Abstract Since its establishment more than a decade ago, the cultural and political debate on Afropolitanism has been characterized by several different positions. In particular, the Afropolitan opposition to any kind of essentialism (Eze 2014) has been counterweighed by the necessity of a connection to “knowable African communities, nations and traditions” (Gikandi 2011, 9). This debate has been reproducing a typical oscillation of postcolonial theory and criticism between the celebration of hybridity (Bhabha 1994) and the interpretation of postcolonial texts as “national allegories” (Jameson 1986). At the same time, Afropolitanism appears to be related to a more recent phenomenon, which has been defined as “national failure” in political analysis (Zartman 1995; Rotberg 2004) and “failed-state fiction” in literary criticism (Marx 2008). The latter sheds a different light on Afropolitanism, by showing its advantages and its limits both on a national and transnational level. In view of this, Afropolitan literature – including the paradigmatic works by Helon Habila (2002, 2007, 2010) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006, 2013) here analyzed – appears to be based on the persistence of “old names,” or categories, in an uneven but fruitful coexistence with the “new” ones (Eze 2016).

中文翻译：

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新旧名称。非洲政治、失败国家小说和世界文学

摘要 自十多年前成立以来，关于非洲政治的文化和政治争论一直呈现出几种不同的立场。特别是，与“知名的非洲社区、民族和传统”建立联系的必要性抵消了非洲人对任何本质主义（Eze 2014）的反对（Gikandi 2011, 9）。这场辩论在庆祝混合性（Bhabha 1994）和将后殖民文本解释为“民族寓言”（Jameson 1986）之间再现了后殖民理论和批评的典型振荡。与此同时，非洲政治似乎与最近的一种现象有关，这种现象在政治分析中被定义为“国家失败”（Zartman 1995；Rotberg 2004）和文学批评中被定义为“失败国家小说”（Marx 2008）。后者通过展示其在国家和跨国层面上的优势和局限性，对非洲政治有了不同的认识。有鉴于此，非裔文学——包括 Helon Habila (2002, 2007, 2010) 和 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006, 2013) 在这里分析的范式作品——似乎是基于“旧名称”或类别的持久性，在与“新”的不平衡但富有成效的共存中（Eze 2016）。