Small Magazines, Literary Networks and Self-Fashioning in Africa and its Diasporas

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This project focuses on the contemporary legacies of black internationalism (c.f. Hayes Edwards) in the construction of African and diasporic solidarity through the study of small magazines, both print and digital. Through their role as sites of intimacy and collaboration, these works give rise to the creation of networks of affiliation and corridors of storytelling which span localities, regions and transnational and diasporic contexts, functioning as active participants in the creation of black and African ideologies in the global imaginary. Small magazines and literary networks play a crucial role in everyday social and political life in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). From the late days of empire to the present day, cultural forms of expression have served as central media through which notions of national, ethnic and civic belonging have developed, while also offering an outlet for the fostering of large-scale forms of activism and for the transmission of new orthodoxies for subjectivity. This interdisciplinary network examines the circulation and production of small magazines in SSA in order to explore the ways in which these publications enable lateral forms of self-fashioning in the early twenty-first century, covering areas including citizenship, sexuality and ethnicity in order to produce an examination of affiliation, identity and civic participation in SSA today. Ranging from formal publications in receipt of state and NGO sponsorship to informal 'zines' circulated through counter-cultural networks and taking forms spanning print and digital media, these new publications are not widely known nor accessible outside of their specific localities; yet, through their vernacular and often-overlapping trajectories of distribution, these publications hold a far more central role in the fostering of everyday practices than their better-known 'high' literary counterparts. Beginning with better-distributed publications including Kwani? (Kenya), Saraba (Nigeria) and Chimurenga (South Africa) and expanding into lesser-known publications, the network will engage with a broad range of forms of social creation through informal networks of literary writing, bringing together scholars with expertise in ethnographic methods, historical study and literary criticism, along with writers, publishers and literary entrepreneurs working in Africa and its diasporas. The network addresses questions including: what forms of identification are produced, contested and authenticated in the small magazines which proliferate across SSA? How do the informal networks produced by publishers, writers and readers function with respect to formalised political and civic networks? What modes of self-fashioning emerge through the entanglements of actors and publics operating in sub-Saharan Africa? These questions will be explored during two research weeks in Cape Town and Kampala; the network's findings will be presented at an international conference to be held in Bristol which will form the basis for a special journal issue showcasing network findings. Additional activities will include public engagement events at the 2018 Africa Writes festival (London); the creation and maintenance of a project website hosting a blog, teaching resources and a working paper for NGOs and cultural organizations working on literary citizenship in SSA; and a range of non-academic articles to be published with Africa in Words.Rather than view its material as passive, the network will emphasise the coproduction of knowledge, developing bespoke research methods and leveraging vernacular forms of literary criticism which span the gap between material and aesthetic approaches. Where study of SSA has been hampered by a reliance on methods which mirror the top-down approach to socio-political intervention in SSA by global powers, this network will undertake a multifocal approach which places its emphasis on the everyday as the ground from which to develop theoretical insight.