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- Convenors:
-
Hans Peter Hahn
(Goethe University Frankfurt)
Sylvestre Kouakou (Goethe University Frankfurt)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Images of the living and dead
- Location:
- Room 1234
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
Images of Africa, produced by a wide range of different media, cinstitute rough simplifications and stereotypes. with a special focus on German language, this panel discusses, how do authors manage to represent simplified but popular images.
Long Abstract:
Popular perceptions of Africa do have a great influence on the image of Africa in Europe. The basis of such popular perceptions consists of elements from a wide variety of media: in addition to video, television, radio, internet the daily press and other media, in this panel, a genre of documents is worth to be examined that has a considerable importance but is also characterized by great heterogeneity. It is about reportages in the format of a book, which have as their subject a synoptic picture of Africa. Authors of such documents are travelers, very often also journalists, who provide a diagnosis of Africa by producing a larger and coherent texts. Such texts of book size usually constitute an extra work apart from their employment with an organ of the press, television or radio. Such documents give special room to the autors’ personal perspective.
On the one hand, the genre of book reportage is of outstanding importance, if one thinks, for example, of the very large print runs of the books by Peter Scholl-Latour or Ruppert Neudeck. But, on the other hand, it is also particularly heterogeneous, because there is no standard corpus of knowledge, no standard of presentation and no fixed journalistic framework. What images do these works convey? What is the relationship between these works and images about Africa in other media? And, finally, what are the textual characteristics of this kind of coverage of Africa? These are the questions this panel invites to discuss more in detail.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
It is notorious that knowledge about Africa is not very sophisticated in German-speaking regions. At the same time, there are some popular images that prove to be quite persistent. This paper aims to approach some of these images on the basis of two texts by Bartholomäus Grill and David Signer.
Paper long abstract:
The introductory text to this panel raises the question if there is a specific "German" image of Africa and, implicitly at least, reveals a certain unease about any such image because of the simplifications with regard to Africa. Furthermore, it attributes great importance to a certain type of text for the shaping of this image: the reporatge in form of a book. In this paper, I will deal with the texts of two authors who can claim a certain prominence in German-language media coverage of Africa: Bartholomäus Grill, over decades one of the most important journalistic voices on Africa in German quality papers, and David Signer, who has contributed from a slightly different angle as correspondent for Swiss newspapers to this image in the German-speaking countries. It is my aim to have a look at the representations of the continent that appear in some of their texts, relate them to each other and their possible contexts, and reflect on them, drawing on my own experience working for six years in Abidjan.
Paper short abstract:
Images of Africa in German-language travelogues (in text and film) about Africa published in the last decade (2010s) are in the focus of this presentation. Especially the film "Anderswo - allein Afrika" (2018) by Anselm Pahnke will be analysed drawing on travel writing studies and mobility studies.
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation I will examine images of Africa in German-language travelogues (in text and film) about Africa that were published in the last decade (2010s). The focus is on travelogues by authors who were only in their twenties during the trip and who are not professional journalists or travel writers. Their travelogues find a large audience not least because they are marketed and perceived as particularly "authentic". Even if the authors position themselves and their journeys as "different" in the sense of "progressive", the images of Africa that are passed on in them are often surprisingly stereotypical and not very diverse (cf. Sennefelder 2020). Africa thus seems to become a "playing field" for young Europeans who want to "find themselves" on the continent, and whose involvement with people and societies in the countries they travel through remains surprisingly superficial despite the length of their stays. This, I argue, is in particular valid for those travelling by bicycle, quite in contrast to their claims.
By taking the example of the film "Anderswo - allein Afrika" (“Elsewhere – alone in Africa”) (2018) by Anselm Nathanael Pahnke and his book “Von Anderswo und anderen Orten” ("On Elsewhere and Other Places") (2020), I will analyse in depth the numerous pitfalls of these travelogues from an African Studies perspective. Further, the analysis draws on concepts and approaches from travel writing studies and mobility studies.
