Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French is a brilliant and altogether convincing analysis of the way in which Western writers, from Homer to the twentieth century have … imposed their language of desire on the least-known part of the world and have called it ‘Africa.’ There are excellent readings here of writers ranging from Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Sade, and Celine to Conrad and Yambo Ouologuem, but even more impressive and important than these individual readings is Mr. Miller’s wide-ranging, incisive, and exact analysis of ‘Africanist’ discourse, what it has been and what it has meant in the literature of the Western world. –James Olney, Louisiana State University