Hello, I am Rémi Armand Tchokothe. I feel privileged to be joining the Institute as a Tenure-Track Professor of Comparative Literature with a focus on ‘African’ Literatures, starting October 1st 2020.
How can we speak about the literatures of a continent which counts more than 2000 languages in an introductory course under current Covid-19 restrictions? What is the point in studying literatures from ‘Africa’ and the diaspora in Vienna? What will be our reading and working languages?
These are some of the central questions that we will address in this course which is an invitation to leave (y)our comfort zones, an encounter that will draw your attention to the ties between ‘Africa’ and the world, which bears down to the fact that I see myself as a citizen of the world and particularly as a critical intercultural mediator.
Hailing from Cameroon (Anglophone/Francophone distinction irrelevant!), I moved to Germany eighteen years ago and completed a PhD on Swahili literature which included field research in Kenya and Tanzania at the University of Bayreuth. My current research project in the Comoros Archipelago addresses ‘migration’ from Africa to Europe which happens on African grounds.
Speaking of ground, my teaching philosophy is to offer you some ground for gaining qualitative, differentiated, transformative and co-produced knowledge; a transparent, multicultural, respectful and an inclusive environment for (con)testing knowledge; and above all, a space for (y)our personal development.
AKWAABA (kindly find out what language this is…) to this common journey.
Porträt bei einer Ausstellung am Donaukanal, Wien (2021): Rémi Tchokothe
