Images and Empires

Images and Empires
Images and
Empires
Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
EDITED BY
Faul S. Lanoau
AND
Deborah D. Kaspin
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Bctlclc, Lo Argclc Loroor
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
.oo. by the Regents of the University of California
Parts of chapter were rst published in Henry J. Drewal, Mermaids,
Mirrors, and Snake Charmers, African Art .:, . (:q88): 8, q6. Part of
chapter q was rst published in Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre,
LExposition coloniale, ..: La mmoire du sicle (Paris: ditions Complexe,
:qq:). Chapter :. has been aoapteo from material incorporateo in Eric
Gable, Appropriate Booies: Self through the Other in Manjaco ano
Fortuguese Representation, Vtool Artltopolog, Rcctc. :, : ,:qq8,: :q.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Images and empires : visuality in colonial and postcolonial
Africa / Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-.o-..q8- (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN o-.o-..qq-
(paper : alk. paper)
:. Visual anthropologyAfrica. .. Visual sociologyAfrica.
. AfricaColonization. . PostcolonialismAfrica. . Africa
in art. 6. Africa in literature. . Africa in mass media.
I. Landau, Paul Stuart, :q6. II. Kaspin, Deborah, :q
GN6 .I .oo. .oo:oo8.8
o:.oq6dc.: CIF
:o oq o8 o o6 o o o o.
:o q 8 6 . :
The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-
free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO
Zq.8:qq. (R :qq) (Permanence of Paper).
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Introduction: An Amazing Distance: Pictures and People in Africa
Pool S. Lorooo / .
:. Our Mosquitoes Are Not So Big: Images and Modernity in Zimbabwe
Ttmotl, Botlc / .
.. The Sleep of the Brave: Graves as Sites and Signs in the Colonial Eastern Cape
Docto Borr /
. Tintin and the Interruptions of Congolese Comics
ôrc, Roc Hort / o
. Cartooning Nigerian Anticolonial Nationalism
Tcomolo Olort,or / .:
. Empires of the Visual: Photography and Colonial Administration in Africa
Pool S. Lorooo / ..
6. Portraits of Modernity: Fashioning Selves in Dakarois Popular Photography
Hootto ôto Motofo / .,:
. Mami Wata and Santa Marta: Imag(in)ing Selves and Others in Africa and the
Americas
Hcrt, }olr Dtc.ol / .
8. Captured on Film: Bushmen and the Claptrap of Performative Primitives
Ro/ctt }. Gotoor / :.:
q. Decentering the Gaze at French Colonial Exhibitions
Cotlcttrc Hooctt / :
:o. The Politics of Bushman Representations
Ptppo Slotrc / :
::. Omada Art at the Crossroads of Colonialisms
Poolo Bcr-Amo Gttltcl / :,
:.. Bad Copies: The Colonial Aesthetic and the Manjaco-Portuguese Encounter
Ettc Go/lc / :
Conclusion: Signifying Power in Africa
Dc/otol D. Ioptr / :o
ninrioon\rnv / ,
ris+ or cox+nint+ons / ,.
ixnrx / ,
i rrts +n\+i oxs
:.: Urban bioscope, Northern Rhooesia ,Zambia,, ca. :qo /
:.. A scene from Pltlcmor tlc Foot/ollct, :q. /
:. Aovertisement for Lifebuoy soap, :q6os / o
..: Map of the Eastern Cape /
... Bernaro Ficart, Les funerailles oes Cafres et Hottantots ,:.q, /
.. Robert Jacob Goroon, Hottentot chief s grave ,:q, /
.. King Cetshwayos corpse ,:88, /
.. Henry Butler, The Epitaph ,:8, / ,
..6 Thomas Baines, Tlc Dcotl of Colorcl Foto,cc ,oetail, / ,
.. Graves in the Winterberg ,:8, / ,,
..8 Iingoes viewing the booy of Chief Sanoile / ,
..q Sanoiles grave / 8o
..:o Goolonton canoelabra ,oetail, / 8.
..:: George Hay, Sanoili, cottc oc ctttc / 8
.: Weloeo silhouette by Lubumbashi railway worker, ca. :qo. /
.. Le match oe Jako et Mako by Louchet /
. Vision oe guerre by Narib / .o.
ctt
. Congolese soloier in fez cap / .o.
. Les enchains by SAV / .o:
.6 Les aventures oe Mbumbulu by Masta / .o
. Mbu et Mpia. . . . espiegles Kinois by F. MBila / .o,
.8 Apolosa moniteur by Sima Lukombo / ..
.: Akinola Lasekan, Ioreign Capitalist / .:,
.. Akinola Lasekan, Eternal Servituoe? / .:8
. Akinola Lasekan, Democracy versus Communism / .o
. Akinola Lasekan, Nigerian Nationalism / ..
. Akinola Lasekan, A Suggestion / .:
.6 Akinola Lasekan, Thin Wall of Lies Smasheo / .
. Akinola Lasekan, Leaving Us at the Mercy of the Big Wolf ? / .
.8 Uniteo Africa Company, Joseph Learns Something New / .
.q Uniteo Africa Company, The Gang Have Been Captureo / .,
.:o Uniteo Africa Company, Joseph Talks to the Chief / .8
.: Aovertisement for Banania / .
.. Lake Chrissie San from Raymono Darts Gallery of African Iaces / ..
. The Authentic Sculpture, frontispiece in Margery Ferhams Tcr Afttcor / .
. Noebele Warriors, ca. :8qo / .o
6.: Amateur portrait of a well-oresseo person, illustrating oc / .,
6.. Sotiba fashion show / .8:
6. Wall in an atelier of an olo tailor, Dakar / .8
6. Weooing photo of a brioe with guests in a living room / .8
6. Seateo guests at a naming ceremony / .8,
.: Snake charmer chromolithograph / .
.. Water spirit heaooress, Bonny, Nigeria / .
. Contemporary Igbo shrine to Mami Wata / :o.
cttt irrts+n\+ioxs
.. Mrs. Margaret Ekwebelam ano her shrine / :o:
. Mami Wata clay sculptures / :o
.6 Clay Mami Wata wearing costume jewelry / :o
. Contemporary Saint Martha, manufactureo object / :o,
.8 Henry Drewals personal altar to Mami Wata / :o
8.: N!ai, from ^!ot, Tlc Stot, of o Iorg 1omor ,oir. John Marshall, :q8o, / :.
8.. C. L. H. Hahn, Dr. Caole ano two average size Kalahari Bushmen / :.,
q.: Senegalese weaver ano apprentice / :
q.. Senegalese jewelers workshop / :
q. Le gaz aux colonies / :
q. Irench Western African Favilion, Faris, :q: / :
q. Coco Banania et les poissons-volants / :
q.6 Iormer Cameroon-Togo pavilion, Faris / :
:o.: Diorama of hunter-gatherer camp, South African Museum, Cape Town / :
:o.. /Xam from the Frieska oistrict, :q:o / :,
:o. Faintings of animals ano plants / :8
:o. Mtcot installation, main room / :
:o. Another view of Mtcot installation, main room / :
:o.6 Mtcot installation, section of semi-circle of resin casts / :
:o. Fart of the Mtcot installation / :,
::.: Carveo royal altar tusk, late nineteenth century / :8
::.. Drawing by Joanne Wooo, oetail of tusk in g. ::.: / :8
::. Omaoa wooo carving of a European shopkeeper, part of a box / :8
::. Drawing of Omaoa carving of young girl with tray / :8,
::. Omaoa wooo carving of a European / :88
::.6 Omaoa wooo carving criticizing European manners / :8
::. Omaoa carveo chair oepicting a orunk European / :o
irrts+n\+ioxs tx
:..: Fhotograph of a scarieo Manjaco woman, by Artur Martins oe Meireles / :,
:... Two Manjaco ancestor posts, one by Jon Biku Finambe / :8
:.. Art oeco lithograph of village scenes from Antonio Carreiras ethnographies / o.
:.. Fhotographs from Artur Martins oe Meireles, Mottloc trtco oo Moroco / o
:.. Cluster of Manjaco ancestor posts / o
:..6 Manjaco ancestor posts by Uut / o8
:.. Manjaco ancestor posts by Soga Menoes / o
:..8 Cluster of Manjaco ancestor posts, incluoing some by Jon Biku Finambe / .o
x irrts+n\+ioxs
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This volume stems from a meeting of interesteo scholars, calleo Images ano Em-
pires in Africa, organizeo by us, Faul Lanoau ano Deborah Kaspin. Yet it repre-
sents much more than a publication of those conference papers. Both of us wrote
commentaries on most of the papers, combining our own critiques with the re-
marks of our able oiscussants who spoke at the conference. Most of our authors
then rewrote their essays to reect the planneo integrity of the book, ano eleven of
those essays were selecteo ano eoiteo again, ano illustrations were settleo on. Faul
Lanoau wrote an extenoeo introouction to the abioing issues in the burgeoning
scholarship behino the project as a whole. He also contributeo a separate chapter
on the subject of photography in Africa. Deborah Kaspin wrote a conclusion ao-
oressing the problems of culture ano power that our authors variously oescribe.
We thank our initial participants ano, most of all, the contributors to this book
for bearing with us through this long process.
Lanoaus initial concept for the conference ano for this book oeriveo from his
prior work on images in the history of southern African evangelism. When mis-
sionaries useo pictures or slioes, they receiveo unpreoictable responses. Iconic im-
ages sometimes became focuses of oierent interpretations ano revealeo important
epistemological conicts beneath the surface of colonial contact. In the conference,
Lanoau wanteo to consioer the visual image as a particular mooe of expression in
Africa, in much the same way that texts ano orality have been problematizeo. The
meaning of any communicative meoium, incluoing iconic images, is arguably a
proouct of what Stanley Iish calls its interpretive communities.
1
If there are
histories of text ,writing ano printing, for instance,, ano of orality ,folktales ano oral
traoitions, for instance,, then perhaps there coulo be a history of images in the same
vein.
Kaspin came to the project with a backgrouno in the cultural politics of Chewa
ritual ano Nyau masqueraoes. Like Lanoaus evangelical pictures, Nyau has been
xt
oierently interpreteo, ano energetically contesteo, by the several factions createo
by colonial ano postcolonial politics. More munoane practices, from the shapes of
houses to the cut of clothing, are similarly implicateo in contests of cultural au-
thority. As a teacher, Kaspin founo that these imagesalong with lms, photos,
maps, aovertising, ano so oneliciteo stuoents interest in the politics of meaning
in a way that oral ano textual meoia alone coulo not.
We share the premise that Africans have the major role in shaping their histo-
ries ano their presents. Both of us strongly felt that such a focus on Africans was
missing from too many stuoies of colonial oiscourse. We therefore oisavoweo the
fashionable ioea that Western analyses of Africans expressions must primarily be
self-reective. On the other hano, we also explicitly rejecteo the contrary notion
that art ano expression somehow speak their original intentions oirectly, in an
unmeoiateo way.
THE CONFERENCE
We began planning for the conference in :qq6. The invitation to submit proposals
to the meetings laio out the essential framework we woulo later rely upon in mak-
ing this anthology. We suggesteo not only that pictures ano sculptures might be seen
as elements of colonialism in Africa, but also that they continue to mark ano ex-
press the inequalities that typify the postcolonial conoition tooay:
Participants are invited to treat examples of subaltern, hand-wrought, or artistic im-
ages, and ocial, consumer or colonial images, in a single regional, social and his-
torical context. . . . In New Crossroads, South Africa, wall murals of up-raised sts,
and the governments cartoon pamphlets, both spoke to the single issue of the tri-
cameral parliamentary elections. In the :qth century Cape interior, foragers and pas-
toralists painted caves with scenes of white men on horseback, and photographers
helped dene the stereotype of bushmen who were then identied as the artists of
those same paintings. In central Africa, Africans produced tourist art to reect Eu-
ropean expectations, while imperial hygiene lms depicted African life to Africans
themselves. In West Africa, studio photographers supplied twin-cult duplicate pho-
tos to urbanites, while twin-cult statuary was collected by Westerners; sculptors fash-
ioned deities wearing pith helmets while European images of whites as Christ ap-
peared in Sunday schools. Figurative images thus played an important role in
mediating relationships between the colonizer and the colonized, the state and the
individual, the global and the local.
2
As a working hypothesis, we suggesteo that
Imperial depictions of Africans created ideal forms that t, discursively, into the ad-
ministrative apparatus; African depictions of Europeans sought to understand, deny
and control Europeans authority. Since many Africans were and are not literate, pic-
tures also represented an important medium of communication. Africans saw whites
on butter wrappers, cheap posters of The Last Supper, and :qos Spencer Tracy lms:
just as whites understood Africans through Natural History Magazine, Tarzan and King
xtt rnrr\cr
Solomons Mines. Images were and are artworks, instruments of hegemony, hidden tran-
scripts, and anonymous or surreptitious speech. Images and Empires seeks a uni-
ed perspective on the circulation of meanings growing out from these images and
operating between them.
We receiveo a great many ne proposals for papers. While the great majority
of them coulo not be accommooateo in the limiteo framework of three oays of
meetings, they showeo us that we hao tappeo into a young ano vigorous elo of
scholarship. The conference was helo at the Henry Luce Center for International
ano Area Stuoies at Yale, from Iebruary : to :6, :qq. Our presenters came from
the Uniteo States, Canaoa, Europe, ano Africa. The twenty original participants
ano their papers, in oroer of presentation, were as follows:
Bennetta Jules-Rosette ,University of California at San Diego,, Interrogating
Mooernity: Representation ano Reappropriation in Zairian Fopular
Fainting ano Tourist Art.
Bogumil Jewsiewicki ,Universit Laval, Canaoa,, Visual Archeology of Zairian
Mooernity ano Folitical Culture: Fopular Images of F. E. Lumumba,
Belgian Colony ano Chains of Slavery.
Nancy Rose Hunt ,University of Arizona,, Ttrttr oo Corgo ano Its Colonial ano
Fost-Colonial Reformulations.
Enio Schilokrout ,American Museum of Natural History, New York,,
Mangbetu Sculptural Art ano the Texts of Herb Lang.
Robert Goroon ,University of Vermont,, Dont Look At Me Now: Death Is
Dancing Me Raggeo.
Keyan Tomaselli ano Arnolo Schepperson ,University of Natal, South Africa,,
Something Olo, Something Borroweo: A Marriage of Fast ano Fresent
Monumental Images in South African Television Aovertisements after
May :qq. Fresenteo by Tomaselli.
Timothy Burke ,Swarthmore,, Our Mosquitoes Are Not So Big: Images in the
Making of Mass Communication in Colonial Zimbabwe.
Juoy Seioman, with C. Schaer, E. Fotenza, ano M. Smithers ,Images of Deance
Foster Collective, Johannesburg,, Join the New Struggle: Images of AIDS
in South Africa. Fresenteo by Seioman.
Eric Gable ,Mary Washington College,, Appropriate/Inappropriate Booies:
Manjaco Fortuguese Intergurations at the Climax of Colonialism.
Faula Ben-Amos Girshick ,Inoiana University at Bloomington,, Omaoa Art at
the Crossroaos of Colonialisms.
Huoita Mustafa ,Harvaro,, Fortraits of Mooernity: Fopular Fhotography ano
Desiring Selves in Dakarois Iashion.
Samba Diop ,State University of New York at Bualo,, Mutual Representations
in Colonial Senegal ,:qoo:q6o,: The Image of the African Native in the
Irench Fress ano the Natives Ferception of the European in Fopular
Faintings.
rnrr\cr xttt
Davio Bunn ,University of the Western Cape, South Africa,, The Sleep of the
Brave: Graves as Sites ano Signs in the Colonial Eastern Cape.
Fippa Skotnes ,University of Cape Town, South Africa,, The Folitics of
Bushman Representations: A Diorama, an Archive ano an Art
Exhibition.
Carol Muller ,University of Natal, South Africa,, The Book, Baoge, Brioe, Bell
ano BMW: Hybrioity of Image ano Empire in South Africas I/orolo
Lomoôotctlo.
Keith Sneoegar ,Utah Valley State College,, Mapping Heaven ano Earth: A
Stereographic Frojection of British Astronomy ano Khoisan Cosmology
onto the Intellectual Culture of :qth-Century Cape Town.
Christrauo Geary ,National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.,,
Betwixt ano Between: Fostcaro Representations by Western ano African
Fhotographers.
Catherine Hooeir ,Institut oEtuoes politiques oe Faris,, Decentering the Gaze
at the Irench Colonial Exhibitions.
Tejumola Olaniyan ,University of Virginia,, Cartooning Nigerian
Nationalism.
Henry Drewal ,University of Wisconsin-Maoison,, Mami Wata ano Santa
Marta: Imaging Selves ano Others in Africa ano America.
The conference was introouceo by Faul Lanoau. Commentary on the papers was
oereo by Susan Vogel, Christopher Miller, Robert Harms, James Scott, ano Deb-
orah Kaspin. At the time all of us were aliateo with Yale University.
NOTES
:. Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
:q8o).
.. One or two phrases have here been altered in order to avoid repetitions.
xtc rnrr\cr
\ckxovrrnoxrx+s
There are a number of people ano institutions without whom this book woulo
not have been possible. Iirst the institutions. Yale University ano many oepart-
ments ano programs at Yale contributeo to the success of the conference ano we
thank them. We wish also to acknowleoge the preceoent set by the Southern
African Research Frogram ,SARF,, ano we are grateful for the use of SARF funos
in oroer to nance the southern Africanist panels at the conference, conveneo
unoer SARFs aegis. We therefore also wish to acknowleoge the Ioro Iounoation,
the source of those funos. Iinally, the Oce of the Dean of the College ano Ar-
lene McCoro generously supplieo us with aooitional funoing when we neeoeo it
most.
Many inoiviouals also helpeo us. At Yale, Ian Shapiro of the Folitical Science
Department lent his voice to the ioea of a conference at an early ano critical stage,
ano without his initial intervention, it woulo have oieo on the vine. Davio Apter of
the Frogram in African Stuoies ano Robin Winks of the History Department also
threw their support behino us. Without Davios subsequent aio at certain key mo-
ments, we woulo again have faileo. Donna Ferry was our tireless assistant, who took
care of a great many logistical issues. John Moore Crossey continually sent us bib-
liographic information tailoreo to the theme of the conference, an amazing service
that will now be greatly misseo at Yale, since he has retireo as the Africanist li-
brarian. Moore also organizeo an exhibition from Yales Africana holoings in pic-
tures, cartoons, ano postcaros, which ran in Iebruary :qq in Sterling Memorial
Library on Yales campus. Susan Vogel hosteo a gathering for the participants ano
contributors at the Yale Art Gallery. We thank her also, ano Christopher Miller,
Robert Harms, ano James Scott, for their illuminating commentaries on the pa-
pers in their respective panels.
Ior subsequent intellectual engagement ouring the preparation of the intro-
ouction ano conclusion, we woulo like to thank Rory Bester, Timothy Burke, Emily
xc
Epstein Lanoau, Fatricia Hayes, Eric Gable, Kira Hall, Catherine Howaro, Feter
Marks, Feter Miller, Santu Mofokeng, Anorew Ferchuk, Donna Ferry, Fippa
Skotnes, Laura Wexler, ano our two anonymous reaoers at the University of Cal-
ifornia Fress. In the long preparation of the book, we have been gratifyingly en-
courageo ano eciently assisteo by Monica McCormick.
xct \ckxovrrnoxrx+s
Introouction
An Amazing Distance:
Pictures and People in Africa
Paul S. Landau
Truly here are real savages by our stanoaros, for either they must be thoroughly
so, or we must be, there is an amazing oistance between their character ano ours.
1
Michel oe Montaigne makes this observation in his essay Of Cannibals. His
point, especially apparent in the woro amazing, is that the oerogatory European
appraisal of Brazilian inoigenes as savages is ironic. Ior while European civi-
lization has left behino the valor ano moral simplicity of the classical past, the
Brazilian cannibals have not, ano are pure of heart. The argument is maoe
mostly by implication, especially in the consistency with which Montaigne quotes
King Fyrrus, Flato, Aristotle, Zeno, ano other such luminaries in oescribing the
cannibals: Flato for instance woulo have seen mankinos Goloen Age in them,
ano the cannibal language resembleo Greek. Of Cannibals can be reao as an
early formulation of a theory of what some mooern writers call alterity, the ioea
that certain kinos of interactions tell people who they are ano who most certainly
they are not.
2
This book is about Africans, not about Brazilians, ano in fact, about Africans
ano visual mimesis. Our authors come from various elos, but each chapter focuses
on visual images as they were oeployeo in their contexts of apprehension. Most of
the chapters juxtapose two oierent kinos of images, in the sense of the eoitors
suggestion that essays compare African iconographies ano reaoings, with Eu-
ropean ones. More accurately, their oiscussions can be saio to concern the global
ano the local. They embrace aovertising ano folk art, colonist ano inoigene, pho-
tography ano funerary sculpture, lm ano oance, public spectacle ano private be-
havior, ano international ano street cartooning, among other topics. By focusing
on the intersections between such oomains, the authors, as a group, make several
relateo arguments, oemonstrating that images change oepenoing on who is look-
ing at them ano showing how images have both unoerwritten, ano unoermineo,
the hierarchies that governeo colonial Africa. Most interesting to me, the chapters
.
in this book all reveal how people use images to oraw together previously inchoate
social meanings from their o.r societies, ano then how they use them to recog-
nize people from otlct societies. Our contributors are smart enough to know that
any kino of oualism is an inaoequate mooel for human interaction. Nonetheless,
ano this is my point, they all contemplate the same amazing oistance remarkeo
upon by Montaigne. It seems as if images leno themselves particularly to ooing so.
Image is a very forgiving woro, even a promiscuous one. In a basic sense, an
image means a picture, whether the referent is present as an object, or in the mino.
At the same time, a picture, in the sense of a sign that resemblesa picture is of
somethingcannot really be in the mino, as a moments reection will show.
3
Thus, if we begin thinking about the subject matter of this book in a limiteo sense,
with the ioea of an image of Africa, it shoulo be acknowleogeo that this image
really consists of a set of ioeas associateo with Africa ,albeit ones that, perhaps, also
embooy visual components,.
4
Montaignes essay is again a gooo guioe. It reminos
us that the history of the European view of non-European peoples has always
reecteo Europeans history of imagining themselves.
Fatently such was the case with Europes general knowleoge of Africa before the
nineteenth century. Armchair geographers reacheo into what was a rather shal-
low archive of reports, glimpses, ano rumors accumulateo over past centuries, ano
the Africa they fabricateo oeriveo from Western oemanos ano prejuoices. We
might call the resulting collagethe image of Africa that, in fact, still survives
tooayan image-Africa, paralleling Eowaro Saios oiscursive Orient con-
structeo by European travelers.
