Diasporic post-colonial African children’s books and the logic of abjection

Abstract

Lacan’s mirror stage points out to the human tendency in desiring wholeness while abjecting what is  considered to be the lack, and in this article whiteness represents the desired wholeness. Using children’s  books about Africa written by diasporic writers primarily for a Western audience, I first analyze how a picture  book titled A Promise to the Sun demonstrates the Logic of Abjection, and later I discuss how these writers,  unable to establish the symbolic identity and as they strive to embrace whiteness, and its material  representation, end up replicating stereotypical colonial discourse that abject Africa (ns). I focus on one  stereotype – a monolithic Africa – to demonstrate how books written by diasporic writers may replicate  colonial discourse, concluding that material conditions facing these writers hinder their efforts to challenge the hegemony.

Keywords: abjection, diasporic, mirror, stereotype, symbolic, whiteness.