CALL FOR PAPERS - Afro-Diasporic Imaginaries in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Latin American/Caribbean Literatures and Visual Arts

Introduction
The term Negritude, which defines the poetic and artistic movement that revolves around questions of race and black identity, appeared for the first time in 1935, in the number 3 of the French magazine The Black Student (L'étudiant noir), specifically in the article by the Martinique poet Aimé Cesaire entitled "Racial Consciousness and Social Revolution". Later on, the term will also appear in the poet's fundamental poem entitled "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land", which was published in 1939 in Paris. Written in free style, the poem
condenses, with the crystallization of the term Negritude, the various manifestations that emerged in different contexts, such as those arising from the Harlem Renaissance in the United States in the 1920s, in addition to those coming from the Indigenism of Haitian literature, and the Cuban Negrismo of Nicolás Guillén from the 1930s.

It is also necessary to highlight the writings of the Martinican sisters Jeanne and Paulette Nardal, precursors of the movement, specifically in their essays published in the magazines Dépêche Africaine and Le monde noir in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The emergence of the term constituted an important stage in raising awareness of the condition of the black man through literature and culture. Thus, the concept of Negritude brings together the concerns and problems present in several black authors, such as those found in the writings of the Haitians Jean Price-Mars (1876-1969) and Jacques Roumain (1907-1944), and in the American Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885), "W.E.B." Du Bois (1868-1963) and James Mercer Langston Hughes (1902-1967), in the Jamaicans Claude McKay (1889-1948) and Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), in the Cuban Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989), in the French Leon Damas (1912 -1978), and in the Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001) in addition to Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) himself.

Through the work of the aforementioned writers in the field of contemporary Latin American and Caribbean literary and artistic research, we can reflect on issues raised by the Negritude movement. In this way, it can be observed a current of thought that begins with the discussions around blackness until reaching -following Kostas Axelos- a "planetary thought" that goes from the "Whole-World" -idea developed by the Martinican thinker and poet Édouard Glissant- to the concept of "Creolity" -proposed by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphael Confiant- and going through themes like the transnational context of the "black Atlantic" formulated by Paul Gilroy, the "black becoming of the world", "brutalism", "Afropolitanism" and the "necropolitics" of Achile Mbembe, as well as the "Afrotopia" by Felwine Sarr. Likewise, the concept of "Amefricanity" by the Brazilian thinker Lélia Gonzales who intends to go beyond an idealized, imaginary or mythologized vision of Africa, to return to the transnational reality in which we live in the American continent. We consider the latter an important tool for understanding the different relationships proposed between literature and visual arts in the Latin American and Caribbean context of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In this regard, our proposal encompasses several currents of thought and cultural movements that inquired and still inquiring into the ethnic-racial relations and into the culture of the black diaspora as a whole. In this context, we consider that the concepts and ideas of the critical theory of race, the blackness movement, whiteness, Afro-American and African studies in general, post-colonial and de-colonial studies, "Afrocentrism", "Afro-pessimism", "Afrotopia" or "Afrofuturism" can be useful tools for the theoretical development of the research that we seek to incorporate into the volume.

The imaginary of the black diaspora is configured under the sign of flow, passages, movement and multiple crossings and encounters. According to Paul Gilroy, the horror and violence of the slave trade produced new identities and cultures, and the black diaspora is configured in the intertwining of geopolitical and geocultural ways of life that result from the interaction between communicative systems and contexts that they incorporate and that, at the same time, modify and transcend. In the words of Édouard Glissant, such entanglements would configure a process of creolization, guided by the unpredictability of the final result. Thus, we look for contributions that explore themes related to politics, religion, globalization, social, racial and ethnic issues, considering the multiple relationships between aesthetics and politics, culture and power in the context of the cultural and artistic production of the black diaspora. We are interested in proposals that examine these themes in the 20th and 21st century from a transnational, transdisciplinary and/or interartistic perspective.

In this volume, we would like to analyze in depth the paths taken by the 20th and 21st century Latin American and Caribbean letters in relation to the experience of the black diaspora in dialogue with the visual arts, as well as in relation to the main themes, forms and techniques used by artist, playwrights, poets, storytellers and writers. In a context of increasing violence and intolerance towards minorities in Latin America, we will welcome analyses that focus on the relationship between literature and the resistance of the cultures created by the black diaspora.
Our hope is to contribute to the field of comparative literature and the visual arts by offering an original and current reading of these themes/questions that revolve around reflections on ethnic and identity issues in Latin American and Caribbean literature and visual arts.

Organizers
- Michel Mingote Ferreira de Azara, PhD Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature (Federal University of Minas Gerais, UFMG), post-doctoral fellow in Comparative Literature at UNESP (São José do Rio Preto).
- Rafael Climent-Espino, PhD Latin American Literature (Purdue University), Associate
Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Modern Languages and Cultures, Baylor University.

Contributions
In keeping with these problematized issues, contributions can take the form of original articles, case studies, analyses, abstracts, interviews or reviews in the following disciplinary fields:
- Critical Race Theory
- African Diaspora
- Comparative literature
- Visual and Performing Arts
- Cultural Studies
- Decolonial and Postcolonial Studies
- Literature, Arts and other Media
- Contemporary Brazilian, Latin American and Caribbean Literature.
- Theory of Literature, History and Culture
We emphasize that the main interest of this volume revolves around the multiple relationships between Latin American and Caribbean literature and visual arts of the 20th and 21st centuries in the context of the aesthetic and cultural production with origin in the black diaspora.
We welcome articles in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French.

