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Abdulaziz Dino Gidreta
set up to represent a benchmark for analysis and accurate intervention on the image of
Africa. Although such an idea was proposed back in the mid-1980s, no clear figure was
created, not even a network of actors.
Associating Hall’s counter-strategies and positive strategies can also be helpful here in
this context. Under the title ‘Contesting racialized regime of representation’, Hall (1997:
269-275) proposes three counter-strategies particularly against racial stereotypes: re-
versing the stereotypes; balancing of positive and negative images through difference
acceptance; and contestation of representations.
The first of Hall’s strategies is ‘Reversing the stereotypes’ in which he suggests three
sub-reversions (1997: 270-272). Reversing by entry - integrationist strategy where he
says blacks could gain entry to the mainstream, even at the cost of adapting to the white
image of them and assimilating white norms of styles looks and behaviors. Reversing by
normalization - is like in the revenge films that began to show that blacks are as normal
people as whites, and as moral-players and heroes as them. Reversing the evaluation
of stereotyping - the simple re-encoding or re-interpretation of extreme stereotypes into
positive intentions can be a calm way to change the stereotypes. For instance, changing
the prejudice ‘blacks are poor’ by ‘blacks are motivated by money’.
The second strategy is the celebration of differences by ‘the attempt to substitute a range
of ‘positive’ images of black people, black life and culture for the ‘negative’ imagery
which continues to dominate popular representation’ (Hall, 1997: 272). According to Hall,
this approach has the advantage of ensuring the balance, underpinned by an acceptance
and celebration of difference. ‘It inverts the binary opposition, privileging the subordinate
term, sometimes reading the negative positively: ‘Black is Beautiful’. It tries to construct
a positive identification with what has been objected. It greatly expands the range of
racial representations and the complexity of what it means to ‘be black’, thus challenges
the reductionism of earlier stereotypes’ (Hall, 1997: 272). In fact, Hall fears the dangers
of homogenizing all non-white cultures as ‘other’. And it will give ways for the diversity of
misrepresentation.
The third counter-strategy, through the contestation of representation and gaze, ‘locates
itself within the complexities and ambivalences of representation itself, and tries to con-
test it from within’. According to Hall, it is more concerned with the forms of racial rep-
resentation than with introducing a new content. ‘It accepts and works with the shifting,
unstable character of meaning, and enters, as it were, into a struggle over representation,
while acknowledging that, since meaning can never be finally fixed, there can never be
any final victories.’ (1997: 274).
