Local Cosmopolitans in Colonial West Africa

Historians of imperialism and postcolonial literary scholars have inherited a series of derogatory categories from colonial discourse, labels that were kept firmly in place by local elites in their anti-colonial cultural nationalism. In particular, in the colonial period the category of "mimic" was frequently used to keep distinctive social classes (and also ethnic groups) out of the political sphere. By continuing to recognize and debate mimicry, we indirectly inherit this negative bias. This article debates the ways in which cosmopolitan theory can help us to see the ambivalent mimic-man in a slightly different light from received opinion. If we re-classify colonial "mimics" as cosmopolitans or, more accurately, as local cosmopolitans, an array of new cultural and historical questions comes to the fore highlighting the relationships between elites and sub-elites, and the politics of representation in local contexts.