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

Abstract

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”.