This dissertation focuses on Kwani?, a contemporary literary journal started in 2003 in Kenya. Presented by its founders as a platform of expression for a new generation of mainly transnational writers, it stands as a multifaceted object of analysis. A hybrid object integrating a wide variety of texts and an interface between different discursive fields, Kwani? is also the result of a collective endeavour from gathering writers who are part of an ever-fluctuating and transnational sociability network. Assessing such an object requires, therefore, taking an interest in its content and its form, while replacing its creation in its specific context of production, diffusion, and reception, a context which is over-determined by local political, ideological, and socio-economic factors. Analysing the circumstances in which the journal entered the national scene thus allows to uncover the particular workings of this embryonic literary field, which is founded on a certain number of rules that the journal claims to subvert, and which is strongly interlinked with the global literary world. Drawing on recent contributions from the fields of discourse analysis and sociology of literature, we aim to offer an original study of the Kwani? phenomenon identifying the ways in which the journal and its collaborators, in their great diversity, take part in a national and regional literary renewal and thereby initiate a movement towards the reshaping of the global literary world.
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