Postcolonial Narratives: Literature of Migritude

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the history of migritude, a phenomenon that arose among the African intellectual emigration at the beginning of the 21st century. Its origin is associated with the name of the Kenyan writer of Indian origin Shailja Patel, the author of poetical show (2006) and the poem under the title “Migritude” (2010). As a result, a literary movement of the same name was formed, the bias of which is connected, on the one hand, with the renewal of the format of post-colonial narratives and their themes, and, on the other hand, with the tectonic changes that have taken place on the world stage in the context of globalization. The author of the article focuses on the ego-story of Shailja Patel and its transformation, primarily due to content, into the history of an entire generation living in the era, which coincided in time with the situations of postcoloniality and postmodernity. Addressing the issues of colonialism and post-colonialism, racism, segregation and migration is not new. Eventually women joined the discussion and set themselves the task of answering the question posed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay “Can Subaltern Speak?” They radically changed the range of topics proposed for discussion by addressing the ideas of gender equality and the fight against stereotypes, focusing on the problems of social and professional identity without regard to ethnicity and race. The article identifies a number of the most famous authors of migritude (Fatou Diome, Christina Ali Farah, Igiaba Scego, researchers of their works Augusta Irele and Ashna Ali, etc.) and the topics they refer to. Particular emphasis is placed on their interpretation of the problem of identity in the context of the strategy of interculturalism in conjunction with the processes of globalization, liberalization, democratization and digitalization. The author comes to the conclusion that in recent years the discursive field of migritude has been forming with its own borders (within the Diaspora) and practices (primarily adaptative), terminology, intellectual and social communities, activists and sympathizers. In conditions when migration has become a marker of the modern world order migritude has become a norm for them as an opportunity to realize a number of their most important intentions, including self-realization, obtaining a profession, and achieving success.