Nouvelles expressivités littéraires pour L’Afrique qui vient : Alain Mabanckou et Léonora Miano

This article analyses the theoretical writing of two writers who participated in the African francophone literary renaissance. Their works are influenced by their activism and their strong ties to African contemporary scholarly critique. Alain Mabanckou and Léonora Miano belong to what Waberi has termed the “Transcontinental generation.” Their shared common features seem to represent a break away from previous generations and the role they gave literature. This new generation’s writing process is given a blatant political dimension: they seek to report in writing “an Africa to come” (une Afrique qui vient), a metaphor that symbolises the imminent flourishing of the continent, enabled by artistic creation. Mabanckou’s literary reflections echoe Mbembe’s postcolonial approach while Miano foregrounds a new relationship with the continent, that of border-crossing identities and Afrodescendents. New forms of literary expressions have appeared (specialised magazines, social networks, etc.) that address other publics. They place the writing process and the figure of the writer at the centre of critical discourse. The concept of f(F)rancophonie and the relationship to the language one writes in are being rethought and represent building blocks for literary creation. Both writers’s texts offer theorisation of their fiction writing. They explore topics that are at the core of the relationship between France and Africa, such as the revision of immigrants’ status—the Afrodescendents—and the re-appropriation of the history and imagination of formerly colonized people.