“…While the terms Afropolitan and Afropolitanism have been embraced as a celebration of African identity and ways of being global, it has been critiqued for privileging consumerism, commodifying African culture, reproducing western lifestyle and re‐centring the west as the “world” (Dabiri ; Santana ). Further, Grace Musila () has insightfully pointed out that Afropolitan and Afropolitanism are contradictory counternarratives because they further confirm colonial narratives about Africa as ungeographic:The very necessity of qualifying Africans’ being in the world only makes sense when we assume that, ordinarily, Africans are not of the world. I am yet to hear of Europeans terming themselves Europolitans, or Americans as Ameropolitans.…”
Section: Becoming Global: Afropolitanism and Afropolitan Imagineeringmentioning
confidence: 96%
“…The principal goal of Afropolitan Imagineering is the projection of Africa(n) as global, thereby debunking the assumption that one cannot be “global while African” (Musila ). Thus, a global Africa(n) is Afropolitan.…”
Section: Becoming Global: Afropolitanism and Afropolitan Imagineeringmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Thus, a global Africa(n) is Afropolitan. Global, in this case, is synonymous with cosmopolitan; and the “pairing of African and cosmopolitan” (Musila :110) yields the term “Afropolitan”. Taiye Selasi first introduced this term in 2005 to make sense of the modern, cosmopolitan and transnational African emigrants in the diaspora who did not fit the racist stereotypes of Africans as non‐global and ungeographic (Selasi ).…”
Section: Becoming Global: Afropolitanism and Afropolitan Imagineeringmentioning
Branded as “Africa's first luxury perfume”, the Scent of Africa perfume is a “scented declaration of progress”. Particularly fascinating is the commercial advertisement for the perfume, which I argue to be an “Afropolitan Imagineering” project that is intended to signal Africa's rise and its new association with global cosmopolitanism. At first glance, the Scent of Africa perfume advertisement seems to point to the ways in which Imagineering projects can reproduce colonial discourses about Africanness. However, in this article, I suggest that we complicate the advertisement and examine its subversive potential to decentre whiteness and celebrate Africanness while writing Africa into the world. Despite this subversion, I conclude that African worlding practices should disinherit the familiarity of Eurocentric geographic determinism that is embedded in Afropolitan Imagineering and instead become informed by afro‐futuristic imaginings and disidentification politics.
“…While the terms Afropolitan and Afropolitanism have been embraced as a celebration of African identity and ways of being global, it has been critiqued for privileging consumerism, commodifying African culture, reproducing western lifestyle and re‐centring the west as the “world” (Dabiri ; Santana ). Further, Grace Musila () has insightfully pointed out that Afropolitan and Afropolitanism are contradictory counternarratives because they further confirm colonial narratives about Africa as ungeographic:The very necessity of qualifying Africans’ being in the world only makes sense when we assume that, ordinarily, Africans are not of the world. I am yet to hear of Europeans terming themselves Europolitans, or Americans as Ameropolitans.…”
Section: Becoming Global: Afropolitanism and Afropolitan Imagineeringmentioning
confidence: 96%
“…The principal goal of Afropolitan Imagineering is the projection of Africa(n) as global, thereby debunking the assumption that one cannot be “global while African” (Musila ). Thus, a global Africa(n) is Afropolitan.…”
Section: Becoming Global: Afropolitanism and Afropolitan Imagineeringmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Thus, a global Africa(n) is Afropolitan. Global, in this case, is synonymous with cosmopolitan; and the “pairing of African and cosmopolitan” (Musila :110) yields the term “Afropolitan”. Taiye Selasi first introduced this term in 2005 to make sense of the modern, cosmopolitan and transnational African emigrants in the diaspora who did not fit the racist stereotypes of Africans as non‐global and ungeographic (Selasi ).…”
Section: Becoming Global: Afropolitanism and Afropolitan Imagineeringmentioning
Branded as “Africa's first luxury perfume”, the Scent of Africa perfume is a “scented declaration of progress”. Particularly fascinating is the commercial advertisement for the perfume, which I argue to be an “Afropolitan Imagineering” project that is intended to signal Africa's rise and its new association with global cosmopolitanism. At first glance, the Scent of Africa perfume advertisement seems to point to the ways in which Imagineering projects can reproduce colonial discourses about Africanness. However, in this article, I suggest that we complicate the advertisement and examine its subversive potential to decentre whiteness and celebrate Africanness while writing Africa into the world. Despite this subversion, I conclude that African worlding practices should disinherit the familiarity of Eurocentric geographic determinism that is embedded in Afropolitan Imagineering and instead become informed by afro‐futuristic imaginings and disidentification politics.
“…While the question of 'who is excluded from the term [Afropolitan]' (Musila, 2016: 111) is a pertinent one, it should be acknowledged that Selasi's essay draws a very specific picture of the 'Afropolitan identity'. The concept, as defined by Selasi, has clear limits, and there seems little point in extending it to cover all mobile Africans.…”
Section: 'Beautiful Black People': Selasi's Affluent Afropolitanmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Nevertheless, it should be emphasised immediately that the concept, despite all the attention it has received, remains rather poorly defined in terms of theoretical exploration. In consequence, it may well be 'a concept that was expected to run before it had been allowed to crawl and find its feet', as Grace Musila (2016: 110) expresses it. For example, Taiye Selasi's Bye-Bye Babar (2005), often considered to be the inaugural text of Afropolitanism, is not a theoretical text.…”
ANNA-LEENA TOIVANEN COSMOPOLITANISM'S NEW CLOTHES? THE LIMITS OF THE CONCEPT OF AFROPOLITANISM Despite all the attention it has received, Afropolitanism remains undertheorised. Afropolitanism, inspired by the concept of cosmopolitanism, includes an explicit link to the African continent, which may result in promoting racialised and territorialised biases. It is also often conceived as an identity position, which tends to result, first, in unfruitful debates on who qualifies as 'Afropolitan' and, secondly, in generating critical interest in a mere handful of 'Afropolitan' star authors. This article argues that, instead of introducing a 'new' concept, it would be more useful to continue to revisit the concept of cosmopolitanism in order to explore its potentials in the analysis of African literatures.
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