Submitted Article
"US-American Racial Politics in French Spaces: Examining the Contemporary Relevance of William Gardner Smith's The Stone Face." The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research
First published in 1963, William Gardner Smith’s novel, The Stone Face, unveils the story of Simeon Brown, an African American journalist who escapes to Paris as a way of fleeing the ubiquity of racial violence he experiences in the United States. At the time, Paris had acquired a reputation as a safe haven for African American artists and intellectuals where they could evade the racial cast system entrenched in the United States. It is during his stay in Paris that the protagonist of Smith’s novel slowly develops an awareness of racial hierarchies emerging from France’s colonial history—an awareness that disrupts his initial idealized image of Paris as a racially tolerant paradise. This evolving awareness compels him to “translate” and re-contextualize his understanding of institutional and cultural forces that shape racial politics and violence beyond US-American borders. In a certain fashion, Smith’s protagonist develops comparative tools that enable him to not only contextualize but also relate struggles for racial justice as well as opportunities for forming alliances across national boundaries. At a time when prominent French political figures, including President Emmanuel Macron, decry the influence of US academic discourse on race studies in French spaces, this presentation will examine how William Gardner Smith’s novel, written fifty eight years ago, can inform these contemporary debates.
(Co-authored with Germán Campos-Muñoz) "Pedagogical Entanglements: Lucian of Samosata, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and the Comparative." PMLA, Journal of the Modern Language Association
Despite its many self-assessments, there is a lacuna in the field of comparative literature when it comes to teaching practice. But the classroom, we believe, constitutes a most significant locus for comparative praxis, a place in which a range of social, institutional, and political concerns converge. This article explores the pedagogical entanglements among texts, students, readers, and teachers, and the significance of these connections in the theory and practice of comparative literature, by examining in tandem two distant pieces where teaching is thematized. We start with the contemporary novel The River Between, by Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, which we read as a diagnosis of the dangers of detaching pedagogy from context. We then shift to Roman antiquity and read the second-century tale “Heracles,” by the Assyrian/Greek rhetorician Lucian of Samosata, as a counterpoint to Ngũgĩ’s diagnosis and a reminder of the ethical imperatives of a comparative pedagogy.
Published Book
Teaching in Times of Crisis: Applying Comparative Literature in the Classroom (Routledge press)
Teaching in Times of Crisis: Applying Comparative Literature in the Classroom explores how comparative methods that are instrumental in reading and teaching works of literature stemming from different regions around the world also provide us with tools to dissect and engage the moments of crises that permeate our contemporary political realities. Written in the form of a series of classroom reflections—or memos—capturing the political environment preceding and proceeding the 2016 US-American presidential elections, this book examines the ways in which the ethics involved in reading comparatively can be employed by teachers and students alike to map and foster “lifelines for cultural sustainability” (to borrow the term from Djelal Kadir’s Memos from the Besieged City) that are essential for creating and maintaining a healthy multicultural society. This book accomplishes this aim through comparative readings of postcolonial works, films, LGBTQ texts, French slam poetry, as well as episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, among other materials. The classroom reflections captured in each memo are shaped by the Appalachian setting in which the discussions and lessons took place. Inspired by this setting, the author develops a pedagogic ethics of comparison—a method of reading comparatively—which privileges local educational spaces in which students find themselves, by mapping the contested cultural politics of Appalachian realities onto a world literature curriculum.
Published Articles and Book Chapters
“Comparative Literature: The View from Appalachia.” Comparative Literature Studies.
