Short Abstract

Grounded in the "African Prisms" theme, this panel examines how anglophone African noir fiction refracts postcolonial realities. Presentations will analyze how the crime genre hybridizes with gothic, speculative, and domestic modes to expose contemporary urban anxieties.

Long Abstract

In alignment with the ECAS 2027 theme "African Prisms," this panel explores how contemporary anglophone African noir and crime fiction serves as an analytical lens to refract, deconstruct, and re-evaluate complex socio-political and existential realities across the continent. Once defined by Eurocentric conventions, the genre is dynamically remapped by African writers who weaponize its tropes to expose structural vulnerabilities, postcolonial anxieties, and dark economies. This panel examines how different generations and geographies utilize the aesthetic of noir to mirror changing landscapes and shifting moral boundaries.

Particularly welcome are presentations that analyse the evolution of urban noir, recent satirical subversions of the genre, and the translocal or speculative turns in African fiction. We encourage analyses of texts where traditional crime narratives merge with sci-fi, political precarity, and contested models of masculinity and femininity. Also relevant are explorations of domestic noir, and works revealing the hybridization of the genre with African spiritualities and world-gothic modes.

Ultimately, this panel aims to demonstrate that anglophone African noir is not merely escapist literature, but a sophisticated, flexible archive. It acts as a prism that breaks down singular narratives of African cities and societies into a pluralized spectrum of survival, resistance, and the complex phenomenon of human agency.

This Panel has 3 pending paper proposals.
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