Refusing interpellation: a double bind of African migrant writing

In this paper, I explore the possibility of writers who can be collectivized by their contemporaneity in the world literary arena and who, by some tacit acknowledgement of the determinate institutional constraints in this arena, register a type of refusal to be interpellated as “African writers.” They are thus united by their refusal of interpellation, an affinity for writerly self-determination, which finds its trace in their literary productions. In doing this, significantly, the writing seems to suggest a deferral or diverting of the ethnographic imperative which would have African migrant writing respond to all manner of calls that are put out, all of which seek to delimit and make recognizable so-called “African” literature. The source of the ethnographic call is quite specific, though it does not mean that it is singular. It therefore emerges that, as they pertain to African writing, our reading practices seem overdetermined by a curious predisposition that seeks to make individual voices intelligible according to a particular structure of recognition. This anticipated rubric, or the unique stage directions established for contemporary African writing limits its world-making potential