Imaginative geographies of Sub-Saharan Africa in the Czech environment: outline of topic

Abstract

This article provides an outline of imaginative geographies of Sub-Saharan Africa that can be found in Czech society. It is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with Czech men and women regarding the respondents’ ideas about Africa and its inhabitants. Edward Said’s imaginative geographies are used as the key analytical concept – these are ideological images and visions of distant places emphasizing mainly their otherness. The aim is to analyze the ideas of Sub-Saharan Africa and to critically interpret discourses of otherness of the region and its inhabitants. For this purpose, not only postcolonial critique of imaginative geographies is used, but also Marxist critique of neoliberalism because this theoretical approach is an added value of the analysis. The analysis itself reveals that for the otherness of Sub-Saharan Africa some discourses are crucial: those of savagery, poverty, passivity of people and unwillingness to work and especially conservation of Africa in the past times, which has a special impact on perception of humanitarianism and economic neo-colonialism.