5
The history of the oevelopment of the image-
Africa woulo incluoe Tlc Pcttplo of tlc Et,tltocor Sco , C.E.,, with its cryptic oe-
scription of tall traoing men, the temporary location of Frester John in Nubia or
Ethiopia, the visibility of the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa, emperor of Mali, the
white spaces on the Mappa Munoi, ano Guy Tacharos ano Feter Kolbens wooo-
cuts of Bushmen poseo like Socrates. It woulo account for oark invocations of
witchery ano fetishism from Africa, the popularity of Leo Africanuss narratives,
the ancient mystique of the Mountains of the Moon, ano the ioea of the
Hamites. It woulo brace us for a reaoing of two of the volumes of the massive
eighteenth-century Urtcctol Httot,. The image-Africas permutations might be seen
as implicitly charting the rise of sixteenth-century Europe out of Asias shaoow, the
colonial encroachments of the Fortuguese ano the Dutch, ano the prospects of swift
gain along the Ivory, Slave, ano Golo coasts.
6
Its accretion of images ano gments
ano blanks either followeo the contours of the familiar or oetoureo into obscenity,
exoticism, ano incomprehension.
At the height of the African slave traoe, the image-Africa unoerwent a change.
Joseph Miller has calleo the transatlantic commerce in human beings the way of
oeath. Its eect on the Wests picture of Africa was also pernicious, as the oegra-
oation of millions of Africans soureo the Western imagination of their places of
origin.
7
The contrary response was to assert the commonality of the slaves hu-
manity. The freeoman Olauoah Equiano went further than this ano eectively re-
: r\tr s. r\xn\t
capitulateo Montaignes cannibal trope in Of Cannibals. Equiano graspeo that
even if Westerners coulo not see contemporary Africans as their equals, they might
still be leo to unoerstano Africans as embooying the essence of Europes ances-
tors, ano so he orew an analogy between the manners ano customs of my coun-
tryman ano those of the Jews before they reacheo the Lano of Fromise . . . |in other
woros,| the Israelites in their primitive state. . . . As to the oierence of colour be-
tween the Eboan Africans ano the mooern Jews, he continueo, I shall not pre-
sume to account for it.
8
Equiano was asking his European reaoers to project aspects of their imagineo
past selves into the voio of their knowleoge about Africa. He knew they coulo not
unoerstano his own Igbo-speaking people on Igbo ,Eboan, terms, because they
hao no ioea what those terms were, ano possibly no oesire to know.
9
But just like
Montaignes cannibals, the Igbos helo within them a critical part of Europes
most authentic self. In the history of the circulation of images in ano about Africa,
this mooe of interpretation consistently recurs: the substitution of what is familiar
ano internal for what is alien. Westerners visualizations of Africa oio this, ano
Africans visualizations of Westerners oio it too.
In the fullness of the Wests nineteenth-century engagement with Africa, the
slave eras harsh views were fragmenteo. Of the many varieties of observations that
jostleo against one another, several again reecteo Montaignes ironic reversal. It
was maintaineo that Africans were chiloren, that the present oay in Africa was
somehow the primitive past of the West, ano yet, conversely, that the ancient his-
tory of Africa belongeo to the biblical past of the West.
10
Wilo men of the oark
forests ano magical pygmies were linkeo with lost Egyptian tribes ano forgotten
cities. Maybe, some imperialists thought, Africans coulo attain the same level of
civilization as Europeans. Ferhaps, however, others felt, they shoulo be oiscourageo
from wanting to. European theorists rankeo subsets of humanity from fauna up to
Caucasian, informing the evangelical ano military engagement of Africans from
Isanolhwana to Kumase.
11
In all this mixeo-up thinking, the images of Africans ano Europeans both re-
pelleo one another ano overlappeo. The Wests oistancing of the image-Africa was
met again ano again by a sense of slippage towaro it, or even a congruence with
it. When one of Montaignes cannibals was captureo in internecine battle, he
typically challengeo his mortal enemies to eat him, taunting them that his own booy
hao been nourisheo by the blooo of his captors ancestors. These muscles. . . . Sa-
vor them well, you will no in them the taste of your own esh, he woulo say.
12
Just as the absorbeo ancestors of the cannibals opponent were part of the very stu
of the cannibal, Montaigne nos traces of our ,or at least his, ancestors insioe
the savages. He announces an amazing oistance between their character ano
ours ano locates classical virtues in theirs, not ours. In the same way, Equiano, by
asserting the Igbos similarity to the Hebrews of antiquity, oareo Europeans to sa-
vor the taste of your own esh. Ior if the past of the West was mixeo with the
present of Igbolano, slavery was also a form of cannibalism. In the chapters to
ix+nontc+iox
come, while images are shown to behave in all sorts of ways in all sorts of oier-
ent situations in colonial ano postcolonial Africa, this oizzying, self-oevouring, us-
them reversal recurs over ano over again.
When Christian travelers encountereo slave traoers ano plantations in Central
ano West Africa, they reacteo in horror ano attributeo what they saw to an extreme
otherness of essence, to the irreoucibly barbaric character of Arabs ,actu-
ally Swahili, or Africans. They oio not know or oio not creoit that the slave traoe
ano the importation of European rearms hao oestabilizeo new African polities,
nor that the subsequent abolition of the Atlantic slave traoe hao cheapeneo slaves
in Africa without shutting o their supply.
13
Towaro the eno of the nineteenth cen-
tury, when the provioential benet of slavery in the Americas was no longer ar-
gueo, Central Africas garrisoneo states ano the incorporation of slave carriage into
legitimate commerce in West Africa continueo to reinforce European prejuoices.
All the while, Westerners accumulateo a library of knowleoge about Africa, oe-
velopeo ethnological comparisons, ano applieo their misprisions of Darwinism to
them. As African ioentities were essentializeo in terms orawn from the growing
image-Africa of these paper representations, a science of booies ano races emergeo
ano became a sourcebook of biological arguments for African inferiority. The
amazing oistance became a chronological gulf: Africans liveo in a past era, which
hao accioentally been mislaio in the present.
14
Such were the ioeas ano assertions of the learneo. In comparison, the late Vic-
torian publics ioeas about Africa were probably more nuanceo.
15
A host of mate-
rial entereo the corpus of the image-Africa as the nineteenth century orew to a
close in the form of explorers accounts, sentimental missionary vignettes, promo-
tions, tales of hunting exploits, ano yellow press reports of military campaigns, all
aimeo at the burgeoning mioole class. Some of this reecteo the concerns ano ioeas
of Africans in an imprecise way, but not much. Once-popular accounts have to-
oay been forgotten: not only explorers ano missionaries, but boys-aoventure writ-
ers ,Rockwooo, Henty, Lloyo, ano other lesser lights, also visiteo Africa. Those
authors who participateo in inventing the mooern best-seller are still remembereo
tooay. Davio Livingstones Mttorot, Ttoccl oro Aoccrtotc solo o,ooo copies in :8,
ano Henry Morton Stanleys Ir Dotlct Afttco solo :o,ooo in its English :8qo eoi-
tion alone. Teooy Roosevelt, Ireoerick Selous, ano other hunters were wioely reao,
ano Rioer Haggaros sensational novels, which orew on South African history, hao
a broao impact. Like Montaignes Brazil, the image-Africa of Stanley ano Hag-
garo was at once part of Europes glorious past ano the antithesis of Europes
reneo present.
16
During the twentieth century, the archive of both visual ano textual Africana
grew, but the image-Africa became even simpler ano atter in its resonances. Eogar
Rice Burroughs, one of the most successful novelists of his century, xeo the im-
age of Africa in the American imagination as a jungle playgrouno for masculine
innocence. Laurens van oer Fost helpeo oistill the mooern image of the mystical
Bushman as a sort of Jungian self of his white reaoers.
17
Despite the forwaro march
r\tr s. r\xn\t
of scholarship on Africa from the :qos on, the Western public tooay is by ano large
left with oecontextualizeo vision-bites of the continent ano its peoples. Steamy jun-
gle, ario savannah, Stanley ano his bearers, Livingstone in a cauloron, the wise
Bushman squinting in the Kalahari sun, bronze booies, spears, lions, witch ooc-
tors ano bones, tom-toms ano war cries, wilo-eyeo rites ano wiloebeest on the plains,
all hang in front of Africa like a theatrical scrim. They reproouce themselves over
ano over again, faoe into the oark, the squalio, the starving chilo ano the refugee
camp, the irrational war cry, before returning in fresher forums: Saturoay morn-
ing cartoons, Stot 1ot movies, ano television commercials. The release ano sub-
sequent recollection of visual tropes replenish the tableau in an unenoing spectac-
ular cycle of images alreaoy partially familiar to Western viewers.
Unlike the oiscursive elo that is other parts of the imperial worlofor in-
stance, the Muslim Orientthe image-Africa lives on almost solely in picture form.
This notwithstanoing an African literary canon stretching back centuries in Sahe-
lian, Suoanic, ano coastal East Africa. The African savage is the inarticulate twin
of overcivilizeo man. North Africa, as an aojunct of the Meoiterranean worlo,
has been conspicuously excepteo from this eect: in the Sahara, Beau Geste makes
his way among all-too-human scounorels, but in oarkest Africa, the society scion
Greystoke grows up as a monosyllabic Tarzan of the apes.
18
In contrast to the ca-
cophony of the bazaar ano the music of the harem, sub-Saharan Africa appears
muteo ano speechless, oeriving almost entirely from oescriptions of Africa ano
Africans, ano pictures of Africa ano Africans.
19
Items of visual meoia were therefore critical to the image-Africa. Colonial-era
cinema, stereoscopic slioes, tobacco-package inserts, Senegalese postcaros, Ttrttr
comic strips, half-tone news photographs, colonial exhibitions, ôtotol Httot, Mog-
otrc, animal trophies, ano mounteo spears ano shielos all informeo it. The seri-
ous investigation of visual signs in the experience of colonialism has only just be-
gun. Christrauo Geary has written a pathbreaking stuoy of photographs from the
kingoom of Bamun, Cameroon, ano Anorew Roberts has oirecteo scholars at-
tention to photography in Africa as an historical source.
20
Annie Coombes has pro-
ouceo an innovative work on the evolution of Victorian ano Eowaroian mooes of
seeing Africa in museums ano colonial exhibitions.
21
Jan Neoerveen-Fieterse has
written a general overview of images of Africa ano African Americans, ano James
Ryan has publisheo a history of photography in the British empire.
22
Fascal Blan-
charo ano the Association Connaissance oe lhistoire oe lAfrique contemporaine
have archiveo, exhibiteo, ano commenteo on colonial images throughout fran-
cophone Africa.
23
Ano as Fippa Skotnes oiscusses in this volume, her important ex-
hibition Mtcot visually oeconstructeo the conoitions of the making of the pecu-
liar South African archive that has kept Bushmen at an amazing oistance for
so long.
24
Of course, even in a banal sense, as Ulf Hannerz writes, oistances, ano bouno-
aries, are not what they useo to be.
25
High-speeo travel, television, ano the Inter-
net have all trivializeo the oistinction between the propagation of images or waves
ix+nontc+iox
ano that of objects or booies.
26
Ano so Montaignes amazing oistance may be
shrinking, too. Nowaoays it is fashionable to claim alterity ano similarity at one ano
the same time. Western television commercials are rife with South African Bush-
men, eloerly Australian Aboriginals, Tibetan monks, Vietnamese shing people,
Maasai ano Ovahimba pastoralists, ano so on, a particularly meoiateo form of
imagineo nostalgia.
27
They proclaim the globalization of information ano the
,supposeo, blurring of ethnic ano class oistinctions as they sing the praises of a soft-
ware company, a cellular phone, or a sports utility vehicle. The eect is jocular, a
oisruption of visual knowleoge, a creolization of the exotic. Have these insou-
ciant people so consumeo the culture of tlctt alter-egos, that they have become
them?
28
No. They are entirely ctool beings, straight out of the pages of the ôttorol
Gcogtopltc magazine in a peoiatricians waiting room. Their projection serves to hioe
the reliance of major manufacturers on the labor of their kino: cheap, brown-
skinneo, Thiro Worlo. Thus once again images of people in the postcolony serve
as interfaces for an oscillation of perspective, from one eno to the other of the
amazing oierence: from alterity, to shareo ioentity, ano back again.
Of course, while there is always an us ano them, neither pronoun stanos
consistently on any one sioe of a permanent oivioe. Us ano them change their
shapes with the ingestion ano expulsion of all sorts of constellations of people.
29
The chapters in this volume oeliberately consioer Africans images alongsioe Eu-
ropeans, but also quite varieo Africans oescriptions, interpretations, ano oistri-
butions of images among themselvesboth within ano beyono the venues pro-
vioeo by colonial ano postcolonial state structures. None of our essays make the
mistake of assuming the primacy of ethnicity for Africans ioentities, nor oo any
of them treat Africans creativity or responsiveness as somehow oiscernibly
African.
BRIDGING AFRICAN ART
No poem is intenoeo for the reaoer, no picture for the beholoer, no symphony for
the listener, Walter Benjamin wrote.
30
It shoulo be obvious to all that Africans have
a long history of art ano aesthetics behino them, whether Westerners have unoer-
stooo them or not. Saharan sanostone bas-reliefs, Nok statuary from Nigeria, ano
rock paintings ano the Lyoenberg heaos from South Africa all instantiate traoitions
that can no longer be comprehenoeo in their original circumstances. Ano even
when we turn to African art being proouceo tooay, it still must be faceo that the
situation of its wioest public, who are upper-mioole-class Westerners, obscures the
oense cluster of meanings in much of it. Africans images can never simply be ao-
oresseo on their own terms, since those terms oo not reaoily present themselves.
Art is a compression of culture. It is no surprise that anthropologists use terms like
translation or even conversion to oescribe the process of committeo scholarly
engagement with another culture, of imagining ,in Faul Ricoeurs phrase, one-
self as another.
31
The process seems so absolutely improbable.
r\tr s. r\xn\t
What about attenoing to unknowable forms in the meoium of ones own cul-
ture? Since this is what we all oo, it must be a genuine form of appreciation! With
hinosight, it is clear that mistakes have been maoe. As Annie Coombes has pointeo
out, African art is a fairly new category. Until recently masks ano stas ano other
ritual objects were houseo in ethnographic collections like the Horniman, the
Fitt-Rivers, ano the Mayer museums, ano a booy of knowleoge was createo through
them. Since the regrouping of such artifacts as art, Western art historians have
proouceo new insights, ano the essays in this book oraw on them. Even the now
outmooeo framework of tribal art has permitteo knowleoge that no serious stu-
oent of visuality can reject. Ano while the simple attribution of artistic styles to eth-
nic groups may be unsupportable, one can presently speak of Yoruba or Chokwe
sculptural trenos, just as of Ilemish or Venetian art traoitions.
32
The ioea of an
African art history also serves to alert us that most of the illustrations in this book
show objects of ,sometimes consioerable, monetary value. Images are not only cher-
isheo for what they signify. In this sense, if in no other, paintings, sculptures, ano
photographs may well be approacheo together as artworks.
Nonetheless this book ooes not approach images as art per se. Nor is there any
comparison of African art with European art in the following chapters, ano the
reaoer may well wonoer why. The reason is that neither the things Westerners see
as art in Africa, nor the processes that give rise to them, share a single coherent
status in Africa. One of our contributors aooresseo this problem some years ago
in an excellent review essay.
33
By examining various social-science approaches to
African art, Faula Ben-Amos ,Girshick, raiseo the question of what it is exactly that
has tieo together African art as a category of stuoy. After all, as V. Y. Muoimbe re-
marks, what is calleo African art covers a wioe range of objects introouceo into a
historicizing perspective of European values since the eighteenth century.
34
In
most cases, Western collectors not only appropriateo African objets oart in the gu-
rative sense but oio so literally as well. In its curatorial organization, the African art
museum, like the ethnographic collection before it, corresponos less to any African
category than to the history of colonial expropriation. It oers its auoience, in Mau-
rice Merleau-Fontys woros, a false consciousness, a thief s consciousness.
35
The
lm Lc totoc mcotcrt oot ,:q, criticizeo the expropriation ano exhibition of
Malian statues in Western museums ano was censoreo by the Irench government
in :q. Mali is still suering from the rampant thievery of its art works from ar-
chaeological sites tooay.
36
As if to obscure such provenance, collections of African
art were given coherence unoer the rubric primitivism ,a synonym for colo-
nizeo,, an ioeology which reacheo its apogee in the early :q8os. Many holoings
still have no other unity now, even as the principles of authentic primitive art col-
lapse.
It may be that the Wests classication of forms in African art can only proceeo
by ignoring the content of that art. In a recent essay, Mamaoou Diawara traces
the African art object from its web of libation, sacrice, prayer to its tc-
sacralization in the temple of the museum, there it is revealeo in the new rit-
ix+nontc+iox ,
ual, that of being shown. In Bamako, Mali, the local museum cannot fully achieve
this transformation, ano many Manoe people are afraio to visit it: they oo not
just see a mask, they are suckeo into its worlo. Diawaras keen insight is that the
aesthetic love of culture, as an object, only commences when the terrors gen-
erateo from within the culture subsioe.
37
On the other hano, we must not view
such meanings as mystical or fetishistic. The assignation of religion to the
making of art follows only from the oerisory view that all precolonial African prac-
tices are somehow religious. Descriptions such as ritual object, occult gure,
ano most of all fetish, often mean nothing more than that art collectors hao lit-
tle ioea how objects were supposeo to be useo.
38
The way in which religion is
supposeo to have infuseo African culture is precisely how Leo Irobenius, the
inuential German anthropologist ano photographer, saw ott as manifest in every
aspect of African culture.
39
In such arguments what is being remarkeo upon is
nothing more than the inappropriateness of a category. At the same time, as Nel-
son Graburn, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, ano others have oemonstrateo, the inap-
propriate category art has miowiveo the vocation of African tourist-artists with
their copious output.
40
The unttingness of Western categoriessuch as arthas been apprehenoeo
both by anthropologists ano Africanist art historians. Robert Iarris Thompson
promulgateo the recognition that African art was something in motion, alive, with
ouration ano rhythm, not something contemplateo at a viewers leisure. Johannes
Iabian ano Ilona Szombati-Iabian aoopteo the concept of genre from folklore
in oroer to surmount the aestheticizing implication of art ano to accentuate the
ramications of auoiences. In a brave ano insouciant little book, Davio Hecht ano
A. Maliqalim Simone represent similar material as African micropolitics.
41
Henry
ano Margaret Drewal have oiscusseo the performance of beholoing art in Africa,
which unoerlines the fact that quietly lighting a mask behino a piece of plexiglass
falsies the piece itself. Zoe Strother has recently emphasizeo the history of Fenoe
oance over the history of transitions in the visual forms of masks, ano this in a book
calleo Irccrttrg Mol.
42
Mary Jo Arnoloi ano Kris Haroin opteo to shift the elo
of inquiry from art to material culture. Susan Vogel, who long helo the formal-
ists position that there are inoeeo universal criteria for juoging quality in all art,
rejecteo in her show Afttco Explotc the usual oistinction between colonial, hybrio
pieces ano authentic, precolonial pieces createo by tribes in pristine styles. In her
more recent show on Baul ,Cte oIvoire, art, Vogel aovocateo contextualizing
African art in local African aesthetic systems. Visitors were alerteo to the privilege
of seeing certain objects when they encountereo rooms restricteo to viewers of
only one sex, or glimpseo a mask in the semi-oarkness. Her awaro-winning book
Bool fosters a proouctive tension between Western aesthetic oescription ano such
very oierent sorts of evaluations by Baul informants.
43
Such a oynamic may nonetheless still conceal problematic hierarchies, in which
African aesthetics are regional or traoitional, ano Western tastes are univer-
sal. As Anthony Appiah points out, the attribution of cosmopolitanism to market-
8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
oriven Western curators is hilariously unoercut by their own narrow-minoeo state-
ments.
44
Muoimbe oirectly aooresses the problem of popular art within curato-
rial frameworks in his book Tlc Ioco of Afttco, ano shows how stanoaro classications
have little room for the African artist as metacritic. Ior instance, Marshall W. Mount
oistinguishes among traoitional, Christian-inuenceo, tourist, ano high art of moo-
ern technique. Noting that Mounts taxonomy is baseo on inconsistent criteria,
beginning with the notion of authentic art, Muoimbe argues insteao that there
are three contemporary trenos: art inspireo by traoition ,to bring the past among
us,, art searching for a mooern aesthetic, ano popular art, which tctrtctptct the
high culture behino the rst two, commenting upon it for the benet of local pa-
trons. One thinks of the wall murals of Dakar, which bleno images of the Statue
of Liberty with an iconieo image of the Mourioe tottqo founoer Amaoou Bamba.
Or the vernacular concrete sculptures fronting oofo womens cults in Ghana. Or
paintings in Kinshasa ano Lubumbashi that oepict scenes of martyroom, resist-
ance heroes, ano oeities of wealth ano gooo fortune. One thinks of painteo back-
orops to West African stuoio portraits or movie posters, ribalo cartoons in the op-
position newspapers of Douala, Cameroon, ano Ko Kouakous witty carvings
of lap-top computers ano shoes.
45
All of which, more or less, comment on the oeath
of authenticity.
It is not haro to think of examples of African art that confouno even Muoimbes
classication: Ko Kouakou, for example, sells his carvings in the international
marketplace, ano what oo we make of the appropriation of African barbershop
signs ano other oroinary objects by collectors? But let us agree with Muoimbe that
the aesthetic hierarchies into which African art has been projecteo foreclose on po-
tential unoerstanoings of it. The trouble is not that Africans have no ioea what art
is, nor is it appropriate to say the European concept of art is too limiteo for what
Africans oo.
46
It is only that the exhibitory view of art, from oecoration to subver-
sion, a painteo rose to a Marcel Duchamps urinal, is not a gooo oenition of what
we are interesteo in here.
We require a oierent framework altogether with which to holo together our
various oiscussions of European ano African image-making. How might we view
the proouction of popular comics in Kinshasa, Congo ,Nancy Hunt, this volume,,
which stano in tension with Western comic strips ano yet follow their markets?
47
The resemblance of Manjaco grave posts to caricatures of colonial ocials ,Eric
Gable,? The great importance that inoigent women in Dakar attribute to photos
of themselves arrayeo in the nest borrowable coototc ,Huoita Mustafa,, or the
mockery of the innovative court carvers in the Eoo Kingoom of Benin ,Faula Gir-
shick,? The only coherent framework for Xhosa grave sites ,Davio Bunn,, typo-
logical colonial photography ,Faul Lanoau,, the commercial prooucts set on shrines
of Mami Wata ,Henry Drewal,, ano the lmeo gestures of Bushmen in game pre-
serves ,Robert Goroon, is that they all oeal with visual phenomena.
48
Ano so it is
gooo to ask what a visual representation isespecially in a cross-cultural context
such as this book.
ix+nontc+iox
THE NATURE OF THE IMAGE IN DIVERSE SETTINGS
Let us take Africa as she is, ano try ano see what her people are like. She has no
smooth ano easy history, each race has its past. What is this history? Not being set
oown in writing, oocuments for our information are lacking, says a :q photo al-
bum, a Gotoc Blco for Irench Africana.
49
Where we lack written history, it says,
where we no silence in Africa, we can rely on pictures, which can somehow tell
us even about the history of something as intangible as a race. Can pictures in-
oeeo speak so meaningfully to us? What oo they say?
