Abstract
In an era of globalisation, there is a need to create more meaningful platforms for resolving political debates, reducing conflict, understanding identity politics, and to establish citizen advocacy beyond representational democracy. Fictional literature has come to represent knowledge and a freedom of expression of ideas, beyond its positioning within the arts, as representations of politics and culture. In a time where we need to explore both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to understanding politics and culture, it is useful to understand the significance of fictional literature, and how the themes that are articulated herein relate to these disciplines. This study will examine the role of fictional literature in politics and culture, particularly within an African and African diasporic context in Pan-Africanism and Afropolitanism. It will discuss the relationship between rhetoric, truth and fictional literature and the status of the socio-political novel, particularly within an African context. It will explore how the subjective imagination can support universal truths around the human condition in times of displacement, diaspora, relational and political disconnect and conflict, and in cultural understandings. This study will be contextualised to African politics and culture, considering key themes represented in fictional literature within the colonial and post-colonial eras in Africa. It will also consider fictional literature as a representation of an African culture within Pan-Africanism, particularly from an African diasporic perspective. It will explore how particularly African fictional literature articulates with other disciplines of study, including cultural theory and in more contemporary times with post-colonial studies, postmodernism and cosmopolitanism, particularly within Afropolitanism. This study will also explore the politics of positioning African fictional literature within the wider global context in World Literature.