Call for paper: Africa 2020 "Artistic, Digital, and Political Creation in English-Speaking African Countries'

French President Emmanuel Macron announced on 3rd July 2018 in Lagos that a Special Season would be organized in France, from June to December 2020, to mark a renewed partnership with Africa, a “varied, strong and diverse continent that will play a part in our shared future”. Even if this cultural focus cannot be abstracted from a broader geopolitical agenda marred by controversial presidential declarations (Joe; Iati), it nevertheless has the potential to offer a somewhat different coverage of the continent. One can only hope that it avoids the temptation to officially “curate into being” “exceptional” artists (Dovey 60), tapping into the all-too-familiar image of Africa as “the supreme receptacle of the West’s obsession with, and about, the facts of ‘absence,’ ‘lack,’ and ‘non-being,’ of identity and difference” (Mbembe 4). 

Marseilles is undoubtedly set to play a major role in Africa 2020. The city’s special relationship with the continent dates back to its function as the first colonial port in France and persists in its multiple diasporic ties and recent position as one of Europe’s main transit points for African immigrants whose status is more and more precarious. One of the city’s major cultural festivals, the multidisciplinary Festival de Marseille, has embraced these historical, cultural, and social ties for the past three years, under Jan Goosens’ directorship.

Building on the recent partnership signed between Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) and the Festival, the peer-reviewed journal of AMU research centre on Anglophone Studies (LERMA), E-rea, has decided to seize the opportunity of Africa 2020 to dedicate a special issue to contemporary creation in English-speaking African countries. The first part of this double issue will consist in a series of interviews with English-speaking African artists programmed at or connected with the Festival de Marseille, while the second part, which is the subject of this call for papers, will focus on English-speaking African countries as places of contemporary artistic, digital, and political creation. Heeding Kenyan political analyst Nanjala Nyabola’s advice to eschew the too reductive ‘Africa rising’ and ‘Africa failing’ narratives in favour of ‘Africa being’ stories, this special issue wishes to focus on “stories reflecting the ambivalence, complexity, challenges and opportunities of African societ[ies] in an increasingly connected world” (Nyabola xxiv).