In oroer to answer such questions, we must begin by noting that resemblance
ano signication are separate concepts. A painting, for instance, shows a woman
in tears. Whether she is part of an aovertisement for antihistamines or a conoemneo
sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman is seconoary. The stanoaro theoretical treat-
ment in this regaro is C. S. Feirces oistinction between the inoex, the symbol, ano
the icon. The rst of these, the trocx, is a contiguous form of signication. It is
motional, causal, or gestural: the sign emanates, as a trace or pointer, from what it
oenotes, ano so can be reao back to it.
50
In this volume, a small graveyaro near Al-
bany in the Eastern Cape inoexes the plight of white settlers ,Davio Bunn,, ani-
mal trophies ano ethnographic photographs inoex game ano people ,Faul Lanoau,,
ano resin booy casts ,Fippa Skotnes, both inoex ano resemble the African womens
booies from which they were maoe.
51
S,m/oltc signication, the secono type, is a
matter of arbitrary assignment. In writing ano speech, meaning is conveyeo sim-
ply through habitualizeo conventions: there is no necessary bono between the
sounos pronouncing the woro table ano a table, ano it is only through past us-
ages that the relationship has come to be. Iinally, in contrast to both inoexing ano
conventional symboling, pictorial or tcortc signs are helo to work by resembling what
they oenote. They share visual properties with what they sign for: Aoams hano on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel looks like a hano, ano a thirteenth-century Ife
bronze heao looks like a heao.
As it happens, this tripartite oistinction has been seriously questioneo. Feirce
himself recognizeo the complex interplay between these mooes ano oraws a ois-
tinction between resemblance ano signication: when that biro peckeo at Xeuxiss
famous painting of a bunch of grapes, it was acting out of hunger, not aesthetic
aomiration.
52
Some critics have then proceeoeo to argue that icons actually oper-
ate in much the same way as conventional symbols oo. An early move towaro such
a position came with Erwin Fanofskys inuential critique of perspectival repre-
sentation, he suggesteo that perspective was merely a symbolic convention for rep-
resenting oepth, ano not a copy of the real. Ernst Gombrich expanoeo the
ramications of the view in his celebrateo treatise on the language of art. When
one looks carefully at that language, he argueo, the oistinction between natural
,iconic, ano arbitrary ,symbolic, signs breaks oown.
53
In Gombrichs view, it is,
for example, necessary to learn the conventions inhering in sculpture before being
able to recognize even Michelangelos Docto. Art functions by relying on visual
.o r\tr s. r\xn\t
terms of art: one must know the language of picturing for a given genre be-
fore one can see what is actually pictureo. The learning process is often hiooen in
culture ano goes largely unnoticeo.
The same argument has also been extenoeo to photographs: their apparent re-
alism has been consioereo by some scholars to be purely a proouct of convention.
54
Often enough, when scholars have questioneo the transcultural transparency of
photography, ano even the ioea that photographs signify through resemblance, they
have lookeo for evioence in colonial contextssuch as Africa. Iollowing Gom-
brichs Att oro Illotor, M. H. Segall, D. T. Campbell, ano M. J. Herskovits together
revieweo visual perception among primitive people in :q66. Because primitives
often cannot interpret what photographs signify without being shown how, they
reasoneo, it follows that photographs must employ arbitrary conventions that West-
erners have naturalizeo among themselves. Similarly, noting that primitive peo-
ples who hao never seen photographs apparently oo not know what to make of
them, Nelson Goooman argues that the photographic sign must be oeciphereo like
any other. In a wioely citeo article, Allan Sekula again has recourse to Herskovitss
examples to make the same point: the photograph is an arbitrary sign.
55
Wherever we come oown on the question of whether Africans coulo or coulo
not reao naturalistic visual signs before being habituateo to them, however, tlc
oc/otc tlcmclcc naturalize a host of imbalances in colonial ano postcolonial rela-
tionships. Even as their results revealeo that key aspects of iconic signication are
themselves really matters of politics, custom, ano culture, the experiments unoer-
taken by Herskovits ano his colleagues pregureo colonizeo people as people who
lackeo, ano therefore coulo highlight, something calleo naturalistic conventions.
But as W. J. T. Mitchell tells us, the very ioea of natural ,iconic, signication may
have been elaborateo at least partly in opposition to the category non-Western
art, ritual objects of pagan, primitive cultures . . . |in their| stylizeo or con-
ventional mooes. In interpreting Africans imagery as ritualistic, Mitchell sug-
gests, Westerners call attention to what they cannot recognize in themselves. He ar-
gues in eect that spirits are hiooen in the highly mimetic images so common in
the West. The natural sign is a fetish or an iool, in the same way that some African
sculptures, which provokeo chargeo behaviors in their home environments, were
unoerstooo as fetishes by Western collectors ,more about this below,.
56
The eoice
of nature ,icon, versus culture ,conventional symbol, has eectively blockeo out
more interesting questions of power, politics, ano thought in the colonial worlo.
Consioer three short examples concerning the relationship between imagery
ano money. One: A missionary in the :8os wrote that many black South Africans
felt of the queen of Englano that she can only be an image on the money . . . not
a real person. What were the roots of those ooubts? Is it justiable even to con-
sioer what they might be, without looking at the meanings of British sterling as it
croppeo up on the Highvelo after the opening of the oiamono elos at Kimber-
ley? Two: A schoolboy nameo Anton Lembeoe, later the intellectual leaoer of the
African National Congress Youth League in South Africa, wrote an essay on
ix+nontc+iox ..
money in about :q., saying: Money is a small coin, a small wheel bearing the
picture of the Kings heao. Rouno this heao is an inscriptionheao of the King
of EnglanoGeorge V. You can go to any store. If you present this coin the store-
keeper gives you whatever you want.
57
Here the heao of the king becomes a kino
of passbook, ano text valioates image. The young Lembeoe unoerstooo commerce
as a form of social regulation. Is this relevant to his notion of naturalism? Three:
In the :qqos, platinum miners in South Africa claimeo that some of their co-workers
were oisappearing unoergrouno ano resurfacing after several weeks with mysteri-
ous writing on their booies. A mine spirit hao feo them clay, which X rays re-
vealeo in picture form, the writing instructeo mine authorities to release them ano
pay them a generous severance package. Now, in one sense, the ioeas about pho-
tographic truth ano captions in this example are simple misunoerstanoings about
X rays ano silicosis. Is it important here that there was a massive strike at the same
mine shortly after the interview invoking these claims was recoroeo?
58
The ioea that Africans, Melanesians, ano Aboriginals can reveal the hiooen
mechanisms of Western representation because they have or oo not have cer-
tain aptituoes thus neeos to be joineo to another fact. The West has muteo, ob-
serveo, put to work, ano classieo those peoples, ano rarely engageo them as equals.
In South Africa, the National Institute for Fersonnel Research showeo photo-
graphs to illiterate, relatively primitive Africans in oroer to see whether they coulo
estimate three-oimensional oistances, its conclusion was that Africans ano Inoians
lackeo pictorial oepth perception because of cultural reasons.
59
This is baloer-
oash. When colonial power is naturalizeo, the primitive visual sense is wrongly
imagineo to be some sort of oenable categoryone that is, tellingly, cultish ano
overschooleo ano nave ano unschooleo all at the same time.
60
Fower is therefore hiooen in ways of seeing. Fierre Bouroieu has further ar-
gueo that the license to appreciate ano evaluate the worth of images in the West-
ern worloin other woros, the exercise of tasteis surreptitiously oetermineo by
the viewers class status. In this view, an investment in an expropriateo mask or
statue ano the sentiment that a photograph of African girls is a gooo one, both serve
materialist interests. Status ano privilege, accoroing to Bouroieu, continue to aect
all subsequent meanings for such images in the West, even subversive ones. By way
of illustration here, we might think of the immense oierences among various
tribal masks, the statuary in the Muse oe lHomme in Faris, ano the semi-nuoe
Senegalese girls in Eomono Iortiers photographs. All these inuenceo Fablo Fi-
casso in his painting of Lc Dcmotcllc oActgror ,:qo,. Ficasso unoerstooo them
as signifying together, coherently: they meant the reverse of bourgeois rene-
ment, the exaltation of sexual license. Ninety years later, the magical mask in Jim
Carreys lowbrow lm Tlc Mol ,:qq, means much the same thing. Such con-
sistency oerives from the perpetuation of colonial ano class relations to the pres-
ent era.
61
Bouroieu has got holo of a large truth, but the relationships between interpre-
tation ano power in Africa were ano are, often, more multisioeo than his analysis
.: r\tr s. r\xn\t
suggests. A central question of this volume is how we can begin to unoerstano the
jostling between the various realms of collection ano approval that competeo with
one another: sacreo ano profane ,Bunn, Skotnes, Drewal, Goroon, Gable,, ethno-
graphic, reportorial, ano artistic ,Girshick, Olaniyan, Lanoau, Skotnes, Goroon,,
even authentic ano kitsch ,Hooeir, Hunt, Drewal,. All of the essays in this book pay
attention to the particular political contexts of ways of seeing in Africa. The rst
two, Our Mosquitoes Are Not So Big, by Tim Burke, ano The Sleep of the
Brave, by Davio Bunnchapters : ano .treat aspects of the variances in in-
terpretations of shareo images ano intertwineo signs, in southern African settler
colonies.
In both the Eastern Cape ano in Southern Rhooesia, power ano status were
ultimately mortal worries for much of the population. Burke examines the rela-
tionships among images, aovertising, ano regurations of mooernity in the lat-
ter ,tooays Zimbabwe,. He reveals the consioerable eort that businesses maoe to
gure out the ways whites ano Africans woulo react to commercial aovertisements.
The picture of an infant on Stork Margarine wrappers, for instance, was appar-
ently unoerstooo by some Africans to inoicate that the proouct containeo baby
fat. Whites reacteo nervously to such mistakes, since they pointeo out something
oisturbing about their own taken-for-granteo worlo: the public slippage between
the surface of things ano what lay unoerneath. Dierent perioos saw oierent the-
ories of African perception, Colgate ano Raleigh ano Bayer inuenceo Africans
ano, in turn, reacteo to them. Aovertisers accounts of African interpretations
were not neutral, if only because they oisplaceo whites recognitions of the seouc-
tive oanger of images in their own lives. By rooting iconography in economic ano
social relationships, Burke usefully reproblematizes the ioea of oierence be-
tween the visual senses ,ano sensibilities, of Africans ano Europeans.
Davio Bunn argues that the interplay of tombs ano gravesites formeo a history
of competing sepulchral representations on the very lanoscape of the Eastern
Cape. The mooes of burial ano the means of memorialization useo by Xhosa ano
by settlers were in constant oialogue with one another, just as in the case of black
ano white Zimbabweans mutual misinterpretations. In the course of the violent
colonial history of the eighteenth- ano nineteenth-century Eastern Cape, English
settlers oisloogeo graves from their illocutionary places in Xhosa memory ano
maoe them into spatial markers. Along the way, Bunn argues, Xhosa peoples per-
ceptions of the inoexes ano icons of oeath also transformeo settlers perceptions.
Here no one coulo mistake perception for a value-free activity. Opposing alliances
of men sought to protect, respect, make visible, hioe, or ruin burial places ano
graves, they oeleo ano inscribeo corpses, painteo burial mounos for reproouc-
tion in alarmist English journals, ano maoe soloiers into bas-relief miniatures cut
in stone. Iocusing especially on representations of the oeath of the Xhosa chief
Sanoile, Bunn oemonstrates that the fury of Africans, ano of whites, paraooxi-
cally createo a cross-talk of informeo interpretation, not only about new repre-
sentational forms, but about authority, pollution, ano citizenship.
ix+nontc+iox .
IMAGE AND TEXT
Burke ano Bunn show how habituations to representational conventions have hao
contesteo ano turbulent histories. Yet, as I have pointeo out, iconicity also has a
rather passive, objective oimension, that of tccm/lorcc. It is possible for a small chilo
to be fooleo by a wax gure, or for a rst-time spectator to be nauseateo by the
roller-coaster rioe in the pioneering lm Ctrctomo. Even if the conventions of paint-
ing, lm, or sculpture neeo to be learneo, visual mimesis may still be self-evioent.
Fanofsky recognizeo the necessity of oistinguishing between illusion ano symbol-
ing, ano separateo the initial oenotation of an image, which he calleo pre-
iconographic, from the reaoing of conventions that relate it to specic themes.
Signifying in this view oepenos on experience. Consioer the following vignette,
reporteo by Henry Methuen, a traveler in Bechuanalano in the :8os: |T|here
were in Mr. Moats house two gooo likenesses of himself ano his laoy, on rst be-
holoing which, the Bechuanas were struck with amazement, saying that they were
glao that the originals of the pictures were both present else they shoulo have con-
cluoeo that these were their ghosts, or their skins stueo.
62
The contemplation of pictures by Tswana ,Bechuana, observers in this ex-
ample cannot be oisentangleo from the prestige of Robert ano Mary Moat, the
white missionaries, the assertion of status involveo in oisplayeo portraits, ano the
conoescension of Methuens reportage. Yet the Tswana were in fact unfamiliar with
the portrait as a thing in itself. While they at once noteo some kino of resemblance
to the Moats, it is by no means clear that they fathomeo the general situation of
the images at all. These Tswana hao never encountereo a surface as a fragment of
oimensional space, but they hao encountereo John ano Mary Moat.
63
The essence
of the mimetic image, this oistinction has been calleo its oouble reality, in that it
is simultaneously a part of a plane, ano a section of real space.
64
In the situation oescribeo above, Methuen perhaps trieo to tell the Tswana
what the pictures were. Text or voice can inoeeo substitute for experience ano can
convert resemblance into representationturning, in other woros, Fanofskys
pre-iconographic oenotation into iconography.
65
In this case, European
painters have this skill or the Moats sat for a long time while they were copieo
was very likely given in explanation. Mark Twain, having seen Guioo Renis paint-
ing of a sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman, Bcotttcc Ccrct tlc Do, /cfotc Hct Ex-
ccottor, commenteo: It shows what a label can oo. If |observers| oio not know
the picture, they woulo inspect it unmoveo, ano say, Young girl with hay fever,
young girl with her heao in a bag.
66
Ior Twain, as for the Tswana, the text in
the paintings label elevateo what coulo alreaoy be oistinguisheo in some fash-
ion, to a more specic variety of sign. The pictures meaning woulo otherwise
have been guesswork.
In this volume, chapters ano oer extenoeo analyses of iconic meoia that
make no bones about relying on text: political cartoons ano comic strips ,in Irench,
/oroc octrc or BDs,. Along the way, their authors, Nancy Hunt ano Tejumola
Olaniyan, confouno any attempt to oistinguish African from European forms of
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
representation. While recently in Nairobi, in a rather oingy local travel agency, I
founo myself staring at a poster: Remember your rst time in Africa? it askeo,
above a picture of a lao paging through Ttrttr oo Corgo. Nancy Hunt takes on this
tiny giant in Ttrttr ano the Interruptions of Congolese Comics, placing her ois-
cussion in opposition to the suggestion Deborah Kaspin ano I sent to our contrib-
utors ,which was to focus on a single locale |ano| two forms of representation,.
67
Insteao, she oescribes BDs as a single meoium, a complex, transnational social ano
historical elo, with a core vocabulary that has proveo remarkably able to traverse
multiple locales. Congolese illustrators appropriateo elements of Hergs Ttrttr,
ano especially the famous Ttrttr oo Corgo, ano Hunt traces an uneven trajectory
through Kinshasa painting, postwar Congolese-orawn BDs such as M/om/olo ano
M/o oro Mpto, to the international success of Chri Sambas paintings ano Barly
Barutis BD, Eco I, ano the low-eno street BDs in Lingala.
Almost by oenition, comics incluoe text. Frinteo woros ioentifying the funny
brown characters in Ttrttr oo Corgo as Africans coulo not prevent some Con-
golese/Zaireans from ioentifying with Tintin ano putting his perspective to new uses.
On the other hano, by xing meaning in an image, text can greatly reouce the free
play of its interpretation. After all, the very woro stereotype comes from the plate
that laio oown print on the pages of newspapers like Lo Ctotx oo Corgo ano the 1ct
Afttcor Ptlot, an important Nigerian newspaper. Tejumola Olaniyan argues that the
consuming fervor of the mirror stage of nationalism orove the prooigious output
of the Ptlots cartoonist, Akinola Lasekan. On behalf of the National Council of
Nigeria ano the Cameroons ,NCNC,, Lasekan evolveo an accessible style oeriveo
almost entirely from European ano American newspapers of the :qos ano :qos,
ironically enough in light of European perceptions of Nigerian sculpture, Lasekan
explaineo his choice with the remark African people seem to prefer realistic art.
Quite unlike Herg, who aoopteo the minstrelsy rubrics of the same era ,what Hunt
calls a global iconography useo to oepict black people,, Lasekan employeo a
heavy-lineo graphic realism, in Olaniyans woros, another sort of global iconog-
raphy, to economize on his use of text ano further bring home his meaning. What
strikes me is how relentlessly mythieo Lasekans symbology nonetheless was, how
much it relieo on clichs. Even when he labels a gure Zik, for the NCNC leaoer
Azikiwe, the gure is also a shephero threatening to abanoon his ock. The Uniteo
Africa Companys comic strips were technically oerivative ano reactionary but were
lmic ano narrative. Lasekan spoke in stylizeo visual proverbs, in a suitable inter-
national style.
OSCILLATIONS AND IDENTITY
Iconic images oo not oictate to us. As Twains remark about Guioo Renis paint-
ing shows, the conceit that titles are irrelevant to the expressive message of artworks
is a pretense of high art. Captions at the bottom of lowly news photographs are
even more important.
68
Even if we accept purely iconic signication as a theoret-
ical possibility, it is awfully rare in practice. Museums have wall text, comics have
ix+nontc+iox .
oialogue, photographs have eager owners, paintings have titles, vioeo has souno
ano experts are always reaoy with narratives ano theories. Nor is it only through
conventional ,vocal or alphabetic, signication that viewers are aioeo in interpret-
ing images: inoexical elements oer less obvious help. Knowing that a Rockefeller
collco an African mask art, like knowing that a Rockefeller oorotco a Rothko to an
exhibition, at least oisposes auoiences to pay attention. In photography, blurring
or strobe-light eects ,ano in lm, slow motion, oo not accoro with the perception
of moving subjects, but they come from the circumstances of visual capture ano
so aoo realism. Rosalino Krauss has even argueo that the photograph is funoa-
mentally an inoexical sign, not an iconic one. In her view, the quasi-tautological
relationship it posits between signieo ano signier manoates textual captions to a
far greater oegree than painting, which more easily accommooates visual symbols.
69
The trouble is, when an image is passeo from situation to situation, from preoica-
ment to preoicament, the conventional signs that once went with it fall by the way-
sioe. A common feature of many of the visual signs oiscusseo in this book is their
mobility. Chapters through 8 focus on images especially as they were shifteo away
from their original performative or ceremonial context. As they entereo alien cir-
cuits of information ano exchange, images often arriveo without any linguistic ac-
companiment.
70
In fact, when observers aojusteo ano manipulateo the ioentity of
representeo gures, they relieo on the relative mobility of images, ano the relative
immobility of signiers that workeo by convention. It was the momentary parting
of resemblance, or mimesis, from signication, which alloweo an image to be in-
vesteo with relevance, ano often, with key parts of the observers own worlo.
Chapters through 8 all treat this process in one way or another. They each ois-
cuss the relationship between mimetic representation, ano the construction of oi-
alogues between the self ano the other. In chapter , Empires of the Visual
,Faul Lanoau,, I contextualize the proouction of colonial photographs of Africans
in the political economy of inoirect rule. I argue that hunting ano shooting estab-
lisheo a technology ano a oiscourse that subsequently accommooateo the visual
typing of African ethnic groups. The catalogue of recognizable peoples that in-
formeo colonial aoministrations operateo largely, I suggest, through oistance, which
alloweo Europeans to project various qualities into images. The realism of colo-
nial photography was itself coloreo by the ptocttcc of photography, which changeo
from something that happens in a stuoio to something that happens instantly at
the hanos of the shooter. Instant capture furthermore reinforceo the inoexical
character of the chemical reaction that froze the visible worlo on lm ano vouch-
safeo its reality.
The inoexical nature of photography can itself even become a trope for
verication. In southern Africa, the concept of the photo can express facticity
even when no specic photograph exists. Fhotos have become stano-ins in impor-
tant ceremonies for oistant kin or frienos.
71
In one southern African account of
Luthers objections to Catholicism that I know of, Luther took a bottle of ink ano
threw it in the Fopes oirection, a notion which nicely captures the centrality of
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
text in the Reformation, but the proof that the ink staineo the wall was some of
the people have a photograph.
72
The leaoer of the Ghathlian Church, a small
movement in the :q.os in South Africa, wrote in a letter to the eoitor of Tlc ^cgto
1otlo: All I |can| oo is to spreao the opinion of the Uniteo Negro Improvement
Association ano get books of its photos to spreao this spirit of the new Negro.
73
Once the truth claims of photography hao been aovanceo, they coulo also be
manipulateo. The same Mark Twain who noteo the inoeterminacy of Guioo Renis
paintinga histamine attack or griefin :qo extolleo the reportorial power of
the photograph in a satirical pamphlet, Itrg Lcopolo Soltloqo,, in which Leopolo
blames the exposure of his tyranny in the Congo on the incorruptible Ioool . . .
the only witness I have encountereo that I coulont bribe.
74
Yet the Fortuguese
government supplieo oozens of photographs to its pavilions in the :q: Faris Colo-
nial Exposition, illustrating the wonoerful benets of Fortuguese colonialism in An-
gola ano Mozambique. A careful reaoing of the pictures reveals chiloren working
in a cigarette factory ano a somber African oriving a tractor over an alreaoy-
harvesteo elo.
75
In Ghana, portrait photographers supply elaborate backorops,
painteo with television consoles, refrigerators, or fancy cars, not as visual trickery
but to supply a mask of cool.
76
In this volume, chapter 6, Fortraits of Mooernity, recounts the manipulations
of photography in the latter sort of context. There are, as of yet, very few histo-
ries of oroinary Africans creation ano oeployment of photographs.
77
In Dakar,
as Huoita Mustafa shows us, women go to extraoroinary lengths to create images
of themselves wearing expensive, often borroweo, clothing. They strike poses aimeo
at projecting a precise form of oouble in the frame of the photograph, so that a
poor woman can look like the Fresioents wife.
78
Mustafas analysis suggests that
in these stageo photos, several interpretations of women no concurrent expres-
sion: as objects of male oesire, bearers of patriarchal oecorum ano prestige, ano
at the same time, inoepenoent ano competitive inoiviouals. In West Africa gener-
ally, there is a strong traoition of remembering events by clothes ano clothes by
photographs, ano photographers often start out as tailors.
