What are the Scholarly Objectives?

This ERC project explores how African and Afrodescendant people in Romance-speaking Europe go online to gain visibility, raise their voices and re-appropriate the narrative of who they are, what groups and contexts they relate to and why. It conducts a qualitative analysis of representative case studies using a semiotic approach that unravels the texts and textures of digital platforms to decode poetics of digital writing and to understand their impact in imagining Afrodiasporic self-positionings.

Since the turn of the millennium, we have seen a considerable increase of digital platforms operated by people of African descent that have not been extensively studied. Drawing from my prior findings, this project will provide groundbreaking insights into how African and Afrodescendant internet users create a digital space to articulate their own narratives and (self-)images. It will give answers to how they position themselves as members of (transnationally connected) diasporic communities – a plural positioning that makes belonging oscillate between a global network of solidarity and local affiliations, and the frictions arising from these intersections.

Thanks to its innovative approach combining postcolonial diaspora studies with digital media studies and literary and cultural studies methods, this project will generate seminal insights into the digital agency of Afrodiasporic communities in Europe. It will reveal the essential role of shared and culturally encoded imaginaries in the context of constructing diasporic subjectivities online. It will, furthermore, give crucial impulses to the debate on migration and Europe’s diversity.