Introduction: Reading African Forms Simultaneously

This introduction to the special issue “African Literatures and the Question of Form” draws on Achille Mbembe’s work, arguing that form should be understood as a process. This, the authors argue, forms the basis of a comparative approach to African cultural and literary forms, centering the process of forming. Avoiding imposing preconceived definitions of form on a particular work, this is a “simultaneous” approach to form, in so far as it eschews an objectification of form-as-genre in favor of a practice of “thinking with” specific instances of form and their often multiple and radically diverse affiliations. The four articles and afterword contained in this issue are presented as examples of reading forms simultaneously.