ABSTRACT
Applying a mobility studies perspective, this chapter analyzes two Francophone Afrodiasporic historical novels by focusing on their portrayals of the mobilities of privileged historical Africans in and towards Europe and the coerced im/mobilities of the enslaved victims of the Middle Passage. With a reading that foregrounds representations of mobility practices in Wilfried N'Sondé's Un Océan, deux mers, trois continents and Emmanuel Dongala's La Sonate à Bridgetower (Sonata Mulattica), the chapter argues that the texts highlight the historical presence and mobilities of Africans in Europe and represent Europe as built on and haunted by (the legacy of) slavery. The relational approach to privileged and coerced mobilities not only underlines the “exceptionality” of historical Afroeuropean figures, but also draws attention to the fragility of this exceptionalism and the oscillating line between enslaved and free-moving historical Africans in Europe. N'Sondé's and Dongala's novels signal the importance of the memory of the Middle Passage and slavery to contemporary Europe by establishing parallels between historical and contemporary mobilities and by bringing the history of slavery to Europe in a way that resonates not only with the historical contexts in which the novels are set but also with today's Afro-Europe.
