Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe

463 Pages·2009·7.711 MB·English

by  Elisabeth Bekers, Sissy Helff, Daniela Merolla (eds.)

Transcultural Modernities
Narrating Africa in Europe
Matatu
Journal for African Culture and Society

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Gordon Collier Christine Matzke Frank Schulze–Engler
Geoffrey V. Davis Aderemi Raji–Oyelade Chantal Zabus
†Ezenwa–Ohaeto

TECHNICAL AND CARIBBEAN EDITOR
Gordon Collier

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BOARD OF ADVISORS

Anne V. Adams (Ithaca NY) Jürgen Martini (Magdeburg, Germany)
Eckhard Breitinger (Bayreuth, Germany) Henning Melber (Windhoek, Namibia)
Margaret J. Daymond (Durban, South Africa) Amadou Booker Sadji (Dakar, Senegal)
Anne Fuchs (Nice, France) Reinhard Sander (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
James Gibbs (Bristol, England) John A. Stotesbury (Joensuu, Finland)
Johan U. Jacobs (Durban, South Africa) Peter O. Stummer (Munich, Germany)
Jürgen Jansen (Aachen, Germany) Ahmed Yerima (Lagos, Nigeria)

— Founding Editor: Holger G. Ehling —

(cid:93)(cid:94) Matatu is a journal on African and African diaspora literatures and societies dedicated to
interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social
sciences and cultural anthropology.
(cid:93)(cid:94) Matatu is animated by a lively interest in African culture and literature (including the Afro-
Caribbean) that moves beyond worn-out clichés of ‘cultural authenticity’ and ‘national
liberation’ towards critical exploration of African modernities. The East African public
transport vehicle from which Matatu takes its name is both a component and a symbol of
these modernities: based on ‘Western’ (these days usually Japanese) technology, it is a
vigorously African institution; it is usually regarded with some anxiety by those travelling in
it, but is often enough the only means of transport available; it creates temporary com-
municative communities and provides a transient site for the exchange of news, storytelling,
and political debate.
(cid:93)(cid:94) Matatu is firmly committed to supporting democratic change in Africa, to providing a forum
for interchanges between African and European critical debates, to overcoming notions of
absolute cultural, ethnic or religious alterity, and to promoting transnational discussion on the
future of African societies in a wider world.
Transcultural Modernities
(cid:93) (cid:94)

Narrating Africa in Europe

Edited by

Elisabeth Bekers, Sissy Helff, and Daniela Merolla

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
M atatu Number 36

Cover design: Gordon Collier & Pier Post

Cover picture: Ibrahim El-Salahi, The Tree
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions
de ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents
- Prescriptions pour la permanence’.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2538-7
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2816-6
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Printed in The Netherlands
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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(cid:93) Acknowledgements | ix
(cid:93) Illustrations | xi
(cid:93) Introduction | xiii

NEW EURO-AFRICAN LITERARY SPACES
(cid:93) SABRINA BRANCATO
Voices Lost in a Non-Place:
– African Writing in Spain | 3
(cid:93) PETER PEDRONI
Kossi Komla–Ebri and Migrant Writing in Italy | 19
(cid:93) DANIELA MEROLLA
Poetics of Transition:
– Africa and Dutch Literary Space | 35
(cid:93) ELISABETH BEKERS
Chronicling Beyond Abyssinia:
– African Writing in Flanders, Belgium | 57
(cid:93) EILA RANTONEN
African Voices in Finland and Sweden | 71

