The John Fiske article 'Act Globally, Think Locally' is timely for me as I think about bridging the divide between Africans and African Americans. Fiske mentions Edward Said's Orientalism work in which Said discusses the articulations of the other and the simultaneous self articulations of the West in its representations. Africa has always been represented as uncivilized, over run with animals, primitive, disease infested, poor and lacking any type of industrialization. Because of these colonialized images Blacks in the West often come to think of Africa in these terms. We never see for example pictures like this one:
The picture above is of Johannesburg --the richest city in Africa. There is a facebook group dedicated to breaking down this 'Orientalism' by presenting new types of representations of Africa. Because of the power differential as mentioned by Fiske, only one culture's articulation is being presented. As such what we 'know' about Africa is through a fractured lens. See the racist cartoon clips above. Pay particular attention to the lyrics in 'Civilization' the song that says 'bingo bango bongo I'm so happy in the congo..."etc. This compilation shows the blackness diasporically in contrast to whiteness with blackness being uncivilized. The cartoon spells out a particular definition of Civilization that is Western and drenched in ideological baggage. Even if we were to accept the definition of civilization as presented, Africa is never shown as living up to that definition even as they have cities like the one presented above.Fiske often makes mention to the third world within the US (african americans) in his discussion of Rodney King. News media frequently portrays blacks as violent, lazy welfare queens, hung up on bling culture. Because of power difference in media ownership etc. these stories of African Americans seem to travel further than African Americans self representations which tend to stay more localized. The same occurs with Africans. Equally important is the fact that African American passport ownership is low, so the likelyhood of African Americans having the opportunity to self represent in person is low. The result of all of this is that the diaspora sees itself through otherized notions and fails to be able to see the oppressor's hand or the similarities in each other. When Africans come to see Africans as 'rich' it is through the lens of hip hop and thus the 'third world' in the US becomes the 1st world in Africa....To them we are just simply Americans.
What follows is that African Americans will start to present Africans according to these See Coming to America. The only full clip I could find is not in english. See also the intro scene where music that has a Kenyan influence interlaced with the sounds of Animals near the palace. Other scenes in the movie borrow from other regions to construct the fictitious country Zamunda. Africans in Black cinema have been shown through binaries of uncivilized or Regal. Monarchy is a common representation though the countries of allusion are mostly republics etc. Neither the common experience nor the contemporary one is presented. The presentation of regality should be noted that it is not always rooted in historically accurate accounts but more closely linked to purity myths and romanticized 'authenticity'. These types of representations have been purposed to empower African Americans in the face of white supremacy and a denial of cultural history and heritage. Meanwhile many Africans find these representations to be offensive and off base. Africans in a similar way will present African Americans as they see them on hip hop music videos. As I show in my picture posted below from my trip to Ghana, the image of 50 cent and other billboard topping rap artists are more accessible than other forms of African American expression.
From my conversations, many Africans believe African Americans to be rich, violent, promiscuous etc. Just as much as African Americans (especially pan africanists) perform Africans, Africans perform African Americans. Terms like Nigger, however have unstable meanings as they circulate. From one interview with a Rawandan the term Nigger is a positive thing which they might relate to someone who has big muscles or a lot of money. Nigger has become a way of identifying with African American culture but is detached from its historical roots. They believe after all that it is African Americans that are representing themselves in the ways that they see them all too often. 
The picture above is of a shop in Malawi that sells their local version of Hip Hop attire. The N word has been connected with Hip Hop in other regions as well as with the lampooning in Tokyo Breakfast seen here .Tourism advertisements also show instances where Africa articulates itself through the lens of exoticism and otherization as the West has identified it. See the Tanzanian Tourist Board's commercial here. It is no surprise then that in the year of the census few 'Africans' who have lived here for years will see any relevance in the label African American and likewise few 'African Americans' who historically are Africans will see any relevance in the label 'African'. The tensions that divide the diaspora are in many ways are because of the issues Fiske raises. "Representation is control. The power to represent the world is the power to represent us in it or it in us, for the final stage of representing merges the representor and the represented into one" (Fiske 285).
