Traveling Elsewheres: Afropolitanism, Americanah, and the Illocution of Travel

IF 1.3 Q2 ETHNIC STUDIES

Critical Philosophy of Race Pub Date : 2019-07-19 DOI:10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0289

R. Òké

{"title":"Traveling Elsewheres: Afropolitanism, Americanah, and the Illocution of Travel","authors":"R. Òké","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0289","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article follows a perplexing juncture in Chimamaanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel Americanah: Ifemelu's choice to return back to Nigeria. Following the themes of \"home,\" \"travel,\" and \"Africanness,\" this article explores the link between the migration away from and to Africa and the apparent racelessness Ifemelu experiences as she crosses the fragmented racial zones between Nigeria and America. It challenges the claim that returning to Africa is counterintuitive and only a departure from the Continent is desirable, thus, analyzing the logic of travel concomitant with contemporary phenomenologies of Africanness (Afropolitanism). This analysis seeks to distinguish Afropolitanism from \"Americanah\" and to offer Americanah's emphasis on reverse migration as a counterweight to Afropolitanism's emphasis on extra-continental travel. Ifemelu's return opens up two questions in the context of this analysis: (1) What does the logic of travel offer to Ifemelu's racial identity as she comes to understand herself in two geospatial temporalities? and (2) What does the language of \"home\" as contrasted to the discomfort of travel, contributes to her ontological understandings of herself as African?","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"289 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Philosophy of Race","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0289","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ETHNIC STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract:This article follows a perplexing juncture in Chimamaanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel Americanah: Ifemelu's choice to return back to Nigeria. Following the themes of "home," "travel," and "Africanness," this article explores the link between the migration away from and to Africa and the apparent racelessness Ifemelu experiences as she crosses the fragmented racial zones between Nigeria and America. It challenges the claim that returning to Africa is counterintuitive and only a departure from the Continent is desirable, thus, analyzing the logic of travel concomitant with contemporary phenomenologies of Africanness (Afropolitanism). This analysis seeks to distinguish Afropolitanism from "Americanah" and to offer Americanah's emphasis on reverse migration as a counterweight to Afropolitanism's emphasis on extra-continental travel. Ifemelu's return opens up two questions in the context of this analysis: (1) What does the logic of travel offer to Ifemelu's racial identity as she comes to understand herself in two geospatial temporalities? and (2) What does the language of "home" as contrasted to the discomfort of travel, contributes to her ontological understandings of herself as African?

查看原文本刊更多论文

《到别处旅行:非洲政治主义、美国文化和旅行语言》

摘要：本文讲述了奇马曼达·恩戈齐·阿迪奇2013年的小说《美国人：伊菲梅卢选择返回尼日利亚》中一个令人困惑的转折点。本文以“家”、“旅行”和“非洲性”为主题，探讨了Ifemelu在穿越尼日利亚和美国之间支离破碎的种族区时，从非洲移民到非洲与明显的无种族主义之间的联系。它挑战了返回非洲是违反直觉的，只有离开非洲大陆才是可取的说法，因此，分析了伴随着当代非洲现象（非洲主义）的旅行逻辑。这项分析试图将非洲主义与“Americanah”区分开来，并将Americanah对反向移民的强调与非洲主义对跨大陆旅行的强调相抗衡。Ifemelu的回归在这一分析的背景下提出了两个问题：（1）当Ifemellu在两个地理空间时间中理解自己时，旅行的逻辑为她的种族身份提供了什么？（2）与旅行的不适相比，“家”的语言对她作为非洲人的本体论理解有什么贡献？

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Critical Philosophy of Race ETHNIC STUDIES-

CiteScore

2.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The critical philosophy of race consists in the philosophical examination of issues raised by the concept of race, the practices and mechanisms of racialization, and the persistence of various forms of racism across the world. Critical philosophy of race is a critical enterprise in three respects: it opposes racism in all its forms; it rejects the pseudosciences of old-fashioned biological racialism; and it denies that anti-racism and anti-racialism summarily eliminate race as a meaningful category of analysis. Critical philosophy of race is a philosophical enterprise because of its engagement with traditional philosophical questions and in its readiness to engage critically some of the traditional answers.