A Comparative Reading of Pan-Africanism and Afropolitanism (Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature)

This book is response to the recent surge of formidable voices that consistently demean and attempt to reverse the gains of pan-Africanism. Besides questioning its relevance, these voices supplant essential tenets of pan-Africanism – Blackness, the narrative of Return, sanctity of the ancestral homeland, exposition of evils of colonialism and African Literature – with new postulations. These new suppositions deny race, accentuate onward migration and diminish the ancestral homeland to any ordinary city to globetrot. These voices liken any reminiscence of colonial evils to Afro-pessimism, pronounce African Literature dead on arrival and proceed to ‘substitute’ pan-Africanism through studies, which neglect pioneer and contemporary literary works, cultural productions, folklore, conversations on social media (blogs, Facebook, WhatsApp) and questionnaires to gauge their influence among Black peoples themselves. This study adopts a design that interrogates literary works, data from questionnaires and social media to determine the relevance and influence of pan-Africanism and the new paradigm.

Andrew Nyongesa is a lecturer and a writer of fiction. Some of his published works are The Endless Battle (2016), The Water Cycle (2018), Many in One and Other Stories (2019), The Armageddon and Other Stories (2020) and Say My Name and Other Stories from Home and Away, all of which are based on postcolonialism and eco-criticism. His scholarly works include Cultural Fixity and Hybridity: Strategies of Resistance in Safi Abdi’s Fiction, ‘Conversation with the “Other”: Style and Pathology in Selected African Novels,’ by the Journal of African Languages and Literary Studies and ‘Humanity and Mother Nature: Ecological Reading of Ole Kulet’s Blossoms of the Savannah’ by Kenya Studies Review. Among his most recent works are ‘The Centre and Pathology: Postmodernist Reading of Madness in the Oppressor in Contemporary Fiction’ and Postmodern Reading of Contemporary East African Fiction: Modernist Dream and the Demise of Culture by Routledge. His research interests are postcolonialism, psychological criticism, Black aesthetics and eco-criticism. He currently teaches literature at Murang’a University of Technology, Murang’a, Kenya.

John Mugubi is a professor of film and theatre arts at Kenyatta University. He has more than 20 years teaching experience in the areas of film, drama, literature and Japanese language and culture. Prof. Mugubi holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Nairobi and a PhD from Kenyatta University. Currently, he is the Dean at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, Film and Media Studies, Kenyatta University. He has published extensively in film, dramatic arts and literature. He has more than fifty publications on film. He focuses on screenwriting, playwriting, film genres, film theory and criticism, stylistics and research methods in the visual and performing arts. Prof. Mugubi is the current chairman of Film Lecturers and Trainers Association – Kenya (FleTA-K). He also chairs the Kenya International Theatre Festival Board of Trustees.