“Bodies on the Move”: Examining the Quest for Migration in the Postcolonial Africa Novel
Abstract
The scholarship of cosmopolitanism and migrations, in many forms, narrative, artistic, and cultural continues to influence and inform our experiences as global citizens navigating an increasingly complicated global environment. This paper aims to re(map) these notions, which calls for reconsideration, re-evaluation, and emphasizing the importance of cosmopolitanism as reflected in literature. There has been an exponential increase in studies on cosmopolitanism in literature during the last two decades. This tendency is directly tied with transnational interconnection and experiences with a difference in a way that has never been seen before as a result of cross-border commerce, migration, mobility, media, and consumption. This paper interrogates Open City by Teju Cole; We Need New Names by No Violet Bulawayo, Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasie and Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego to underscore how they use cosmopolitanism as the main idea.
Downloads
References
Balakrishnan, S. (2017). The Afropolitan Idea: New Perspectives on Cosmopolitanism in African Studies. History Compass 15/2: e12362, https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12362
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Bosch Santana, S. (2016). Exorcizing the future: Afropolitanism's spectral origins. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(1), 120-126.
Bulawayo, NoViolet. (2013). We need new names: A novel. New York: Reagan Arthur Books, Little, Brown, and Company,
Chielozona, E. (2014). Rethinking African culture and identity: the Afropolitan model. Journal of African cultural studies, 26(2), 234-247.
Cole, T. (2011). Open city: A novel. New York: Random House.
Dabiri, E. (2016). Why I am (still) not an Afropolitan. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(1), 104-108.
Filiu, J. P. (2011). The Arab revolution: ten lessons from the democratic uprising. Oxford University Press.
Grote, J. (2010). Nationilism-belonging to the spaces between: conceptualizing nation-less identity and belonging.
Jones, R. (2016). Violent borders: Refugees and the right to move. Verso Books.
Kasse, T. (2014). Africa and its diaspora in migration dynamics. Pambazuka News: Pan-African Voices for Freedom and Justice, 684.
Kehinde, A. (2008). Post-Independence Nigerian Literature and the Quest for True Political Leadership for the Nation’’. Journal of Sustainable Dev. in Africa, 10, 333-360
Mbembe, A. (2007). ‘Afropolitanism’, in Simon Njami and Lucy Durán (eds.), Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continentm (Johannesburg: Jacana Media: 26–30.
Santana, S. B. (2016). Exorcizing the future: Afropolitanism’s spectral origins. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(1), 120-126.
Selasi, T. (2005). Bye AS AUK Babar. The LIP Magazine, March 3. http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76 Search in Google Scholar
Selasi. T. 2013. Ghana Must Go. London: Penguin Books.
Waters, M. C. (2021). Black identities. In Black Identities. Harvard University Press.
Copyright (c) 2022 Mark Kipkoech Chepkwony, Goro Nicholas Kamau, PhD, Mutie Stephen Muthoka, PhD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
