Description
Too many convictions about the fifty-four nations of Africa come from non-African sources. Western media often treat the continent as a simulacrum of Western anxieties. In contrast, the author focuses on specific historical episodes and cultural practices - cinema, art, ethnography and journalism - to steer us away from treacherous generalisations. This book celebrates the ingenuity with which African artists - and a handful of Europeans - have reimagined the colonial encounter and voiced their impatience with white minority rule. Among his illustrious cast of filmmakers, photographers, writers, and painters are Seydou Keïta, Sanlé Sory, Ernest Cole, Sarah Maldoror, John Akomfrah, William Kentridge, and Binyavanga Wainaina. Here, the author argues that Western museums with priceless African holdings - the British Museum, the Musée du Quai Branly, the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium - are now the sites of a struggle over the colonial past, adding the latest chapter to an unfinished history. --
