coda 265northern Nigeria lost their validity. Instead, actors and actresses, direc-
tors, producers, and technical staff seized the chance to create their own
“live” versions of Afromodernity.
BINDING AND BANNING ALTERITYAfrican cultural producers mediate alterity for local audiences by ap-
propriating foreign media content and domesticating it within their own
cultural work. Their mimetical interpretations are as much about the ex-
ploration of the possible as they are about the binding and banning of
alterity. Seen from this angle, media such as the photo novel, the comic,
the video film, and the music video have inherited some of the functions of
older forms of mediation, which have been employed previously to come
to terms with alterity. Like rituals of spirit possession, masquerades, and
wooden figurines, which were and still are used to fix and contain alterity
within the temporal and spatial confines of performances and material
objects, the media I discuss are the privileged instruments and sites for
engaging and containing cultural difference today. Media producers may
be called the heirs of ritual specialists. Like the priests of traditional cults,
media producers specialize in the mediation of alterity. They produce im-
ages of cultural difference by means of various media, including their own
bodies. And like the alter beings portrayed previously in rituals, masquer-
ades, and wooden figurines, the other possible lives portrayed currently
in popular media are marked by a fundamental ambiguity, as they are at
once fascinating and repulsing.
As specialists of mediation, cultural producers act on behalf of the
common people. They perform and produce audiovisual representations
of alterity so that the viewers are spared undergoing mimesis themselves.
The audiences of such cultural forms are thus privileged to engage with
alterity from a safe distance—through tv screens, for example, which
function as windows and walls at the same time. This is reminiscent of
the Aristotelian notion of the distancing effect of mimetic arts, as seen
in painting and drama (particularly tragedy). According to Aristotle, mi-
mesis allows its audience to take pleasure in viewing and gaining under-
standing about things that might otherwise appear disgusting, if seen