Selection Process and Schedule

The selection of proposals will be made in three stages.
1. Submission of abstracts and bio-bibliographic notes: until February 1, 2023.

Contribution proposals must include a title and an abstract of approximately 800 words in the author's usual language (English, French, Portuguese or Spanish). They must be accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographic note, not exceeding 150 words.

2. Selection of proposals: from February 1 to February 28, 2023. The selected proposals will be the subject of an article with a maximum of 35,000 characters, including spaces. A notification will reach authors by February 28, 2023.

3. Deadline to send the articles: June 30, 2023.
Article proposals, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographic note, should be sent to michel_mingote@yahoo.com.br
For any other information in regards to the process, please send an email to michel_mingote@yahoo.com.br
https://nakanjournal.com/appels-a-contribution-3/

Bibliography

APPIAH, Kwame Anthony. Na casa de meu pai. A África na filosofia da cultura. Tradução Vera Ribeiro, 1ª edição. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto, 1997

AXELOS, Kostas. Vers la pensée planétaire. Paris : Minuit, 1964

Bernabé, Jean; Mohamed Bouya taleb-khyar ; Patrick Chamoiseau ; Raphael Confiant. Éloge de la creolité. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.

Césaire, Aimé. Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Paris : Presence Africaine, 2008.

Confiant, Raphael; Patrick Chamoiseau. Lettres créoles. Tracées antillaises et continentales de la littérature, 1635-1975, Paris, Hatier, 1991.

FANON, Frantz. Pele negra, máscaras brancas. Rio de Janeiro: Fator, 1983.

Gilroy, Paul. L'Atlantique noir. Modernité et double conscience, Amsterdam Editions, coll. Atlantique noir, 2010.

GLISSANT, Edouard. Le discours antillais. Paris : Seuil, 1981.
______. L'Intention poétique, Paris, Editions du Seuil, coll. "Pierres vives", 1969, rééd. "Poétique II", Gallimard, 1997.
______. Poétique de la Relation, Paris, Gallimard, 1990.
______. Traité du Tout-Monde, Poétique IV, Paris, Gallimard, 1997.
______. La cohée du Lamentin, Poétique V, Paris, Gallimard, 2005.
______. Une nouvelle région du monde, Esthétique I, Paris, Gallimard, 2006.
______. L'intraitable beauté du monde. Adresse à Barack Obama, avec Patrick Chamoiseau, Paris, Editions Galaade / Institut du Tout-monde, 2009.
______. Philosophie de la Relation. Poésie en étendue, Paris, Gallimard, 2009.
______. La terre le feu l'eau et les vents. Une anthologie de la poésie du Tout-monde, Paris, Editions Galaade / Institut du Tout-monde, 2010.

GONZALES, Lélia. "A categoria político-cultural de amefricanidade". Tempo Brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro, Nº. 92/93 (jan./jun.)

HILL COLLINS, Patricia La pensée féministe noire : savoir, conscience et politique de l'empowerment. Montréal: Les éditions du remue-ménage, 2016.

Kesteloot, Lilyan. Négritude et situation coloniale. Seine: Panafrika/ Silex/ Nouvelles du Sud, 1988.
______. Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine, Khartala, 2004.

Mbembe, Achille. Critique de la raison nègre. Paris, La Découverte, 2013.
______. "Necropolitics". Public Culture, vol. 15, no 1, 1er janvier 2003, p. 11-40.
______. Le Brutalisme. Paris, La Découverte, 2020.
Ménil, René. Légitime défense n°1, Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place, 1979.

Nascimento. Abdias do O Quilombismo. 2ª ed. Brasília/ Rio: Fundação Cultural Palmares/ OR Editora, 2002.

SARR, Felwine. Afrotopia. São Paulo : n-1edições, 2019.

Sédar Senghor, Léopold, Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas. L'étudiant noir. Paris, mars 1935.



Presentation of the Journal
NaKaN, a journal of cultural studies which has its roots in the West Indies, brings together leading academics from different areas. It focuses on cultural margins, based on a transdisciplinary approach that combines concerns for the local and the global, synchronously and diachronically. The journal NaKaN finds its genuine relevance through in the issues and theoretical considerations that it raises and which places it at odds with substantialist readings of the literary, artistic and social margins. The journal focuses on the study of literary, artistic and musical cultures, representations, the history of ideas, etc. The journal's main areas of interest are the study of literary, artistic and musical culture, representations, the history of ideas, etc.


Background
NaKaN as a journal of Cultural Studies was created in november 2020 at the initiative of Mélanges Caraïbes.


Steering Committee
Buata Malela, director (University of Mayotte, France)
Frédéric Lefrançois, editor in chief (University of the West Indies, Martinique)
Gérald Désert (University of the West Indies, Martinique)
Isabelle Petitjean (Independent researcher, France)
Jessy Neau (University of Mayotte, France)
Hanane Essaydi (Cadi Ayyad University of Marrakech, Morocco)
Sandrine Soukaï (Gustave Eiffel University, Paris, France)
Michel Mingote F De Azara (Independent researcher, Brazil)

Reading Committee
Depending on issues of the Journal


updated by Thierno DIA, on 16 Feb 2023