摘要：This article explores the relationship between the forms of representation and the modes of production of African online writing, rendering visible an appreciation of the digital contexts that have occasioned new experimentations with regard to genre, style and the formation of digital publics. But it’s the bibliographic form and materiality of African digital texts that interest me the most. The medium of African literature, profoundly transformed since the arrival of the Internet, conditions the transmission, reception of meaning and the constitution of reading publics and the identity of audiences. More so, the new textual environment of African writing and creatives expressions such as digital networks and literary blogs are terrains of discursive contestations that activate these digital fields of cultural production in Africa as materially connected to prior literary forms. Deploying several examples, including the recent ‘transition’ of Saraba Magazine to print and Mike Maphoto’s Diary of a Zulu Girl, I argue that, despite the widespread uses of digital media forms in new African narratives, there is a lingering print imaginary in the digital articulations of African literary texts. While this tension between print and digital forms shapes textual meanings, it signals new directions in African literary studies more broadly.
关键词：Materiality; African literature; digital media; textuality; print
