Knowledge production and circulation of Africa in modern China

Abstract

This dissertation examines knowledge production about Africa in modern China from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It analyzes how and why ideas of Africa and Africans have been produced and circulated in popular periodicals, propaganda posters, music iconography and documentary films. It explores continuities and fractures in the meaning-making processes of Africa in China and presents a study of dialogues and negotiations between sameness and difference, self and other, fractures and continuities, and past and present. Examining how ideas about Africa have been produced and circulated in various social spaces in China, this dissertation uses discursive, cultural, and historical methods to investigate how and why this African presence helped condition and was conditioned by dominant narratives of the time. Knowledge about Africa in China is rooted in global, transnational, and transregional movements of people, goods, and ideas. These meaning-making pathways have responded to, challenged, or replicated colonial and imperial tropes and have been shaped by political and ideological shifts in modern China. In using the case of Africa in China, this research contributes to the expanding fields of Global China and Global Africa by investigating transregional imaginaries of Africa in China. It provides a comprehensive examination of the processes of knowledge production, knowledge circulation, motivations, and contexts. The material analyzed here makes an empirical contribution through its combination of textual, visual, and audiovisual material. It engages with the issues underlying the interactions between Chinese and African communities and attempts a theoretical and methodological reframing of knowledge and inquiry in modern times. This dissertation thus contributes to a growing body of work centering on peoples and cultures in Africa–China relations. Underlying currents for scholarships on race and racialization of blacks in the Chinese context, this research argues against the notion that distinct political eras introduced and abolished racialized categorizations in China. It shows that a change in political eras did not cancel racial understandings. Instead, they were unified in a coherent narrative that involved, challenged, or responded to global circulations of ideas as they pertained to Africa. In this regard, this project also contributes to a wider understanding of contemporary Africa–China relations at a moment when these relations face challenges brought about by geopolitical and global health crises which contribute to shaping contemporary and future Africa–China relations.