Combined and Uneven Comparisons. Rethinking the Fields of African and Postcolonial Literary Studies within the Debate on World-Literature. Notes for New Comparatist Avenues

Abstract

The project "Combined and Uneven Comparisons. Rethinking the fields of African and Postcolonial literary studies within the debate on world-literature" funded by The São Paulo Research Foundation (2020/07836-0) is situated in the fields of African literary studies and postcolonial literary theory, to be addressed as two fields characterized by a significant proximity and in growing affirmation within Brazilian and global academic and critical contexts. Proposing a mapping of critical paradigms produced within the field of postcolonial studies, with particular focus on the recent developments that characterize the debate on world-literature, the project analyses a corpus of established contemporary African writers, with the aim to consolidate a new theoretical category that corresponds to the notion of (semi-)peripheral African novel. The main hypothesis is to tackle this new theoretical category as a paradigmatic literary form in order to set the basis of a new theoretical approach and also for the establishment of a possibly original field of study identified as Comparative African Literatures. Outlining the research that will be developed within the project and the state of the art from which its main objectives have been defined,  the aim of this article is to draw some new comparatist avenues and critical possibilities within the fields of postcolonial and African literary studies.