ABSTRACT

From collaborative experiments on Twitter to creative projects in word and image, Teju Cole’s work is characterised by connectivity and plasticity. Within the tradition of the public intellectual, it comes into focus as a mode of artistic activism, because it creates new publics through the use of social media and affords new insights in its protean erudition. Cole’s distinctive positionality as a public intellectual is theorised as an amalgam of Achille Mbembe’s Afropolitanism and Bruce Robbins’ cosmopolitanism. Characterised by “distant belongings,” this Afrocosmopolitanism informs Cole’s Tweets and contributions to other social media. It also infuses the essays in Known and Strange Things and the photographs and texts in Blind Spot and Human Archipelago with thoughtful reflection on and incisive questioning of the most pressing issues of our time. Cole’s aesthetic praxis is thus integral to his political stance as a public intellectual.

摘要

从 Twitter 上的协作实验到文字和图像的创意项目，Teju Cole 的作品具有连通性和可塑性。在公共知识分子的传统中，它作为一种艺术激进主义的模式受到关注，因为它通过使用社交媒体创造了新的公众，并在其多变的博学中提供了新的见解。科尔作为公共知识分子的独特地位被理论化为 Achille Mbembe 的非洲政治和布鲁斯·罗宾斯的世界主义的混合体。以“遥远的财产”为特征，这种非洲世界主义为科尔的推文和其他社交媒体的贡献提供了信息。它还注入了已知和奇怪的事物中的散文以及盲点和人类群岛中的照片和文字对我们这个时代最紧迫的问题进行深思熟虑的反思和尖锐的质疑。因此，科尔的审美实践是他作为公共知识分子的政治立场不可或缺的一部分。