Reimagining Home: Hybridity, Afropolitan Subjectivity, and the New African Diaspora in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

The emergence of a new generation of African diasporic writers has profoundly transformed literary representations of migration, identity, and belonging within contemporary Anglophone fiction. Moving beyond the binary oppositions that traditionally characterize postcolonial discourse-such as home/exile, center/periphery, and native/foreign- these narratives construct fluid forms of subjectivity shaped by transnational mobility, cultural hybridity, and cosmopolitan consciousness. This study investigates how contemporary Anglophone African fiction reimagines the concept of home through the intersecting theoretical frameworks of hybridity and Afropolitanism, arguing that the New African Diaspora produces alternative modes of belonging that transcend territorial and nationalist conceptions of identity. Employing a qualitative interpretive methodology grounded in postcolonial literary criticism, the study conducts a close textual analysis of selected contemporary African novels, drawing primarily on the theoretical contributions of Homi K. Bhabha, Achille Mbembe, Simon Gikandi, and Taiye Selasi. The analysis demonstrates that home is no longer represented as a fixed geographical origin or nostalgic destination but rather as a dynamic, negotiated, and relational space continually reconstructed through memory, displacement, mobility, and intercultural encounters. Furthermore, Afropolitan subjectivity emerges not merely as a celebration of cosmopolitan mobility but as a critical negotiation of multiple cultural affiliations, historical memories, and global inequalities. The findings reveal that contemporary African diasporic fiction challenges essentialist notions of identity by foregrounding liminality, multiplicity, and transnational belonging, thereby redefining African identity within the context of globalization. By integrating the concepts of hybridity and Afropolitanism into a unified analytical framework, this study contributes to contemporary postcolonial scholarship and African diaspora studies by offering a nuanced understanding of how literary narratives reconceptualize home, identity, and cultural citizenship in the twenty-first century.

کلیدواژه ها:

new African diaspora ، Afropolitanism ، hybridity ، diasporic identity ، Adichie ، Selasi ، Bulawayo ، Mbue