The Humanitarian Misunderstanding in the Postcolonial Humanitarian African Imagination

This chapter records the contributions of the postcolonial humanitarian African imagination to critical investigations of humanitarianism in Africa. Humanitarian interventions, structured around those acted upon and those who claim trusteeship over the world, operate in frameworks shaped by a western-centric monologic configuration. The “male-oriented colonial agenda” creates the conditions of a gendering of humanitarianism, compounding the vulnerability of women and girls. Reframing humanitarianism should be understood as a clearing gesture that challenges the perpetuation of the monologic configuration of humanitarian discourses and practices, and the attendant erasure of Africans’ agency. This chapter brings the contributions of creative African writers and filmmakers to the conversation on humanitarian practices and discourses that the rich multidisciplinary tapestry on display in this volume represents. African writers expose the humanitarian misunderstanding, the inherent paradox of deploying humanitarian as a camouflage in exploitative ventures such as plantation slavery, colonialism, and their unsavory legacies. From the premise that African indebtedness proceeds from a humanitarianism misunderstanding, I argue that modern African writers, in the redemptive reclamation of their humanity, have been concerned with devising a postcolonial story of the humanitarian debt. Postcolonial African writers advance alternative interpretations that call for reversing the lens on the gift by reconnecting with the story of decolonization.