Convergences urbaines: la ville dans les littératures africaines de l’Atlantique Noir

Abstract

The article analyzes how migration and city interact in six novels by African authors who not only write about but also from the Americas. I argue that the novels mediate the Africa-Americas nexus through the Heteropolis, a term coined by Charles Jencks to describe an urban form built on difference, contradiction, and inclusiveness. Transposing this concept to literature shifts the focus towards a process of interferences on five levels. First, the concept points to the production of competing versions of a city by a variety of different narrators. Second, Heteropolis indicates the gradual entanglement of the American and African city through the characters’ mobility and the diversity of voices, languages, and speech types. Third, it implies overlapping historical periods and fourth the integration of intertexts. Finally, Heteropolis suggests the interference of the fictional and non-fictional world because the authors not only draw on personal experience but also reconfigure “real” cities through their imagination.

Keywords:

• Heteropolis
• African literatures
• urban space
• migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 http://unhabitat.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/PR2.pdf

2 http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/01/244-million-international-migrants-living-abroad-worldwide-new-un-statistics-reveal/

3 Le corpus n’est qu’un échantillon d’une production littéraire plus vaste qui sera étudiée en plus de détails dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche qui inclut des auteurs comme Alaa Al-Aswany, Ryad Assani-Razaki, Emmanuel Dongala, Ondjaki ou encore Sami Tchak et Henri Lopes.

4 Le concept d’hétérophonie ne jouit pas de la même notoriété que celui de polyphonie, utilisé souvent à tort suite à une erreur de traduction (Dayan 108). Le préfix de raznogolosie, mot employé par Bakhtine, ne signifie pas « nombreux » mais « différent » ou « divers » ainsi que le démontre Tzvetan Todorov dans Mikhaïl Bakhtine. Le principe dialogique (Todorov 89). En revanche, la polyphonie (polifonija) est appliquée, incorrectement, à toute présence de voix multiples, bien que Bakhtine le réservât strictement aux oeuvres de Dostoïevski (« Dostoïevski » 9–56; Dayan 108).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antje Ziethen

Antje Ziethen is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Kansas. She specializes in global literature in French, with a particular focus on (urban) space, migration, transnationalism, gender, and modernity. Her research deals with different geographical areas including Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, Québec, and Acadia. Antje is the author of Géo/Graphies postcoloniales. La Poétique de l’espace dans le roman mauricien et sénégalais (2013) and has published a number of articles, co-edited volumes and special journal issues. Her most recent publications deal with transatlantic migration in African literatures as well as the Black Mediterranean in speculative fiction. Currently, she is working on a manuscript which reads several African novels through the lens of urban transnationalism, addressing issues such as biopolitics, terrorism, climate change, social media, and mass tourism.