Tarzan, a Black Man: Toward a Critique of the Polit Economy of the Name of “Africa”

• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Marcelo R. S.
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Afro-Ásia (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufba.br/index.php/afroasia/article/view/38589
• topic: Cinema; África; Tarzan; Racismo; Cinema; Africa; Tarzan; Racism

Since 1912, countless texts – novels, radio shows, comic strips, television serials, films – have produced and articulated representations of Africa in narratives featuring Tarzan, a character created by the US author Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). Taking the name of “Africa” as a reference, the texts which surround and inhabit the name of “Tarzan” belong both to a Western genealogy and to a cross-cultural history. After examining the economy of the global circulation of the “Tarzan” trademark, I give a brief and schematic description of Tarzan’s filmography, which allows me to interrogate what I call the occidentalist name-in-closure of “Africa”. At last, by means of a close reading of Jean Rouch’s Moi, un noir (1959) as a prism through which Tarzan’s global circulation can be interpreted and reinvented, I suggest possibilities of imaginative overflow, opening up the cross-cultural spacing of the writing of “Africa” as political economy of the name of “Africa”.