Encounter Images in the Meetings between Africa and Europe

Saying that the image of Africa in the West is negative is stating the obvious but explaining nothing. This book is about understanding how the images have evolved in the encounters between Africa and Europe over time. It shows a greater variety than is usually assumed on the two basic European themes of romanticizing “the primitive” and looking down on “the backward”. The contributions to this book have been produced within the research project “Cultural Images in and of Africa” at the Nordic Africa Institute and deal with history, music, missionary writing, development aid discourse, commercial handicraft, popular literature, and travel writing. Also included are two special interviews with scholars who have made an important impact on the debate, Terence Ranger and Valentin Y. Mudimbe, and the text of an address on Africa images in European literature given by the Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera.