Remembering and forgetting under the Western gaze. A Brazilian Historian looks at East Africa
Keywords:
EAST AFRICA, MEMORY, COLONIALISM, TOURISMAbstract
Taking as its starting point how recent social conflicts are
remembered (or not) through memorials and museums in Uganda, Kenya, and
Tanzania, this essay discusses colonial continuities that shape how these
countries see themselves and present themselves to foreign eyes. Drawing on the
work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Edward Said, and Aimé Césaire, among others,
I argue that the way these countries present themselves to the Western gaze is
largely driven by the needs and expectations of a tourism industry that reinforces
imperial nostalgia and stereotypes of Africa as a land of nature and adventure,
with folklore playing a side role. Traveling in East Africa is about animals and
landscapes, not the history and aspirations of its inhabitants. Although this plays
to Western prejudices and fantasies, there is an African complicity. The Western
gaze’s pervasiveness at the intersection of memory and tourism reveals the
limitations of decolonization in East Africa as a whole.
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