Skip Navigation


Forum for Modern Language Studies Advance Access originally published online on February 20, 2009
Forum for Modern Language Studies 2009 45(2):129-139; doi:10.1093/fmls/cqp002
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
45/2/129    most recent
cqp002v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Loingsigh, A. N.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.

This article appears in the following Forum for Modern Language Studies issue: SPECIAL ISSUE: Global Francophone Africa [View the issue table of contents]

"Alors, et l'Amérique?" Post-Independence African Travel to the United States

Aedín Ní Loingsigh

School of Languages, Cultures and Religions
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
UK

aedin.loingsigh{at}stir.ac.uk

  Abstract

The travelogues Carnets d'Amérique, septembre–novembre, 1974 by the Congolese author Valentin Y. Mudimbe, and Lettres d'Amériques by his compatriot Zamenga Batukezanga provide an important theoretical impetus for reconceptualising African intercontinental travel to the United States. Both texts recount sponsored journeys that took place in 1974 and 1981 respectively within the context of academic and cultural exchange programmes. As such, they provide an important African perspective on globalisation's American engine. Michel-Rolph Trouillet's ideas on the ruptures and connections between the current global order and previous imperial world orders serve to underscore the importance of developing a more historicised approach to globalisation. This is especially evident in the emphasis both authors place on American technology, an issue that emerges as paradigmatic of globalisation's reframing of the age-old question of African tradition versus Western modernity and that draws attention to the "differential temporalities" of globalisation as they overlap in the uneven cultural and economic spaces created by the very processes of globalisation. For both authors, however, Africa is not simply the powerless recipient of global cultural and economic trends but rather a dynamic partner in a complex process of mutual influence.

Key Words: travel writing • francophone African literature • globalisation • American culture • technology


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.