Jeannot Moukouri Ekobe, Dr. des.

Dr. Moukouri Ekobe was an associate doctoral student at the Graduate College from 2016-2020.

Dissertation Abstract

The (re-)imagination of the national in times of transformation. An Afropean aesthetic intervention

The present research work examines how Léonora Miano (La Saison de l’ombre), Diran Adebayo (Some Kind of Black) and SchwarzRund (Biskaya), three authors from the ethnic margins of their respective nations (France, England, Germany), capture, narrate and negotiate the moment/process of transformation due to an ever-increasing transnationalization of the living environment. Using various methods of analysis from postcolonial theories, cultural studies, Afro-feminism, intersectionality and critcial whiteness studies, the different aesthetic strategies of the writers and the results obtained by them are highlighted. While Léonora Miano attempts to insert the memory of the slave trade into the French national narrative, Diran Adebayo highlights the heterogeneity and ethnic fragmentation of the British nation. Finally, SchwarzRund’s writing is an opportunity not only to reconstruct the historical links between the German nation and the “black world”, but also to negotiate a legitimate belonging of Afro-Germans to the German nation. In addition, the Writing allows her to highlight the experience of Black Germans, which has been neglected in German literature until now. In a context of ever-increasing transnationalization/transformation of the living space, the literature of these Writers from colonial and postcolonial migration appears to be a particular form of imagination from the Black periphery of the nations in question. This imagination is a critical examination of the question of the national