In his 2004 article entitled “To World, To Globalize—Comparative Literature’s Crossroads,” Djelal Kadir posits that “comparative literature is defined not by a corpus, a subject matter, an object, or an immutable set of problems” but rather by a dynamic set of practices done in its name.1 Kadir henceforth instrumentalizes the word “world” as a verb. When conceptualized as a verb, the notion of “worlding” or “to world” compels us to examine “who carries out [this] worlding and why?”2 As Kadir explains, “where the foot of the compass rests is inexorably the center. And, since all actions are motivated, the worlding of literature is not random, though the outcomes of the actions, as with the potential of all actions, could well be unintended and accidental.”3 Hence, worlding involves a practice of mapping, thematizing, relating, taxonimizing, and generally conceiving the world in a manner that is always anchored to specific interests, subject positions, and goals. Kadir’s definition of comparative literature as a practice of world-making has obvious pedagogic implications. My goal here is to relate the process of worlding to the idea of “syllabusing,” which functions as a both a pedagogic and comparative method of inquiry. For comparatists, designing a world literature syllabus becomes a world making process that involves a number of operations: these include the selection of a theme; the decision to highlight or mitigate specific voices, experiences, and representations; the process of selecting and relating works stemming from different national and cultural contexts to each other, of privileging and deprivileging different forms of media through which stories circulate; as well as rationalizing the grounds on which selected texts can be compared to each other for the purposes of achieving specific learning outcomes. In designing a syllabus, the comparatist weaves together particular stories from different parts of the globe into a larger meta-story, often composed of texts and counter-texts, which he or she, in turn, uses to theorize or make sense of a given set of global social phenomena. Here, “syllabusing,” as a verb, and from a comparative literature perspective, situates processes of world-making within pedagogic imperatives and conundrums. In this context, it is by examining the ongoing construction and reconstruction of a syllabus from a Comparative Queer Theory and Literature course—a syllabus used in a class I regularly teach—that I will compare and interrogate the invisibility of Appalachian and Kenyan queer identities in prevailing theoretical visualizations of queer spaces across cultural contexts. In particular, I will examine how specific Kenyan and Appalachian texts employ similar rhetorical strategies to contest, respectively, heteronationalist and metronormative narratives that have been used to efface the visibility of queer subjectivities and practices within the local cultural milieus from which they stem. Finally, through a queer reading of Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya4, I will examine how ideas of sexual deviance, ideas that have been used to define Appalachia’s “culture of poverty,” have similarly been instrumental in legitimizing power structures in African colonial contexts.
“Afrofuturism Answers back to Afropessimism” Peeps Magazine.
The term afro-pessimism gained currency in the 1980s and its prevalence has not abated to this day. Indeed, while the number of low-income African countries with a GNP under $700 per capita was 18 during the 1980s, this number had increased to 27 in 1995[1]. The structural adjustment programs imposed on a number of African countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s devastated their economies. In this climate, observers from both inside and outside the continent developed a deep disenchantment about the region’s ability to overcome the challenges that afflicted it, including poverty, youth unemployment and corruption to name a few.
Nonetheless, anxieties, as well as cautious forecasts regarding the futures of many African countries, do not necessarily all fall into the category of afro-pessimism. Toussaint Nothias identifies five analytical components of afro-pessimist logic:
essentialization
racialization
selectivity
ethnocentric ranking
prediction [2]
Afro-pessimists typically offer simplistic generalizations about the continent that ignore differences among countries. They divide and homogenize the continent along eurocentric racial lines, problematically differentiating black sub-Saharan and Arab/Muslim North Africa, while choosing to focus selectively on negative stories from the continent. As Jon Soske, an African studies scholar, observes in his research on afro-pessimism “All evils are derived from something essential to Africa, invariably connected to the presence of tribalism. Africans, it is implied, remain forever cursed by their savage and uncivilized past.”[3]
Films such as Blood Diamond,[4] The Last King of Scotland,[5] or even Hotel Rwanda[6] reinforce some of these afro-pessimist assumptions. Even a popular science fiction film such as District 9[7] (set in South Africa) still portrays some African characters as backward, superstitious cannibals mystified by technology (in this case, alien technology). However, a few other films emerging from the African continent have used afrofuturist aesthetics to counter afro-pessimist assumptions. By pitting local political realities against the conventions of film genres, the films question fixed perspectives on African realities.
"Negotiating Blackness in French Rural Spaces: An Analysis of Kamini’s Hip-Hop Comedy." The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor.
