How and Why Do Literary Scholars Study Websites?
Insights into a Research Project on Afroeuropean Activism in the Digital Space #
Recently, more and more people of African descent in Romance-speaking Europe have started to tell their stories online, re-appropriating the narrative of who they are and why they are here. The ERC-funded AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE project investigates how they use the internet to gain visibility and participate in knowledge production. Studying online magazines, blogs and other digital formats, it explores how people of African descent narrate experiences of racialization and of (un)belonging on their own terms.
In this talk, I outlined the research design of the ERC project and showed how literary and cultural studies can contribute to a debate of digital diaspora as they provide us with a methodological toolbox that allows us to explore the poetic strategies, intertexts and symbols used to imagine a diasporic community online, unravelling the narrative textures that shape emerging Afrodiasporic subjectivities.