The Africanized Queen: Metonymic Site of Transformation

Abstract

Race as a category of classification has an infamous history of injustice and domination. In late nineteenth century Africa, it was deployed in a violent agenda of empire building, in which European superiority became the organizing principle of the new political order. Following colonization, European cultural values, social norms and conception of reality provided the privileged frame of representation, and the standpoint for understanding Africans whom Europeans considered to be subhuman.