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Africa’s Reductive Images, Contesting the Sources, and New Generations as Passive Victims: A Reflection on Historical and Global Representational Practices
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
Introduction
There is a danger of homogenization in approaching the entire Africa as a single subject
of analysis, since Africa is not a single cultural group, or even a nation. It is rather the
most ethnically heterogenous continent in the world (Blake, 2013). However, at a level of
broader public dialogue and perception, there has been ‘a single’ matter that the entire
African continent tends to share. That is ‘image’. To mean, there is a common subject
matter discoursed as ‘African image’ inscribing the historical and global representational
issues of both portrayal and participation.
The issue of African image become a concern for its undesirable impact on Africa, and
Africans as bearers of negative images and ‘passive victims’ (
Pitchford, 2008)
. There is a
growing risk of pushing Africans to a reduced self-conception and so a reduced ‘role-per-
ception’ in international spheres of dynamics where image matters a lot. In other words,
these anxieties and acts of passiveness would lead Africa and Africans to be sidelined in
the global socio-economic shares.
Hence, there should be collective attempts to contribute to the solution of this continuing
representational concern. One of these interventions can be bringing the subject matter
into academic and public debates. With these grounds, this article endeavors to focus on
a more preliminary aspect of the subject - historical and global phenomena. It is guided
by a general question ‘how has Africa been represented and involved in prominent his-
torical and global representational practices’. The practices addressed in this context are
practices of both portrayal and participation of African continent.
The general purpose of this article is to bring the issue of African image into scholarly and
public debates which would have further impacts on studies and policies. So specifically,
the study aims to make a wide-ranging review and reflection on representational prac-
tices of early colonial exhibitions, missionary collections, Oriental narratives, and exotic
depictions during slavery. It then considers representational tendencies and the position
of African continent in the broader world information and communication order, in world
m
apping in the sense of spatial imagery, and in the practices of developmental and
hu-
manitarian interventions.
Method
An intensive study of African image could consider more precise study subjects, aspects
of image, and bounded signifying practices. However, a general reflective analysis on
the historical and global representational practices can serve as a supportive ground for
specific study efforts. Accordingly, this article reviews various scholarly works including
books, journal articles, e-magazines, online newspapers, web pages, blog posts, as well
as visual elements like pictures and maps. It then discusses series of themes considered
for reflection.
