African writers such as Chris Abani, Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Biyanvanga Wainaina, Dinaw Mengestu and many others are committed to reimagining the concept of “home” and “what it means to be African?” in the era of mass globalization and “new” diasporic belonging. This phenomenon is what Taiye Selasi terms "Afropolitanism" in her 2005 essay “Bye-Bye Babar (or What is an Afropolitan?”) A concept Achille Mbembe later explains as “the ability to see one’s face in that of a foreigner” and “work with what seem to be opposites” in order to create “an ethic of tolerance” and “revive African aesthetic and cultural creativity in the same way as Harlem or New Orleans once did in the United States” in his 2007 essay, “Afropolitanism.” African writers have either engaged with Africa as a cosmopolitan continent of hybridized cultural heritage of European colonizers and Arabs or portray how African immigrants in other places of the world, particularly America, have created a “new” Black diaspora.

This panel focuses on Afropolitanism and its departure from what Achille Mbembe conceptualizes as “the nativistic reflex;” a term the theorist used in his argument that Afrocentric ideologies such as Pan-Africanism and Negritude foster “a culture of hatred” and division, not “diversity.” While Afropolitanism offers us a new way of re-imagining Africans as global citizens in the age of transnationalism, the fact that critics argue that Afropolitanism oversimplifies and undermines the nationalist struggle of anti-colonial movements in Africa is, among others, the concern of this panel. This panel, in reference to contemporary African literature, invites papers that interrogate this question and more: "who is an African and who is not or what is African and what is not?” 

The clash between Afropolitanist idea of globalization and Pan-Africanist idea of “Africanness” is a major interest in this panel. We welcome submissions on (but not limited to) how Anglophone and Francophone African writers have portrayed Africa’s and Africans’ hybridity against the backdrop of postcolonial politics, migration and “new diaspora.”

The deadline to submit paper proposals is May 15, 2026.

[To submit a proposal, click on https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20044 or go to the PAMLA CFP page, find the "Afropolitanism and Its Postcolonial Tensions" session, click on the session title, and then click on the green “Submit Abstract” button to submit your proposal. (If you’ve never created a User Account at pamla.ballastacademic.com, you will need to do so first).]