Short Abstract

This panel explores how oral and performative aesthetics such as rap and slam reshape the conventions of the contemporary African novel, and what their incorporation into literary texts reveals about contemporary literary and aesthetic practices.

Long Abstract

Bringing together Senegalese and French scholars, this panel explores how oral and

performative aesthetics such as rap and slam reshape the conventions of the contemporary

African novel, and what their incorporation into literary texts reveals about contemporary

literary and aesthetic practices. While considering the affinities between rap and slam, the panel

will also attend to the specificities of each form.

Rap, in particular, occupies a prominent place in contemporary African fiction. In Marc

Alexandre Oho Bambe’s Les Lumières d’Oujda (2020), for instance, the rappers Yaguine and

Fodé embody the emancipatory, resilient, and decolonial potential of rap. In Jean Bofane’s

Congo Inc. (2014), the protagonist Isookanga’s musical preferences contribute to a

reconfiguration of the tension between urban modernity, associated with Kinshasa and rap, and

the ancestral culture of the Ekonda people.

The relationship between literary writing and musical performance is also embedded in the form

of these works. Les Lumières d’Oujda, with its extended passages of punctuation-free poetic

prose, lends itself to rhythm, chanting, and rap performance. Alongside Oho Bambe’s work, the

novels of Gaël Faye, notably Petit Pays (2016), and of Senegalese writer and rapper Insa Sané,

invite us to consider the interplay between the “rapped novel” and “novelistic rap,” and the

political and aesthetic possibilities of transmedial writing.

Finally, the works of slam artists who have turned to fiction, such as Congolese writer Fann

Attiki (Cave 72, 2025) and Gabonese artist Kemit (Basquiat, l’Africain, 2024), provide an

opportunity to examine the movement from oral performance to novelistic textuality.

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