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The Afropolitan Flâneur in literature
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Physical
- Summary
-
"This timely study engages in the Afropolitan debate via the streets of the literary city. It first provides a historical and theoretical framework to illustrate how the literary flâneur--an aimles...
"This timely study engages in the Afropolitan debate via the streets of the literary city. It first provides a historical and theoretical framework to illustrate how the literary flâneur--an aimless wanderer of the city--migrated from Europe to Africa and the diaspora, and how this figure is to be understood in relation to current considerations of Afropolitanism. The literary analysis focuses on texts set in three cities in Africa (Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Lagos), as well as three global north cities (New York, Paris, and London), considered through the eyes of various types of Afropolitan flâneur. By problematising the binaries of local/global, national/transnational, black/white, and slum/paradise, this book addresses issues of belonging or not belonging, and gestures towards new ways of understanding what it means to be an African in the world today."--Cover page 4.
Details
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- Creator
- by Carol Leff
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
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- Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022
- ©2022
- Physical Details
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- xviii, 281 pages ; 22 cm
- ISBNs
- 9781527583696, 1527583694, 9781527583702, 9781527583702
- OCLC
- on1328017706
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Preface: Finding the way -- Three brief notes -- Introduction. The first steps ; New African identities and diasporic approaches ; Pedestrian perspectives ; The entanglement of Europe and Africa ; Multi-faceted Afropolitanism ; Novel chorographies of the city ; Texts and the city -- Chapter 1. Mapping the territory of Johannesburg. Defining the boundaries of an edgy city ; Ivan Vladislavić's ambulatory itineraries in Portrait with keys ; Mark Gevisser's liminal spaces in Lost and found in Johannesburg ; Phaswane Mpe's elegy for Afropolitanism in Welcome to our hillbrow ; Encounters across difference -- Chapter 2. Thinking Africa from the Cape. Entangled worlds ; Flâneusing the cityscape in Patricia Schonstein-Pinnock's Skyline ; Living on the edge as a street child in K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen cents ; Effects of a troubled childhood in Yewande Omotoso's Bom boy ; A longing to belong -- Chapter 3. Pigments of the imagination in Lagos. A place for strangers ; The 'half slum, half paradise' of Chris Abani's GraceLand ; Teju Cole's Every day is for the thief as examination of reverse migration ; A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass as satirical exploration of identity formation ; In black and white -- Chapter 4. New African diasporas in Paris, London, and New York. Roots and routes ; Parisian Africans and African Parisians in Alain Mabanckou's Blue white red ; Mapping Lagos and London in Biyi Bandele's The street ; Tracking the in-between World of New York in Teju Cole's Open city ; Exploring beyond borders -- Walking on