Decolonizing the Global: African Perspectives on World Literature

Abstract

This article offers a critical reflection on the place of African literatures within the contemporary framework of so-called world literature, as articulated by the Institute for World Literature (IWL, Harvard University), drawing on the theoretical work of David Damrosch. The analysis is grounded in the hypothesis that contemporary African literature engages in a dual movement: on the one hand, it reaffirms historical, cultural, and linguistic affiliations shaped by struggles for national affirmation; on the other, it enters into critical dialogue with the world literary system, while remaining subject to hierarchical logics inherited from coloniality. Taking as a point of departure Chimamanda Adichie’s notion of “the danger of a single story,” which challenges reductive stereotypes and advocates for the re-inscription of African voices into transnational grammars, the article develops a theoretical reflection based on authors such as Dipesh Chakrabarty (Provincializing Europe, 2000), whose project of decolonizing thought seeks to render visible alternative histories and epistemologies without subordinating them to the Western model of modernity; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who proposes the decolonization of language and imagination as a precondition for genuine globalization (Globalectics, 2012); and Felwine Sarr, whose Afrotopia (2016) outlines a vision of African modernity rooted in local epistemes and future-oriented imaginaries. Collectively, these contributions point to the urgency of reconfiguring the terms of global literary belonging. From this perspective, the article contends that African literatures should not be regarded as peripheral to the world literary system, but rather as discursive centers in their own right – capable of reorienting how we conceptualize the literary, historical time, and universality. It interrogates world literature as a model of uncritical inclusion and instead proposes a conception of globality grounded in the radical diversity of worldviews and voices. The conclusion asserts that the repositioning of African literatures does not occur through assimilation into the norms of the center, but through their capacity to formulate alternative centralities – rooted, plural, and insurgent. The gesture of world-making from Africa is thus not only literary, but also political and epistemic, calling for a thorough rethinking of the categories of global literary criticism.