79
The oouble reality
of photographs is manipulateo, ano the photograph as a faaoe inoexes another
faaoe: oress. In the same vein, we might think of the Bamun king Njoyas wear-
ing of locally manufactureo German uniforms ano Hausa royal garb, of South
African Zionist Christians aoaptations of clerks uniforms, or even African
youths T-shirts emblazoneo with pictures of their heroes. All are assumptions of
the signs of power.
80
When Dakar women oress themselves photographically,
when they oistance themselves from their oaily lives in images, they create alter-
ego selves.
In oroer to oraw conclusions about the intention of signsto make signication
out of resemblancewe neeo as many clues as possible. The elements of a Kuba
statue that make it of o ltrg are akin to the title that explaineo Guioo Renis paint-
ing to Mark Twain, those elements are locateo in a visual vocabulary of Kuba con-
ventions, which may or may not be intelligible in a museum, oepenoing on the
ix+nontc+iox .,
reaoing knowleoge of the beholoer. In any ano all cases, however, the elements
of the nose, mouth, ano eyes, the relationship between the position ano shape of
the limbs, all correspono to a persons booy rather more closely than a cooking pot,
a cat, or a mountain. The images ano inoexical signs of Africa pitcheo ano rolleo
in oceans of speech, were hung in catheorals of text, ano winkeo ano vanisheo in
great tapestries of historical knowleoge, but in the absence or mistaking of such
contexts, interpretation nevertheless proceeoeo apace. The results have sometimes
been astonishing. A Kongo rltt became an African fetish on a Fortuguese slaving
ship, an ethnographic item in a museum of natural history, ano a work of art in a
gallery. Leonaroos Lot Soppct has been copieo ano recopieo in Africa by hano
ano in halftone: versions of it hang in the homes of strict Methooists in South
African townships ano grace the rear of oozens of Nigerian buses. The rst Apollo
lanoing stimulateo trucker gossip in the Tio kingoom that the Americans were
going to hioe the moon with a Coca-Cola sign ano oisrupt human ano natural
fertility: a prescient unoerstanoing, given the numbing ubiquity of Coke signs in
Africa tooay. In these cases, previous usages are reworkeo in a way that erases the
oistinction between misprision ano evaluation.
81
The unfamiliar is not only malleable but also potent. A picture of a Sri Lankan
may speeoily take on oeep meaning for a Ghanaian Twi-speaker. A note written
in Sinhala ,a Sri Lankan language, coulo not oo thiseven if the Twi-speaker knew
as little of the intentions of the writer as of the colorist. Icons are polysemic: their
resembling aspect is itself what allows interpretations to oier from one another,
ano sometimes to oppose one another. Much like ioeologies, icons weave oierent
auoiences together ano link mutually incompatible interpretations, all of which
will be helo to be legitimate. Such is one theme in chapter , Mami Wata ano
Santa Marta, by Henry Drewal. A successful German circus master ano keeper
of exotic beasts, Carl Hagenbeck, incluoeo in his show a woman from the East,
possibly a Sri Lankan. Hagenbeck hao a chromolithograph maoe of her as an
Oriental snake charmer. The picture reacheo West Africa, where many people
apparently unoerstooo it as a reection of something they alreaoy knew, a oeity of
personal ambition. This Mami Wata was associateo with foreigners ano water,
ano so sh, ano via synecooche, snakes. In making the snake charmer picture their
own, Twi-speakers ,among others, subsequently reimageo Mami Wata in its form.
If the lithograph hao been but a written text, no West African coulo have appro-
priateo even part of its meaning without a translation. The history of the chro-
molithograph involves a break in the continuity of text ano speech, while history
of the ioea of Mami Wata connects ever-new speakings with metamorphosing im-
ages. The picture of Hagenbecks employee was but one: Drewal enos his chapter
by consioering her American incarnation, Santa Marta.
82
Recall Montaignes amazing oistance. Seeing a picture of a Sri Lankan snake
charmer as Mami Wata requireo such a oistance from Ceylonese-looking people.
Seeing a picture, or a woman, as an African similarly relieo on oistancing, since
otherwise such a picture woulo resolve into a more particular ioentity. Inoeeo,
.8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
generic African ioentities were ano are supplieo to Western consumers merely by
recycling their prior gleanings of the image-Africa. States ano businesses have cho-
reographeo spectacles ,Hooeir, ano oistributeo caricatures ,Hunt,, requireo per-
formances of public transcripts ,Lanoau, ano overt role-playing ,Burke,.
83
Fer-
ception was inseparable from power, which is what oecioeo which Africans were
authentic representatives of their kino, ano which were bao copies of others
,Gable,. In chapter 8, Captureo on Iilm, Robert Goroon oiscusses the way that
Khoe ano San speakers in southern Africa have, for so long, performeo the role of
Bushmen. Goroon moves from the era of German photographic ethnography
in the nineteenth century, through the lmeo Denver Africa Expeoition of :q.,
to N!xaos starring role in the :q8: lm Tlc Goo Mot Bc Cto,.
84
Because the ex-
pressive oance is a critical mooe of being ano expression among many Kalahari-
owellers, Goroon uses it as a metaphor to argue that the people labeleo Bushmen
have long participateofor better or worsein performing their lmic, ooppel-
ganger selves. In other woros, Bushmen improvise steps in a negotiateo choreog-
raphy. Like impoverisheo people in the way of tourists all over the worlo, they con-
ouct interpretations of their lives towaro the learnt ioea of authenticity in oroer to
survive in an inauthentic worlo.
EXHIBITIONS AND INSTALLATIONS
The frequent imposition of ioentity in the colonial milieu relieo on more than the
fact that representations of Africans oio not simply work by resembling some-
thing else. In any environment in which people have power over those they oepict,
ioentity is a critical nooe of struggle ano compromise. Ferhaps such struggle can
most clearly be seen in colonial theater, in which living Africans themselves ,who
clearly resemble Africans!, can be representations of ioentities that they are sup-
poseo to holo naturally, but oo not. In chapters q ano :o, Catherine Hooeir ano
Fippa Skotnes oiscuss the relationships between exhibition ano mimesis in the
chargeo contexts of colonial ano postcolonial politics. Like Goroon, Hooeir oe-
scribes a situation in which Africans pctfotm Europeans prior ioeas of them. In
her chapter, Decentering the Gaze at Irench Colonial Exhibitions, she shows us
how Senegalese men ano women portrayeo the Senegalese of the image-Africa
in the Faris exhibitions of :88q ano in :q:. They occupieo Hollywooo-lot streets
ano proto-Disney confabulations of West African architectural styles, they acteo
out the ioeology of primitivism ano innocence, ano, as seamlessly as possible, the
ameliorative eects of the Irench civilizing mission. The collective narrative re-
sulteo from careful performances by Africans in Faris who rooe the metro ano took
cigarette breaks. Hooeir focuses on the exhibitions from several angles, revealing
the motives ano methoos of their construction, ano unoermining their iconogra-
phy in the process.
In chapter :o, The Folitics of Bushman Representations, Fippa Skotnes writes
retrospectively as the curator of the most controversial post-apartheio museum
ix+nontc+iox .
exhibition, Miscast: Negotiating the Fresence of the San. The visual oisplays in
the exhibit were recontextualizeo into wioely varying oiscourses, incluoing acclaim,
complaint, humility, irritation, ano trauma. One persons view that a picture was
of a banoit, anothers that it was of a victim, ano a thiros that it was of a
/Xam forager might each be oefenoeo.
85
In critiques at the time, even rare con-
sioerations of Skotness intention as the artist in no way hinoereo peoples inter-
pretations of her work as they saw t. In her own thinking, Skotnes was inuenceo
by Lucy Lloyo, a nineteenth-century linguist who collaborateo in transcribing
/Xam myths ano traoitions, ano in her essay here, Skotnes juxtaposes Lloyos
archive with the museological ano meoical archive of booy castings, artifacts,
ano brutal photographs of Bushmen. But in the wake of Miscast, Skotnes was
herself accuseo of imposing an externally oeriveo ioentity on Bushmen, either
that of victim or sensual object.
Skotnes herself is forceo to concluoe that she coulo not preoetermine all the
meanings her installation woulo convey. As we have seen, such changefulness is a
general feature of images as they cross boroers. Suggestions that a gure is an Igbo
Mbari statue or a goo of thunoer oo not rule out its reaoing as a white colonial
ocer. A Kota reliquary gure appears both in a oark corner of a mens associ-
ation in Gabon ano a street venoors spreao in front of the Museum of Mooern
Art in New York.
86
Because images involve both resemblance, ano conventional as-
sociations rooteo in experience, they are bouno to be oierently interpreteo by
oierent auoiences.
87
DEPERSONALIZING OTHERS
In his pioneering book Tlc Socogc Htt Bocl, Julius Lips noteo that European artists
most commonly oepicteo Africans as unspecieo gures. In contrast, he pointeo
out, African artists showeo Europeans as inoiviouals, ano inoicateo their national-
ity, status, ano even their personal character in their artworks.
88
In fact, in almost
all pictorial traoitions, regaroless of the national origin of the artist, only those per-
sons recognizeo as powerful or relevant attain the full status of nameo inoiviouals
,see Lanoau, Goroon, ano Hooeir, this volume,. The same was sometimes true
when Africans oepicteo Europeans. Sixteenth-century Benin guilo artists repre-
senteo white people mainly as generic Fortuguese, who became in their bas-reliefs
gures supportive of ,or ancillary to, the Benin court. This was much as they were
in life.
89
In chapter ::, Omaoa Art at the Crossroaos of Colonialisms, Faula Ben-Amos
Girshick investigates how a lesser-known group of carvers in the nineteenth-century
Eoo kingoom of Benin ,Nigeria, representeo Fortuguese men just as the balance
of power in Benin began to shift. In oelightful sculptural reliefs, these young arti-
sans, calleo Omaoa ,bearers of the kings sworo,, took aovantage of their casteo
status to wioen the space for their personal creativity. The Omaoa oepicteo Euro-
peans ano their material accoutrements on ooors, boxes, stools, ano chairs. Their
:o r\tr s. r\xn\t
iconography sometimes rioiculeo white men in Eoo ioioms, but it also betrayeo a
new ano uneasy sense that Europeans possessions were powerful objects. At the
same time, the situation of the Omaoa placeo them at a sucient oistance from
Europeans so that the personal ioentities of the Fortuguese coulo oisappear. Gir-
shick argues that the Omaoas in-between stature, their position at the fulcrum
between the high-status Eoo hierarchy ano increasingly importunate foreigners,
gave them their license. It alloweo them to evaoe the sacreo strictures associateo
with guilo sculptors ano create a more chargeo commentary on political change.
In chapter :., Bao Copies, the last essay before Deborah Kaspins Conclu-
sion, Eric Gable oers an example of a motool repuoiation of inoivioual stature, a
mutual gesture of oistancing, oisoain, ano appropriation. Like Davio Bunn, Gable
examines the interplay between the resilient politics of African chiefooms ano the
insistent hegemony of Europeans. He oiscusses how a Fortuguese colonial aomin-
istrator, Artur Martins oe Miereles, createo an illustrateo archive of the booies of
thousanos of African women. Miereless eort to capture the image of the traoi-
tional part of Manjaco society in twentieth-century Fortuguese Guinea ,Guinea-
Bissau, focuseo on the scarication of womens torsos. He catalogueo 6 percent
of the Manjacos booies, over .,ooo people, ano photographeo hunoreos of
women. Retrograoe, feminine, authentic, nakeo, ano collective, Miereless pictures
suggest the quintessence of the image-Africa.
The Manjaco rst evaoeo ano then chafeo against colonial rule. They also
sought to copy its parts for their own purposes. The smart Manjaco who oresseo
in fashionable clothes ano liveo in urban settings appeareo to Miereles as bao
copies of Europeans. They were too close to the observing European self, ano
so insuciently Manjaco. In contrast to Montaignes Brazilian cannibals, these
persons oiscomteo Fortuguese rulers by resisting the amazing oistance between
civilizeo ano savage, oefying Miereless attempts to transform them into emboo-
iments of oierence. Most fascinating of all, some Manjaco createo a parallel to
Miereless attempts to recoro their nameless selves in his anthropological project.
They carveo oeinoiviouateo Fortuguese colonials as woooen posts in com-
memoration of chiey ancestors. The Manjaco were eclectic in their borrowings,
Gable tells us, they were not cargo cultists, not obsesseo with European capaci-
ties, with their European markers stakeo at the margins of physical life, they
were simply exercising their right to copy. They reworkeo themselves on their
bounoaries with imagesmuch as they hao oone, in another fashion, by scarify-
ing their booies.
MAGIC, AUTHENTICITY, DOUBLENESS, AND ECSTASY
Miereles was after the impossible. No one can measure ano freeze what he sees as
anothers authenticity. Even grasping it for a moment feels almost impossible, since
its reality is preoicateo on oistance. When the plotogtopl captures authenticity, then,
having been taken at close quarters, it tenos to erase authenticity from whatever it
ix+nontc+iox :.
pictures. Such an image is then relevant only because it shows something that no
longer exists. What happens when the meaning of an image is the oisappearance
of its subject? It becomes magical. The early photographs of South African Bush-
men, as oiscusseo by Goroon, clearly have this quality ,see also the essays by
Mustafa ano Drewal in this volume,. Seventeenth-century users of the magic
lantern unoerstooo the same principle when they claimeo they coulo commune
with spirits of the oeao. Ano in :8q, the photographic pioneer Iox Talbot calleo
photography natural magic, seeing in it the character of the motcclloo.
90
In
oiscussing the impact of a photograph of himself ano his mother, Rolano Barthes
suggests we keep in mino the mogtcol character of the photographic image. In
West Africa, photographers were long calleo image magicians, ano even tooay,
stuoio names such as Magic Fhoto Stuoio or Mr. Magic are common.
91
In oiscussing this magic, let us remember the ooo notion that savages ano
primitives, people in other woros on the other sioe of the amazing oistance,
also seem to poc magic powers. This goes for faraway rural peoples, for elves,
Fygmies, leprechauns, Bushmenano from some past African perspectives, Eu-
ropeans. Frimitive people are uncanny imitators ,see Goroon, Hooeir,, they are
in touch with spirits, they shamelessly trac in preteno magic.
92
When George
Eastman introouceo a camera costing a oollar, he nameo it the Brownie, after the
lilliputian people calleo Brownies by the chilorens author Falmer Cox.
93
Surely
a magical people calleo Brownies also gestures to the brown Bushmen or brown
Fygmies of the image-Africa, whose remote alterity maoe them the perfect foil for
hi-tech wizarory.
94
In this unexpecteo ano circuitous way, the oouble reality of
the mimetic image, its startling ability to be ano not be at once, again brioges the
amazing oistance between the civilizeo self ano the savage other. Thats the
magic of Kooak.
Just like other aspects of iconicity, the magic of mimesis is subject to the eects
of interpretive hegemony. We can grouno the point by consioering the treatment
by some Baul women of certain small sculptures that Susan Vogel glosses as spirit
husbanos. All images routinely imply presences beyono themselves to omc ob-
servers without revealing them to otlct. Spirit husbanos are one such case. Baul
women marry them, care for them, ano are troubleo by them. One might say here
that the image ,the sculpture, has a presence beyono itself as an object of wooo
ano paint. At rst glance perhaps this looks like a peculiar feature of tribal art,
or of African magic. But it is really no oierent from the oouble reality of the
photograph: that it is simultaneously a at oesign, oro o ccttor of tlc tcol: simulta-
neously an object ano its referent, to at least some interpreters. The special care
given to spirit husbanos ,ano spirit wives,, the way they are tenoeo ano hiooen from
public view, seems to oerive only from the oeepest meanings of husbanohooo ano
wifehooo in the culture of their living spouses. It is the signication of the statues.
95
When such items are removeo from the matrix of interaction in which they sig-
nify, when they are appraiseo unoer orescent light in air-conoitioneo galleries,
then their prior meanings become spirits or specters. It often happens that the thing
:: r\tr s. r\xn\t
pictureo or referenceo is important for its fragility or evanescence. Its scaoloing,
its belief system, collapses on the shores of the mooern worlo. At that moment,
the mask, sculpture, or photograph that represents this thing at once becomes a
fetish or a magic trinket. The spirit presence of a spirit-husbano gure, once
it is oescribeo in this way, is something that must be believeo in by Baul women
,with the implication that they are wrong,. Such women then take their places be-
sioe creoulous Zimbabweans ,Burke,, husheo visitors to graveyaros ,Bunn,, nave
spectators in a colonial fair ,Hooeir,. They are like the Malians who are afraio to
look at a mask at a Bamako art museum. When Walter Benjamin oiscusseo the van-
ishing auras of artworks in the age of mechanical reproouction, he was al-
luoing to just such spirits. In short, recognizing a specter presupposes its superan-
nuation as natural meaning in life.
96
The aura of a pctor means either personality or ghost, ooes it not? In Africa,
these are often kinoreo concepts: the essence of personhooo ano the chimerical
reection of the outwaro self. It was frequently the secono phenomenon, the hu-
man image, that was thought to survive after oeath as a ghost. In Zulu, for in-
stance, tttlort means reexive self, oouble, or image, ano it is often given as
shaoow.
97
When it was useo in ways that missionaries recognizeo as referencing
the past, the same notion became ancestor ,tolot,. Similar to tttlort, the woro
mootmo in Tswana locateo a person as a faoing but ever more powerful ano inclu-
sive memory, a shaoe.
98
Note the association between image ano self in these
ioeas, a matter that also occupies Davio Bunn in his oiscussion of South African
spirits ano grave images ,this volume,.
99
On the western sioe of the continent, one
nos a similar variety of image ano essence. Explaining the relationship between
I/ct oolls, twins, ano photographs, a Yoruba spiritualist intervieweo by Hecht ano
Simone calleo Mr. Deja Vu saio, When you snap |photograph| . . . someone,
you are looking at a picture of the soul of that person, not the person. . . . That is
why, when one twin oies, we snap the other ano we no the oeao twin again.
100
Behreno ano Wenol tell us that in many African languages, the woro for , photo-
graphic, negative is the same as for ghost or oeao spirit, ano ,to return once
more to shaoes, that photos have been in many places integrateo into ancestor
veneration.
101
Yet Henri Junoo, in his grano ethnography of the Thonga ,an ethnic group
his orthographic stanoaros helpeo to construct,, remarkeo that Thonga people
oio not really know the category soul at all. Insteao of soul, Junoo founo a
Thonga woro that correlateo with Breath, viz., something of the nature of the
wino, the shaoow, the image, the external likeness, or fashion of man as opposeo
to his esh. Quite obviously, these listeo ioeas are wioely oierentiateo in En-
glish. As a result of their semantic anity in Thonga, the human being is a oou-
ble ano can be unsheatheo by witches or even, unoer some circumstances, by
a photographer ,the magic of Kooak once again,. Thus when Thonga observers
were shown a lantern slioe of their people, they crieo out, That is how they ill-
treat us when they take our photographs!
102
Now, one might still chuckle at this,
ix+nontc+iox :
since the projections were after all just images. But one might also try to unoer-
stano the manner in which the Thonga were correct. Europeans hao long associ-
ateo the oouble-natureo image with magic. If they oenieo it in the milieu of colo-
nial aoministration, if they locateo its magic only among chiloren ano natives,
they oio so because they hao faileo to transform imagery completely into com-
mon sense. Moreover, they always cherisheo their ability to manipulate signs of all
sortstextual, aural, pictorial, ano numerical ones. When it came time to make
policy, they even seemeo to privilege the importance of images over tangible peo-
ple. The Thonga were perceptive.
As both Goroon ano Burke remino us ,this volume,, colonial censors consistently
banneo cinematic scenes of Africans kissing or orinking: evioently they helo it as
a principle that Africans woulo reao themselves into the oiegesis of the shaoow-
play. Iritz Kramer ooes inoeeo notice this kino of ioentication in Africa, refer-
ring to it as an ecstatic ano ,for him, nonrational beholoing of oierence. In his
challenging book Tlc Rco Fc, Kramer argues that in small-scale African societies,
when mysterious outsioe presences possess people or things, what in fact is hap-
pening is that people are aoopting alterity ,otherness, through mimesis ,imita-
tion,, ano so are empowering themselves. He views such imitation as an empiri-
cal activity, a sort of tactile phenomenology, ano so he pronounces it utterly oevoio
of specters or spirits.
103
Ecstatic ,besioe-the-self , imitation is realism in the same
sense, accoroing to Kramer, that Honor oe Balzacs writing is realism: it so full of
perceptions, of suggestive, intuitively graspeo images that they simply over-
whelm the self.
104
This might also remino us of the Suoanese Za
r, or the Niger Hauka cult, in

which people perform, in altereo states of being, as powerful others. Whether or
not we call such ecstatic behavior realism, it may certainly have real eects on
the social relations of men ano women.
105
The cowboy Bills gang in Zaire bor-
roweo from Gene Autry, ano gangsters in South African townships emulateo
Spencer Tracy. As Drewal tells us ,this volume,, an Ewe person in Ghana likewise
can aoopt the guise of a Mossi or Hausa foreigneror the image of Mami Wata
not by mulling it over but by engaging it. Such an argument might be tieo to
Theooore Aoornos claim that true unoerstanoing is not oispassionate, but insteao
engages the specic experience of a matter . . . |in a| relateoness to the object.
106
As an example, Aoorno refers to ones submission to a work of art as giving way
to the compulsion of its structure. This losing oneself in ois- or oierent em-
booiments may be violent ,as for instance in the oisturbing Hauka episooes Jean
Rouch lmeo in Lc moittc foo,, or somnambulant. But unless we oistinguish en-
gagement from unoerstanoing ano empathy, which are functions of protracteo
interaction, we risk falling into the same mysticism that infuseo Ficassos milieu
when he intuitively engageo African art.
107
Sculpting a orunken foreigner ,Gir-
shick,, oressing up as a rich woman ,Mustafa,, gazing upwaro at a lm ,Burke,, ano
miming African blacksmithy ,Hooeir, neeo not involve any sort of unoerstano-
ing. Nor ooes the oonning of blackface. In twentieth-century Cape Town,
: r\tr s. r\xn\t
Coloureo people still troupeo in blackface in a Coon Carnival. In Ghana,
Africans oio so. In Zaire ,Hunt,, artists reworkeo comic-book minstrelsy for new
purposes. None of these instances of blackface requireo much knowleoge of Amer-
ican blacks. On the other hano, they were not about rioiculing blacks either. The
reuse of minstrelsy was about wealth, cool, ano oanger from a sort of image-
America ,or tmogc-Irance,, of songs ano aoventures, of automobiles ano black
celebrities. The high prices that Michael Joroan T-shirts fetch in Kenyas outooor
markets inoicate that minstrelsy is alive ano well as of this writing.
108
The fact is that imagic appropriations, however tenoentious they are, often cre-
ate new versions of the self. Through that self, they channel preexisting forces,
whether of anticolonial rage, monetary greeo, or aoolescent posturing. Sometimes,
however, the eect fails to take. The images fail to work, ano encounters remain a
puzzle.
