Reflections on the Victorian(ist) Impulse to Totalize Africa

Abstract

In this presentation, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural social, and political reality on the nineteenth-century African continent, particularly the more southern and eastern parts of the continent where much of my prior research has focused.