9/11 and Its Remediations in Popular Culture and Arts in Africa

9/11 has been described as an "absolute event" that radically changed the course of history. It reinforced the opposition between Christian and Muslim worlds and led to the declaration of a unilateral war against a global network of terrorists that broke up the classical definition of war as a war between nation states. Yet 9/11 also created responses in parts of the world that were not directly involved in the unfolding "War on Terror". In Africa, local conflicts were re-mapped into an emerging new geography of anger that also reflects the effects of marginalization in a globalized world. The essays of this volume explore local remediations of 9/11 in African popular culture (posters, photographs, videos, cartoons) and visual arts. They give evidence of the fundamental ambivalence towards the event and provide insights into the various ways distant conflicts are translated into intense proximities. Heike Behrend has been a professor of Anthropology at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Cologne. Tobias Wendl is Professor at the Institute of Art History - Free University of Berlin, where he holds the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Chair for the Arts of Africa.