ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½

About

Hervé Tchumkam holds degrees from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 and the University of Pennsylvania. Trained as a comparatist, his fields of interest range from Postcolonial Studies and Literary Theory to Political Philosophy. His most recent publication, Marginal Bodies and Precarious Lives in North Africa: Homo Expendibilis, presents an examination of North African literature situated at the crossroads of literary analysis, political philosophy, and sociology. He analyzes social categories in relation to civil and social protections and in particular, the ways in which disruptions to these protections can lead to social degeneration. His analysis starts from the premise that precarious lives in North Africa have become true bodies of exception. In other words, they are deemed dangerous, expendable and unworthy of the rights and treatment accorded to full citizens. Thus, Prof. Tchumkam assesses portrayals of violence in contemporary literature as a crystallization of the existing disjunction between the socially disqualified and those who wield colonial, political, and religious power. Moreover, he argues that in order to understand contemporary politics and the current climate of insecurity, a deeper understanding of precarity in North Africa from colonial times to the present is crucial. By affirming their right to exist, Prof. Tchumkam argues that the marginal bodies of North Africa offer unique insights into the society that marginalized them and thus, from the often inaudible and invisible periphery, they nevertheless challenge the dominant ideas of the center. Other publications include numerous essays and book chapters on contemporary fiction and politics with a connection to the (former) French colonies including hexagonal France, the Caribbean and North Africa. As editor, he is the author of an essay on postcolonial migrations in Africa and its Diaspora entitled Exils et migrations postcoloniales (2011), and La France face à ses banlieues (2013), a collection of essays on the relation between State power, politics and citizenship in contemporary France. 

Publications

• Precarious Lives and Marginal Bodies in North Africa: Homo Expendibilis. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021. 
• Avoir peur. Insécurité et roman en Afrique Francophone. Presses de l'université Laval, 2019. 
• State Power, Stigmatization, and Youth Resistance Culture in the French Banlieues : Uncanny Citizenship. Lexington Books, 2015.
• Terroirs. Agamben et l’Afrique: Quelle pertinence? Terroirs, Revue africaine de sciences sociales et de philosophie, guest editor. Paris: Karthala, 2016.
• “Homo Africanus, Homo Sacer. Biopouvoir et ethnoracialisation des rapports sociaux en France.’’ Terroirs 1.2 (2016): 117-135.