration to mobilities: Applying a mobility studies perspective to Francophone Afrodiasporic Fiction
Toivanen, Anna-Leena
2018BoMoCult/CULTCHANGE conference: Methods, approaches, ethics
 

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Keywords :
Mobility; African Francophone literature; Travel
Abstract :
[en] Mobility is a defining feature of the global postcolonial era. Yet, much of postcolonial literary scholarship adopts a somewhat limited approach to mobility by reducing it to migration. Human physical travel, however, is a diverse phenomenon that covers a wide variety of mobilities of which migration is only one manifestation. Illustrative of reductive understandings of mobility is the way in which African mobile subjects are not generally recognised as travellers (Loingsigh 2009, 2–3). Further, while the concept of migration itself entails aspects of mobility and travel, discussions on migrancy tend to erase these dimensions and foreground a static, nation-based focus on issues such as integration (Mainwaring & Bridgen 2016, 247, 251). This paper explores the ways in which the mobility studies paradigm – more often associated with social sciences than humanities – can be adopted to analysing Francophone Afrodiasporic fiction. I focus on J.R. Essomba’s Le paradis du nord (1996), Michèle Rakotoson’s Elle, au printemps (1996), and Alain Mabanckou’s Tais-toi et meurs (2012), and argue that while these texts can certainly be read as « migrant novels », they also feature rich representations of journeying that merit attention as concrete mobile practices – and that such a reading can be achieved by adopting a mobility studies perspective.
Disciplines :
Literature
Author, co-author :
Toivanen, Anna-Leena ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de langues modernes : ling., litt. et trad. > Littérature anglaise moderne et littérature américaine
Language :
English
Title :
From migration to mobilities: Applying a mobility studies perspective to Francophone Afrodiasporic Fiction
Publication date :
04 October 2018
Event name :
BoMoCult/CULTCHANGE conference: Methods, approaches, ethics
Event organizer :
UEF
Event place :
Joensuu, Finland
Event date :
04/10/2018-05/10/2018
Audience :
International
European Projects :
H2020 - 701238 - AFROEUROPOLITANS - Cosmopolitanism Revisited: Afro-European Mobilities in Contemporary African Diasporic Literatures
Funders :
CE - Commission Européenne [BE]
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since 09 October 2018

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