Where are the Natives? Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala as Parody ofAuthenticity

Abstract

This article reengages Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala as a retrospective
conversation with colonial discourses of authentic Africa, a depiction of Africa that
fulfills the metropolitan audience’s desire for exotic images of distant and
purportedly different people. Set within the theoretical contexts of Paul S. Landau’s
“Empires of the Visual: Photography and Colonial Administration in Africa” and
Manthia Diawara’s In Search of Africa, it analyzes the novel’s ironic portrayal of
the colonial civilizing mission. Through the satirical device of parody, the novel
destabilizes the colonial desire for pristine, pure, and timeless Africans and instead
privileges a hybrid appropriation of colonial culture, thereby mitigating the
prejudiced colonial gaze.