Performative Authorship: Francophone African Novelists in the late 20th-21st Centuries

Focusing on four contemporary francophone writers with roots in West and Central Africa—Fatou Diome, Alain Mabanckou, Bessora, and Léonora Miano—Performative Authorship develops a new theory of authorship based on both written text and embodied performance. In order to better apprehend what it means to be a writer in the highly mediated realm of literature in the 21st century, this volume proposes a model for understanding contemporary francophone authors and literature and its specific applicat