Naija, the missing spectacle: guidebooks on Nigeria in the neoliberal era
Publication Name: African Identities
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 22
Issue: 1
Page Range: 213-228
Description:
Nigeria, long a quintessential terrain for the expatriate gaze more than the tourist gaze, has now very nearly disappeared as a topic from standard Western issued guidebooks. The gap in publications was very noticeable by the second decade of the 21st century, but it came as a culmination of the country’s diminishing role in those for the last four neoliberal decades. The country has apparently lost its identifiable role as spectacle in global capitalism in the Debordian sense. At the same time, space opened up for radical Western guidebooks and in the last decade, radical homegrown guides that reflect and celebrate the African gaze on Africa, with a new and unashamedly local frame of reference and context. Not surprisingly, this overlaps meaningfully with socialist and feminist political commitment in most relevant literature. This article deals with the projected image of Nigeria in guidebooks foreign, as well as domestic.
Open Access: Yes