Mobilities and Cosmopolitanisms in African and Afrodiasporic Literatures

Anna-Leena Toivanen, Ph.D. (2010), University of Jyväskylä, is Academy Research Fellow at the University of Eastern Finland and a former MSCA-IF Fellow. Her research on African and Afrodiasporic literatures has been published in diverse international peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1 Mobility and Cosmopolitanism: Complex Relations, Shortcomings, and Unease2 Mobilities, Representation, and the Literary Form3 Outline of the Book and Chapter SummariesPART 1Trouble in the Business Class1 Anxious Mobilities of Afropolitans avant la lettre Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story1 Automobility: Undecidedness in the Streets of Accra2 Hotels as In-between Spaces3 Transnational Business Class Travel: Afropolitans avant la lettre4 Conclusion: Freedom of Movement?2 The Hotel as a Space of Transit in Sefi Atta’s and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Short Stories1 Atta’s Hotel: A Chronotope of Hypermobility, Inequality, and Unbelonging2 Adichie’s Hotel Room: Adulterous Space between the Domestic and the Public3 Conclusion: Being in Transit, Longing for Home3 Uneasy ‘Homecoming’ in Alain Mabanckou’s Lumières de Pointe-Noire1 Returnee: A Tourist-Native2 Nostalgia and Loss3 Returned Gazes, Unbalanced Dialogues4 Blind Spot behind the Camera: La blanche5 Conclusion: Problematics of a Business Class ReturnPART 2Budget Travels, Practical Cosmopolitanisms4 New Technologies and Communication Gaps in Novels by Liss Kihindou, Véronique Tadjo, NoViolet Bulawayo, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie1 Formal Matters: The Mobile Poetics of Communication Technologies2 Technological Advances – From Letters to Email and Skype3 Creating Distance: Communication Gaps4 Conclusion: Ruptured Dialogues and Unbalanced Cosmopolitanisms5 Everyday Urban Mobilities in Michèle Rakotoson’s Elle, au printemps and Alain Mabanckou’s Tais-toi et meurs1 Cartographies of Paris2 Débrouillardise Cosmopolitanism: Survival in a New Environment3 Peripheral Dead Ends4 Conclusion: Managing the Metropolis through Mobility6 European Peripheries and Practical Cosmopolitanism in Fabienne Kanor’s Faire l’aventure1 Peripheries and the Dream of “la grosse Europe”2 Débrouillardise Cosmopolitanism: Limits and Potentials3 Conclusion: Out of Reach? Centres and Cosmopolitan IdealsPART 3Abject Travels of Citizens of Nowhere7 Failing Border Crossings and Cosmopolitanism in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North1 Cosmopolitanism as an Active Engagement2 Instances of Anti-cosmopolitanism3 Non-dialogue and Linguistic Nonconformity4 Parodying the Afropolitan5 Abject Unbelonging6 Conclusion: Cosmopolitanism’s Breakdown8 Arrested Clandestine Odysseys in Sefi Atta’s “Twilight Trek” and Marie NDiaye’s Trois femmes puissantes1 Erased Identities2 Tropes of Mobility: Shoes, Trucks, and Boats3 Sand and Sea: The Slavery Parallel4 Conclusion: Precarious Journeys9 Zombie TravelsJ. R. Essomba’s Le Paradis du nord and Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore1 Tropes of Zombifying Mobilities: Hiding, Confinement, Dehumanisation, and Darkness2 Not Feeling It: Lost Selves, Lost Emotions3 Europe and the Failures of Cosmopolitanism4 Eliminating the Zombie5 Conclusion: The Poetics of ZombificationCodaBibliographyIndex