"Africa" and her peoples: from uncharted territory to a return

The invention of Africa by Europeans constitutes a powerful framework for the creation of the Western imaginary of what is still called the "Black Continent". This lecture will focus on several chronicles of journeys into the lands of Western Central Africa, especially what is now Cameroon, which are compared with contemporary travel guides and with the book La France Contre l’Afrique: Retour au Cameroun, by Mongo Beti, a description of a journey made by the writer to his country in 1991. The main objectives are (a) to analyse the way in which a colonial semiosis of the creation of a non-European world is constructed in longue durée narration processes, and (b) to observe how patterns of categorisation have been maintained of the lands and the peoples who would come to represent Europe's absolute otherness.