We have alreaoy seen how visual interpretations can be rerouteo by hiooen con-
ventional symbols that signify in untowaro ways, such as ,perhaps, in the case of
the Uniteo Africa Companys comic strips ,Olaniyan,, whose conventions markeo
them as manipulative, or Stork brano margarine ,Burke,, which accommooateo
a profouno suspicion of colonial authority. But the removal of clf from signication
altogether is a oierent matter, ano enos the alteric relationship completely. Mon-
taignes cannibal oisgorges his enemy, ceasing to be his alter-ego because he no
longer contains any part of him. The image of an other becomes a mere im-
age, a nakeo sign, the chain is broken, ano the prior meaning of a sign becomes
spectral, illusory, or just phony. Thus in a remarkable sermon, the South African
Griqua leaoer A. A. S. Le Ileur scoloeo his parishioners in the late :q.os:
Pentecost is no reality to the Ministry of today, the spirit of God is lost and the spirit
of sects race or colour, has taken its place. This is the age, church without God, [so
God becomes] . . . a sort of show more the nature of a cinema imaginary, . . . for to them
Jesus is a stranger, the spirit of God, a mere shadow.
109
A mere shaoow here is the opposite of the Thongas notion of the shaoow
as one half of our oouble-nature. Le Ileurs shaoow is what is left when aura
oies, when cynicism sets in. Unity is a picture in the air, says a bitter Zimbab-
wean survivor of Fresioent Mugabes purges of the :q8os. What colour is it? What
shape is it?
110
In :8q, a bano of Jesuits passeo through Shoshong, a town in
Bechuanalano ,now Botswana,, they carrieo a painting of gures which, they
hopeo, woulo provoke Africans to lose themselves ,as Aoorno says, in the com-
pulsion of its structure. The imaging of oneself as another, as I noteo at the be-
ginning of this essay, is oescribable as conversion. In this case no one converteo.
For two days the entire population of Shoshong came along to admire our picture of
Christ. But they were shocked at seeing a Zulu, a Matebele and a Becwana in ado-
ration at the foot of the cross. They were unable to understand how or why these Blacks were
there. We could not make them realize that this symbolized the calling to the faith. . . .
In desperation, we feel that we shall have to alter the gures in the picture.
111
ix+nontc+iox :
The Jesuits presumeo that their image was an aooration of Christ. But in
Barthess sense it was literature, meaning it signieo no real thing at all. It was
not even a picture of Christ in the usual sense, it was a parable, a woro-picture
in iconic signs, in which the fottl was personieo in Christ, ano the hopeo-for fu-
ture of the faith was signaleo by the trio of African types. The Fanofskian pre-
iconographic representation of the picturein which it resembleo four inoivio-
uals in the same spaceran counter to the intenoeo message of the picture.
The point here is not that visual signs of a mixeo nature were beyono the nor-
mal ability of Africans to unoerstano. Rather, when an observer is saio to mtreao
an image, it can only be that he is not at home with the aspect ,to use Wittgen-
steins woro, or with the lorgoc ,to use Saussures, in which it is constraineo to
signify. He woulo have to learn that aspect by habit, or else as a set of rules, in or-
oer to arrive at a proper interpretation. Yet, as we have also seen, for an image
to invite the wioest auoience into its folo of meanings, its beholoers must not be
too familiar with its components. They shoulo, in fact, glimpse those elements from
across a chasm: perhaps from across Montaignes amazing oistance. Thus in the
case of the picture in Shoshong, the Jesuits hao to alter the Africans in it to ren-
oer them suciently other, perhaps lightening their skin, or clothing them oier-
ently. The gures coulo then become types ano not particular persons to black
southern African observers.
112
The amazing oistance is a tricky oistance. Stanoing too close leaos to scorn
,bao copies, or misunoerstanoings. Stanoing utterly outsioe a signs ambit can
oetach its referents, which then become ctive. The Baul spirit husbano becomes
a mere woooen gurine, taken as more than that only by oeluoeo people. In fact,
things are no oierent on this sioe of the Atlantic. Do millions of consumers be-
lieve a sneaker is somehow imbueo with the spirit of their hero? writes one skep-
tic about the American success of Nike-brano athletic shoes. I am forceo to con-
cluoe that I have no ioea why Michael Joroan sells so many sneakers.
113
Or so
many T-shirts in Nairobi. When such habits are formulateo ano stateo as proposi-
tions beyono the whole aspect of their usage, they can safely be termeo false,
even if millions of consumers remain insioe Nikes worlo, ano some Baul people
still keep spirit spouses, ano their habits are all logical enough. ,Let it be noteo that
the accounting of images as ooubles for the self is not therefore only a phenome-
non in acephalous African societies. Inoeeo, it supports the economy of the West-
ern worlo.,
114
Feople fathom alterity, ano encounter ecstasy, through images: they
want to become wealthy, comfortable, loving, loveo, sexy, famous, or just other. Who
is to say whether they succeeo?
Every unit of meaning, ano not just every image, is a public crossroaos of his-
tories of interpretation. In the realm of the visual, oecontextualizeo icons some-
times reveal this with suooen clarity. Not only Laoy Liberty, but also Mickey Mouse
stanos besioe Cheikh Amaoou Bamba in a Senegalese wall-mural grato. Spi-
oerman works together with Anansi, the mythical Akan spioer-trickster, in a Ghana-
ian comic strip. An ancestral marker looks like a colonial ocer. James Bono
: r\tr s. r\xn\t
becomes an ancestor gure in East Africa. More often, however, the ships of vari-
ant interpretations trawl past each other quietly, unaggeo as to their origins. Was
not James Bono also a type of oeity to American boys?
115
Rambo has been
aoopteo in oierent ways by populations in Sierra Leone, Benin City, ano Angola,
but the gure hao a bigger impact in New York ano Los Angeles.
116
The inter-
sections of global ano local interpretations neeo not all be ostentatious ones. The
West African oeity Ogun has many faces, which vary from place to place, so
that he has a oierent persona oepenoing on where he is behelo. Each version of
Ogun can be seen as a front for a larger unity, or as a separate oiscoursejust like
a movie star.
117
Everywhere there are images, there are also struggles over what ultimately is
real, ano what is representational. Some such struggles are profouno, others are
comical. We shall see how positions vary, ano vary legitimately, on oierent sioes
of images: the aoaptation of Ttrttr to carry social messages in Congo ,Hunt,, the
oefacing of grave sites as an act of war between Xhosa chiefs ano English military
men in the Eastern Cape ,Bunn,, the attempt by a Fortuguese ocer to replace
Manjaco people with images of their womens booies ,Gable,. In all such contests,
a funoamental point of contestation is where to oelineate the real. Coulo an
African rioe the metro at the turn of the century ,Hooeir,? Were not tribes a
social reality unoer colonial rule ,Lanoau,? Among the criticisms of the South
African Miscast exhibition ,Skotnes,, the most interesting was the notion that the
oisplayeo booy casts were, in eect, the granoparents of some observers.
It is only right that we have trouble separating images from reality. Mimetic im-
ages seem attracteo to that amazing oistance that marks alterity, that limns the
boroerlanos of the ego, ano the oouble reality of mimetic images resonates ois-
comtingly with our sense of selfhooo. Inoeeo, a picture in this book, ano you, the
reaoer of the book, are both tr the worlo, ano embracing of wioer parts of the worlo,
at one ano the same time.
118
The image possesses an aooress ano yet encompasses
territory far beyono it, it is simultaneously opaque ano transparent, there ano not-
there at the same time, ultimately, it is uncontaineo. These same attributes oe-
scribe consciousness. It is hopeo that the following essays help make sense of this
unsettling corresponoence, perhaps not in the well-tteo vocabulary of nineteenth-
century Thonga or Zulu observers, but nonetheless.
NOTES
:. Michel de Montaigne, Of Cannibals, Essay : in Complete Essays, trans. Donald M.
Frame (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, :q8), :8.
.. For a fascinating if not entirely convincing discussion of the origins of this relation-
ship, see Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (:q8; Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, :qqq). The best history of the noble savage concept is
oered by Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Com-
parative Ethnology (:q8.; New York: Cambridge University Press, :q86). See also Michel de
ix+nontc+iox :,
Certeau, Montaignes Of Cannibals: The Savage I, in Heterologies: Discourse on the Other,
trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :q86), 6q. I am, of
course, aware that Montaignes real subject in Of Cannibals is his fellow Europeans.
. Ludwig Wittgenstein, cited by Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New
York: Free Press, :qqo); I cannot recover the page reference.
. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, :q).
. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, :q8).
6. James Blaut, The Colonizers Model of the World: Geographical Diusionism and Eurocentric
History (New York: Guilford Press, :qq); M. Van Wyke Smith, The Most Wretched of
the Human Race: The Iconography of the Khoikhoin (Hottentots), :oo:8oo, History and
Anthropology , (:qq.): .8o; Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, :q), esp. ., citing Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of
the British Colonies in the West Indies (.d ed., London: John Stockdale, :q), .: 6oq; The Periplus
Maris Erythraei, ed. Lionel Casson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :q8q); and
An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time (London: T. Osborne, :68), with ar-
ticles by George Sale, George Psalmanazar, Archibald Bower, George Shelvocke, John
Campbell, John Swinton, and others. There were exceptions to the generally deprecatory
way of depicting Africans, in pictures of royalty, and in Caspar the black of the three
magi. See also The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half
of the Fifteenth Century, ed. G. R. Crone (London: Hakluyt Society, :q; Nendeln, Liechten-
stein: Kraus Reprint, :q6), cited in Peter Mark, Africans in European Eyes: The Portrayal of Black
Africans in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Europe (Syracuse, N.Y.: Maxwell School of Citizen-
ship and Public Aairs, Syracuse University, :q), 6668; Frank Snowden Sr., Blacks in An-
tiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, :qo), and Jean Devisse and Michel
Mollat, From the Early Christian Era to the Age of Discovery, vol. . of The Image of the Black in
Western Art (New York: Morrow, :qq); Paul Landau, With Camera and Gun in South Africa:
Constructing the Image of Bushmen, ca. :88o:qo, in Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of
Bushmen, ed. Pippa Skotnes (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, :qq6), :.q:.
. This is the classic argument of Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, :q); see also George M. Frederickson, The Black Image in
the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, .8.,.. (Hanover, N.H.:
University Press of New England / Wesleyan University Press, :q:); and Seymour Drech-
sler, The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientic Racism, in
The Atlantic Slave Trade: Eects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Eu-
rope, ed. Joseph E. Inkori and Stanley Engerman (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
:qq.), 6:q6; and for an excellent recent overview of the relationship between slavery and
images of Africans, see David Brion Davis, Constructing Race: A Reection, William and
Mary Quarterly, d ser., , no. : ( January :qq): 6:6, and the essays published in that issue.
And Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, .,o.8o
(Madison: University of Wisconsin, :q88).
8. Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written by Himself, in id., The Interesting Narrative and Other
Writings, ed. Vincent Carretta (New York: Penguin Books, :qq), .
q. Equianos narrative rst appeared in :8. Mainstream Protestants of the day com-
monly reected on their own putative similarity to biblical Jews (David Waldstreicher, pers.
comm., April :qqq). Vincent Caretta has recently (and cautiously) cast doubt on whether
:8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, as he was known for most of his life, was born in Africa or in
the Carolinas, which makes his comparison even more interesting; see Carretta, Olaudah
Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity,
Slavery and Abolition .o, (:qqq): q6:o.
:o. Curtin, Image.
::. By locating the true church somewhere on the African continent, for example,
Swedenborgians amplied the idea that Africans lived especially spiritual lives. Curtin,
Image, q; Patrick Brantlinger, Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of
the Dark Continent, in Race, Writing, and Dierence (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :q86), ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr., :8..; Ann McClintock, Maidens, Maps, and
Mines: The Reinvention of Patriarchy in Colonial South Africa, South Atlantic Quarterly
8, : (Winter :q88), :6q.; Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical
Civilization (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, :q8), esp. vol. :, The Fabrica-
tion of Ancient Greece, .,8.8, chs. and ; Saul Dubow, Scientic Racism in Modern South
Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :qq); and Jean-Bernard Ouedraogo,
Scnographie dune conqute: Enqute sur la vision plastique dun colonial, Cahiers du
LERSCO: Iconographie et Sociologie (:qq:). Hermann Wittenberghs forthcoming work on
the capture of African landscapes into biblical and classical terminology will prove sig-
nicant here.
:.. Montaigne, Of Cannibals. This is also a reworking of transubstantiation.
:. Brantlinger, Victorians and Africans; see also Patrick Manning, Slavery and African
Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :qqo), and Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slav-
ery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :q8).
:. At Harvard . . . in a museum[,] a series of skeletons [were] arranged from a little
monkey to a tall well-developed white man, with a Negro barely outranking a chimpanzee.
Eventually in my classes stress was quietly transferred to brain weight and brain capacity,
and at last to the cephalic index. W. E. B. Du Bois, On Being Ashamed of Oneself
(:q), in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, :qq6).
:. The :8qo Stanley Africa Exhibition, for example, avoided many of the stereotypes
very much in evidence now: see Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Cul-
ture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, :qq).
:6. Carolyn Hamilton, Terric Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical
Invention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, :qq8), argues for the sustained
inuence of Africans concerns in colonial stereotypes of the Zulu. On travel writing gen-
erally, see Mary Louise Pratt, Fieldwork in Common Places, in Writing Culture: The Poetics
and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Cliord and George E. Marcus, .o (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, :q86); and Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Trans-
culturation (London: Routledge, :qq.); Laura Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Fou-
caults History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
:qq); Brantlinger, Victorians and Africans.
:. For Tarzan, ignore Kenneth Camerons empty analysis of the many Tarzan movies
in his Africa on Film (New York: Continuum Press, :qq), and see Gail Bederman, Tarzan
and After, in her Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United
States, .88o.., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq), who points out that the writ-
ix+nontc+iox :
ten Tarzan was a killer of many black men (in Tarzans words), an emphasis missing from
the lmic Tarzans. For van der Post, see, e.g., Alan Barnard, Laurens van der Post and the
Kalahari Debate, in Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of Bushmen, ed. Pippa Skotnes (Cape Town:
University of Cape Town Press, :qq6), .q; and we await Edwin Wilmsens fuller study.
:8. Despite the quip about Africa beginning at the Pyrenees, for most Westerners Africa
refers to latitudes south of the Sahara.
:q. For a recent summary of our advances in knowledge about (mainly precolonial)
African history, see Joseph C. Miller, History and Africa / Africa and History, American His-
torical Review :o, : (:qqq): :.. See also Said, Orientalism; Percival Christopher Wren, For-
eign Legion Omnibus: Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, Beau Ideal (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, :q.);
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (:q:.; New York: Ballantine Books, :q8); Malek
Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :q86).
.o. Christopher M. Lyman, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by
Edward Curtis (New York: Pantheon Books, :q8.); Christraud M. Geary, Images of Bamun: Ger-
man Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroun, West Africa .o:.. (Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, :q88). Andrew Roberts pioneering work on photogra-
phy and lm archives includes Photographs as Sources for African History: Papers Presented at a Work-
shop Held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, May .:., .88, ed. Andrew Roberts
(London: SOAS, :q88); and id., Review Article: Photographs and African History, Jour-
nal of African History .q (:q88): o:::. See also The Raj: India and the British, .oo.,, exhi-
bition catalogue, ed. Christopher Bayly (London: National Portrait Gallery, :qq:), esp.
Christopher Pinneys essay, Colonial Anthropology in the Laboratory of Mankind ; David
Prochaska, Fantasia of the Phototeque: French Views of Colonial Senegal, African Arts .,
(:qq:): o; and Nicolas Thomas, Colonialisms Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :qq).
.:. Coombes, Inventing Africa, and Raymond Corbey, Ethnographic Showcases,
:8o:qo, in The Decolonization of the Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, ed. Jan Nederveen-
Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books, :qq), 8o; Sylviane Lep-
run, Le thtre des colonies: Scnographie, acteurs et discours de limaginaire dans les expositions, .8.,
(Paris: LHarmattan, :q86); Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, LExposition coloniale, ..: La
mmoire du sicle (Paris: ditions Complexe, :qq:); and Robert Rydell, All the Worlds a Fair: Vi-
sions of Empire at Americas International Expositions, .8,.. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :q8). See also Grace Sieberling with Carolyn Bloore, Amateurs, Photography and the Mid-
Victorian Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q86); and Roy Flukinger, The For-
mative Decades: Photography in Great Britain, .8.:o (Austin: University of Texas Press, :q8).
... Jan Nederveen-Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular
Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq.); James Ryan, Picturing Empire: Pho-
tography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq),
and Alloula, Colonial Harem.
.. Pascal Blanchard et al., eds. Lautre et nous: Scnes et types (Paris: Syros / Association
Connaissance de lhistoire de lAfrique contemporaine, :qq).
.. Allan Sekula, The Body and the Archive, in The Conquest of Meaning: Critical His-
tories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :q8q), 8q.
Skotnes insists on her own entrapment in the politics of [her] own knowledge, to quote
her wall text (which quotes the anthropologist Greg Dening). That may, of course, be so, but
her exhibit nevertheless also attempted to contextualize the creation of colonial knowledge
about so-called Bushmen.
o r\tr s. r\xn\t
.. Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (New York: Routledge,
:qq6), (thanks to John Comaro for introducing me to Hannerzs work); and see Arjun Ap-
paourai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization ,Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Fress, :qq6,.
.6. Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance (New York: Semiotext(e), :qq:), ; see
also id., Speed and Politics (New York: Semiotext(e), :q86), quoting Paul de Kock (:8.): The
railroad is natures true magic lantern. Major motion pictures that betray a sense of anx-
iety about visual reality include Terminator (:qq) and Terminator Two (:qq6), The Net (:qq),
Dark City (:qq), Lawnmower Man (:qq), The Game (:qq8), The Truman Show (:qq8), The Matrix
(:qqq), Existenz (:qqq), Ed TV (:qqq), and The Sixth Sense (:qqq).
.. Appadurai, Modernity, . I refer to the international business elite, to the conjunc-
tion of the Northern and Western hemispheres in the so-called First World, and to the likely
position of most readers as the West, for the sake of simplicity.
.8. See Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, :qq); Landau, With Camera and Gun in South Africa; and Han-
nerz, Transnational Connections, 66. The predicament of civilized natives is a political ana-
logue to what Mary Douglas has famously described as the discomfort generated by matter
out of place in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo ( :q66; reprint,
New York: Routledge, :qq.).
.q. There are exceptionsthe work of Tobias Wendl, Heike Behrend, Vera Viditz-
Ward, and Birgit Meyer being a few.
o. Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator, in Illuminations: Essays and Reec-
tions, ed. Hannah Arendt (:q68; New York: Schocken Books, :q6q), 6q.
:. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq.).
.. The cataloguing of anities between workshops and artists in tribal domains re-
sults in a confusion of tribe and style. Rejecting this was the emphasis of Jan Vansinas im-
portant book Art and History in Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin, :q8), and see also
Paula (now Girshick) Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin (London: British Museum Press, :qq); the
more traditional Africanist art history of such scholars and curators as (to take a few an-
glophone examples) Philip J. C. Dark, William Fagg, Marshall Mount, Frank Willet has also,
of course, been terribly important.
. Paula Ben-Amos, African Visual Arts from a Social Perspective, African Studies Re-
view ., no. . (September :q8q): :.
. Ibid., , and Ben-Amoss citation of V. Y. Mudimbe, African Art as a Question
Mark, African Studies Review .q, : (:q86): .
. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, :q), ., quoted in V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, :qq), 6; and see 8. See also Guy Brett, Through Our Own Eyes: Popular Art and
Modern History (London: GMP Publishers, :q86). On the problem of thievery, see Plundering
Africas Past, ed. Peter R. Schmidt and Roderick J. McIntosh (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, :qq6).
6. For the fall of authentic primitive art after :q8, see Shelly Errington, The Death
of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, :qq8), who also oers an extended discussion of the discursive construc-
tion of meaning in tribal art in general. Chris Marker and Alain Resnaiss lm Les statues
meurent aussi is discussed in Manthia Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, :qq.), .. Scholars of African art no longer subscribe to the
ix+nontc+iox .
idea of a pure (anti-hybrid) art. See Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in the Colonial and
Postcolonial Worlds, ed. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner (Berkeley and Los Ange-
les: University of California Press, :qqq).
. Mamadou Diawara, Le cimitiere des autels, le temple des tresors: Reexions sur les
muses dart Africains, Jahrbuch der Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin: Wissenschaftskolleg,
:qq). Cf. David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q8q).
8. William Pietz discusses the fetish as both a projection of European categories of
thought in the mercantile era into African culture, and as a theory of African thought, in
William Pietz, The Problem of the Fetish, I, Res q (:q8): :; The Problem of the Fetish,
II: The Origin of the Fetish, Res : (:q8): .; and The Problem of the Fetish, IIIa:
Bosmans Guinea and the Enlightenment Theory of Fetishism, Res :6 (:q88): :o.. See
also Wyatt MacGaey, Dialogues of the Deaf: Europeans on the Atlantic Coast of Africa,
in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and
Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, :qq), .q6.
q. Christopher Miller in Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qqo) tells us that Frobenius saw Africa as marked
by a rough, austere art, which was in essence the pure Africa leaving no room for (in
Millers words) disjuncture or agency. Frobenius inuenced Leopold Senghor, who also
came to imagine Africa as an idealistic vision. Senghor quoted from Leopold Senghor,
Les leons de Lo Frobenius, Prsence africaine , (:q8): :8, and Leo Frobenius, Die
Kunst Afrikaner, Der Erdball (:q:): qo, both cited by Christopher Miller, Theories of Africans,
:. W. E. B. Du Bois also articulated an anticolonialism that, like ngritude, reversed, without
erasing, many of the images of nineteenth-century colonial writers; see The Oxford W. E. B.
Du Bois Reader, ed. Sundquist, 6..
o. Robert Brain, Art and Society in Africa (New York: Longman, :q8o), quoted in
Mudimbe, Idea of Africa,
:. David Hecht and A. Maliqalim Simone, Invisible Governance: The Art of African Mi-
cropolitics (New York: Autonomedia, :qq); Ilona Szombati-Fabian and Johannes Fabian, Art,
History, and Society: Popular Painting in Shaba, Zaire, Studies in the Anthropology of Visual
Communication , : (:q6), and Folk Art from an Anthropological Perspective, in Perspectives
in American Folk Art, ed. Ian M. G. Quimby and Scott T. Swank (New York: Norton, :q8o).
.. Robert Farris Thompson, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act in the Collection of Katherine
Coryton White (Los Angeles: University of California Press, :q); Thompson, Flash of the Spirit:
African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York: Random House, :q8; Vintage Books,
:q8); and see Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (nar-
rative and paintings by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, :qq6). See also Henry Drewal and Margaret Drewal, Gelede: Art and Fe-
male Power among the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, :q8); Z. S. Strother, In-
venting Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :qq8); and Mary Jo Arnoldi and Chris Hardin, Ecacy and Object: Introduction,
in African Material Culture, ed. Mary Jo Arnoldi et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
:qq6), :.8.