I was really struck by this posting as it's inherently apparent that representation is based in not only our preconceived notions of reality and how we see others, but also in our we feel that others view us. According to Fiske "Realism as a mode of representation, is particularly characteristic of Western culture and therefore, in the modern world, or capitalism. It is as powerful and attractive as it is because it grounds our cultural identity in external reality: by making "us" seem real it turns who we think we are into who we "really" are." Amazingly, not only is Fiske's conjecture true, but it really teases apart how African-Americans can portray a simply dejected and mirrored image of ourselves based in how others see us.
ReplyDeleteThe issue that I do have with this argument though is wondering exactly how capitalism fits into that schema of Western culture while simultaneously complicating our view of Africans or African-Americans? Is it because we are so destined to not reflect roots of negativity (i.e. slavery) or that we don't want to have that "primitive" stereotype on us that we create a culture that we deem "different" from African or American culture yet end up being reflective of external negative perceptions anyway? I feel that one of the important things we sit on is simply the fact that capitalism and the desire to make money in conjunction with pure commodification is something that is obviously embedded in culture understanding, communication and belonging.
I agree with Tichina. Capitalism is power, and one is through commodifying through identity. I believe that understanding culture can be one thing, but translating a culture can be difficult. Regardless of what ethnicity you're in, capitalism will always gain the power to oppress others to get where they need to go, whuich is winning money over.My question is, do you think capitalism can controlled by Africans or African Americans?
ReplyDeleteI agree capitalism is where power is. Capitalism determines how things are translated and how it is interpreted. To answer Antionette question I believe both are capable of controlling capitalism.
ReplyDeleteI like the statement that Fiske makes at the beginning of his article Act Globally, Think Locally. He stated, “A culture of power is a culture of representation.” I found this quote very truthful and thought provoking because cultures that are able to represent themselves do have more power in society vs. cultures that aren’t representing themselves. This notion is typically the case for Africans and African Americans through the way that society portrays black citizens in the media and to other countries. To address Antionette’s questions I agree with Bola, it can be controlled by both because each are an different cultures of people.
ReplyDeleteI think that these different perspectives of each other between Africans and African-Americans is very interesting. I was in Morocco this summer and noticed this myself. I realized my own ignorance when I stepped into the country to find that there was almost no black people, as their population consists mostly of Islamic Arabs. There were some black girls in my group, and the Moroccans hassled them on many occasions, though their comments were usually ridiculous or outdated, saying things like "Hey Obama's sister" or "Let's hear that soul sister talk you always do." This reminds me of the Fiske article where he explains, "A culture of power is a culture of representation." The views that people have of Americans is in a large part due to the tremendous power of the American media, thus the representation it receives elsewhere. But if this is all through popular culture figures like 50 Cent, then this is all that the other cultures will know of African-Americans.
ReplyDeleteSince Coming to America is one of my favorite movies, I think it is appropriate to share my childhood memories of the movie
ReplyDeleteI remember watching this movie so many times and thinking that I wanted to move to "Zamunda" because the Black people looked like they were so rich and the animals did not eat them. To be honest, this was the my first media encounter with what it means to be African. it wasn't until my mother told me (destroyed my dream) that most Africans did not live like this and that "Zamunda" was not a real country. Then as I started to learn more about the African continent (through the media's eyes), I saw the stereotypical images of what most people think about when they think about Africa.
Thank you for posting this picture of Johannesburg, for most people, including myself would have never knew that Africa had some sort of wealth and capitalism. There is always this racial tension between Africans and African-Americans, this notion that some Africans think that African-Americans are lazy white-wannabes and how some African-Americans did not want to be associated with being descended from Africa. I remember as a kid, the worst insult in the world was to be called an "African-looking person" (whatever that meant).
I truly agree with Fiske that representation is control, not just control over how people view you, but how we view ourselves.
