Using Stereotypes as Tactics/Strategies

Jane Juffer says in her book Single Mother that tactics are "determined by the absence of power just as a strategy is organized by the postulation of power" (Juffer 36). That is, a tactic is a response when something is out of your control, whereas strategy is created as when you assume your own power.  

Binyavanga Wainaina writes in How to Write About Africa a satire of common stereotypes made by the western world about the continent. His essay, in which he makes such obviously inaccurate statements, is a movement to act against the ignorance of many people. He says of media, "be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed", because often that is the impression we are given.

"In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book."

So what is it that Wainaina is really doing with these stereotypes? He's obviously not just being sarcastic. Through his remarks, we as readers know he is not being serious on the surface, but that between the lines he is making a point. He can't do anything about it in a radical way, so he assumes a tactic - responding to the media in the only way he can to grab their attention. No one, otherwise, will hear the voice of reason and believe that Africa actually isn't what it's stigmatized as.

A similar kind of example is used in Season of Migration to the North by Tayib Salih. The character, Mustafa Saiid, puts on a mask, as Frantz Fanon famously puts it, using his race and the romantic stereotypes that come along with being Arab to get what he wants. The absurdity of some of his statements are clear - he over-dramatizes the sensuality of his bedroom with bright colors and speaks of magic carpets to seduce women, a few of which eventually die from "longing". But this is a tactical response of his hatred against western culture and its stereotypes and misguidings of his identity.