Le Malentendu International

Abstract

The discipline of International Relations and cognate fields of Comparative Politics and Development Studies have more or less successfully contained the study of Africa’s condition within the limits of the dominant Western imagination, with grave consequences. Africa is seen and analyzed as a site of weak states and neopatrimonial rule. The continued dominance and ubiquity of such analytical vocabularies and their underlying methods rests on many forces, one of which is the reluctance to acknowledge that Africans can and do articulate their own analyses of their condition and to respect such analyses. This article seeks to remember some of the routinely forgotten international relations which structure Africa’s contemporary condition, by turning to the work of Cameroonian film director Jean-Marie Teno. Teno’s work, in particular Afrique Je Te Plumerai and Le Malentendu Colonial, is profoundly important for students of international relations. This article examines the content, form, and effect of the critique Teno elaborates in Afrique Je Te Plumerai.