Yes representation is control I agree. I do believe that the opening quote in Fiske's article that Kortney points out is very thought provoking as well. In reference to the blog posting, I remember going to England and realizing that I was a spectacle to be seen because I was an African-American girl representing their views on American society as far as African-American cultures goes. I think that this experience allowed me to see that representation is control. I think African-Americans have the opportunity to gain control of their own representations and re-present them as well. While there..I was disgussing with my professor for the summer course that was ignorant to the fact that not all African-American people who have grown up up urban societies are, indeed, about bling and big cars. My existence in that country during that summer gave me access to even represent my culture in a positive perspective. The reason to why this professor was unaware of the more positive side of African-American culture was due to the heavily circulating media displays of our culture. I couldn't refute his beliefs because that's what he saw. The fact that he simply listened to my opinions on representation exemplified a discourse that sought to equalyize power relations. I, at that moment, was a representation of a select feature in an absent reality or referent as Fisk states. I agree with Lena that Coming to America was a big eye opener for me, and I truly enjoyed and was troubled when I saw that the media displays did not truly represent every aspect of African culture. Great blog!!!
ReplyDeleteLena thanks again for such a beautiful comment to this post. As all the comments rightly point out, and Tiffany's analysis reminds us...the "western gaze" and the ability of the first world to "control" the images of the "third world" we see and consume remains a critical site of analysis. Making Ang's argument and our understanding of hegemony critical for making sense of representation and interpretation.
ReplyDeleteFiske definitely brought to light the question of who's lenses are we using to understand our world and how that is fertile ground to "otherize" people. The "Culture of representation" connected with me on the level of today in my EPS 310 class we discussed the conflicts our military engages on our behalf with those in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Often times in news reports we are told that there were strategic attacks on "military targets" and how the casual viewer tends not to question where these places are. Dr. Anderson brought it up like this "What is a military target? Any ideas? Where are these targets, are there spaces reserved for military use? Sure, there are bases, there are forts, reserves, etc. but then why is it that we also hear about 'non-combatants' and see civilians in these places?"
ReplyDeleteHe continued with asking "Now where would military targets be if someone invaded America and looked to the midwest." We were all clueless until he pointed out we have a vast network of highways, power plants, medical and farm research, and even what could potentially be the most powerful supercomputer in the world. In a combat situation these could all be militarized and it was this point that made it clear why there are such high civilian body counts and war pictures with mothers and children that seem to conflict with the idea of "military targets" that we don't bat an eyelash at. We are selectively shown and told things that frame our reality that make these countries out to seem like war zones and thus with this frame/lens, it makes an odd sort of normal sense to expect this violence to occur.
Your breakdown of the colonized images of Africa fit here, especially juxtopositioning the reality of places like Johannesburg with the other texts we receive.
Wow, Ms. Tiff, so many points to jump off of.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to talk about the parallelism that we see in Fiske's piece between the politics of U.S. foreign policy--how the "economics and politics of its distributions of international aid" create a discourse of "first" and "third" world relationships--and the construction of media and how it ALSO GIVES certain economic/political discourses as relations between world 1 and world 3.
Part of the reason, Tiff, we see Africa as a desolate land lacking metropolis is because this is part of our assumed and CREATED discourse with "africa land" (oh the horror).
I think it's interesting to see this "other" discourse, between African American media representation, and the youth that consume it in Africa proper. I wonder if this is another type of imperialist hegemonic consumption. Or just an example of dynamic interpretation of culture and language......(like the Ghanaian resto/spot called "niggers")
REALLY interesting post. This post definitely provided me with a good example of what the reading was about when it comes to the idea of representation being power.
ReplyDeleteI definitely saw this as the first world controlling the third world. Representation IS power...certain representations that are created here I definitely see transferring over and being consumed in other countries.
Just as you saw how certain representations were being consumed across the world. I experienced this as well when I was in the Philippines for the first time...Representations of whiteness in America and thinking that will lead to success have made filipinos obsessed with whitening creams.