For a Post-Historical Poetics in the Contemporary African Urban Novel

Abstract

This paper argues that contemporary African literature has exhausted the impetus that the postcolonial condition gave it and that recent iterations of African urban novels have set in motion a new way of looking at and reading African literature that is referred to here as post-historical poetics. That African literature has had a protracted discourse should not take away from this article’s propositions of emergent poetics. Indeed, this article is an attempt to suggest a possible alternative reading that would open up a novel avenue, roughly outline such an alternative reading, contribute to the prevailing discourses and champion for sustained dialogues without foreclosing continuing or any further critical possibilities. This paper is aware that the proposition of a posthistorical poetics can hardly be discussed exhaustively in such a brief format and thus seeks solely to sketch the approaches to such a reading. By looking at two novels with strong leanings to fantasy and science fiction, the paper seeks to analyse and exemplify those narrative modes and techniques that would make up the suggested post-historical poetics.