. Africa Explores: Twentieth-Century African Art, ed. Susan Vogel (New York: Center for
African Art; Munich: Prestel-Verlag, :qq:); Susan Vogel, Always True to the Object, in Our
Fashion, in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and
: r\tr s. r\xn\t
Steven D. Lavine (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, :qq:); and id., Baul:
African Art, Western Eyes (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq). And see also
Vansina, Art and History, and Sidney Kasr, African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a
Shadow, African Arts ., . (:qq.): :.
. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Fathers House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, :qq.), :q, scathingly discusses Susan Vogels organiza-
tion of a :q8 show.
. Marshall W. Mount, African Art: The Years Since .:o (:q; Bloomington: University
of Indiana Press, :q8q), and Susan Vogel, Introduction, in Africa Explores; and V. Y.
Mudimbe, Idea of Africa, :6o6.. For wall murals, see Mamadou Diouf, Fresques murales
et criture de lhistoire: Le Set/Setal Dakar, Politiques africaines, June :qq., :, and David
Hecht and A. Maliqalim Simone, Invisible Governance, esp. ch. 6. See also Samba Diop, Mu-
tual Representations in Colonial Senegal (:qoo:q6o): The Image of the African Native in
the French Press and the Natives Perception of the European in Popular Paintings (paper
presented at the Images and Empires conference). For the Ghanaian form called the posuban,
see Fritz Kramer, The Red Fez: Art and Spirit Possession in Africa (New York: Verso Press, :qq),
.:o::. And see Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Collective Memory and Its Images: Popular Urban
Painting in Zaire: A Source of Present Past, History and Anthropology, . (:q86), and id.,
Painting in Zaire: From the Invention of the West to the Representation of the Social Self,
and Susan Vogel, Inspiration and Burden, in Africa Explores, ::, and .6 (and Cat. 86).
In the Congo case, Fabian agrees that interactions between local audiences and artists cre-
ate art, although he himself contracted the art he analyzes in Fabian, Remembering the Present.
6. Robert Faris Thompson, commentary, ACAS, New Orleans, :qq8.
. Achille Mbembe, The Thing and Its Doubles in Cameroonian Cartoons, in Read-
ings in African Popular Culture, ed. Karin Barber (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,
:qq), ::6. My view reects that of Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, :q86), who points out inter alia that the elevation of
photographs of ordinary objects and situations, over special ones, is a characteristic of the
aspiring classes, 6.
8. The way in which this volume moves away from art as a category is in an impor-
tant sense pregured by African Material Cultures, ed. Mary Jo Arnoldi et al.; see especially
the introduction by Kris L. Hardin and Mary Jo Arnoldi.
q. Robert Delavignette, introduction to the photographic album French Equatorial Africa
(photographs by Michel Huet, Michel Mako, and Pierre Ichac, with notes by Jacques Vu-
laines) (Paris: Hachette, :q), .:; a translation of Afrique quatoriale franaise, Les Albums des
Guides bleus .q (Paris: Hachette, :q). For the Gotoc Blco, men exist only as types. Rolano
Barthes, The Blue Guioe, in M,tlologtc ,Faris: Seuil, :q,.
o. Indexical interpretations have always been important in Western scholars under-
standing of African-wrought objects: the use of organic materials, blood, grasses, and so on
has especially come to their attention. The reasons for this are complex, but one might note
that material indexing is implicitly suggested as the tribal equivalent of Western iconic sig-
nication, in the sense that both are natural representations of larger elds of meaning.
:. C. S. Peirce, The Icon, Index, and Symbol, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce,
ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
:q:8), vol. ..
.. Thanks to Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak for her insightful remarks here. Major cri-
tiques of Peircean thought have come from Saussure, Barthes, and others. Umberto Eco
ix+nontc+iox
would get rid of the notion of the iconic sign, but he concedes that some things can per-
haps look like other things (Eco, A Theory of Semiotics [Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
:q6], .:6). See also W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, :q86), :.
. Erwin Panofsky, Die Perspektive als symbolischen Form, Vortrge der Bibliothek War-
burg (:q.): .8:, cited in Martin Jay, Scopic Regimes of Modernity, in Vision and
Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, :q88), ; Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :q6). Gombrich subsequently claried his position
in order to limit its less supportable implications: see his Image and Code: Scope and Lim-
its of Conventionalism in Pictorial Representation, in Image and Code, ed. Wendy Steiner
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, :q8:), ::, cited in Mitchell, Iconology, 6.
. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (:q68; Indi-
anapolis: Hackett, :q6); Roland Barthes, Rhetoric of the Image, in Image-Music-Text (New
York: Hill & Wang, :q); and Mitchell, Iconology. It must be noted here that C. S. Peirce him-
self classed the photograph as an indexical, not an iconic, form of signication, because
the photograph is an imprint of the real left on a sensitive surface. For more on this point,
see my discussion of captions, later in this Introduction. See also Rosalind Krauss, The Orig-
inality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :q8), Notes
on the Index ., .:o::, citing Peirce, Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs.
. I am somewhat caricaturing the complex arguments in M. H. Segall, D. T. Camp-
bell, and M. J. Herskovits, The Inuence of Culture on Visual Perception (New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
:q66); in ne, they argue against the sort of nave cultural relativism aicting other studies
set in colonial contexts (., . .). Goodman, Languages of Art. See also Allan Sekula, On
the Invention of Photographic Meaning, in Thinking Photography, ed. Victor Burgin (Lon-
don: Macmillan, :q8.), 8:oq. Sol Worth and John Adair reckoned with the issue by giv-
ing their camera to Navajo people in the lm Through Navajo Eyes (:q.); see the discussion
by Jacques Aumont, The Image (London: British Film Institute, :qq), qq.
6. Vogel, Baul (I return to Baul spirit husbands at the end of this essay); Mitchell,
Iconology, qoq:, ::. My brief comments on Herskovits dovetail with criticisms from others
who have argued that he erred primarily by divorcing cultures from their historical context
in the New World. My colleague Stephan Palmis forthcoming 1toto oro Sctcrttt: Explo-
tottor tr Afto-Co/or Mooctrtt, oro Ttootttor ,Durham, N.C.: Duke University Fress, .oo., of-
fers a critique in this regard. Mitchell is quite aware of the relativistic usage of fetish to
depict what other people do and cites Patrick Brantlingers Victorians and Africans, Criti-
cal Inquiry :., : (September :q8), .o. For idol he is also drawing on usages in Karl Marx,
The German Ideology (:8) and Sir Francis Bacon, The New Organon (:6.o). My thoughts
here are strongly conditioned by Wittgensteins works, especially (to put things perhaps too
succinctly) by his eort to avoid the common error of confusing customs with rules. See Philo-
sophical Investigations (New York: Blackwell, :q8), part :.
. Freedom in Our Lifetime: The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, ed. Robert
R. Edgar and Luyanda ka Msumza (Athens: Ohio University Press, :qq6). The quotation
comes from the memory of Lembedes teacher at Inkanyezi Catholic school, Sister Sibeko,
and may reect her own thoughts. Lembede was about fourteen.
8. University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Collection, CPSA AB ..q/Gd:.:,
William Crisp, vol. :, Crisp to Aunt Polly, Thaba Nchu, :/6/:8.; and interviews conducted
by Mpho Matebula for Paul Landau, Phala Mines, August :qq6.
q. Saul Dubow, Scientic Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, :qq), .6o. Aumont, Image, :, .o, , has pointed out that other studies of vi-
r\tr s. r\xn\t
sual perception have shown that movement is required for recognition, and that the per-
ception of space particularly relies on the movement of the observer, or memories of such
movement. The Inuence of Culture on Visual Perception by Segall et al. aims in the direction of
the dynamic I am stressing.
6o. W. J. T. Mitchell argues that the debate over the relative weight of image or word in
producing iconic signication is itself a displaced contest between ideologies touting nature
or culture, respectively. See Mitchell, Iconology, and passim.
6:. In other words, it is not only that taste indexes status but that status denes good
taste through such indexing. See Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions, and id. et al., Photography: A
Middle-Brow Art (:q6; Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, :qqo). Phillips and Steiner
come dangerously close to sneering at the hoi polloi in their critique of the populist amal-
gamation of ethnic art in Unpacking Culture, :8. On Picasso, see Marilyn McCully, The
Fallen Angel? review of The Picasso Papers, by Rosalind E. Krauss, New York Review of Books,
April 8, :qqq, :8.; and Anne Baldassari, Picasso and Photography: The Dark Mirror (Hous-
ton: Houston Museum of Fine Arts / Flammarion, :qq), also cited by McCully; and see
Philippe David, ed., Inventaire gnral des cartes postales Fortier (Saint-Julien-du-Sault: Fostier,
:q868). In Otto Premingers lm Bunny Lake Is Missing (:q6), a tribal mask signies sex-
ual voyeurism.
6.. See Paul Landau, The Illumination of Christ in the Kalahari Desert, Representa-
tions (Winter :qq).
6. Learned perception is a matter of moving about and deriving information from the
constantly shifting sum of ones activities, but a visual frame in a painting or photograph
cannot be shifted to make way for independent observations of the section of real space rep-
resented, which was new to the Tswana in the :8os. This argument draws heavily on Ter-
ence Wright, Photography: Theories of Realism and Convention, in Anthropology and Pho-
tograph, .8o.o, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq.),
citing James Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Miin,
:q66), and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Miin, :qq); Wrights
discussion of the implications of Gibsons work is particularly good (..8). And see, addi-
tionally, Suren Lalvani, Photography, Vision, and the Production of Modern Bodies (Albany: State
University of New York Press, :qq6), .
6. Aumont, Image, o: this double reality has been mostly discussed for the photo-
graph, but there is no reason to exclude realistic painting.
6. Theodore K. Rabb and Jonathan Brown, Image and Text, Journal of Interdiscipli-
nary History :, : (Summer :q86): :6.
66. The example is expanded from Mitchell, Iconology, , citing Mark Twain, Life on the
Mississippi (:88; reprint, New York: Readers Digest, :q8), .6..
6. Hunt is here provocatively quoting the editors invitation to the meetings in which
these papers were rst delivered.
68. Certainly, captions have been all but ignored in histories of photography: Patricia
Hayes, personal communication, December :qq.
6q. Terrence Wright, Photography, points out that phenomena like blurring segue into
convention with accustomed encounters, .. The photographs power to convince relies in
large part on our implicit or explicit knowledge about how it was produced: as a physico-
chemical reaction to light. As noted in n. above, C. S. Peirce classed photographs as in-
dices. In a well-known two-part essay, Rosalind Kraus draws attention to the critical im-
portance of indexing in Western abstract expressionism in producing apparently
self-referential artworks. Like photography in this regard, such painting is composed solely
ix+nontc+iox
of the gesture that produces it. See her The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist
Myths (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :q8), esp. Notes on the Index : and Notes on the
Index ., citing (inter alia) Andr Bazain and Roland Barthes.
o. Michael Taussig explores this process in his book, Mimesis and Alterity (New York:
Routledge, :qq).
:. Heike Behrend and Tobias Wendl, Photography: Social and Cultural Aspects, in
Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara, ed. John Middleton (New York: Scribner, :qq), oq:.
.. Oral History Project, University of Witwatersrand, interview of Miss Nkwapa
Ramorwesi by Mmantho Nkotsoe, May ., :q8., Phokeng, Bophuthatswana, South
Africa. The concept of a written record can work the same way among the nonliterate.
. Joseph Masagha [Masogha], South African Agent, Negro World, September .,
:q.. Thanks to the historian Robert Hill.
. Twain himself supplied nine pictures of rubber-gatherers with their hands cut o:
Gore Vidal, Twain on the Grand Tour, New York Review of Books, May ., :qq6, .6. For
the best recent treatment of the atrocities in the Congo, see Adam Hochschild, King Leopolds
Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Miin, :qq8).
. The more one knows, of course, the more one can read the contrivances in photo-
graphs, e.g., the famous Stalinist images from which purged Bolsheviks were excised. On the
rich set of photographs published in Albuns fotogrcos e sescrtivos da colnia de Moambique, with
photos by Jos dos Santos Runo (Hamburg: Broschek & Co., :q.q), see Eric Allina, Fal-
lacious Mirrors: Colonial Anxiety and Images of African Labor in Mozambique, ca. :q.q,
History in Africa . (:qq): q..
6. Philip Kwame Apagayas photographs in this vein may be seen in Snap Me One! Stu-
diofotografen in Afrika, ed. Tobias Wendl and Heike Behrend (Munich: Prestel, n.d. [:qq8?]),
.6, Shama/Ghana. See also Tobias Wendl and Nancy Du Plessis, Future Remem-
brance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana, lm (Institut fr den Wissenschaftlichen
Film, :qq). Thanks to Birgit Meyer for alerting me to this. Her forthcoming work on local
video-cinema in Ghana is fascinating.
. However, see David, ed., Inventaire gnral; Guggenheim Museum, In/Sight: African Pho-
tographers, .o to the Present (New York: Guggenheim Museum, :qq6); Steven Sprague,
Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves, African Arts :., : (:q8): .q,
:o; Snap Me One! ed. Wendl and Behrend, and Vera Viditz-Ward, Photography in Sierra
Leone, :8o:q:8, Africa , (:q8): :o:.
8. The quotation is a citation from an earlier draft of Mustafas paper.
q. See Kerstin Pinther, Wenn die Ehe eine Erdnu wre . . . ber Textilien und Fo-
tograe in Afrika, and also Tobias Wendl, Francis K. Honny, in Snap Me One! ed. Wendl
and Behrend, 6, (in German), and quotation, English, from the unpublished Proposal
for an Exhibition (:qq8), .
8o. Geary, Images from Bamun; Jean Comaro, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, :q8), ..; see also Clothing and Dierence: Embodied Identities in
Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa, Bodies, Commodity, Text, ed. Hildi Hendrickson (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, :qq6).
8:. Errington, Death of Authentic Primitive Art, , puts this very well: Discourses create ob-
jects. . . . [In other words, they] materialize and narrativize categories by creating institutions
and using media that illustrate, support, conrm, and naturalize their dominant ideas. See
also MacGaey, Dialogues of the Deaf. For the almost accurate prognostication about the
Coca Cola sign, see Jan Vansina, Venture into Tio Country: Congo, :q6:q6, in In
r\tr s. r\xn\t
Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa, ed. Caroline Keyes Adenaike and Jan Vansina (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, :qq6), ::: Coke executives refer to Coke signs overexpo-
sure as the red rash.
8.. I am aware that the chromolithograph appears in this book as a :q print with Hindi
on it, but I am highlighting Sri Lankan language as a comparison to the appropriated Cey-
lonese image. See also Tobias Wendl, Mami Wata: Oder ein Kult zwischen den Kulturen (Mun-
ster: Lit, n.d. [:qq:?]); and Charles Gore and Joseph Nevadomsky, Practice and Agency in
Mammy Wata Worship in Southern Nigeria, African Arts o, . (Spring :qq): 6o6q, q. The
latter authors grant less importance to the lithograph for the wider Mami Wata cult than
does Drewal. Mami Wata is a genre in the same way the Chevrolet Impala is a genre:
such names describe not only a particular car, but also every car in the long history of a
brand in its shifting market, even if late models share not even a chassis with earlier ones.
8. James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, :qqo). Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, ed. Bernth
Lindfors (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, :qqq), was published after this essay was
drafted, but the essays by Zoe Strother, Neil Parsons, and Veit Erlmann are relevant to this
discussion.
8. See also Robert J. Gordon, The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, :qq.), .. nn. : and .. For another view of N!xao, the star
of The Gods Must Be Crazy, see the photographs and text in Paul Weinberg, In Search of the
San ( Johannesburg: Porcupine Press, :qq).
8. It is easier to deal with archives and artifacts that dont talk back, than with rep-
resentatives of ethnic communities, who may be hostile or have their own political agenda
that is not in harmony with the position of the museum curator, Anna Laura Jones notes
in Exploding Canons: The Anthropology of Museums, Annual Review of Anthropology, .
.. (:qq): .:. Jones goes on to advise taking the counsel of representative groups. For what
it is worth, I see Joness advice as a recipe for banality.
86. Herbert Cole, Icons: Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa (Washington, D.C.: Smithson-
ian Institution Press, :q8q), on a sculpture of Amadioha god of thunder, 6; Kramer, Red
Fez discusses similar gures; for Kota, see Vansina, Art and History in Africa, :., 8o, and
Gable, this volume.
8. Sometimes context arises in unexpected ways: a Congolese displays national feeling
by owning an oil painting of Patrice Lumumba in her living room; it is signicant if it hangs
beside a reproduction of The Last Supper. See Fabian, Remembering the Present, and Bogumil
Jewsiewicki, Corps interdits: La reprsentation christique de Lumumba comme rdemp-
teur du peuple zarois, Cahiers dtudes africaines ::., 6 (:qq6): ::..
88. Julius E. Lips, The Savage Hits Back (:q; New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, :q66).
See also Fritz Kramer, Red Fez, .. The reality of identity complicates the matter, however,
as, for instance, Enid Schildkrout, Jill Hellman, and Curtis Keim, show in Mangbetu Pottery:
Tradition and Innovation in Northeast Zaire, African Arts .., . (February :q8q): 8, :o:,
and other work on the statuettes colons, gurines in Western dress made in Congo for the inter-
national market. These gures are interesting precisely because they do not specify the indi-
vidual nature of Euro-Americans (tourists and so forth), and they include Africans too.
8q. In Mustafas essay, women wish to showcase their conformity to idealized modes of
personal expression. See also Sprague, Yoruba Photography.
qo. I have written about the magical character of the cameras progenitor, the magic
lantern (or slide projector) in Landau, Illumination of Christ in the Kalahari Desert. Fox
ix+nontc+iox ,
Talbot: see Don Slater, Photography and Modern Vision: The Spectacle of natural
magic, in Visual Culture, ed. Chris Jenks (New York: Routledge, :qq), ... Slater also dis-
cusses the conundrum of modernity and magic in photography.
q:. Roland Barthes, Rhetorique de limage, Communications (:q6): ., cited and trans-
lated by Rosalind Krauss, Originality of the Avant Garde, .::; Behrend and Wendl, Photogra-
phy: Social and Cultural Aspects, Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara, : :.
q.. My thoughts here are very inuenced by Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, esp. ch. :,
which explores the irreducible magic of mimesis. But see Hunts and Gables arguments,
this volume.
q. On the Brownie, see the Eastman House Museum exhibit, The History of the Cam-
era, in Rochester, New York. Brownie is recorded earlier as a term meaning a benevo-
lent goblin in Scotland (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.). Eastman may also have been inspired
to name his camera after Robert Brownell, who designed many of his camera bodies, but a
public recognition of others was uncharacteristic of him.
q. Image-xing borrows the cult value of the alter-ego of the self, who is therefore for-
eign, childish, or primitive. The very types who, as we have seen, reexively dened nat-
uralism by virtue of their lack of it, now become the sign for the mystery of naturalistic
mimesis. Similarly, Walt Disneys Mickey Mouse (rst appearing in Tugboat Willy), ap-
pears to have been formed from a caricature of early Jazz Age black vaudevillians.
q. Vogel, Baul, .6 .
q6. This again is why Mitchell argues that spirits are hidden in the highly mimetic im-
ages so common in the West, in Mitchell, Iconology, qoq:, ::; and see Walter Benjamin,
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in Illuminations: Essays and Reec-
tions, ed. Hannah Arendt (:q68; New York: Schocken Books, :q6q), .:.. The point about
specters is made dierently by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazers Golden Bough, I,
:q: (MS ::o), and II, ca. :q8 (MS :), in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions,
..:.., ed. James Klagge and Alfred Nordman (Indianapolis: Hackett, :qq).
q. Axel-Ivar Berglund, Zulu Thought Patterns and Symbolism (Uppsala: Swedish Mission
Institute, :q6), 8 .
q8. Ibid.
qq. The historical testimony of the persons existence, distilled and recalled as his or
her image after corporeal death: cf. Benjamin, Work of Art, ..
:oo. Hecht and Simone, Invisible Governance, :.. See also Sprague, Yoruba Photogra-
phy, and Snap Me One! ed. Wendl and Behrend.
:o:. Behrend and Wendl, Photography: Social and Cultural Aspects, ::.
:o.. Henri Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (.d ed., New Hyde Park, N.Y.: Univer-
sity Books, :q6.), .: 6.6; see also Patrick Harries, Exclusion, Classication and Inter-
nal Colonialism: The Emergence of Ethnicity among the Tsonga-Speakers of South Africa,
in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, ed. Leroy Vail (London: James Curry; Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, :q8q), 8.::. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity,
:o., shows the implicitly sacred nature of image-making (:o) with the example of a Cuna
(Panama) text in which purba, double or image, was alternately translated as spirit.
:o. Lienhardt writes that the deities of the Dinka may be thought of as the images
of human passiones, using the Latin concept passiones to describe events such as anger
and desire. Georey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, :q6:), :o, cited in Kramer, The Red Fez; see also Strother, Inventing
Masks.
8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
:o. Kramers intention is to counterpose Balzacs ecstatic knowing (which pace Nietz-
sche he calls demonic) with the doctrine of decorum evoked by the story of Jesus.
Kramer, Red Fez, ..
:o. Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zar Cult of Northern Sudan
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, :q8q).
:o6. Ibid.
:o. Jean Rouch, Les matres fous (:q6); Paul Stoller, Regarding Rouch: The Recasting
of West African Colonial Culture, in Cinema, Colonialism, Postcolonialism: Perspectives from the
French and Francophone World, ed. Dina Sherzer (Austin: University of Texas, :qq6), 6q; and
see Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Black African Cinema (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, :qq), 8..
:o8. I admit that Adorno would be horried at the connections I am drawing, and fur-
ther, that he was thinking about music, not visual art. Kramer, Red Fez, passim; and Jean Co-
maro, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance; Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits. For African cowboys,
I rely on notices of forthcoming or recent work by Pieter Remes, Kolanga Molei, and Di-
dier Gondola, and discussion from Edward Alpers and Charles Ambler, via H-Africa, the
e-mail discussion network cited above; for South Africa, see Shamil Jeppie and Bill Nasson,
She preferred living in a cave with Harry the snake-catcher: Towards an Oral History of
Popular Leisure and Class Expression in District Six, Cape Town, c. :q.os:qos, in Hold-
ing Their Ground: Class, Locality and Culture in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century South Africa, ed.
Philip Bonner ( Johannesburg: Ravan Press, :q8q), .8o6; Ezekiel Mphahlele, Down Sec-
ond Avenue (New York: Anchor Books, :q:); anything by Nat Nakasa; or Mike Nicols ele-
giac compendium, A Good-Looking Corpse. For West African blackface, see Catherine Cole,
Reading Blackface in West Africa: Wonders Taken for Signs, Critical Inquiry . (:qq6):
:8.:, and forthcoming work by Emmanuel Akyempong; and, nally, personal observa-
tion, Nyanza, Kenya.
:oq. E. M. S. LeFleur Collection, UNISA, Pretoria. Circulars, A. A. S. Leeur, Griqua
Independent Church of S.A. [Christmas] Greeting. N.d. (prob. late :q.os); this is an exact
quotation, but with my emphasis added.
::o. Jocelyn Alexander, Dissident Perspectives on Zimbabwes Post-Independence War,
Africa 68, . (:qq8): :, quoting Mawobho Sibindi.
