This paper aims to explore how the notion of Afropolitanism is manifested in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's widely recognized novel, Americanah. While the critique of Afropolitanism has been the center of many other Afropolitan novels, notably Cole's Open City, Americanah has not been closely examined in association with the theory. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to set the novel in the context of Afropolitanism, and by doing so, to investigate its political significances. The main idea of this paper lies on the assertion that Americanah is both deeply political and apolitical at the same time: It is political in terms of criticizing Afropessimism and its entailing negative images of the continent as an ahistorical place, but in doing so, the novel posits a highly apolitical kind of subjectivity based upon the negative liberty of liberal individualism. By presenting the main character as the one who can freely negotiate among different identities and can choose her own hybridity at her own will, the novel not only offers free agency as an imaginary solution to the political problems it raises but also erases the existence of other 'less fortunate' traditional diaspora subjects from the narrative.

Despite the traditional book form, Richard Powers's Plowing the Dark uses second-person narration to demonstrate an intriguing case of novelistic remediation of digital media by appropriating the latter's aesthetic effects and compositional techniques to revitalize the novel form. Similar to Marie-Laure Ryan's argument, this novel exemplifies narrative, print or hypertext, as virtual reality with the union of immersion and interactivity in which readers can create a palpable three-dimensional space through the act of reading. It is a novelistic rendition of digital virtual reality in print. The second-person narration maximizes the reader's experience of immersion in the text, recalling the narrative voice and mood in early text-based computer games such as Colossal Cave Adventure. The story of Adie Klarpol, a Seattle designer participating in the creation of a virtual reality machine called the Cavern, directly connects to the contemporary development of virtual reality technology, in reference to the University of Illinois's CAVE project. In another narrative of Taimur Martin, a hostage held by Lebanese terrorists, the second-person narration offers the reader an intensive VR experience of immersion into the text. The position of the reader-addressee in Taimur's second-person narration reminds us of the role of a user-player in hypertext and interactive fiction, summoned to interact with the story world. Despite the limitations imposed by the book form on the degree and nature of the reader's interaction with the text, through the second-person narration and the embedded narrative frames, Powers suggests that literature and art in general provide the audience a VR experience of dwelling in a time-space of verisimilitude. Powers's experiments demonstrate that the reader of print narratives can play an active role in the immersive story world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the universal cause of ongoing racial conflict by comparing Octavia Butler's Kindred and Lee Chang-rae's Native Speaker. First, this paper will simultaneously deal with the usefulness of 'time travel' and the 'spy' as narrative devices in terms of content and formality. In fact, Kindred borrows the form of a fantasy novel, but it is not fanciful at all nor does it stimulate fantasy. Second, this paper will examine what values and relationships they undermine in contemporary society while exploring the problem of a single identity being embedded. If 'time travel' and the 'spy' are narrative devices that portray the reality that white-centered society is working as shackles, the identity given to social minorities is nothing more than a restraint that suppresses the freedom of choice. Third, I will introduce the ways in which a single and inclusive identity undermines the cultural, economic, and political diversity of individuals, and how this individual pluralism can be combined with a communal identity. If contemporary society still discriminately recognizes and treats individuals, it is necessary to consider the various characteristics and pluralistic relationships of individuals as important components of society. To that end, this study reminds us of the value of people as beings that we must consider before constructing identities related to individual groups, nations, and races.

Taking seriously the pros and cons of the diasporic frame of reference, my paper makes a critical inquiry into a possible scenario for the return of diaspora in the so-called post-racial era of America. My critical position assumes that African American studies are to be nested within broader currents of American history as well as in the larger economic, political and cultural dynamics that shape American life in general. Given this context, reexamining the critical usage of the concept of diaspora, I reassess the complex relationships between diaspora and transnationalism. In my scrutiny of the confrontation between the African American diaspora discourse and other transnationalist ones, I attempt to pave the way for a tenable interdisciplinary discursive site where African American criticism can intersect with other minority discourses. On this purpose, in order to save the African diaspora at stake, I suggest that diaspora as essence should be transformed to diaspora as method by throwing off the easy essentialist way of thinking.