| Traditional Western cartography has played a substantial role in the advent of colonialism, particularly in Africa. This dissertation examines the use of space in representations of Africa through African literature, African film, and American film. Instead of looking at traditional mapping, the articulation of space in this project is based upon the combination of experiential space, or space that is mapped through the narrative, and its link to larger geopolitical spaces. The aim of this project is to explore the experiential mappings of spaces that are generated within literary and filmic depictions of Africa. This exploration yields a comparison between the types of mappings generated through African and American aesthetic works.;This project focuses on African literature and film in the colonial, postindependent, and contemporary moments. African literature and film from these periods portray space in markedly similar ways, suggesting that those periods generate a collective response to colonialism and its aftermath that is implicit in its spatial mappings. In contrast, I divide American filmic representations of African spaces into two categories. The first group of films largely comprise the Jungle Film genre and emerge in the 1930's and continue through the 1950's, the discussion of which I frame around the classic King Kong (1933). The second group of films focuses on the Jungle Film's reemergence in the 1980's continuing through the 2000's. The shift in the post-2003 Jungle Films, including the remake of King Kong (2005) reveal films laden with a greater sense of spatial anxiety tied to the aftereffects of 9/11. Hence, I argue the representations in American filmic depictions of Africa communicate American anxieties displaced onto the space of Africa. The result is an increasing awareness of the ways in which cartographic narratives function actively to affect collective perceptions of spaces and their geopolitics. |
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