French hip-hop music emerged from the housing projects or banlieues built to accommodate large numbers of immigrant from North and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean brought in to solve labour shortages following the two World Wars. The rap songs stemming from the banlieues sought to capture the realities of these urban spaces in order to make them more visible. Departing from the plethora of studies that focus on French urban hip-hop, this contribution examines instead how rural French black identity is humorously represented and defined in the works of Kamini Zantoko, a French rapper of Congolese origin, who grew up in Marly-Gomont, a village located in the French countryside.
"Negotiating French-Muslim Identities through Hip-Hop." The Journal of Hip-Hop Studies.
Introduction: In the summer of 2016, viewers around the world were confronted with pictures of French policemen fining and forcing Muslim women relaxing on the beach to remove their burkinis, a full bodied swimsuit. Throughout the summer, multiple French cities enforced a ban on the burkini. The list of French towns and cities deciding to ban the burkini from their beaches was extensive. As the summer progressed, more than 30 French towns had set in place ordinances that effectively banned the burkini (CNN). The burkini ban was litigated at the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court, which ruled against it—prompting many French mayors, in turn, to maintain the ban despite the court ruling. Defining the burkini debate as “a battle of cultures,” Frech Prime minister, Manuel Valls, defended the ban by declaring that “the burkini is not a new range of swimwear, a fashion. It is the expression of a political project, a counter-society, based notably on the enslavement of women” (Politico). Elaborating on his stance against the burkini at a government rally, Valls further infamously declared that “Marianne has naked breast because she is feeding the people. She is not veiled because she is free!” (Libération). As a prominent symbol of the French republic, the feminine figure of Marianne is influenced by a classical tradition where the gender of a given noun, such as la République, determines the personified form of its allegorical representation. Since 1792, the idea of the French republic was often represented by feminine figures. Aside from Valls’ problematic definition of female emancipation, his comments also epitomize the ways in which symbols, slogans and ideas used to define the French republic have been instrumentalized as a means to marginalize the country's Muslim population. In an article published in Libération, French historian, Nicholas Lebourg explains that in 1848 the French government issued a competition to choose an image that would symbolize the emergence of the republic. It was in the aftermath of this competition that two images of Marianne emerged: on the one hand, a fully clothed Marianne crowned with sun rays that harkened back to the iconography of the monarchy,—a Marianne that came to represent order and patriotic duty—and a bare breasted Mariane leading the people to social revolution, on the other hand. Thus, while the image of the subversive Marianne was later embraced by the communards, anti-capitalist political groups and others seeking radical social change, the fully clothed Marianne has typically served the purposes of militarists, xenophobic nationalists and other proponents of intrusive state power. In the article, Lebourg notes that Manuel Valls’ own political positions align more with the historic symbolism of the fully clothed Marianne rather than the bare breasted one. If Manuel Valls’ cooptation of the bare breasted Marianne exemplifies the instrumentalization of republican symbols in order to satisfy xenophobic sentiments, then the rhetorical dimensions of Nicholas Lebourg’s response also mirrors how French Muslim rap artists like Médine have deployed similar strategies to answer the growing tide of islamophobia—primarily, by historicizing, reinterpreting and appropriating French republican concepts such as laïcité (secularism) as an integral part of their French-Muslim identity. In the process, French Muslim rappers like Médine question the antagonistic roles they are forced to occupy in mainstream political discourse by presenting themselves as the true heirs of French republican ideals.
"Afro-Futurism and the Aesthetics of Hope in Bekolo’s Les Saignantes and Kahiu’s Pumzi." Journal of the African Literature Association.
