A second term I often use in what follows is “anti-conquest,” by which I refer to the strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony….The main protagonist of the anti-conquest is a figure I sometimes call the “seeing-man,” an admittedly unfriendly label for the European male subject of European landscape discourse–he whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess.
–Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes
Sitting in an outdoor cafe just off Windhoek’s Independence Avenue this morning, I both participated in and bore witness to a complicated, triangulated form of modern “anti-conquest.” Of course, the opportunities for such gestures are almost infinite in even the most modern of African landscapes, such as Windhoek. The streets here offer to my Western eyes all sorts of curiosities–from child beggars and AIDS orphans to “exotically” dressed women and prostitutes. Surveying these scenes, I have come to passively possess them through my theoretically-trained eye, filtered through my own (taken for granted) cultural innocence. In this blog, all of this sometimes comes together to form a narrative of what we might simply call the “African adventure,” through which you, as my readers, vicariously participate.
There are no subjects in Namibia more suitable for the ant-conquest than Himba women. Pictures of their colorful hair and exposed breasts are common in pamphlets celebrating the country’s “cultural (African) diversity,” which can then be metaphorically consumed by Western tourists. The fact that the Himba number perhaps 4,000 in Namibia, making them the tiniest of minorities in this small country, matters little. What matters for their marketability is simply that they are women who walk around topless, thus suggesting a normalization of a Western sexual tabboo. Their presence can confirm, for those who wish to find it, the theory that Africa is, sexually speaking, a more “open” landscape.
While sitting with my friend Rachel at the outdoor cafe around noon today, I saw two Himba women pass by on the street. Rachel, who was born and raised in Namibia but has since spent much of her life living abroad, drew my attention to them. I felt somewhat ashamed to look, as I noticed that quite a number of people walking by them on the street were also staring at them. And of course, they were looking mostly at their exposed breasts, since that is perhaps the sole, and certainly the primary, reason that anyone is interested in them at all.
As the women walked past, another passerby on the street, a black woman, pulled out her camera and quickly took a picture of them. One of the Himba women turned around and asked if the woman had just taken their picture. “No,” she lied. “I was taking a picture of the street.” The two Himba women paid no further mind to this and continued walking. However, another black woman then pulled out her camera and said she wanted to take a picture of the two women. A nearby baker offered to intercede on her behalf, explaining to her that the Himbas would allow their picture to be taken for $10 per person. The woman agreed to this, and the baker ran down the street to catch the two Himbas, who agreed to come back.
There then ensued, in front of both Rachel and myself, a negotiation over the proper price to pay someone for taking their picture. The Himba women, savvy to the interests of tourists, now demanded $20 per person for their pictures to be taken. The woman with the camera refused, and they continued to haggle. Just then I reached for my bag, thinking that I could pull out my own camera. My plan was to take my camera to the black woman with the camera who wanted to photograph the Himbas and offer her $10 if I could take a picture of her taking a picture of the Himbas. Rachel, laughing heartily, thought this was a fantastic idea. Unfortunately I realized that I had left my camera at home, so my opportunity for mischief was snuffed out before I even had the chance to effect my plan. Instead, I passively watched as the woman with the camera gained the consent of the two Himbas to be photographed for $10 per person. After receiving their money, the Himbas smiled politely for the camera. As soon as the pictures were taken they continued on their way, and the woman with the camera walked away satisfied that she had captured for posterity this curiousity of half-naked women walking along the street. Rachel said the woman with the camera was probably Angolan, although I don’t know how she reached this conclusion.
Reflecting on this incident afterwards, I thought of Mary Louise Pratt’s work on the “anti-conquests” of male European travelers who wrote memoirs in which they portrayed themselves as passive observers to an exotic new landscape. Except, in this case, there were a number of differences: the medium of possession was the camera, not the narrative. The possessor was female, not male; black, not white; African, not European. She was, however, probably belonging to a class similar to her male European counterparts, judging by her clothes and her willingness to spend $20 on two pictures. And so the anti-conquest spreads its reach further and further.
There is, of course, a further dimension. As the transaction occurred, both Rachel and I stopped paying attention to the Himbas and instead watched, intently, this woman with the camera. As the incident unfolded I began to plot out in my mind how I would write about it later; what I would say and what I would not say. I was thus initiating my own anti-conquest, not of the Himbas and not of the woman with the camera, but rather of the interest the woman with the camera had in photographing the Himbas. This was what I wished to record. I did not have my camera with me, but I do have this narrative, which I have now finished.
