Cosmopolitanism’s new clothes? The limits of the concept of Afropolitanism

Abstract

Despite all the attention it has received, Afropolitanism remains undertheorised. Afropolitanism, inspired by the concept of cosmopolitanism, includes an explicit link to the African continent, which may result in promoting racialised and territorialised biases. It is also often conceived as an identity position, which tends to result, firstly, in unfruitful debates on who qualifies as ‘Afropolitan’ and, secondly, in generating critical interest in a mere handful of ‘Afropolitan’ star authors. This article argues that, instead of introducing a ‘new’ concept, it would be more useful to continue to revisit the concept of cosmopolitanism in order to explore its potentials in the analysis of African literatures.

Keywords:

• African literature
• Afropolitanism
• cosmopolitanism
• critical reading
• mobility

Notes

1. It should be noted that in history, the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ has also been invested with negative meanings in order to denote ‘a viciously derogatory scapegoat of impurity and degeneracy’, as in the case of anti-Semitic or anti-homosexual ideologies (Cheng, 2004: 50–51). Also political opponents, both in Stalin’s communist regime and in McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunts, were often referred to as ‘cosmopolitans’ (50–51).

2. In the Anglophone context, Afropolitanism is mainly discussed in the light of Selasi’s (2005) text as an identity position of affluent, diasporic Africans. Mbembe’s account of Afropolitanism as a form of hybridity and transculturation marking the history of the African continent, on the other hand, has gained more visibility in the Francophone context. Two recent Francophone and Anglophone conferences addressing the concept of Afropolitanism (Panafricanisme, cosmopolitisme et afropolitanisme dans les littératures africaines, organised by the Association pour l’étude des littératures africaines [APELA] in Dijon in September 2015, and the African Literature Association [ALA] annual conference in Bayreuth in June 2015, both with numerous panels on Afropolitanism) attest to this observation. While at the ALA conference the (Anglophone) panels on Afropolitanism consisted mostly of critical reactions to Selasi’s formulation, at the APELA conference, scholars seemed to be more interested in Afropolitanism’s philosophical dimensions, and in linking or juxtaposing it with Pan-Africanism, traditional cosmopolitanism or such recent concepts as the Afropea/afropéan (see, e.g., Hitchott and Thomas, 2014).

3. The Afropolitan magazine, <http://www.afropolitan.co.za>; The Afropolitan Shop, <http://www.theafropolitanshop.com> and Mr. Afropolitan, <https://mrafropolitan.com>.

4. The question of style is also central in Achille Mbembe’s (2005) Afropolitanism, which, according to him, is ‘[a stylistics], an aesthetic and a particular poetic of the world’ (2007: 28). While Selasi’s focus on style has been criticised, no scholar has considered the centrality of style/aesthetics in Mbembe’s formulation to be a problem. This discrepancy in reception probably results from the fact that because of his academic background, Mbembe has more intellectual authority than Selasi. Moreover, in Selasi’s account, the question of style is reduced to clothing and appearance, while Mbembe’s ‘style’ seems to also have a philosophical sense to it.

5. At the beginning of the essay, Mbembe (2013: 208–210) uses the concept of cosmopolitanism. He identifies two different types of African cosmopolitanism: a vernacular cosmopolitanism, which he calls ‘petits migrants’, and a form of elitist cosmopolitanism made up of the affluent classes (209–210). For the rest of the essay, he talks about Afropolitanism. If there is a reason behind this terminological shift, it is not addressed explicitly. An earlier version of this part of the essay was published in the edited volume Readings in Modernity in Africa (2008) under the title ‘The New Africans: Between Nativism and Cosmopolitanism’.

6. Different EU-scale mechanisms aimed at border controls and restrictions to mobility that concern mobile subjects from Africa strongly signal that the concept of Fortress Europe is particularly relevant today (see Thomas, 2014).

7. The translations from Sow Fall’s novel are mine.