Fractal Afro-Poetics: Afrodiasporic Writing Practices in the AfroeuropeCyberspace

Watch the keynote by Mayra Santos-Febres (U Puerto Rico / Recinto Río Piedras) at the Navigating Afro-Knowledges Conference, U Bremen

In the context of the Navigating Afro-Knowledges conference, organized by the ERC project AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE, professor and writer Mayra Santos-Febres gave a keynote lecture on “Fractal Afro-Poetics: Afrodiasporic Writing Practices in the AfroeuropeCyberspace”, moderated by Nelson Sindze Wembe (U Bremen).

Her talk departed from a historical perspective that establishes 400 years of independent maroon AfroDiasporic cultures in the Caribbean and Latin America, creating parallel African societies within the outskirts of European colonization and slavery. At the same time, it re-read the production of 200 years of literary production of Afro Latin American and Afro Caribbean Literatures taking into consideration how cyberspace creates a supra national exchange of literary traditions that defies traditional ways of reading and producing literature. Asking how, according to this historical panorama, we should read AfroDiasporic literary cannons, Mayra proposed to read it in a supranational, maroon way, going beyond the fragmented national readings of afrocentered literature, in dialogue with contemporary African Literatures and emphasizing the fractality of our literary and critical understanding of our cultural and literary productions in the age of AfroeuropeCyberspace.