Still the Primitive?: Myths and Resistance of the Ethno-Spirito in African Representations

Abstract

These statements imply multiple meanings with regard to the perceptions and ideology of Africa in the West. They speak to the lack of unity and loss found since religion was replaced by science, and the rise of capitalism. As the surrealist and Pan-Africanist, Aime Cesaire wrote of a conversation between M. Gobineau and M. Caillois and in which: Gobineau states, The only history is white. Caillois, in turn, observes: The only ethnography is white. It is the West that studies the ethnography of the others, not the others who study the ethnography of the West.