African Cultural Studies 901: African Theories ⎻ Space & Time

This course investigates the concept of space in African fiction. It examines how African narratives both indigenous oral art and modern fiction engage space in connection to power, knowledge-making, and ideas about the future. We will analyze how space serves as a context for questioning principles of worldbuilding, reimagining embodiment, and knowledge-making.

Our theoretical foundation spans African and non-African perspectives, including Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, Kwasi Wiredu on ancestral spaces, Cajetan Iheka on animist spatial logics, Wole Soyinka’s mythopoeic spaces, Ato Quayson’s work on urban spaces, as well as Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, Walter Benjamin’s Arcardes Project, and Robert Tally on geocriticism. We will explore representations of space across diverse fictional works: the experimental, psychedelic spaces in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road; the necropolitical world of Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka; the multispecies imaginary in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga; queer utopia in Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda; and the fl neur-esque exploration of Lagos in Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief.