Date: May 8, 2020
Time: 4 to 5:30 PM
Speaker: Arina Rotaru, Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Moderator: Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

This presentation discusses the aesthetic potential of artistic experiments emerging in the diaspora and some ways in which they can be tied to an ecology. I position ecology in relation not only to the environment but also to contemporary racialization. The focus of my inquiry lies in the theoretical and performative concept of migritude, which designates migrant strategies of living in the metropolis rather than returning to one’s homeland. Initially applied in a Francophone context, migritude has also taken shape in narrative performance across national borders. I apply the possibility associated with this concept to a discussion of the work of Afro-German author Olumide Popoola, especially through a reading of her account of the refugees of Calais. I then read it in conjunction with a Francophone film on the “jungle camp.”

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