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Provoked by @YaaAsantewaaBa, here are my best reads on Afropolitanism. As promised, this thread focusses more on the special @AfricaJacs issue titled "Contemporary Conversations: Afropolitanism: Reboot".
The first thing I love about Carli Coetzee's introduction to the special issue is how it starts.
"Scholarly gossip ..."
See more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2015.1105129
"Scholarly gossip ..."
See more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2015.1105129
From @G_A_Musila's contribution to the special issue, Part-Time Africans, Europolitans and ‘Africa lite’:
"Afropolitanism is yet another trendy term involved in botoxing out the wrinkles of various struggles of accepting cultural difference as it comes."
"Afropolitanism is yet another trendy term involved in botoxing out the wrinkles of various struggles of accepting cultural difference as it comes."
"The term Afropolitanism seems to come with a certain glow of access, affluence and mobility in the global north that signals particular class and cultural inflections which would therefore not be extended to Brian Chikwava’s migrants in Harare North ..."
"Despite its celebration of broadmindedness, thanks to its embeddedness in Euro-American affluence and cultural normativity, Afropolitanism, hardly embraces similar forms of mobility and cultural eloquence when these Africans are in, China or Saudi Arabia, or within Africa."
@EmmaDabiri's is titled: ‘Why I am (still) not an Afropolitan’. The first version was published by @africasacountry in fact ... https://www.africasacountry.com/2014/01/why-im-not-an-afropolitan/
"The centrality of capitalism and the importance of commodification are confirmed when one keys the term ‘Afropolitan’ into web search engines such as Google. What such a search yields are mainly online shops and aspirational luxury lifestyle magazines."
"Afropolitanism can be seen as the one of the latest manifestations of a planetary commerce in blackness. It seems as though, having consumed so much of black American culture, there is now a demand for more authentic, more virgin, black cultures to be consumed."
"While Afropolitans talk and talk about what it means to be young, cool, and African, are many of them concerned with addressing the world beyond their own social realities, to the issues that concern other Africans?" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696815.2015.1100066?journalCode=cjac20
Amatoritsero Ede brings on the dialectics https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2015.1132622?src=recsys
Find these in a special @AfricaJacs issue on Afropolitanism.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjac20/28/1?nav=tocList
They are brought together in the book, Afropolitanism: Reboot, edited by Carli Coetzee https://www.routledge.com/Afropolitanism-Reboot-1st-Edition/Coetzee/p/book/9780367143152
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjac20/28/1?nav=tocList
They are brought together in the book, Afropolitanism: Reboot, edited by Carli Coetzee https://www.routledge.com/Afropolitanism-Reboot-1st-Edition/Coetzee/p/book/9780367143152
Away from the special issue, the debate really flourished on the blogosphere. That was where some of us found it.
Binyavanga (R.I.P) in a keynote distinguished Pan Africanism from Afropolitanism
https://africainwords.com/2013/02/08/exorcizing-afropolitanism-binyavanga-wainaina-explains-why-i-am-a-pan-africanist-not-an-afropolitan-at-asauk-2012/
He'd retract that take before he transitioned.
Binyavanga (R.I.P) in a keynote distinguished Pan Africanism from Afropolitanism
https://africainwords.com/2013/02/08/exorcizing-afropolitanism-binyavanga-wainaina-explains-why-i-am-a-pan-africanist-not-an-afropolitan-at-asauk-2012/
He'd retract that take before he transitioned.
There was a time almost everyone whose identity crosses the African - European boundary needed to tell the world if they were Afropolitan or not. Marta Tveit's "The Afropolitan must go" essay was in the I am Not an Afropolitan category. https://africasacountry.com/2013/11/the-afropolitan-must-go
There were of course many who were (are still) proud to call themselves Afropolitan. Definitely. The label has power. The contributions to the debate mention many of them. Afropolitanism is a brand! At some point, it was patented, in fact. Ditto, neoliberal capitalism!
If I mention one, the blog https://www.msafropolitan.com comes to mind immediately. She mentions that Afropolitanism is a luxury. "People who are struggling for food, or fleeing wars, or struggling with other disabling structures, sadly rarely have the luxury to debate ideology."
Critiques of Afropolitanism are varied. While some are dismissive, others want to redeem the concept from what they think are distortions. In this light, there is @animaadjepong's "Exorcising the heteronormative ghost from Afropolitan futures". http://holaafrica.org/exorcising-heteronormative-ghost-afropolitan-futures/
On my part, in 2013, I read Habila's review of We Need New Names as requiring African writers to explore "Afropolitanism" or burst, for @ThisIsAfricaTIA (who have lost many pieces of mine "interestingly"), republished by @asterixjournal here https://asterixjournal.com/afropolitanism-africas-new-single-story-reading-helon-habilas-review-need-new-names-brian-bwesigye/
Two years later, my anxieties about "migrating", "class", and "cosmopolitanism" were still present and I explored them for @africasacountry - https://africasacountry.com/2015/11/waiting-to-be-local
I am still "interested" and this thing forms part of my larger work, here is one outcome:
"Beyond the Afropolitan Postnation: The Contemporaneity of Jennifer Makumbi’s Kintu." Research in African Literatures, vol. 49 no. 1, 2018, p. 103-116. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/699326 .
"Beyond the Afropolitan Postnation: The Contemporaneity of Jennifer Makumbi’s Kintu." Research in African Literatures, vol. 49 no. 1, 2018, p. 103-116. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/699326 .
Before I stop, there is an interview with @yomotoso where she states that she is not Afropolitan, she is of the continent, that I have been thinking about a lot lately, what does it mean to be diasporised within the continent? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021989414552922?journalCode=jcla
Also, I really would love @kobbyagraham's insights on the "actual" counter-cultural roots / origins of "Afropolitanism" and the appropriation (including patenting) of that early work to get wider attention, but will he accept to publish?
Threads must end, there is simply too much stuff out there on Afropolitanism, I do not think I have read even half of the things and I wish I could, I do not know if a lot of them would lead to freedom. What I heard from Kobby would lead to freedom, though. It is not published.