Abstract: This article examine how both Bekolo and Kahiu deploy afrofuturist aesthetics in their films Les Saignantes (2005) and Pumzi (2009) in order critique afro-pessimist perspectives from which socio-econmic realities on the continent are often framed. Les Saignantes confronts the viewer with a question: “How can you make an anticipation [or futuristic] film in a country that has no future? It is therefore by juxtaposing political realities against the narrative and aesthetic conventions of film genres that Bekolo seeks to interrogate the seemingly immutable perspectives from which African realities are examined or perceived. Both Bekolo and Kahiu’s films are set in dystopic futures. Kahiu’s film, Pumzi, seeks to question the fatality of present African realities by engaging dystopian politics. It is ultimately through the aesthetics of Afro-futurism that both films manage to critique dominant ways of conceiving the African present by setting their works in alternative futures.
"The Deliverance or the Domestication of Others?: The Dialectics of Emancipation and Cultural Homogenization in Comparative Literature Classes." The Comparatist. (published in 2016)
Introduction: In his work The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, David Palumbo-Liu examines the relevance of World Literature as a delivery system. According to Palumbo-Liu, works of literature bring the lives of others to us. As a system of delivery, literature, therefore, exposes us to alternative cultural worlds that transcend the borders of our own lived realities. However, it is not just others and their worlds that are exposed to us; the “rational” foundations we employ to make sense of our world also become exposed, destabilized and scrutinized in the process. The deliverance of difference is therefore not always a painless process. As a professor of World Literature teaching at an open enrollment university in rural Appalachia, where many students have limited exposure to people and traditions outside their immediate environment, I find that Palumbo-Liu’s analysis effectively captures the pedagogic imperatives and dilemmas that I navigate in my classes. From a pedagogic perspective, Palumbo-Liu’s work offers a useful way of framing and understanding students’ resistance to particular types of texts and reading experiences. It is by envisioning comparative and World Literature classes as delivery systems that this article will frame pedagogic issues as indispensable theoretical platforms on which comparatists can articulate the exigency of the discipline. Such an approach can encapsulate an engagement with some of the following questions: How do we determine, organize and politicize the corpus of what is delivered? How much difference is enough? What delivery methods should we employ? Is translation an effective delivery method? How do literary worlds travel through these delivery systems and how do we make sense of these processes of circulation? These questions do not just summarize debates in the discipline but they also directly epitomize anxieties about the way comparative and World Literature classes should be taught.
"Killing the Angel and the Monster: A Comparative and Postcolonial Analysis of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out." Virginia Woolf and Twentieth Century Women Writers. Salem Press Critical Insights Series. (published in 2014)
Introduction: Much has been written about Virginia Wolf’s The Voyage Out and Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Deploying the aesthetics of literary modernism, both works foreground an intersectional epistemology connecting patriarchy, as a cultural and sociopolitical institution, and the impetus of British imperialism. Originally written in 1912, under the original title Melymbrosia, before undergoing considerable revisions, The Voyage Out seemingly borrows the thematic tropes of the Bildungsroman while ultimately subverting its patriarchal teleology—a patriarchal teleology that concomitantly legitimizes its power through the dynamics of colonial conquest and the “civilizing mission” it purports to uphold. Published in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea, similarly, unravels the coercive cultural and economic politics of patriarchy within the institution of marriage by connecting it to the logic of British colonialism. The two novels, thus, employ discursive strategies that seek to disrupt the authoritative colonizing power of an omniscient “objective” narrative perspective. By problematizing androcentrically projected notions of ideal femininity, both works reveal how such “desiring assemblages,” in this context, are inextricably linked to larger economic and political structures from which British imperialism emerges. To “kill the angel in the house” thus also entails questioning the entire systemic apparatus from which patriarchy justifies its privilege. However, while both texts have been recognized for their ability to tackle the intersections between patriarchy and colonial violence, they have also been critiqued, similarly, for the limitations emerging from their analyses of colonialism, gender and race. For example, in “Woolf, Postcards, and the Elision of Race: Colonizing Women in The Voyage Out” Mark Wolloaeger posits that the portrayal of natives as mere backdrops whose sole purpose are to highlight the inner drama of Rachel, the protagonist of Woolf’s text, “partially reproduces the imperial hierarchy the novel otherwise attacks” (66). Likewise, Gayatri Spivak (as well as other postcolonial scholars) highlights the epistemological limitations of Wide Sargasso Sea by contending that “no perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self, because the project of imperialism has always already historically refracted what might have been the absolutely Other into a domesticated Other that consolidates the imperialist self” (253). A postcolonial comparative analysis of The Voyage Out and Wide Sargasso Sea therefore provides insights into the discursive politics of intersectional systems of oppression as well as the difficulties that emerge from trying to untangle and resist them. The first section of this chapter will focus on the critical intersections between feminist and postcolonial criticism in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out. The second half of this chapter will then proceed to compare Woolf’s novel with Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
