“The Blackness Without and the Blackness Within”: The Rhetorical Construction of the African

Commenting on European and North American objections to his television series on Africa, Davidson (1987) aptly recounts: “The objection heard from a number of viewers in Europe and North America, was against a central theme in the series. This theme portrayed Egypt of the Pharaohs, Ancient Egypt before the conquest of the Arabs in the seventh century A.D., as a country of black origins and population whose original ancestors had come from the lands of the great interior, and whose links with inner Africa remained potent and continuous (italics mine). To affi rm this, of course, is to offend nearly established historiographical orthodoxy” (p.39).