The Afropolitan Idea: New Perspectives on Cosmopolitanism in African Studies

Abstract

This essay locates the concept of Afropolitanism, introduced in the mid‐2000s by Achille Mbembe and Taiye Selasi, inside a longer historiography on cosmopolitanism in Africa. Used to describe the multifarious ways that Africa is enmeshed in the world, today ‘Afropolitanism’ connects Africa's global metropolises, transnational cultures and mobile populations under a single analytic term, signifying the radical diversity that Africa possesses now and has throughout history. This essay argues that the idea of Afropolitanism has impacted theory on Africa in two ways. First, instead of regarding pluralism as a threat to state stability, Africa's cosmopolitan cities and zones are now thought to be harbingers of a new post‐racial political future; rather than supposing that states will progressively coalesce into defined nations, as per the organic analogy, ethnically heterogeneous states are increasingly upheld as ‘modern’. Second, Afropolitanism marks a radical shift from a longer history of black emancipatory thought. Contra 20th century Pan‐African and Afrocentrist endeavours to create a civilization based on the ‘African Personality’, proponents of Afropolitanism instead propose a world in which there can be no centre for Africa, no cultural integrity, only networks and flows.

Beyond Sovereign Reason: Issues and Contestations in Contemporary African Identity

“…Afropolitanism thus invokes the following credentials: it is cosmopolitan, yet unlike Western cosmopolitanism it is discursive and ‘anti‐ essentialist, open to cultural and intellectual hybridization, but endowed with a particular consciousness for Africa's historical wounds’, yet, inspiring a political moment, one that would contribute to complete the ‘unfinished decolonization process of Africa’ (Gehrmann, , p. 64). During the era of decolonization scholars often feared for the stability of Africa states due to the diversity within the borders of each (Balakrishnan, , p. 3). During this period, newly emancipated states in Africa laid claim to a false homogenous national memory that they never possessed.…”

“…The concept of cosmopolitanism introduced in the 1990s and Afropolitanism in the 2000s provided an alternative to the fear of pluralism. Balakrishnan (, p. 3) explains:

[I]nstead of regarding pluralism as a threat to state stability, Africa's cosmopolitan cities and zones are now thought to be harbingers of a new post‐racial political future; rather than supposing that states will progressively coalesce into defined nations, as per the organic analogy, ethnically heterogeneous states are increasingly upheld as ‘modern’.

…”

“…These models, which were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, sought to ‘abjure any obvious cultural identifications with the West’ and aimed to find a ‘common identity for all people with dark skins’ (Eze, , p. 235). Pan‐Africanism was a ‘determinedly non‐European epistemology – a way of seeing, being and thinking through the world that was uniquely “African”’ (Balakrishnan, , p. 3). Afropolitanism assumes sociopolitical and cultural unity beyond racial solidarity.…”

Afropolitan Sexual and Gender Identities in Colonial Senegal

“…Afropolitanism allows blacks and other marginalized people to be free and thrive in many contexts. For instance, as Balakrishnan (2017) argues, within Taiye Selasi's theory of Afropolitanism, the African diaspora could no longer be represented "as a scattered tribe of pharmacists, physicists and the odd polygamist'; instead, the Afropolitans chose jobs in art, music, politics, or design, preferring the creative high society to fields traditionally reserved for immigrants. They lived in the metropolitan capitals of the world, 'achieving things [their] "people" in the grand sense only dreamed of'" (Balakrishnan 2017, p. 6).…”

“…It is important to remember that a metropolis is one of the most fertile grounds of Afropolitanism. Balakrishnan (2017) writes: "Afropolitanism, contra Pan-Africanism or négritude, located its liberating potential inside the multifarious transnational exchanges of ideas and belongings occurring all over the continent but especially in the African metropolis. By studying these sites as futurist zones, the colonial city's violent pasts became also refocused as a precondition to post-racial universalism.…”