RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"

Ikhide, I wonder which part of the "articulated priorities" riles you. I'm also a bit nonplussed by your take on the title, quite so because, I think it does express sufficient irony and pathos apt to Teju Cole's incisive analysis. Perhaps you'd wish him, as you often do, to dismantle and cuss out Africa, blame the land and people, and maintain the cynical lie that these images retailed serially about that sad continent where the left-handed charity industry is most lucrative is indeed all of Africa, and be left without scrutiny. I think Teju speaks volumes and does speak for me in many regards. I suspect your ambivalence is driven by a need for a particular kind of tepid correctness that would serve very little to the spirit of the article. All those who take a stand for that continent must, to quote the erudite Okpewho, call it by its proper name. Teju Cole does. He does more: he takes a steady look at this phenomenom of the "white savior Industrial Complex," a more contemporary equivalent of the "whiteman's burden" and puts a name to it. His articulated priority? to point to the powerful implication of misrepresenting an entire continent  by the powerful imagery created in powerful lands where Africa remains a strange alchemy off horror -  terror, war, tyranny, disease, and death, and nothing else . Teju speaks for many of us in his "articulated priorities."
Obi Nwakanma

 

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Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:47:43 -0700
From: xokigbo@yahoo.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com; Ederi@yahoogroups.com

"One song we hear too often is the one in which Africa serves as a backdrop for white fantasies of conquest and heroism. From the colonial project to Out of Africa to The Constant Gardener and Kony 2012, Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected. It is a liberated space in which the usual rules do not apply: a nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs satisfied. Many have done it under the banner of "making a difference." To state this obvious and well-attested truth does not make me a racist or a Mau Mau. It does give me away as an "educated middle-class African," and I plead guilty as charged. (It is also worth noting that there are other educated middle-class Africans who see this matter differently from me. That is what people, educated and otherwise, do: they assess information and sometimes disagree with each other.)"

 

- Teju Cole in The Atlantic Mobile, March 21, 2012

 

Thoughtful fairly nuanced piece; the condescending title does the burden of his essay a disservice. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it but I couldn't disagree more with the essay's articulated priorities.

 

Read the rest here.

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com

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Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

 

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