“Enacting Africa: Neoliberalism and Politics of Global Presence”

This talk explores popular contemporary accounts about American travelers to West Africa. In it, I consider what the hypervisibility of certain African sites within American popular culture means for Western understandings of the continent. What are the genealogies and effects of using Africa as a stage for performances of American identities, both black and white? What pleasures do these performances provide? And how do they reflect and reinforce neoliberalism?