Though I did not set out to do so, I have been watching films about aliens recently. After all, DSTV has hit us with a barrage of them. I don’t why and I don’t know why now? As an African Literature student, I am intrigued by the apparent parallels in wonderment, terror and hopelessness displayed by humans on encounter with or on witnessing so-called aliens in these films- and the moment of colonial encounter between the colonizer (read European) and colonized to be (read African). Were our ancestors on the continent so terrified by the sight of a species (because strange looking) of humans they had never laid eyes on? Or did the appearance of these strange ‘humanoid substance’ totally explode their sense of knowledge – the epistemic violence ala Umofia in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart? What were their instincts- to fight an invading unknown being or to revere them as beings that came from yonder the known world- that is to make of them gods they were not? White people were quick to pass judgment – to see blacks as simply infantile things to be tutored and exploited (to be sure not all encounters produced this disgrace which has since been disproved). So on the part of whites, the ‘alien moment’ of the colonial encounter produced or supported the discourse of Whiteness as superior. But for the blacks- what was it- terror in the same way as we see in the Hollywood alien films? Fanon has done insightful work on the psychopathology of colonial relations. It is high time someone adds with enquiry on the psychic ruptures – if at all, of the colonial encounter itself.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 13:18:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015