If the goal of racialised modernity was to create a homogeneous self and a singular normativity, and set them in opposition to pathologised others, responses to race in Africa have undermined that singularity by affirming the validity of other norms, other ways of being in, experiencing, and narrating the world.

So far, utopia and retrotopia don't differ – at least in their proceedings and the partiality of results. What really sets one apart from the other is the changing of places between trust and mistrust: trust being moved from the future to the past, mistrust in the opposite direction … the future (once the safe bet for the investment of hopes) smacks increasingly of unspeakable (and recondite!) dangers. So hope, bereaved, and bereft of the future, seeks shelter in a once derided and condemned past, the home of superstitions and blunders.

I judge, however, that you have some African blood, and are dark skinned. Am I correct?

We have a similar problem if you can call it that, in our work with Mr. —, whose paternal ancestry was Armenian but on his grandmother and mother's side was Amharic, and who had always considered himself a true Ethiopian.