Paper short abstract:
Die neuen Medien haben zur Demokratisierung und folglich zum vereinfachten und schnelleren Zugang zum Wissen geführt. Die starke Globalisierung verursachte eine globale Vernetzung zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen, und der daraus entstandene Austausch führte zum Bewusstwerden verschiedener Völker.
Paper long abstract:
Wie die Erfindung der Schrift und der Druckerei in der Vergangenheit ist das Internet heute die allerletzte Revolution der Menschheit. Mit der Erfindung des Internets und den mit ihm verbundenen Suchmaschinen am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts ist das Wissen, das dank Gutenberg durch die Erfindung der beweglichen Lettern (der Druckerei) für jeden zu geringen Kosten zugänglich war, nun für jeden in Sekundenschnelle verfügbar und zwar dank der Digitalisierung dieses Wissens, das überall, zu jeder Zeit und auf jedem Medium verfügbar ist.
Die neuen Medien als Symbole der Digitalisierung und der schnellen Verfügbarkeit des Wissens haben zur Demokratisierung der Informationen geführt, sodass es heute (fast) unmöglich ist Offensichtliches zu verbergen, denn die neuen Medien haben eine optimale Sozialkommunikation ermöglicht.
Die starke Globalisierung hat dazu geführt, dass eine globale Vernetzung zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen entsteht. Diese digitale Revolution hat das Bild Afrikas sowohl bei den anderen Völkern als auch bei den Afrikanern selbst revolutioniert, denn die Gelegenheit ist nun gegeben, verdeckte Tatsachen zu entdecken. Damit ist der Dekolonisationsprozess Afrikas in eine neue Phase geraten.
Verbreitete Klischees, Vorurteile, Ignoranz, Verleumdungen, usw. haben die Chance, mit den neuen Medien abgebaut zu werden. Die brennende politische Aktualität in gewissen Ländern (West)Afrikas ist der Beweis dafür, dass die neuen Medien eine beträchtliche Rolle in der (De)Konstruktion des Afrikabildes tatsächlich beitragen und zwar durch das Internet, das der privilegierte Ort des Erwerbs und der Verbreitung von echten afrikanischen Realitäten bzw. echten Afrikabildern bleibt.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on selected works by Klaus Stephan, ‘Resident Special Correspondent’ for Bavarian Broadcasting (BR) in 1960s Nigeria. Three works will be read against each other as an entangled continuum in which fictional filmic storytelling becomes an extension of journalistic book reportage.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on selected works by Klaus Stephan, German writer and journalist who from 1960-1971 served as ‘Resident Special Correspondent’ for the Bavarian Broadcasting Cooperation (BR) in Nigeria and Ethiopia. During his time in Nigeria Stephan produced three major works available to me: a travelogue entitled _Nigeria: Reise gegen die Zeit_ [Nigeria: Journey against Time] (1961), a four-part documentary _Götter der Könige – Emire des Propheten_ [Gods of the Kings – Emirs of the Prophet] (1963) and a fictional feature film _Taiwo Shango: Der 2. Tag nach dem Tod_ [Taiwo Shango: the Second Day after the Death] (1965) which makes controversial use of an historical incident in mid-1940s Oyo. Produced in cooperation with Nigerian television (NTS), _Taiwo Shango_ can be considered the culmination of Stephan’s Nigeria coverage, though it caused some controversy on the ground and was seemingly neglected after its single 1965 broadcast on ARD. The film can be seen as a concrete cultural manifestation of Pratt’s ‘contact zone’ (2007) in that it is the outcome of an interdependent engagement of two national cultural industries with uneven power and production realities in which a certain image, and thus certain knowledge, of ‘Africa’ was construed, largely for a German audience. As such, the film reflects and creates social and artistic discourses of the time, but also challenges and disrupts these. I will read the three works against each other as an entangled continuum in which fictional filmic storytelling becomes an extension of journalistic book reportage.