Postcolonial Eyes underlines in concrete terms the presence of a particular strand of francophone African literature that presents black Africans not as static objects of reflection for the West but as mobile, critically reflective subjects. I have illustrated how, in their own ways, each of the texts studied here contributes to the consolidation of ‘inverted’ patterns of travel and pre-eminently qualifies as travel literature projecting African views of other peoples and places. Throughout this study, the processes of comparison intrinsic to travel and its textualization have been consistently highlighted. The specific interpretative frameworks informing this comparative dimension have been unquestionably African, and the exploration of other cultures – their differences and their similarities – through travel has also served to highlight the complex nature of African societies themselves as they negotiate their place within the wider world. As the chapters of this study move from the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris to the more recent context of economic migration these interpretative frameworks shift and evolve according to the political, cultural and socio-historical contexts of individual texts.

If in Mirages de Paris, the earliest text studied, Africa very tentatively presents itself as a site from where comparisons may be made and theories may travel, this is done under crippling conditions of self-doubt and assumed cultural inferiority that appear to compromise the ‘authority’ of the traveller's observations and lead him, quite literally, into a dead end.