LITERARY PERSPECTIVES
(cid:93) FRANK SCHULZE–ENGLER
Transcultural Modernities and Anglophone African Literature | 87
(cid:93) SUSAN ARNDT
Euro-African Trans-Spaces?
– Migration, Transcultural Narration and Literary Studies | 103
(cid:93) ELISABETH BEKERS
Culture in Transit:
– The Migration of Female Genital Excision to Europe
in Euro-African Writing | 121
(cid:93) SUSANNE GEHRMANN
Black Masculinity, Migration and Psychological Crisis:
– A Reading of Simon Njami’s African Gigolo | 141
(cid:93) ELISA DIALLO
Polyphony, Old ‘Lyonnais’ and Animism:
– Africa in Urban Europe in Un Rêve utile de Tierno Monénembo | 157
(cid:93) NADIA BUTT
Negotiating Untranslatability and Islam
in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator | 167
(cid:93) OBODODIMMA OHA
‘Occupying the Isolated Terminal Space and Silent’:
– The Rhetoric of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Poetry of Femi Oyebode | 181
(cid:93) DARIA TUNCA
Linguistic Counterpoint in Gbenga Agbenugba’s
Another Lonely Londoner | 195

VISUAL AND CINEMATOGRAPHIC NARRATIVES
(cid:93) ALEX ROTAS
New Labels, But It’s Still Labelling:
– Ibrahim El Salahi and Mohamed Bushara as ‘Asylum Artists’ in the UK | 215
(cid:93) MARIE–CHRISTINE PRESS
North African Modernities:
– Myth Stripped Bare | 239
(cid:93) DAPHNE PAPPERS
Spies in the Sixteenth Arrondissement:
– Myriam Mihindou Exhibits at the Musée Dapper in Paris | 255
(cid:93) JACOBIA DAHM
Emigrants and Immigrants of Burkina Faso, Senegal, and France:
– Ousmane Sembène’s La Noire De ...
and S. Pierre Yameogo’s Moi et mon blanc | 277
(cid:93) MARIE–HÉLÈNE GUTBERLET
Towards an Aesthetic of the Migrant Self:
– The Film Le Clandestin by José Zeka Laplaine | 287
(cid:93) NWACHUKWU FRANK UKADIKE
Critical Dialogues:
– Transcultural Modernities and Modes
of Narrating Africa in Documentary Films | 297

IMAGINING LIFE – NARRATING STORIES
(cid:93) GRAHAM HUGGAN
Imagining Disaster in the African Postcolony | 315
(cid:93) SISSY HELFF
Refugee Life Narratives:
– The Disturbing Potential of a Genre and the Case of Mende Nazer | 331
(cid:93) KATRIN BERNDT
Shared Paradoxes in Namibian and German History:
– Lucia Engombe’s Kind Nr. 95 | 347
(cid:93) ANNIKA MCPHERSON
From Utopia to Atopia to Diaspora?
– Social (Re-)Organization in a German Refugee Home | 363
(cid:93) BETTINA HORN–UDEZE
“Here in Europe it’s like a secret cult”:
– A Nigerian Migrant’s Narration of Initiation into the System of Migration | 377
(cid:93) CHRISTINE MATZKE
“Performing ‘Africa’” in Germany:
– Members of abok Theatre Company in Conversation | 391
(cid:93) FOUAD LAROUI
Misunderstandings:
– Working Euro-African Life into Fiction | 405

CREATIVE WRITING
(cid:93) FOUAD LAROUI
Le Pyjama bleu | 417
(cid:93) CHIKA UNIGWE
Cotton Candy | 423

Notes on Contributors and Editors | 433
Notes for Contributors | 441

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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We are grateful to the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Afrikaforschung (ZIAF) of
the University of Frankfurt for its generous financial support. Furthermore, we
are indebted to the Musée Dapper, Paris, for their permission to print the
images by the artist Myriam Mihindou and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of
Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, for their permission to print images
by the artist Ibrahim El-Salahi. We also wish to express our gratitude to the
authors Chika Unigwe and Fouad Laroui for kindly contibuting their short
stories.
Since the submission of the final manuscript of the book in July 2007, un-
foreseen delays have tried the patience of our contributors; we deeply regret
any inconvenience caused by this unconscionably protracted gestation.
This book would never have been published without the warm and continu-
ous support of the technical editor of Matatu, Gordon Collier, who handled the
publication process remarkably well in the face of changing deadlines.
Last but certainly not least, many thanks to our families for their loving
patience during the editorial process entailed in bringing out this volume.

ELISABETH BEKERS, SISSY HELFF, AND DANIELA MEROLLA