Call for Papers

Call for Papers: Upcoming Special Issues

(Post-)Migration and the Poetics of Affect in Fiction

The special issue is committed to exploring how works of fiction register and configure affects in response to different forms of migration and (post-)migration. As both intimate and impersonal sensations, affects inscribe bodies into the social world of encounter (Seigworth and Gregg). While encounters with the social world are always unpredictable and messy, in the context of (post-)migration they typically unfold under conditions of dependency, precarity, and hierarchical relations. Experiences of displacement, the ambivalences of belonging and nonbelonging, the vulnerabilities arising from racist experiences, and the anxieties linked to both assimilationist demands and repatriation policies exert affective pressures that migrants must navigate and process (Piocos). In fact, many affective patterns that emerge from experiences of migration and (post-)migration are highly ambiguous, raising substantial ethical questions about the forceful undercurrents, obstinacies, and even refusals shaping contemporary societies. Affects sustain relationality but also interrupt it. Approaching migration and (post-)migration from the perspective of affect—the embodied and somatic—therefore provides an opportunity to bring into view the affective demands and tensions that enable and constrain possibilities of social collectivity today.

The special issue foregrounds the productive role of narrative fiction in modeling and generating affects that are capable of intervening critically in dominant affective economies and opening up new modes of expressivity and forms of sociality. Texts by writers such as Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zadie Smith, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Teju Cole, Dinaw Mengestu, Ocean Vuong, Boubacar Boris Diop, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Valeria Luiselli, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Namwali Serpell, Bernardine Evaristo, and many more use the space of fiction to explore the affective labor that experiences of (post-)migration involve.

By examining the poetics of affect in relation to (post-)migration, the special issue seeks to initiate a conversation about the literary language, forms, grammars, and styles that both register and transform the forces binding some bodies together while keeping others apart. Which affects and affective patterns arise out of migration and (post-)migration and how are they turned into something literary? How is the intersection between affect and race modeled in fiction and how does the articulation of affects navigate sociopolitical pressures and ideologies? What are the political stakes of detachment from hegemonic structures of feeling—and does detachment open up pathways toward liberation and transformation (Yao)? And which affective promises operate as technologies of cultural integration, binding migrants to hegemonic norms (Ahmed)? Finally, how is the engagement with affect and (post-)migration in fiction shaped by the demands and expectations of the contemporary, hyper-commercialized, and Anglocentric book market? While the distinction between affect and emotion has been widely debated in recent scholarship, the issue adopts a broad understanding of affects as physical forces that underpin, accompany, and complicate codified emotions, opening subjects to the pressures of the social.

We invite contributions that focus on the forms and affordances of fiction to foreground the unexpected, inconvenient, and seemingly minor affects that both emerge from and shape experiences of migration and (post-)migration.

Please submit an abstract of 250 words by December 2026 to Birgit.Neumann@hhu.de; full essays of 6000–9000 words are due by June 2027. Essays should be formatted according to the latest MLA style manual.

References
Ahmed, Sara. “Happy Objects.” Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 29–51.
Piocos, Carlos M., III. Affect, Narratives and Politics of Southeast Asian Migration. Routledge, 2021.
Seigworth, Gregory J., and Melissa Gregg. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 1–25.
Yao, Xine. Disaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America. Duke UP, 2021.