"Redefining the Struggle: Remembering the Mau Mau through Hip-Hop Music." Ni Wakati: Hip-Hop and Social Change in Africa. Lexington Books. (published in 2014)
Abstract: This article will analyze the ways in which the memory of the Mau Mau uprising against British colonialism has affected contemporary Kenyan popular culture and politics. The historical legacy of the Mau Mau has emerged as a contested space in which various groups have attempted to articulate and impose their own interests. These debates have pitted loyalists against Mau Mau veterans, Kikuyus against other ethnic groups, and major political parties against each other. The significance of the Mau Mau movement has caused it to retain the status as an important point of reference when discussing Kenya’s political future. The memory of the movement has been employed to depict and critique social injustices in contemporary Kenyan society. These discussions have taken place not only in published works but also in songs. For instance, the rap song “Angalia Saa” (Watch the Time), sang by the Kenyan hip-hop group named Kalamashaka, provides an example of the Mau Mau’s impact on the country’s contemporary popular culture. It is by assuming the personae of Mau Mau fighters that hip-hop artists like Kalamashaka (or K-Shaka) have attempted to communicate their own sense of authenticity. The Mau Mau revolt has emerged as the “authentic” event to which they have asserted their fidelity. This “authentic” event has given them the moral authority to make claims about the present and posit alternative futures. The artistic depictions of the personae of Mau Mau fighters, performed through hip-hop music, dramatize the intense confluence of a series of cultural gestures: on the one hand, a concatenation of pre-colonial, para-colonial, post-colonial phenomena; on the other hand, local and global influences informing the political and poetic frames of reference which are used to diagnose the present.
"Reconfiguring Alien-Nations and French National Identity through Hip-Hop Music." At the Crossroads: Readings of Postcolonial and the Global in African Literature and Visual Arts. Africa World Press. (published in 2014)
Introduction: In the 1980s hip-hop quickly acquired a fan base in France through the popularization of breakdancing and graffiti. Today, France has become the second largest market of hip-hop music in the world (Prévos). The dissemination of hip-hop in France provides a powerful example of the cultural processes through which marginalized groups interact and appropriate each other’s language. Two of the French cities in which hip-hop music prominently established itself are Paris and Marseille. The legendary hip-hop icon Afrika Bambaataa greatly contributed to hip-hop’s popularity in Paris. Following his Parisian tour in 1982, Bambataa sought to promote the growth of local French hip-hop by establishing a chapter of his organization, The Universal Zulu Nation, in the French capital. During the same period, Akhenaton, one of the members of the French hip-hop group I AM, explains that in the city of Marseille “rap music traveled directly from the United States. Between 85 and 88, there were Americans who [arrived on the shores of Marseille and] gave discs and cassettes. They descended from a boat, from a destroyer, or from aircraft carriers with five thousand navy men” (Bocquet, 116). As it was disseminated in French cities including Paris and Marseille, hip-hop quickly became popular, specifically among stigmatized communities. Many impoverished Black and Arab youth of recent immigrant descent found in hip-hop a means to articulate their social and economic exclusion. A number of scholars including Veronique Helenon, André Prevos, Paul Silverstain, Mathias Vicherat as well as Loic Lafarge de Grandgeneuve have all examined the manner in which hip-hop music was appropriated by disenfranchised groups in France. This project seeks to build on the findings that have been provided in the works of these authors by examining how an analysis of French hip-hop can not only inform us about its cultural appropriation but also deliver new insights vis-à-vis the contemporary significance of key historical moments that have characterized the French nation. In this project I will therefore historicize the cultural appropriation of hip-hop in France by answering the following questions: Is the popularity of French hip-hop among stigmatized communities a symptom of larger historical processes in the history of the nation? If so, how does an examination of French rap music inform us about the historical construction of French national identity? I will answer these questions through a literary, historical and socioeconomic analysis that will document the symbiotic relationship between discourses on French national identity and specific rhetorical strategies adopted by hip-hop artists in France.
