Colonial anthropology reduced African rites to obscene black magic

Evidence

Black magic! Orgies, witches’ sabbaths, heathen ceremonies, amulets. Coitus is an occasion to call on the gods of the clan. It is a sacred act, pure, absolute, bringing invisible forces into action. What is one to think of all these manifestations, all these initiations, all these acts? From very direction I am assaulted by the obscenity of dances and of words. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 473

Categorization

• XREF: Fanon shows how ethnography itself becomes a tool of racial stigma, echoing how the colonial gaze constructs the primitive. — connects to: Black identity is reduced to a catalog of stereotyping colonial caricatures; Colonial ethnography reduces African rites to obscene primitive spectacle; The conspiracy’s oath derived from West African ritual traditions (+3 more)

Related

• Colonial ethnography reduces African rites to obscene primitive spectacle (similarity 0.93)
• Black identity is reduced to a catalog of stereotyping colonial caricatures (similarity 0.85)
• The colonial image of Africa forced blacks into self-contempt (similarity 0.81)
• Depicting Africans as primitive legitimized colonial invasion and plunder. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Colonial domination distorts the colonized’s relationship with their own culture and traditions #expands (0.60) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 421