ABSTRACT
Given the sheer extent of the African diaspora across the Americas, from Canada to Brazil via the Caribbean, it comes as no surprise that a comprehensive account of its literatures is still lacking. Local, national and regional studies exist, covering a wide range of issues, literary genres and discourses, even if not all regions have been studied to the same depth. The African-descendant literatures in the U.S. and the Caribbean have been subjects of study throughout the 20th century, however they have only come into focus in Hispanoamerica since the 1970s, academic pioneers being Richard Jackson, Marvin Lewis, Martha Cobbs, William Luis as well as authors such as Manuel Zapata Olivella and Quince Duncan. While mapping African-descendant literatures throughout the Americas is still a virulent task, future comparative studies have to negotiate an obvious challenge. On one hand, the agenda and issues that diaspora groups have contended with, and continue to contend with, are very similar (→ Transnational Migration, I/44; Migration Literature, III/2); The role of the artist as being committed to her/his community is widely accepted, as well as several thematic and formal aspects in visual arts (→ Visual Cultures, III/45) and literature pointing towards shared issues and parallel developments. On the other hand, local settings defined by different ethnic structures (→ Ethnicity, I/25), multifaceted constellations, and power relations generated by these structures inevitably lead to differences – temporal or thematic asynchrony – which in turn motivate transfers, stimulating or blocking the circulation of ideas and paradigms. Brent Hayes Edwards (2001) refers to the concept of décalage (“disjuncture” in time and space), borrowed from Léopold Sédar Senghor, as a crucial characteristic of the African diaspora in the Americas. This basic notion might help grasp the highly diversified literary panorama of African-descendant literatures in the Americas.
