Recontextualising migration: decolonial insights from a postcolonial African novel

The article considers the role that literary geographies play in the study of migration. It explores the possibilities offered by a non-representational analysis of the postcolonial novel Congo Inc. Bismarck’s Testament by In Koli Jean Bofane, aiming to shed light on the potential of decolonizing the perspective on migratory issues. Bofane’s novel treats population mobility as woven into the country’s everyday life; rather than something extraordinary, migration is seen as a component of human life. The work recontextualises specific narrative contents, paying attention to how the novel can be used. Intersecting with mobility studies and the most recent reflections in migration studies, in particular de-migranticisation, the analysis makes the transformative potential of the novel emerge by relating the aspects of migration extracted from literary fiction to the socio-scientific discourse on migration in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Africa. This potential concerns the deconstruction of given contexts, geographical or content-wise, and the recontextualisation of migration through decolonial imaginations, by reframing it as a functional condition which can be experienced by anyone in specific moments of life. While emphasizing the novel’s contribution to presenting other scenarios, the paper complexifies our contextualization and further articulates our vision of migration.