Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives

Polo B. Moji completed her PhD at Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III) and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

• Introduction Part I: The Long Shadow of Marianne 1. I wonder as I wander: AfroFrench visuality and walking as method 2. The map is not the territory: francophonie and the errant writer 3. Black or French: voicing the borders of black France Part II: Blackness Intra Muros 4. Naming into place: Afropeanism as a poetics of relation 5. Zara in the metro: geographic variability and the ethnographic gaze 6. Re-imagining AfroParisianism: blackness encoded; spatiality decoded Conclusion: black spatiality and the search for ouverture

By articulating AfroFrench women’s quests for the right type of visibility, since blackness is represented as “spectacular in European spaces” (107), Moji has authored a powerful book. It is a long awaited addition to the body of knowledge. Moji begins by answering some of the most vexing questions about black female belonging in the city. Can the AfroFrench woman walk? [...] Moji’s writing is dense and intricate. It forces the reader to pay attention. This is because the issues dealt with are heavy and emotive and, as such, words need to be carefully mediated in order to honestly convey the AfroFrench people’s quest for equality and recognition. The book reflects the time, a period of some 17 years, and effort Moji has spent carefully thinkingthrough these issues. The author has intellectually performed a herculean labour and the heftywork is evident in the analysis.Nhlanhla Dube, English Department, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South AfricaPolo B. Moji’s Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives analyzes the tension between Black French people’s notion of belonging and their presence in French public space. Moji offers a “strolling method” (8) using diverse visual and written materials to show how Black people in certain French public spaces are “out of place” and the ways in which their representations of Blackness are perceived as disruptive. Moji utilizes the gaze of the black flâneuse (strolling woman) to investigate how “race and gender intersect in the (re)mapping and/or repurposing of urban spaces.” [...] To address thenotions of belonging, space, and Blackness in France, Moji makes use of documentaries, biographies, andnovels by Black French politicians, authors, artists, and academics. Fania Noël, The New School for Social Research New York (NY), USAMoji’s ground-breaking book highlights the persistence of the geographic collusion that the presence of Black bodies creates and how it disrupts the “fixation of French homogeneity” (45). It is a compelling addition to emerging contemporary Black French studies and demonstrates the need for ongoing transatlantic and afro-diasporic research about blackness in a French context.Eric Touya de Marenne, Clemson University (SC), USA, writing in The French Review, published by Johns Hopkins University PressAnother thing that warms my heart is that [the] book functions almost as an archive of archives. Sometimesit's too convenient to think that starting from this contemporary moment, we are starting from scratch. Thereis the energy and drive that we've been witnessing in the past years, the willingness to ask questions to dismantle the narrative of the State and to create works with our own words, to explain with our own black experience in Europe.Mame-Fatou Niang, Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, writing in GeoAgenda, Black feminism, black geographies