:::. H. Depelchin and C. Croonenberghs, Journey to Gubulawayo: Letters of Fr. J. Depelchin
and C. Croonenberghs, J.J., .8,, .88o, .88. (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe: Historical Facsimiles, :qq),
:.
::.. The same misprisions occurred in other colonial forums. According to an account
in the Nyasaland Times cited by Megan Vaughan, for instance, the screening
of a hygiene lm lecture by the Durban City Health Department at a convention of native chiefs
enoeo in uproar when one of the characters acting the part of a man suering from venereal
oisease was recognizeo by the chairman. That is my nephew, he crieo in astonishment. What
is he ooing in a lm like this? I never knew he hao been sick. Hes relateo to me too calleo
out the General Secretary . . .
The man suering from venereal disease was recognized as a specic and named per-
son, not a type, and no identication, no ecstatic possession of the viewers transpired.
The audience understood the conventions of cinema, but the double reality of the actor-
as-image fell away, and the audience was left looking only at a movie of a mans nephew.
Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, :8. See also the example on p. :q. In lm theory, emotion is the
key element to participation in the narrative life of a protagonist; see Aumont, Image, q.
ix+nontc+iox
::. Steve Landsberg, The $:o Billion Man, New York Times, January ., :qqq, A.:.
The sense of skepticism and self-correction is, of course, accommodated by advertisers as
ironic or knowing sensibility.
::. Like rock painting in Bushman communities in the Kalahari, advertising joins trans-
formation and signication in one moment. Cf. J. David Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing:
Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings (New York: Academic Press, :q8:).
::. Paula Ben-Amos, African Visual Arts from a Social Perspective, . Ian Flem-
ings character James Bond and some other Western icons have become ancestor gures in
East Africa (pers. comm., Richard Waller and Dorothy Hodgson, August :qq8; and see
Henry Drewal, this volume). Drewal tells us elsewhere that the Hagenbeck chromolitho-
graph was regarded by devotees as a photo of Mami Wata, in Mermaids, Mirrors, and
Snake Charmers: Igbo Mami Wata Shrines, African Arts .:, . (February :q88): q.
::6. See Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone
(Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, :qq6), 86o; Marissa Moorman, Film, Gender and the
Nation in Postcolonial Angola: On the Possibilities of Cinema as an Historical Source
(forthcoming); Gore and Nevadomsky, Practice and Agency; and see Brian Larkin, In-
dian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities, Africa 6,
(:qq): o6o.
::. Sandra T. Barnes, The Many Faces of Ogun, in Africas Ogun: Old World and New,
ed. id. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, :q8q), . and passim. Perhaps not coinci-
dentally, this book and Barness book share two contributors. The Ugandan spirit mediums
called Cwezi also had dierent shapes in dierent historical discourses, yet they were one
phenomenon, and have been considered as living art icons: see Rene Tantala, Verbal
and Visual Imagery in Western Uganda: Interpreting the Story of Isimbwa and Nyi-
mawiru, in Paths Toward the African Past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina, ed.
Robert W. Harms et al. (Atlanta: ASA Press, :qq), ... Tantala explicitly connects the
Cwezi idea to Jan Vansinas understanding of continuity in iconography in African art; see
Vansina, Art History in Africa, :o: .
::8. See Ricoeur, Oneself as Another.
o r\tr s. r\xn\t
Chapter :
Our Mosquitoes Are Not So Big:
Images and Modernity in Zimbabwe
Timothy Burke
In :qqo, I askeo Roger Dillon, a long-time Zimbabwean aovertiser who was the
owner of a small marketing rm, whether he hao ever seen an example of African
auoiences misinterpreting or misunoerstanoing an aovertisement of some kino.
Dillon, who specializeo in mobile cinema vans ano billboaros, thought about it for
a minute ano then tolo me two stories. The rst concerneo the experiences of an
acquaintance who hao workeo for the Rhooesian government as a health ocer.
On one occasion, Dillon saio, the man hao gone to the Zambezi Valley to talk to
remote villages about malaria prevention. Equippeo with several large orawings, a
oemonstration mosquito net, ano a two-foot-long papier-mach mosquito, he ex-
plaineo the transmission of the oisease ano suggesteo some possible strategies for
its prevention. At the conclusion of his talk, the villagers thankeo him but gently
suggesteo that his ioeas oio not apply in their area, because their mosquitoes were
so much smaller. In her book Cottrg Tlctt Ill: Colortol Po.ct oro Afttcor Illrc, Megan
Vaughan cites an almost ioentical story tolo by a sta member of the Colonial Iilm
Unit.
Dillons secono tale involveo his experiences showing lms to African auoiences
at mining compounos ano in rural areas. At one such screening of a oocumentary
on Worlo War II, Dillon saio, the auoience arose screaming in fright when footage
of planes strang the grouno was shown, ano many of them eo the room. Again,
this echoes many of the anecootes oiscusseo by Vaughan in her oiscussion of colo-
nial lms about hygiene. As Vaughan notes, these kinos of tales abounoeo on the
colonial circuit ano were clearly tolo with great glee.
1
Why were they a genre, a
common colonial story?
Some of the repetition here may simply be the literal truth: George Fearson,
the man who tells the story about the mosquito in Vaughans book, may actually
have been Dillons unnameo acquaintance, or at the least, may have been con-
necteo to him. Nevertheless, the currency ano popularity of such stories clearly
.
stretcheo beyono any one group of colonial inoiviouals. The temptation is to treat
these tales straightforwaroly as a form of imperial apocrypha, tall tales whose pop-
ularity was oue largely to their racist lampooning of the oecient interpretative
skills of Africans, parallel to stories about African incompetence with machinery
or mioole-class African faux pas with European manners. This was certainly part
of their appeal to white storytellers.
Another possibility is that these stories were elaborateo versions of real events,
that Africans in fact oio interpret mooern visual genres of representation as terri-
fyingly mimetic, that Africans oio not unoerstano the visual grammar of such ma-
terials ano reacteo in ways that Europeans saw as humorous or inappropriate. I
think this too is absolutely on target. Africanist scholars are accustomeo to ois-
cussing the complicateo historical transactions ano misrecognitions between Eu-
ropeans ano Africans regaroing literacy ano writing.
2
The historical evolution of
various styles ano technologies of visual representation within mooern Western so-
cieties have been intrinsically just as complex, ano their introouction to colonial
Africa no less so. Of course, African auoiences hao surprising, sometimes violent,
sometimes whimsical, reactions to visual meoia ano imagery circulating ouring the
era of colonial rule: how coulo it have been otherwise?
I want to review both of these interpretations in relation to visual materials ano
mass communication in twentieth-century Zimbabwe, with particular attention to
early experiments in colonial cinema for African auoiences ano to the later oevel-
opment of aovertisements oirecteo at Africans. In so ooing, I also want to explore
a thiro way of thinking about such stories. White settlers ano aoministrators were
not merely amuseo by African reactions to lms, posters, ano the like. Whites were
just as likely to express anxiety, uncertainty, ano even fear about such reactions. Ior
every whimsical story of Africans running in terror from a movie screen, there was
an aovertiser nervously commissioning a scientic stuoy on the supposeoly oier-
ent physiological basis of African color vision. Ior every humorous anecoote about
giant mosquitoes, there was a surveillance report by a policeman about the behav-
ior of African auoiences in urban movie houses. Whether fearful or bemuseo, white
onlookers were never certain what Africans saw or how they saw it.
Fart of their confusion was proouceo by the familiar ioeological ano cultural
oefense mechanisms among colonizers, which actively maintaineo the alterity of
their African subjects. I argue that, to an equal extent, uncertainty about African
auoiences ano their reception of visual materials was causeo by uncertainty among
whites about their own interpretative skills. New styles ano technologies of visual
representation unnerveo Europeans to the same extent that they puzzleo or
alarmeo Africans. Though whites often claimeo mastery of the visual, their sto-
ries about Africans were sometimes a technique for launoering fears ano anxieties
about the impact that new styles of visual representation were having on their own
lives. At the eno of the oay, these stories were ultimately part of a larger, albeit
somewhat fractureo, oiscussion between Africans ano Europeans about the oan-
gers ano benets of mooern visual technologies. These stories were the tip of an
: +ixo+nv ntnkr
iceberg, a oeeply embeooeo ano shareo reaction to mooern visual genres ano
forms.
THE UNEASY VISUAL
If we were to catalogue the core narratives to emerge out of Western colonial ex-
pansion since the sixteenth century, stories about Western mooes of visual repre-
sentation ano their eect on non-Western peoples woulo surely gure prominently.
The native who fears that the camera will capture his soul ano The native who
fails to recognize himself in the mirror are iconic tales that recur again ano again
in the Western imaginary. Some Africanists have oiscusseo the actual colonial en-
counters that animateo such narratives. Ior instance, Faul Lanoau has oescribeo
the use of a magic lantern, an early form of image projector, in the early :q.os in
colonial Botswana by Ernest Dugmore, a Lonoon Missionary Society preacher,
ano Christrauo Geary has chronicleo the role playeo by photography in the Ger-
man colonial aoministration of Cameroon.
3
The introouction of cinema to African auoiences in British territories provioes
a valuable ano relatively fresh opportunity to examine a similar colonial experi-
ence with visual representation.
4
It came only a few oecaoes after lms appear-
ance in metropolitan societies. Irom the moment of its invention, lm has pro-
vokeo intense anxieties in every society exposeo to it, ano we shoulo not suppose
that white colonizers were any less anxious about the general power of cinema
merely because they were colonizers. Cinema combineo, in the minos of many
onlookers, the presumeo mimetic powers of photography with the imaginative
plasticity of literature ano painting. It coulo bring the fantastic to life, make the
unreal or impossible into truth, grant images a power they hao never hao before.
Such a prospect was unnerving ano exciting enough in itself, but of peculiar con-
cern in a colonial situation. If whites themselves were not certain what to make
of lm, then what woulo Africans oo? If cinema coulo make Irankenstein come
to life, powerfully reproouce the Russian Revolution, or convince an auoience that
the image of a train was actually going to hit them, then coulo it not oepict some-
thing that to African auoiences might suggest ,ano thus help create, a remaoe so-
cial oroer?
The introouction of cinema to Africans in British territories was therefore han-
oleo with extreme care, ano subjecteo to a gooo oeal of semi-ocial scrutiny ano
surveillance. Ior example, the Bantu Eoucational Cinema Experiment, sponsoreo
by the International Missionary Council, showeo a variety of lms to African au-
oiences in East Africa between :q ano :q, mostly instructional lms of oier-
ent kinos. The Experiment recoroeo Africans reactions to several versions of the
same lms, in oroer to elicit responses to variations of particular images ano se-
quences. The supervisors of the project assumeo, for the most part, that African
reactions to the visual language of lm woulo be funoamentally oierent than those
of white auoiences.
otn xosti+ors \nr xo+ so nio
Iigure :.:. Urban bioscope, Northern Rhooesia ,Zambia,, ca. :qo. Fhoto
no. 6:qb, National Archives of Zimbabwe ,NAZ,. Courtesy NAZ.
In some cases, they felt satiseo that they hao accurately unoerstooo ano antic-
ipateo African interpretations of lms ano were able to eoit various movies until
they conveyeo the appropriate instructional message ,though the project also strug-
gleo with consioerable technical oiculties that interfereo with this process of cor-
rection,. Ior example, one lm that trieo to be a slap-stick comeoy in which a
young boy playeo pranks on his eloers, proouceo both laughter ano consterna-
tion. Upon investigating, the unit founo that the concern was emanating from oloer
members of the auoience who thought that it was oisturbing to show such oisre-
spectful behavior, even though the boy hao a beating at the eno.
5
In other cases, however, the lm unit was relatively baeo by auoience reac-
tion or oeeply concerneo about persistent misreaoings. In one instance, a lm about
a progressive chief who tries to bring eoucation to his oistrict showeo one scene in
which the chief falls ill ano is brought to a hospital, where he faints. Later, the chief
arrives back home, cureo in the nick of time, to save a schoolteacher from having
to unoergo a poison oroeal at the hanos of a witch ooctor. Auoiences persistently
assumeo that the chief hao oieo in the hospital ano that the man who showeo up
later in the story, oresseo in new clothes, was another, oierent, chief. The lm
unit resorteo to reaoing an explanation through a microphone ouring the airing
of the lm, but it remaineo, in their juogment, a failure oue to the auoiences per-
sistent refusal to recognize the chief as the same character. Another lm experi-
menteo with oramatizing a local folktale calleo The Hare ano the Leoparo ano
maoe use of African actors oresseo as anthropomorphic animals. The lm was not
a success with auoiences. One viewer summeo up a prevalent complaint by say-
ing, |T|he animals were merely human beings.
6
The unit prooucers sometimes explaineo such misunoerstanoings by arguing
that Africans hao oefective or reouceo interpretative skills that were especially ev-
ioent in oealing with visual material, capacities that woulo neeo to be investigateo
ano specially catereo to before instructional lms for African auoiences coulo be
successful. At the same time, they often acknowleogeo the valioity of African reao-
ings ano misreaoings of the lms shown by the unit, attributing them in some cases
to visual or conceptual errors on the part of the lm prooucers but also to the le-
gitimate exercise of interpretation by the auoiences. After the showing of one lm
about a theft, oebates often broke out among auoience members about the fate of
the thief ano about the appropriateness of colonial law. In the rst version of the
story, the thief was killeo by falling from a tree, in the secono version, he was taken
o by an African policeman, while his victim oepositeo his recovereo money right
away in the Fost Oce Savings Bank.
7
Auoiences oebateo whether the thief shoulo
oiemany assumeo that his fall from the tree was oeliberately causeo by his pur-
suer, not by an accioentano argueo about which court system shoulo have juris-
oiction in the case, many felt that the thief shoulo be punisheo by a chief, not the
European courts. Although the lm prooucers oescribeo the assumptions about the
thief s oeath as a misunoerstanoing, it is also clear that they unoerstooo auoi-
ence reactions as being legitimately preoicateo upon the lms content, ano more
important, on the content of African experience in colonial society. When Africans
reacteo with shock, surprise, or confusion to the capacity of moving images to
conate the imaginary ano the real, the prooucers often conceoeo the legitimacy
of these reactions without necessarily engaging in racist conoescension.
When they maoe such concessions, they oio so in part because their cinema ex-
periment arouseo concern among white ano Inoian auoiences as well, often
premiseo on the same apprehension about the ability of the cinema to transform
reality through its uniquely powerful representational technology. In the case of the
lm about the thief, some Europeans who saw the movie tolo the unit that no lm
portraying crime or violence shoulo be shown to Africans for fear that such a lm
woulo create the behavior it sought to censure.
8
Europeans ano Africans watching
a lm on agricultural planning hao a split reaction when a buoonish African char-
acter realizes late in the lm that he forgot to plant seeos in his well-tilleo ano wa-
tereo garoen: whites laugheo, Africans oio not. In the same lm, Inoians objecteo
strenuously to a scene showing an Inoian merchant overcharging an African cus-
tomer, while Europeans objecteo to a scene showing a European farmer who mis-
treateo his laborers ano to the use of an African actors voice to represent the voice
of another European planter later in the lm.
9
What is striking about the reaction
to this ano many of the other lms shown by the unit is that African interpretations
of the language ano meaning of lm were often closely mirroreo or echoeo by the
+ixo+nv ntnkr
Iigure :... A scene from Pltlcmor tlc Foot/ollct, :q.. Central African Iilm Unit, photo
no. ..qo, NAZ. Courtesy NAZ.
reactions of other colonial auoiences. All social groups were often unnerveo or star-
tleo by the mimetic capacities of the cinema, concerneo about the power of visual
representation not only to reect but to transform social relations in colonial soci-
ety. Inoeeo, in many cases, Africans, Europeans, ano others were critical precisely
because the camera translateo social reality into cinematic images, transforming
unspoken unoerstanoings about everyoay life into a oiscomforting mirror that oe-
manoeo some response.
The same pattern markeo similar experiments with cinema in colonial South-
ern Rhooesia ,Zimbabwe, from the late :q:os to the early :qos. African auoiences
were watcheo, both openly ano in secret, for their reactions to lms. At the same
time, the reactions of whites to movies, especially ouring Worlo War II, were some-
times of equal concern to government ocials ano various civic groups ano were
watcheo closely as well.
Local eorts by the Rhooesian state ano by civic groups like the Boy Scouts to
supervise cinema for Africans were particularly provokeo by the recommenoation
of a metropolitan commission in the :qos that no oistinction between African ano
European auoiences be maoe in the case of lms. However, surveillance ano ocial
concern about Africans ano the cinema hao been prevalent in Rhooesia since the
eno of Worlo War I. As one Rhooesian ocial typically concluoeo, for the Na-
tive, there is a wealth of opportunity for misunoerstanoing even our simple oo-
mestic melooramas. Incioent is everything to the Native, ano unless the subject
oeals quite oenitely with an artistic oevelopment baseo on his own psychology, a
wrong impression is bouno to be createo.
10
Between :q: ano :qo, Rhooesian police ocials reporteo a number of inci-
oents they founo oistressing while surveilling African auoiences. During one news-
reel that showeo a white beauty queen, thrills of oelight were hearo, ano an un-
specieo but apparently oisturbing noise was hearo whenever kissing appeareo
on the screen.
11
Another movie showeo an African stealing roller skates from his
former employer, a skating rink, after he is sackeo for oisturbing a white woman
skater. The skates are brought back to his rural homesteao, where he explains that
these are the things that amuse the white man. A police sergeant chargeo with
investigating this lm immeoiately requesteo it be taken out of circulation, as it was
very much appreciateo by the natives, as was evioent from the laughter.
12
In an-
other instance, a Roman Catholic missionary who showeo lms in townships as-
sureo police that shoulo anything of an objectionable nature be shown . . . I im-
meoiately shut the lm o ano continue further on.
13
Censorship of this sort aimeo at Africans was haroly exceptional: the British
South Africa Companys local authorities ano later aoministrators were perpetu-
ally wary about African access to a wioe range of materials, from Garveyist tracts
to yers for patent meoicines ano fancy clothing. However, visual materials, espe-
cially lm, arouseo particular anxiety. That concern was primarily explaineo, just
as in other instances, as a concern for the oecient interpretative powers of Africans
or about their alien cultural sensibilities. But just as in other instances, the extent
otn xosti+ors \nr xo+ so nio ,
to which ocial fears about African auoiences were echoeo by concerns about
white auoiences was often remarkable. One ocial le leapt from the neeo to ex-
ercise selective censorship of lms for African auoiences to a long harangue about
the appeal of movies to Europeans of limiteo mentality, arguing that regular
patrons of movies favoreo spectacularity, sensationalism ano mauolin sentimen-
tality, ano that they were unable to appreciate lms either in terms of messages
or in terms of art.
14
Having oelivereo these remarks, the author of the report im-
meoiately segueo back to the inability of Africans to properly unoerstano cinema.
In another instance, a :q. report about the exhibition of war newsreels to white
farmers near Chinhoyi, northwest of the capital, the supervisor of the lm unit
complaineo to the minister of internal aairs that white auoiences were inoier-
ent to or actively scornful of the movies.
15
White auoiences in southern Africa also
oemanoeo that images of the Rhooesian African Ries ,an all-black unit, bearing
arms be oeleteo from wartime lms.
16
At the eno of a lengthy corresponoence be-
tween government ocials ano lmmakers about the making of a lm on Cecil
Rhooes entitleo Tlctc Ltc 1oot Htrtctloro, Frime Minister Goofrey Huggins scrawleo
at the bottom: History shoulo be presenteo factually oown to the last oetail. In
other woros, ction ano fact shoulo not be mixeo. I also realize if this were oone
it woulo probably ruin the movie business.
17
These sentiments have a certain bitter hilarity coming from the pen of a prime
minister of Southern Rhooesia. Dominant elites expresseo concern that lms mixeo
ction ano fact in a uniquely powerful manner, not only for African auoiences,
however, but also for whites of low mentality, chiloren, ano other people in Eng-
lano. Members of these auoiences expresseo the same concern. Africans probably
oio at times run from images of strang planes or make appreciatively naughty
noises at white beauty queens, just as white auoiences sought ano feareo cinematic
spectacle or nervously examineo cinematic representations of their own vigorously
sanitizeo history of colonial conquest.
The historical oevelopment of visual aovertising oirecteo at Africans provioes
further insight into these issues, while also illuminating the historical specicity of
oierent visual meoia. Frint aovertisements, billboaros, ano similar promotions oi-
recteo at white Rhooesians appeareo almost immeoiately after the founoing of the
colony in :8qo. Similar aovertisements explicitly oirecteo at African consumers
emergeo in the :q.os, ano their propagation was markeo by profouno uncertain-
ties from that point on. Some of these problems hao relatively little to oo with ques-
tions about visual representation ano more to oo with an imagineo relationship be-
tween consumption ano citizenship, more to oo with local struggles between
factions of capital interesteo in suppressing African wages ano manufacturing cap-
itals interest in African purchasing power. Aovertising to Africans acknowleogeo
their consioerable ano constantly growing centrality to the colonial economy as
consumers, a fact most white Rhooesians were unprepareo to accept.
But many of the furtive oebates among marketers ano between marketers ano
groups of concerneo whites about African aovertising were animateo by concerns
8 +ixo+nv ntnkr
specically relateo to the relationship between visual representation ano colonial
hegemony. At the same time that the cinema was a growing concern, in the :q.os,
civic groups publicly requesteo that the Rhooesian government regulate images
seen on posters in stores ano other public locations in colonial Salisbury, because
Africans might be intercepting messages intenoeo for white consumers ano might
act inappropriately as a result.
18
Many businesses responoeo positively to these re-
quests, ano the government also passeo a law in :q.q that heavily restricteo visual
aovertisements of any kino in rural reserve areas.
19
As in the case of cinema, the
primary fear expresseo by whites was that to reproouce a particular image was, in
some fashion, to make what it showeo into reality. Ior example, one Anglican cleric
complaineo early in the colonization process that pictures showing mission Africans
in fancy European clothinga common genrewere not baseo on reality, but ac-
knowleogeo that the pictures were helping to create such fashions where they hao
not existeo.
20
Frint aovertising oirecteo specically at Africans began to appear in colonial
Zimbabwe in the :qos. Once it became relatively common, many whites warily
examineo such aos both for images that showeo Africans things they shoulo not
be alloweo to see, such as white women portrayeo as objects of oesire, ano for im-
ages that representeo a social worlo oramatically out of line with colonial reality.
The former appeareo only rarely, as aovertisers were acutely conscious of white
sensibilities in this regaro, but the aovertisers I intervieweo tolo me that they often
hao to feno o complaints in the latter category. Of course, this unoerscores that
it was not just Africans who were surreptitious spectators of images meant for
whites, but the other way arouno as well. Frinteo images oisplayeo in public ano
semi-public forums, unlike cinema or written materials, oo not necessarily betray
their auoiences, which is part of what makes them unnerving in situations where
cultural hegemony rests on fragile unoerpinnings.
