Hybrids, Nomads, Grafts, – and Afropolitans: The Depiction of Complex Identities in Postcolonial Literature and Theory

Many novels from authors who belong to the so-called “African diaspora” describe experiences of fragmented subjectivity. This chapter reviews some major concepts of diasporic identity, namely hybridity, grafting, nomadology, creolite, and Afropolitanism. Although these and other suggestions have been made to define the diasporic subject, the necessity of continuous reflections of identity can only partially be solved by inventing new categories for it. The example of the Afropolitan figuration demonstrates that a) the felt necessity of identity allocation stipulates authors who seek to authentificate their writing to introduce autofictional elements and b) definitions of ambiguous or polyvalent identities, whether they are introduced by academics or by literary authors themselves, remain embedded in economical or political contexts and therefore often fail to be exact.