Magic and modernity in Tintin au Congo (1930) and the Sierra Leone Special Court

摘要

Much ink has been spilled over the years on the portrayal of Africa and Africans in the second album on the adventures of Tintin, Tintin au Congo. Written by Hergé in the early 1930s, the book was revised many times in an effort to respond to critiques that is was an apology of colonialism.2 Tintin au Congo tells the story of the encounter between a young, white European and Africa, as imagined by a Belgian artist living in Brussels in the inter-war period; as such, we can understand Tintin as a depiction by its author of a particular vision of Africa and of a certain understanding of Western presence on the continent.