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- Convenors:
-
Ifeyinwa Okolo
(Federal University Lokoja)
Joseph Abel (Federal University Lokoja)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Linguistic and visual (de)colonialisms
- Location:
- Room 1015
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel seeks contributions that interrogate literary narratives, films, and performances which focus on the movement of migrants from Europe to Africa and not the more popular Africa to Europe move. Where are the European migrants in Africa and what are they up to?
Long Abstract:
When Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King (1954) was published, some critics argued that the novel was an allegorical representation of an inversion of the migrant African’s experience in Europe. What Laye did was to take the story of “the clueless African lost in unfamiliar Europe”, replace the African with a European and place him in an unfamiliar African setting to see how he survives. Laye’s novel encapsulates the human being, irrespective of race struggle with adjusting to the unfamiliar when uprooted and thrown into a new environment.
Today, the dynamics of migration have become more complex. Depending on who the migrant is and where the destination is, different narratives are appearing in literary works to account for these movements. Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor (2018: 5-6) recognise the following as some features of the migration narrative: “the portrayal of the debilitating conditions that propel migrants to leave the continent, the experiences of migrants abroad, their relationship to the homeland, and the negotiation of a possible return, be it physical or psychological”. These, however, seem to account for the Africa to Europe movements but not the Europe to Africa moves since their study did not focus on the latter. This panel investigates if the same features apply to the latter group.
The panel seeks contributions that interrogate literary narratives, films, and performances which focus on the movement of migrants from Europe to Africa and not the more popular Africa to Europe move. Where are the European migrants in Africa?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper interrogates European-African sexual alliances in four novels, reading blackness and whiteness (in fact, racial difference) as bargaining chips with varying connotations of power, dominance, and influence.
Paper long abstract:
Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King which encapsulates the human struggle, irrespective of race, with adjusting to the unfamiliar says a lot about reading migration stories through multifocal lenses. The features of Africa to Europe migrations identified in Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor (2018: 5-6) also apply to the Europe to Africa migrations because, what else do migration stories all over the world do if not portray the conditions that propel migrants to move, their experiences abroad, relationship to the homeland, and the negotiation of a possible return? We establish this in the paper by tracing the sexual relationships between European migrants and Africans in selected African novels.
Several countries in Africa in recent times have seen sex tourism on the rise. The tourist-attraction combination is usually of older European men/women versus younger African men/women. It is too simplistic to dismiss these relationships as exploitative, with the Europeans doing the exploiting and the Africans being the exploited. Representations of these sexual alliances in some African novels question the idea of sexploitation and suggest these relationships as more of ‘resource exchange’. This paper interrogates black-white sexual alliances in four novels: Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King, Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy, Jude Dibia’s Blackbird and Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow. At the risk of destroying the stereotyping of the African as exotic sex object (alongside the Asian), blackness and whiteness (in fact, racial difference) are both read in the novels as sexual bargaining chips with varying connotations of power, dominance, and influence.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the activities of Richard Churchill, a European character in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun during the Biafran War in Nigeria. The paper did an in-depth study of his character, his zeal towards the Biafran cause and queries his motive.
Paper long abstract:
Africa has always witnessed a surge of migrants well before the era of globalization. First, she was balkanized and her resources scrambled over; colonized, acculturated and even proselytized by the mostly one-directional North-South migration of Europeans. Globalization has ensured that migration takes different dimensions and directions. However, the world remembers the activities of early European migrants to Africa and the Europeans themselves recalls too. Richard Churchill, a prominent character in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Kainene’s lover, is an English writer who comes to Nigeria to explore Igbo-Ukwu art. As a researcher, Richard associates only with expatriates and soon sees and identifies himself as a Biafran after meeting Kainene. Richard becomes a staunch supporter of the Biafran cause, throws his entire weight and skills into the war and starts writing a book about Biafra. Relying on sociological theory, this paper closely studies the activities of Richard first, as a researcher of arts, many of which were looted by early explorers and as an avid supporter of the Biafran cause, a budding nation which he closely identifies with. A European who uses his privilege to publish articles about the Biafran war and curries financial support for Biafra. The paper also seeks to answer questions bothering on Richard’s motive for his good spiritedness.
Keywords: Migrants, Restitution, Biafra, War, European, Richard
Paper short abstract:
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) discusses European migrants' psychic and physical struggles in an African rustic setting of Congo. Kurtz's and Charles Marlow's rhetorical strategies and overwhelming experiences are interpreted using Freud's psychoanalytical concepts and Trauma theory .
Paper long abstract:
"Dream myth" is one dimension that nourishes migrant narratives. On the contrary, the tendency to leave homelands suggests a complex reality with dominant propaganda both on individual and collective levels. Certainly, expatriation is built on a dream and fueled by socio-economic or Socio-political dilemma. To Jennifer T. Springer (2016:250), migration creates a distance which causes physical and psychological disconnection from home irrespective of the point of movement—Africa to Europe; Europe to Africa. A deeper interpretation recognizes this disconnection as "migration space" and thus raises deeper questions of how migratory acts cause psychological and social traumas. Conrad's narrative is entrenched in the European perspective laced with biased and derogatory image of Africa but there are justifications that propel migrants to negotiate spaces between the homeland and the unfamiliar setting. Kurtz's and Charles Marlow's rhetorical strategies, narrative patterns and overwhelming experiences are interpreted using Freud's psychoanalytical concepts (Freud 1949; Eagleton 2008) and Trauma theory (Cathy Caruth 1995; Felman & Laub 1992). Trauma discourse have offered an interesting discussion on Africa's rustic environment that has threatened European migrants' mental freedom leading to insomnia, nightmares, hallucination, neurosis, dissociation or death. According to S. Felman and D. Laub (1992:69), overwhelming experiences cause trauma survivors not to be in touch with reality and thus remain entrapped in an event that has no ending and no closure. The above view describes Kurt's psychological state which according to Dodhy and Kur (2018:78) depicts signs of traumatic experience which resists language but adopts language in narrating traumatic events.