‘The Europeans and Americans Don’t Know Africa’: Of Translation, Interpretation, and Extraction
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298211063927 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Author | Oumar Ba |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298211063927
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2022, Vol. 50(2) 548 –560
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/03058298211063927
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1. Elizabeth Dauphinee, ‘Narrative Engagement and the Creative Practices of International
Relations’, in Reflexivity and International Relations: Positionality, Critique, and Practice,
eds. Jack L. Amoureux and Brent J. Steele (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 54.
2. Naeem Inayatullah, ‘Falling and Flying: An Introduction’, in Autobiographical International
Relations: I, IR, ed. Naeem Inayatullah (New York: Routledge, 2011), 5. Inayatullah finds him-
self stepping into the role of ‘expert’ on Afghanistan after people in his hometown of Ithaca,
NY (with three institutions of higher education) ‘acquired a thirst for information on the Afghan
people and their landscape’ after the US started its bombing campaign in 2001. This experi-
ence eventually led Inayatullah to write his first autobiographical essay (Inayatullah, Something
There) and the subsequent edited volume on autobiographical IR (Inayatullah, Autobiographical
International Relations, New York: Routledge, 2011). Inayatullah had become an interpreter
and translator, moved by the fact that ‘there is something there: something real and intangible
that the soon to be saturated media coverage would not provide’. (Ibid., 2).
‘The Europeans and Americans
Don’t Know Africa’: Of
Translation, Interpretation,
and Extraction
Oumar Ba
Cornell University, USA
Keywords
Research, Extraction, Violence
‘the one doing the judging may be just as guilty of the crime, if not more’
–Elizabeth Dauphinee1
On Being the ‘Expert’
‘Bombing begets pedagogy’, Naeem Inayatullah writes, reflecting on the sudden
American thirst for knowledge on the Afghan people and its cultural landscape, soon
after the US started its 2001 bombing campaign.2 The African predicament too, is a
Corresponding author:
Oumar Ba, Morehouse College, Wheeler Hall 313, 830 Westview Dr SW, Atlanta, GA 30314, USA.
Email: oumar.ba@cornell.edu
1063927MIL0010.1177/03058298211063927Millennium - Journal of International StudiesBa
research-article2022
Original Article
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