Imagining Africa - Whiteness and the Western Gaze

While challenging traditional postcolonial accounts, Gabay places racial anxiety at the heart of imaginaries of Africa and international order.

List of contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Whiteness, the Western gaze and Africa; 2. Finding anti-civilisation in Africa; 3. Native rights in colonial Kenya: the symbolism of Harry Thuku; 4. 'Exploding Africa': Of post-war modernisers and travellers; 5. The Age of Capricorn: bridging the past to the present; 6. Afropolitanism, and the White-Western incorporation of Africa; 7. Africa rising, whiteness falling; 8. Making whiteness strange; References; Index.

About the author

Clive Gabay is Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. He has been the recipient of a number of prestigious grants and awards and, in 2014, won one of only six British Academy Conference Awards which enabled him to hold a conference at the British Academy called 'Development and its Alternatives', attended by a number of leading scholars, including James C. Scott (Yale) and Phillip McMichael (Cornell). In 2015, he was awarded a highly competitive UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Leaders Fellowship. Among other outlets, he has published in Globalizations, Review of African Political Economy, and Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

Summary

At times of Western crisis, such as the 2007–8 financial crisis, there has been a sudden growth of Afro-optimism, seemingly predicting Africa's 'rise'. Gabay examines British imperial attitudes towards Africa and shows that this phenomenon of positive coverage of Africa is neither unique, unexpected nor unpredictable.

Product details

• Authors: Clive Gabay, Clive (Queen Mary University of London) Gabay, Gabay Clive
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2018
• EAN: 9781108473606
• ISBN: 978-1-108-47360-6
• No. of pages: 278
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Management; Media Studies, Social Theory, HISTORY / Africa / General, Africa, International Relations, Economic history, Social & political philosophy, Political science & theory, social and political philosophy, African History, Political science and theory