Launch of our series: A Short History of African Literatures
We say African literatures as we would say European literatures, that is to say, knowing very well that the word does not hold, that the continent overflows, that languages multiply, that stories diverge. And yet we say it. Because history has done this: it has grouped peoples under the same word, first to better dominate them, then so that they can find each other, recognize each other, respond to each other.
This series does not pretend to embrace everything. It’s called little history for a reason. Not out of false modesty, but because a great story here would be a lie. African literatures cannot be summarized. They don’t let themselves be put in order.
What we want to do is reopen windows. Recall that these texts have a thickness, a genealogy, filiations and breaks. That Negritude is not born out of nowhere. That the Senegalese novelists of the 1970s did not emerge, they forced a door. That the question of which language to write in is not a stylistic question: it is a political question.
Each episode will take a period, a turn, a voice. Not to freeze them, to put them back in motion. Because to read these literatures without their history is to hear a sentence without knowing what made it necessary.
African literatures are not a heritage to be preserved. These are still lit fires.
