(Mis)Imagining Africa in the New Millennium: The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamond

Mafe, Diana Adesola

doi:10.1215/02705346-2010-010

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…13 For a discussion regarding the archetypes Cameron identifies and conceptualises, specific to Blood Diamond, see Mafe (2011). 14 (Bradshaw 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child Soldiers/Child Slaves: Africa’s Weaponised Unfree Children in Blood Diamond (2006) and Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Van der Rede

2024

Genealogy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The figure of the child is one that, at least in the Westernised imagination, is entangled with notions of innocence, naivety, and freedom. But what of the child who is unfree, who has been stripped of innocence, and for whom naivety is a danger? One expression of this iteration of the figure of the child is the child soldier, which has been a centralising figure in various narratives set during and concerned with African experiences of warfare. This paper is concerned with the figure of the child soldier as it is staged in both Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond (2006) and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s filmic adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s novel, Beasts of No Nation (2015). In turning to Ashis Nandy’s articulation of the tension held within “the child” as being both emblematic of a fantasy of childhood produced by adult nostalgia—hopeful, joyous and free—and always potentially dangerous, this paper pivots the notions of soldiering and slaving on and around the child as a figure. In doing so, the paper asks what it might mean to think of the condition of being a child soldier as being akin to that of being a child slave, weaponised for political and economic ends.

show abstract

“…13 For a discussion regarding the archetypes Cameron identifies and conceptualises, specific to Blood Diamond, see Mafe (2011). 14 (Bradshaw 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child Soldiers/Child Slaves: Africa’s Weaponised Unfree Children in Blood Diamond (2006) and Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Van der Rede

2024

Genealogy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Coverage has been dominated, however, by sensationalized portrayals of child soldiering, cannibalism and warlordism (see for instance The Vice Guide to Liberia news documentary). Fictionalized accounts in Hollywood movies such as Blood Diamond, the Lord of War or the Constant Gardener co-produced portrayal of contemporary civil wars in Africa as rather apolitical, senseless acts of violence that are primarily fuelled by primordial ethnic hatred and the economic profiteering of local elites (Mafe 2011;Sakota-Kokot 2014). As we elaborate further below, these reductionist explanations were mirrored in some of the binary intellectual constructs surrounding new and old wars as well as greed and grievances in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Collier and Hoeffler 1998;Kaldor 2012).…”

Section: The Formation Of Security Scholarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgotten Conflicts: Producing Knowledge and Ignorance in Security Studies

Brenner

Han

2021

Journal of Global Security Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Security studies privileges the study of civil wars in some contexts over others. The field's leading journals mostly publish studies of armed conflicts in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Armed conflicts in Asia receive comparatively little attention, despite their prevalence and protracted nature. Against the background of our own empirical archive—the decades-old but largely ignored civil war in Myanmar—we ask why some conflicts draw more scholarly interest than others and why this uneven attention matters. In doing so, we argue that the empirical selectivity bias in the study of civil war and armed conflict reflects (1) institutional entanglements between the field of security studies and Western foreign policy; and (2) sociological factors that shape the formation of scholarly subjectivities and pertain to methodological challenges. This uneven empirical landscape shapes our conceptual understanding of civil wars. In fact, prominent debates within leading security studies journals surrounding the nature of civil war and armed conflict are inseparable from the empirical contexts in which they emerged. Leveling such an uneven empirical landscape thus generates opportunities for discussing conflict, insecurity, and violence in a different light. In shedding light on this issue, we urge closer attention to questions of place, time, and power in the scholarly production of knowledge and ignorance.

show abstract

“…Blindness [2008], Hellboy [2004], Hellboy II: The Golden Army [2008], El espinazo del diablo [The Devil's Backbone 2001] El laberinto del fauno [Pan's Labyrith 2006], and Diarios de motocicleta [Motorcycle Diaries 2004]) the terms of a transnationalised Latin American cinema (including any notion of continental specificity) were much less frequently evoked to describe them and their connection to a sense of the nation or national cinema rarely made (Boyle 2009;Udden 2009;Mafe 2011;). 2 In some academic criticism the first group of films was collectively hailed as the poster films of a Latin American cinematic renaissance (Hart 2004: 13) whilst other criticism downplayed the films' significance in relation to broader continental trends (Page 2009: 10).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas

Tierney¹

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many individuals and institutions. I would like to thank Sussex University for two terms and one part-time semester of leave, and in particular the chairs of Media, Film and Music, Sue Thornham and Tim Jordan, and also the subject heads in film, Thomas Austin and Frank Krutnik. I would also like to thank the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University (Washington DC) where a Research Fellowship in Autumn 2016 helped me with writing the final chapters of the manuscript and also Jeffrey Middents for help in organising the Fellowship. Some of the research for this book has also been conducted as part of the research project: 'Transnational relations in Spanish-American digital cinema: the cases of Spain, Mexico and Argentina' (CSO2014-52750-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. I thank José Cerdán Los Arcos and Miguel Fernández-Rodríguez Labayen for incorporating me into the project. Additionally, initial research for this book, in Mexico City in 2005/2006, was helped by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.I am eternally grateful to all those who have helped in some way by answering questions, providing information, materials and/or contacts, and friendship and positive energy which have helped in the book writing process: Misha MacLaird (in particular),

show abstract

(Mis)Imagining Africa in the New Millennium: The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamond

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Child Soldiers/Child Slaves: Africa’s Weaponised Unfree Children in Blood Diamond (2006) and Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Child Soldiers/Child Slaves: Africa’s Weaponised Unfree Children in Blood Diamond (2006) and Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Forgotten Conflicts: Producing Knowledge and Ignorance in Security Studies

New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About