Anna-Leena Toivanen (University of Eastern Finland) gave a talk entitled “Afroeuropean Mobilities in Francophone African Literatures: Mobile Subjects, Mobile Poetics” on Monday 6 March 2023 (17.00-18.00, Grande Smartroom, CIPL, building A4). This was a hybrid event, which was also accessible via Zoom.

Abstract

Social sciences and the humanities are affected by a mobilities turn that foregrounds the social and cultural meanings of mobility practices and systems. In postcolonial literary studies, ‘mobility’ is frequently understood as global migratory movements or as a metaphor thereof. Such an approach tends to focus on the outcomes of mobility instead of mobilities per se, erasing their relational aspects and the tangible experience of being ‘on the move’. This talk explores the ways in which the mobility studies framework can be combined with postcolonial literary analysis. I focus on Afroeuropean mobilities in Francophone African literary texts from the perspective of specific mobile subjectivities (e.g., student-newcomer, diasporic returnee, tourist, business traveller), and draw attention to the formal strategies the texts use in their portrayals of mobility.