Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Disillusioned African: Rigidizing Cosmopolitan Borders, Binarizing Cosmopolitan Opportunities

Abstract

This paper draws on Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Disillusioned African to argue that thinking beyond cosmopolitan borders should be an essential dimension of a cosmopolitan imagination and cosmopolitan politesse that defines the relationship between African leaders and the African masses and Africa, the West, and the rest. Nyamnjoh’s novel affirms that the maintenance of fluid cosmopolitan borders would facilitate cultural encounters and engender cosmopolitan opportunities, which would blur the us/them dichotomies that define and confine relationships between African leadership and Africans and between Africa and the West or the rest. Analyzing the novel from this perspective affirms Nyamnjoh’s belief in nimble-footedness and flexibility in belonging. It is a perspective that foregrounds the author’s informative concepts of incompleteness and conviviality and thus the importance of reciprocal acknowledgment of the Other in her/his otherness among Africans, and between Africans and the West or the rest. The paper argues that this can indeed become the most potent feature and future of a common global cosmopolitan identity.