Translating Africa Elsewhere:The 'Task' of Shailja Patel

In what follows I will propose a "reading as translation" that proves intimate to the textuality it reads. Provoked by the solicitations of the conference "Africa N'Ko II" my "reading as translation" choses the life and the art of Shailja Patel according to the translation theories of Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Gayatri C. Spivak and T. Niranjana. The work I analyze is "Migritude" staged in 2006 and the poem "Drum Raider" on Bikidude, also in connection to the music documentary "As old as my tongue" by Andy Jones (2009).