Cette communication analyse la reconfiguration des notions de cosmopolitisme et de migrance dans l’œuvre d’Imbolo Mbue à partir d’une esthétique de la fatigue. Nous avançons l’hypothèse d’un « cosmopolitisme d’endurance », où la mobilité n’est plus vecteur de fluidité mais d’épuisement et d’adaptation contrainte. Pour penser cette usure de l’exil, nous mobilisons la désappartenance (unbelonging), entendue comme rapport critique aux appartenances assignées (Yuval‑Davis ; Brah), et les diagnostics décoloniaux de Seloua Luste Boulbina sur les héritages coloniaux. L’analyse se structure autour de deux opérations narratives : suspension identitaire (identité maintenue dans un entre‑deux permanent) et irrésolution exilique (impossibilité de clore la condition d’exil). Deux micro‑lectures situées dans Behold the Dreamers (2016) et How Beautiful We Were (2021) en suivront les effets : d’une part, attentes administratives et usure du travail domestique à New York ; d’autre part, épuisement communautaire face à l’extractivisme en Afrique. L’examen de marqueurs formels (rythmes de reprise, ellipses dialogiques, temporalités suspendues) montrera comment la scénographie d’une voix subsaharienne compose un art vernaculaire de l’endurance, déplaçant les promesses cosmopolites vers des pratiques situées de négociation du vivre‑ensemble.

With figures such as Achille Mbembe (2005; 2013) emerges a new way of perceiving, depicting and thinking about the position(s) of Africa and African people in our ever-evolving globalized world. After decades of being confined to status such as migrants or refugees, more and more scholars notice and call for a changing perspective; through his concept of Afropolitanism, which is the African version of cosmopolitanism, Mbembe describes the ability of navigating through different cultural systems and values. The Afropolitan thus cherishes their African heritage while positively acquiring Occidental cultures, traditions and ethics, which challenges the long-lasting dominant paradigm of migrance. This shift in perspective notices in literature, through fictions setting cosmopolitan voices that overcome issues raised by multiculturalism in postcolonial societies.
Taking these new data into account, our presentation aims to focus more specifically on Sub-Saharan female characters in situations of mobility—whether social, geographical, or cultural—in order to assess the extent to which gender constitutes a determining factor. Aware of the issues raised by intersectionality, we seek to examine whether female characters’ access to cosmopolitanism is delayed, hindered, or reshaped in comparison to that of male characters. How do these gendered distinctions alter the manifestations of cosmopolitanism? What additional challenges or constraints do female characters have to confront in order to achieve it?
To address these questions, we propose a co-authored presentation that brings together literary case studies and theoretical perspectives.

This paper argues that certain cultural processes are constitutive of uniquely subversive forms of cosmopolitanism situated in Africa. This is witnessed not only in literary imaginaries such as literary texts by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Jennifer Makumbi’s but also in social media texts including Facebook and TikTok. The kind of new borders and sodalities that arise in these texts is one that is not armoured, to echo Gilroy (2008) but one that arises out of contingencies produced by the global south’s social, political, cultural and even comic contexts.
How the convivial African audience that is makes possible these broad textual contexts is the focus of this paper, in addition to the kind of publics and audience that these social media posts assemble and literary solidarities that these texts produce, speculate and articulate. I argue that through the textual aesthetics and attendant politics analysed in this paper, there are intra-African solidarities that recalibrate and also transcend the political boundaries within Africa, usually through humour. Simultaneously, I claim that the characters [re]presented in these texts help to unearth a new subversive form of solidarity that valorises coexistence from and within Africa, while simultaneously eschewing hegemonic forms of universalising cosmopolitan values, propositions and existences.

The novel Cœur Tambour (Heart Drum, 2016) explores the emergence of a Rwandan woman singer and the creation of her successful musical group. This study explores Africa’s position in the transformations brought about by digitalization and media culture.
How can Afropop be interpreted as an expression of contemporary Afropolitanism ? This contribution examines how Cœur Tambour from Scholastique Mukasonga represents an intersection of cultural exchanges and a musical-political gesture at the heart of the group.
Mukasonga first offers a reflection on Afropolitanism through the phenomena of circulation and travel across the world, notably through the “groupie” effect. Indeed, the fictional singer Kitami attracts a large number of fans through her Afropop music and conveys a message of inclusion, sapphism, and open-mindedness. The global transformation of the music industry shows how the singer herself becomes a brand.
Central to this artistic process is Kitami’s voice, which functions as a site of temporal convergence. The singer Kitami enters a state of trance through music during her performances. She sings in multiple languages. In contrast to today’s meticulously choreographed concerts and spectacles, trance, in this context is a spiritual and political gesture that reconnects music to ancestral memory and communal experience.
Finally, in opposition to nationalism and individual withdrawal, the novel portrays a female singer who stands for cultural exchange. Her musical style also resonates with global transformations and embraces hybridity within its genres. Her band is composed of musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds : drummers from USA, Guadeloupe and Jamaica.