"From ‘Badman’ to ‘Gangsta’: Double Consciousness and Authenticity, From African American Folklore to Hip-Hop." Journal of Popular Music and Society. (published in 2012)
Abstract: This article analyzes how the mythological figures of the trickster and the badman, key characters in numerous African American traditional narratives, have dramatically influenced perceptions of authenticity and notions of communal agency in U.S. hip-hop. The article tracks the articulation of these folkloric figures in hip-hop music and reveals the extent to which they are symptomatic of key moments in African American history. Badman characters (or gangstaz as they are known in gangsta rap) emerged as meta-juridical figures whose heroic depiction subverted the validity of an evolving legal system that has historically disenfranchised large segments of the African American community. The trickster, the badman and the gangsta thug are all epiphenomena of institutionalized forms of oppression targeted at the African-American community throughout the history of the United States. It is through an exploration of this genealogy that performances of authenticity in contemporary hip-hop become historically intelligible.
"La France inventée en Afrique : un discours sur l’imaginaire collectif." Journal of the African Literature Association. (published in 2011)
Résumé: Cet article examine la manière dont l’image de la France est imaginée en Afrique. Elle analyse la relation dialectique entre l’image idéalisée de la France et l’afro-pessimisme qui paralyse beaucoup de pays africains. En examinant trois romans (Le ventre de l’atlantique par Fatou Diome, Bleu blanc rouge, écrit par Alain Mabanckou et Je vois du soleil dans tes yeux, un livre de Nathalie Etoké) qui mettent en avant le thématique des discours sur l’immigration entre un pays européen, la France, et quelques anciennes colonies françaises l’article documente la façon dont les auteurs africains ont abordé le sujet de la mythification de la France en tant que « terre promise » parmi les habitants francophones de l’Afrique de l’ouest. Les textes analysés dans cet article sont particulièrement choisis dans la mesure où ils adressent la question de l’immigration et du territoire français telle qu’il est imaginé en Afrique noire.
"Signifying Masculinity and Power through the Spectacle of Commodity: A Critical Look at Kenyan Politics." Culturing Manhood and Masculinity. University of Illinois Press. (published in 2011)
Introduction: In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon (1961) describes the African social elite as a bourgeoisie without capital. This characteristic is attributed to Africa’s “postcolonial” leaders, primarily because they are not endowed with the means and infrastructures of production through which their social status as a bourgeoisie can be validated. Conceptions of masculinity as embedded within political power structures have often been problematized within “postcolonial” discourse. African scholars and authors such as Ousmane Sembene (1974) have, for example, explored the theme of impotence as an embodiment of the African leader’s sociopolitical condition. This chapter seeks to analyze the means through which tropes of masculinity and political power, which are manifested within the spectacle of commodity fetishism, operate in Kenya’s contemporary neocolonial environment. The chapter conducts a socio-political analysis of the different symbols of masculinity and power that have been implicitly and explicitly internalized within Kenyan society by asking the following questions: How have conceptions of masculinity and power been constructed in today’s Kenyan society and how (or why) have they “evolved” from their traditional manifestations? What role does the Kenyan and Western media play in constructing new perceptions of manhood and power? And finally, how do these new perceptions participate in the autopoietic economic world system to which Kenya belongs? I shall answer these questions by first focusing on the multiple facets and definitions of power (both at the macro and micro level) that are manifested in neocolonial societies, before analyzing the ways in which they are represented in the Kenyan media and internalized by the society at large.