Email: louis.nana@student.uni-tuebingen.de

Project title: "Think the 'In-common': Time of Entanglement, African Subjectivities, and the 'Becoming-in-common' of the World in some Leonora Miano's Novels"

Project supervisors: Prof. Dr. Susanne Goumegou (University of Tübingen) and Pr. Rémi Astruc (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)

Louis Nana’s dissertation questions and explores Achille Mbembe’s concept of « en-commun » through the reading of some of Leonora Miano’s novels. His project highlights the temporal categories of this concept and the influence these have on the conception of living-together. One of the core questions is to figure out and discuss how contemporary African novel addresses temporal entanglements and the challenges related to them in regards with Community matters in/from the African context. In this specific context, thinking the « en-commun » is to think the wound and the ways of healing it.

Louis holds a Bachelor (2011) and a Master's degree (2014) in African Literature and Civilization from the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon, and a Master's degree in French and Francophone Literatures from the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France (2017). He taught French in Cameroon and in France (at the Académie de Versailles), before moving to Tübingen.

His research is being prepared in co-supervision with the University of Cergy-Pontoise.

Research interests

• Francophone African creation (literature, music, arts)
• The in-common in Africa: meanings, modalities, possibilities
• African Futures in literature, philosophy and arts
• Theories of the South (postcolonial, decolonial, etc.)