Reinterpreting Africa’s Presence in the Global: Afrotopia, Diaspora, Return, and Global Black Reappropriation

Abstract

AbstractFor the African continent, the global turn not only marks a significant shift in the nature of the relationships it maintains with other regions of the world but is also characteristic of increasing demands for internal sociopolitical changes. After a presence in the world through troubling times characterized by uncertainties and doubts, Sub-Saharan Africa is gradually writing its chapter on optimism and entering its Renaissance. However, recent protests in Francophone Africa, which are symptomatic of overwhelming social exasperations and of growing frustrations remind the necessity for the continent to reimagine new ways of responding to its internal social demands while reassessing its place in a more and more transnational global space. Consequently, reflections on the being-in-the-global of the continent entail crucial interrogations and analyses on the multidimensional axes of domination that define Africa’s relations with the rest of the world, while opposing them to the single axis relationships that symbolize colonial times. This work, therefore, calls for the continent’s awareness concerning the contemporary models of global relationships and their implications. It argues that the stakes of the continent’s presence in the global require both an Afrotopian vision and a global black response.Keywords: AfricaAfrotopiaReappropriationExtraversionglobalizationreturn Additional informationNotes on contributorsPatoimbasba NikiemaPatoimbasba Nikiema is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Global Black Studies and Afropean Studies at the Michele Bowman Underwood Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. He is currently working on the participation of African and Afrodiasporic authors in Afrotopia and explores the return from exile in Caribbean and African literary productions.