This book approaches the study of AfroEurope through narrative forms produced in contemporary France, a location which richly illustrates race in European spaces.

The book adopts a transdisciplinary lens that combines critical black and urban geographies, intersectional feminism, and textual analysis to explore the spatial negotiations of black women in France. It assesses literature, film, and music as narrative forms and engages with the sociocultural and political contexts from which they emerge. Through the figure of the black flaneuse and the analytical framework of "walking as method", the book goes beneath spectacular representations of ghettoised banlieues, televised protests, and shipwrecked migrants to analyse the spatiality of blackness in the everyday. It argues that the material-discursive framing of black flanerie, as both relational and embodied movements, renders visible a politics of place embedded in everyday micro-struggles of raced-sexed subjects.

Foregrounding expressive modes and forms that have traditionally received little critical attention outside of the French and francophone world, this book will be relevant to academics, researchers, writers, students, activists, and readers with interests in Literary and Cultural Studies, African and Afrodiasporic Studies, Black Feminisms, Migration Studies, Critical Black Geographies, Francophone Studies, and the comparative framework of Afroeuropean Studies.

About the Author

Polo B. Moji completed her PhD at Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III) and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Reviews

By articulating AfroFrench women's quests for the right type of visibility, since blackness is represented as "spectacular in European spaces" (107), Moji has authored a powerful book. It is a long awaited addition to the body of knowledge. Moji begins by answering some of the most vexing questions about black female belonging in the city. Can the AfroFrench woman walk? [...] Moji's writing is dense and intricate. It forces the reader to pay attention. This is because the issues dealt with are heavy and emotive and, as such, words need to be carefully mediated in order to honestly convey the AfroFrench people's quest for equality and recognition. The book reflects the time, a period of some 17 years, and effort Moji has spent carefully thinking
through these issues. The author has intellectually performed a herculean labour and the hefty
work is evident in the analysis.

Nhlanhla Dube, English Department, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Polo B. Moji's Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives analyzes the tension between Black French people's notion of belonging and their presence in French public space. Moji offers a "strolling method" (8) using diverse visual and written materials to show how Black people in certain French public spaces are "out of place" and the ways in which their representations of Blackness are perceived as disruptive. Moji utilizes the gaze of the black flaneuse (strolling woman) to investigate how "race and gender intersect in the (re)mapping and/or repurposing of urban spaces." [...] To address the
notions of belonging, space, and Blackness in France, Moji makes use of documentaries, biographies, and
novels by Black French politicians, authors, artists, and academics.

Fania Noel, The New School for Social Research New York (NY), United States of America

Book Information
ISBN 9780367637538
Author Polo B. Moji
Format Paperback
Page Count 172
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 453g