Frint aovertisements useo throughout southern Africa often portrayeo Africans
achieving some high social ano economic stanoing through the wise use of some
commooity, particularly from the :qos to the :qos. One campaign for Castle
Lager, for example, showeo Africans y-shing in the mountains ano picnicking
next to their car, transposing black men ano women oirectly into images that hao
initially featureo white subjects. Campaigns for Ambi, a skin lightener, featureo a
wealthy African couple relaxing at Victoria Ialls ano a light-skinneo African ooc-
tor reviewing charts, contrasteo with his oark-skinneo janitor. Other campaigns
were careful to show African achievements as more suiteo to the stanoaros of colo-
nial society: a regular series of print aos for Lifebuoy soap showeo African men in
a variety of appropriate work settings, incluoing mining, bricklaying, clerking,
ano teaching.
Moreover, even in those cases where aovertisements maoe implicit promises of
social aovancement to Africans that were clearly unrealistic, stanoaro visual tropes
that preoateo the aovent of print aovertisements in Africa were still extensively
aoapteo for use in colonial society. Ior example, aos for toiletries aimeo at Africans
Iigure :.. Aovertisement for Lifebuoy soap, Borto Mtttot, September :o, :q6o.
frequently tappeo into one of the oloest themes in mooern aovertising, a theme
with oeep roots in Victorian Englano ano the Uniteo States, namely, the fantasizeo
power of a gooo soap to turn blacks into whites. These were not subtle aos: one
version, promoting Gossages Soap, showeo a caricatureo African whose face was
half white ano half black, with the caption Soap Makes Black White.
21
But these
were also images that coulo never appear in this form in colonial Africa itself. They
woulo have been massively transgressive. As a shorthano oescription of the cleans-
ing power of a soap, making use of Africans as a symbol while appealing to white
metropolitan consumers, they were ne. As a promise to Africans that they might
literally become white, they were impossible to accept. The basic tropetoiletries
can lighten you ano fulll some social aspirationsthus remaineo the same, but
the content of the image often changeo, to show Africans becoming lighter, but not
white.
MISINTERPRETATIONS
Aovertisers worrieo a great oeal about images ano their interpretation by Africans.
Elsewhere, I have recounteo in oetail the general concern of aovertisers about com-
municating with African auoiences.
22
Virtually every inoivioual aspect of aover-
tising intenoeo for African auoiences was scrutinizeo for the possibility that it might
contain a fatal miscommunication or error of some kino. The sensibilities of
African consumers ano of wary white onlookers alike gureo into the calculus of
marketing teams as they oesigneo print campaigns. But nothing maoe these pro-
fessionals more anxious than the visual component of print aovertisements. As pro-
fessional conventions governing transnational or cross-cultural aovertising grew in
importance arouno the worlo ouring the :qos, they hao an immense impact on
the outlook ano practice of aovertising professionals in southern Africa. At the out-
set, such conventions argueo that pictures hao an immeoiacy ano inherent trans-
cultural currency that maoe them the ioeal meoium for conveying aovertising mes-
sages in a wioe variety of cultural settings. Fictures, in contrast to woros, were
believeo to have universal power. Most aovertising apocrypha about cross-cultural
blunoers ano oisasters turneo on poor translations or the oual meaning of woros,
like the selling of the Chevrolet Nova in Latin America ,Nova being turneo into
ro co, or ooesnt go, or the translation of Coke aoos life into Chinese, allegeoly
becoming Coke brings your oeao ancestors back to life in the process. Many Iirst
Worlo professionals argueo that the ability of a picture to make real some propo-
sition about the power of a commooity was not usually subject to such textual mis-
communications. ,They no longer so argue, ano the general consensus tooay is that
visual communication across cultures shoulo be approacheo with as much caution
as any other form of communication, or perhaps more.,
23
Frofessionals in southern Africa never accepteo the then-conventional wisoom.
Even in the :qos, their most time-honoreo anecoote about the oangers of cross-
cultural aovertising concerneo an image rather than woros. An ao for Raleigh bi-
otn xosti+ors \nr xo+ so nio .
cycles that showeo a young African boy eeing a lion on his bicycle hao leo to a
precipitous orop in Raleigh sales among Africans in some parts of the region, it
was saio. The explanation was that Africans hao interpreteo the aovertisement to
mean that lions woulo chase you if you bought a Raleigh bicycle. Irom the outset,
aovertisers wonoereo what Africans saw ano how they saw it, what kinos of per-
ceptions Africans brought to pictures ano especially colors.
As in the case of the cinema experiments, aovertisers sometimes hao a racist un-
oerstanoing of African perceptions, seeing them in terms of a lack, an absence, or
an incapacity. Color was a particular concern among aovertisers working with the
African market: many were concerneo that particular colors were seen as taboo
by African viewers.
24
Some of this obsession was launoereo through scientic
racism: aovertisers commissioneo stuoies that allegeoly proveo that Africans
lackeo the same range of color vision that whites hao. Later on, similar stuoies
unoerstooo the oierence in cultural, rather than biological terms, but the core
proposition remaineo in place.
25
I encountereo the continuing power of this ioea
myself while interviewing a South African aovertiser who hao workeo in Zimbabwe
for many years. Africans, he argueo, reacteo very oierently than whites to pictures,
particularly to brightly coloreo ones, which tenoeo to overwhelm ano frighten them.
Leaning over with a conspiratorial air, he informeo me that he hao a theory about
this reaction, baseo on his long experience. Africans spent most of their lives in
the oark, he explaineotheir rural huts were oark, townships were oark, mines
were oarkso bright images exciteo them.
This aovertiser was perhaps unusual in the racist absuroity of his views ano in
the persistence of those views ,most professionals in southern Africa have oroppeo
the more overtly racist unoerpinnings of their practice with alacrity in recent years,.
However, the founoation of such a view lies fairly oeep within professional prac-
tice in the region. What maoe the whole matter even more oicult for aovertisers
was an equally funoamental assumption that pictorial oisplay was the most pow-
erful technique for reaching ano transforming African consumers. This is precisely
what maoe images so oangerous: they were unoerstooo as far more powerful than
woros in oealing with a population assumeo to be essentially nonliterate ano mostly
without access to raoio. The potential consequences from a misunoerstanoing were
grave, but so too were the potential benets from a successful campaign. J. E.
Maroun, an aovertiser active in the :qos ano :q6os, a man who was unusually
blunt in his aomission that his professions goal was to transform the innermost
self of Africans, helo that the single most powerful ano eective way to oo this
was simply to picture an African using a new proouct in a new manner.
26
Just as in the case of cinema, stories also abouno about African misrecogni-
tions of the language of print aovertising ano of commooity packaging. One ex-
ample involves the image of a baby on the wrapper for Stork Margarine, which ap-
parently was taken by some Africans to signify that the margarine was maoe from
renoereo baby fat. During interviews in Harare, several inoiviouals recounteo sto-
ries about small changes in the packaging of cigarettes that they took to signal a se-
: +ixo+nv ntnkr
cret reouction in the quality of the tobacco. Local Colgate-Falmolive executives
tolo me that changing the image of a brano is approacheo with great reluctance
in southern Africa for exactly this reason. Campaigns announcing that a proouct
is new ano improveo are very rare in comparison with the Euro-American con-
text. I assume that these stories, like stories of Africans running from cinema
screens, have some empirical truth to them, even though they are also tolo ano re-
tolo as humorous apocrypha by those who have never come into personal contact
with these incioents.
Such reactions suggest once more that Africans themselves have sometimes been
uneasy about the power of mooern technologies of visual representation to trans-
form everyoay life. In numerous conversations, particularly with oloer inoiviouals,
I was tolo how unoerwear aovertisements in newspapers have createo immorality
ano licentiousness among young people. Many also blameo the Zimbabwean gov-
ernments promotional campaigns against AIDS for creating loose sexual behav-
ior. By picturing sexuality, these images are helo to create the behavior they envi-
sion. However, aovertising images also have hao immense appeal ano fascination
for many African viewers for much the same reason, as a set of novel ano power-
ful propositions about how life looks elsewhere ano how life coulo look at home.
Ano once again, whites uncertainties about the meaning of pictures to African
onlookers, whites fears that the potentially surreptitious gaze of Africans might in-
tercept images in public space, have not only reecteo whites oesire to maintain
social control over Africans. Such oiscomfort has also been rooteo in whites con-
cerns about the power of aovertising to transform their own oesires ano their own
sense of self through new technologies of visual representation. In this regaro, ao-
vertising is a funoamentally oierent than lm. Anxieties about the cinema have
centereo on its technologically oriven capacity to make the imaginary come to life,
anxieties about aovertising, especially about the visual oimension of aovertising,
center on its capacity for subverting the free will of its targets. Inoeeo, one of the
best known ano most wioespreao genres of opposition to aovertising centers on its
visual components: the paranoiac writings of Wilson Bryan Key ano his fellow trav-
elers about subliminal images in aovertising.
27
Iamiliarity with the ioea of sub-
liminal images in aovertisements, even among those highly skeptical about the ioea,
is nearly universal arouno the worlo: I even hao several interviewees in the town-
ships of Harare loosely oescribe an approximation of this phenomenon.
28
The
wioe currency of the concept has something to oo with its corresponoence to the
liveo experience of viewing aovertisements: many people feel as if they have been
compelleo to purchase a commooity or pursue an action by representational mech-
anisms that they cannot quite perceive or ioentify. This sense was, I think, as com-
mon among white auoiences in colonial Zimbabwe as it was in the Uniteo States
or Europe. Concern over African responses to posters, billboaros, ano print ao-
vertisements was a way to oefer or oisplace these oeeper anxieties. Mooern visual
aovertising proposeo a new kino of oisconnection between the surface of things
ano a hiooen truth unoerneath, it requireo that viewers routinely accept ano be
motivateo by a representation that they know to be a lie. When Africans faileo
to see that the picture of a baby on the surface of a margarine wrapper hao no re-
lationship with the substance insioe, that the babys image was arguably a lie ano,
at the least, a major slippage between representation ano reality, they calleo into
question the whole of aovertising practice ano inoeeo, the whole of mooern mooal-
ities of viewing ano unoerstanoing visual material. If whites laugheo at African
responses, it was a rather nervous sort of laughter.
The fact that fears about the power of new technologies of representation coulo
be oeferreo at all is what makes this a stuoy of a specically colonial situation. Colo-
nial southern Africa was ,ano southern Africa still remains, a oeeply censorious
place, a place where police sat in oarkeneo movie theaters taking notes on the noises
that Africans maoe in response to the action, where concerneo inoiviouals furtively
scanneo African newspapers looking for images that portrayeo inappropriate so-
cial ambitions, where self-conscious state censors specieo with great precision that
magazine pictures of semi-nuoe women must have their nipples eraseo, ano so
on. In colonial southern Africa, the racializeo oistribution of power ano the nature
of the colonial public sphere alloweo for the oeferral of the impulse for censorship
substantially onto a subaltern group, with the usual consequences in terms of so-
cial control ano regulation, buroeneo by the usual quotient of racist thought ano
practice. But unoerneath it all, pictureswhether they were on a screen or in a
newspaperboth exciteo ano repelleo the whole of colonial Zimbabwean soci-
ety, Africans ano Europeans alike. Such sensations were unevenly representeo ano
reporteo in public oiscourse, to be sure, but the aovent of new kinos of visual me-
oia also unoerscoreo the complicateo ano convoluteo manner in which mooernity
was a mutually forgeo artifact in colonial southern Africa.
NOTES
:. Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, :qq:).
.. The most recent and interesting treatment of this subject is Paul Landau, The Realm
of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (Portsmouth, N.H.:
Heinemann, :qq).
. Paul Landau, The Illumination of Christ in the Kalahari Desert, Representations ,
Winter (:qq): .q; Christraud Geary, Images from Bamun: German Colonial Photography at the
Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, .o:.: (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu-
tion Press, :q88).
. A forthcoming work by James Burns should vastly expand our understanding of the
history of colonial cinema in southern Africa.
. L. A. Notcutt and G. C. Latham, The African and the Cinema: An Account of the Work of
the Bantu Educational Cinema Experiment during the Period March . to May ., (London: Edin-
burgh House Press for the International Missionary Council, :q), q.
6. Ibid., 8.
. Ibid., .
+ixo+nv ntnkr
8. Ibid., .
q. Ibid., 6.
:o. National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ), S .8//A-., Cinema Censorship, Cin-
ema Report.
::. NAZ S .8//A-., Cinema Censorship, Sgt. A. G. Horn, British South Africa Po-
lice to chief superintendent, June :q..
:.. NAZ S .8//A-., Cinema Censorship, detective sergeant to superintendent, July
:q:.
:. NAZ S .8//A-., Cinema Censorship, Tilman Esser, St. Patricks Church, to
British South Africa Police, :q..
:. NAZ S .8//A-., Cinema Censorship, Cinema Report.
:. NAZ S 8./.o/q.
:6. NAZ S 8./.o/q, information ocer to minister of information, November :q:.
:. NAZ S 8./.o/q.
:8. NAZ SA /:/, Salisbury Chamber of Commerce Minute Books, :q.::.
:q. See NAZ S .qo/:/q, Department of Native Aairs, Correspondence re: Reg-
ulation of Advertisements, :q...
.o. G. W. H. Knight-Bruce, Memories of Mashonaland (London: Edward Arnold, :8q),
:q.
.:. For more on this subgenre of advertisement, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather:
Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, :qq), ch. ; Jan
Nederven-Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq.); and Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of
Victorian England (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, :qqo), ch. .
... Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodication, Consumption and Cleanliness
in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, :qq6), ch. .
.. Paul Messaris, Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising (Thousand Oaks, Calif.:
Sage Publications, :qq), q::..
.. One black professional, Nimrod Mkele, found himself having to reassure white col-
leagues that there were no colors that carried negative connotations for Africans with the
exception of the color black, whose negative meaning, he noted, was universal. See Nim-
rod Mkele, Advertising to the Bantu: Second Advertising Convention in South Africa (Durban: Society
of Advertisers, :qq), :.
.. See A. P. van der Reis, The Response of Urban Blacks to Colours (Pretoria: Bureau of Mar-
ket Research, :q8o), for one more recent example.
.6. J. E. Maroun, Second Address, Bantu Market Session, in Third Advertising Con-
vention in South Africa: The Challenge of a Decade ( Johannesburg: Statistic Holdings, :q6o), :.
.. See Wilson Bryan Key, The Clam-Plate Orgy, and Other Subliminal Techniques for Manipu-
lating Your Behavior (Englewood Clis, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, :q8o), and other works by the same
author.
.8. Tapera household, Kambuzuma Township, Harare, May :8, :qq:.
Chapter .
The Sleep of the Brave: Graves as Sites
and Signs in the Colonial Eastern Cape
David Bunn
This essay oiscusses the representational power of graves in the Eastern Cape re-
gion of colonial South Africa between :8o ano :88o. Unoer conoitions of extreme
violence in this perioo, something of a reciprocal exchange oevelopeo between
British ano Xhosa forms of memorialization. Evioence of this convergence may
be founo in the increasing visibility of Xhosa graves as topographical features, ano
a wioespreao obsession with the ioea of the oisinterreo corpse.
THEORIES AND SEPULCHERS
What ooes a grave represent? There is consioerable oisagreement between an-
thropologists ano art historians on this question. Iirst ano foremost, a tomb is usu-
ally unoerstooo to be a chamber for the corpse, a receptacle in which the booy
unoergoes its silent transformation through oeliquescence into oust. But for those
who remember the oeparteo, the grave is also a place to be visiteo. At the grave-
sioe, in homage or in mourning, one seems closer to the tangible presence of the
oeao below. At a secono oroer of remove, moreover, this sense of presence may
also come to be associateo with the political role of the oeao citizen living on in
the memory of the public. Ior this reason, many historically important graves be-
come reembellisheo ano elevateo into monuments associateo with the maintenance
of civil society.
Ior the eighteenth-century European imagination, as we shall see, graves were
signiers with a lanoscape function. Many of them were oesigneo for visual im-
pact, appearing over the horizon for an approaching observer ano appealing, in
epitaphs, to a new class of sympathetic citizens for whom funeral monuments were
a fashionable occasion for meoitation. Signicantly, as graves became places to visit
ano signs to be reao, they were also oisplaceo from urban churchyaros. In the rst
quarter of the nineteenth century, the Euro-American rural cemetery movement
aoopteo ano popularizeo the ioea of picturesque grave lanoscapes in a country-

sioe setting. Cemeteries became places to wanoer, meoitate, or picnic.
1
Broaoly speaking, there are thus two general categories of explanation for sepul-
chral representation. The rst is that the grave is a tgr, consisting of a signier such
as a heaostone, epitaph, or marble slab, associateo with a signieo, the ioea of the
memorializeo oeparteo. But this explanation is also rather awkwaro. A grave can
never be a pure sign in the semiotic sense. The relationship between signier ano
signieo is not, in the eno, an arbitrary one, as it is in linguistics, precisely because
most people also associate the grave with the presence of the oeao. When we speak
of graveyaros being haunteo by restless spirits, or of grief-stricken mourners who
prostrate themselves upon tombs, we are also speaking about the grave as a point
of access to other worlos. Mortuary signs are unusual in that they locc ptccrcc, for
this reason, they are less like signs ano closer to what Charles Feirce ano later
Rolano Barthes calleo trocxc. Just as for Feirce a photograph is inoexical because
it has a motivateo relationship to the real, stemming from the actual exposure of
the photographic plate, so too the grave is associateo with the literal proximity of
human remains ano the lingering spiritual presence of the oeao.
2
Its placing is also
xeo rather than symbolically exible, for if the heaostone is moveo away from the
presumeo last resting place of the corpse, it becomes a oierent sort of monument
altogether.
3
As every elegiac poet knows, tombs are not mute. Within the English topo-
graphical verse traoition, graves are, rst ano foremost, markers of arrest, points
at which a freely wanoering subject on an imaginary lanoscape circuit is aooresseo
ano cast into a meoitative mooo. In Grays Elegy, for instance, the speaker
pauses before a rural churchyaro, to make the following observation about the
relationship of oiscursive oepenoency between tombs ano sympathetic mourners:
On some fono breast the parting soul relies, / Some pious orops the closing eye
requires: / Een from the tomb the voice of Nature cries ,ll. 8qq:,. This crying
out of the graveone might even call it ventriloquismalso has an important
ioeological function. Emerging at a time of massive rural peasant oisplacements,
the topographical elegy imagines the rural cemetery as an extension of the or-
ganic, precapitalist village community in neeo of paternalistic care.
4
These con-
ventional forms of ioeological naturalization were then transporteo, with
signicant regional aojustments, into the writing of English colonial settlers arouno
the worlo.
By far the most signicant wave of English immigration to the Eastern Cape
was the group known as the :8.o Settlers. Envisageo as a solution to frontier in-
stability abroao, ano civil unrest ano overpopulation at the time of the Feterloo
massacre in Englano, this settlement scheme involveo joint-stock parties of emi-
grants who were settleo in the Zuurvelo oistrict ,later calleo Albany,, between the
Bushmans ano the Great Iish River, centereo on the present-oay town of Gra-
hamstown. Within two years, all but six hunoreo of the original ve thousano set-
tlers hao been forceo to abanoon farming ano move to towns.
5
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r ,
With the arrival of the :8.o settlers in the Eastern Cape, local lano ano prop-
erty relations were substantially changeo. Most visibly, new spatial linkages oevel-
opeo between oefensible sites: colonial forts ano signaling stations, with their at-
tenoant military rayons, emerging settler villages like Bathurst ano Salem, fortieo
farmhouses, ano a network of churches with walleo graveyaros. All these playeo a
role in the oevelopment of the settler public sphere, ano churches were particularly
important in the regulation of rhythms of visiting ano gathering that make up the
spatiotemporal experience of community.
6
Virtually every well-to-oo emigrant,
says Crais, hopeo to establish a lanoeo estate in the Cape Colony, ano this oe-
sire was communicateo in an obsession with the ioea of the Eastern Cape as a pic-
turesque lanoscape ootteo with pleasing rural architectures.
7
But there are
signicant oierences between the metropolitan ano colonial representation of
churchyaro monuments. Ruins ano sepulchers in colonial South Africa cannot func-
tion primarily as points of meoitative attraction, as they are also always signiers
of ctolcrcc tr tlc ptccrt. Ior every picturesque church, for every hoary gravestone,
there is the counterexample of the pillageo farmhouse ano the oisinterreo corpse.
Thus while the poetry of the settler Thomas Fringle refers extensively to the gure
of the Whiggish, elegiac wanoerer, he is only too frequently unable to oistance him-
self from the memory of violence. Traveling through the Kat River region, for in-
stance, he pauses before the remnants of an olo mission: a rooess ruin, scatheo
by ame ano smoke. |A| baboon, he concluoes, with jabbering cry ooth
mock / The pilgrim passing in a pensive mooo.
Despite these setbacksthe appearance of the baboon in the ruinthere is a
strong association between graveyaros ano an emerging Eastern Cape settler pub-
lic sphere. In a smug commemorative sermon oelivereo at Bathurst in :8, the
Revereno John Ayli paio homage to the Filgrim Iathers of the settlement. With
frequent reference to the Frovioential colonization of New Englano, this aooress
marks the point at which the rst generation of white settlement thinks of itself in
the past ano future tense. Secure in the knowleoge of a network of linkeo church
sites at Salem, Clumber, Kowie, Cuylerville, Grahamstown, ano elsewhere, with
the ower-beoeckeo Methooist chapel in Bathurst at its heart, Ayli is able to con-
struct a founoing narrative for the settlement, symbolizeo by the patriarchal grave:
Tooay, in which we commemorate twenty-ve years of aoversity ano prosperity
tooay, at the grave of our Iathers, let our enmities cease.
8
With its litany of ref-
erences to church sites within rioing ano walking oistance of one another, the ser-
mon oers a founoational account of the spatially coherent ano ioeologically secure
community. Graves, in this view, have a ccrtttpctol aooress, insteao of appealing to
the inoivioual Liberal wanoerer, they evoke the emerging, collective subject of set-
tlement. In the shaoow of the graveyaro, a new enunciative position appears for
the likes of John Ayli. Not only is he able to speak with conoence about the mean-
ingful settler past but the future holos consequent promise, as though the burial of
the rst patriarchs were an act of insemination as much as of memorial.
8 n\\in ntxx
Iigure ..:. Map of the Eastern Cape. Tlc Al/or, }ootrol of Tlomo Slorc, eo. Fenelope Silva ,Cape Town: Maskew
Miller Longman for Rhooes University, Grahamstown, :qq.,.
ON THE MELANCHOLY OF THOMAS SHONE
Graveyaros like those in Bathurst ano at Salem were an important visual analogue
of the ioea of white settlement itself. As rows of gravestones fanneo out ano the
secono generation returneo to teno the graves of the founoers, so genealogy itself
was oramatizeo, with the graveyaro as a metonymy for the new settler ioentity in
its lanoscape context. Each heaostone, therefore, functioneo both as an inoivioual
sign, ano in a visible syntactical association with neighboring monuments. But this
functioning of sepulchral symbolism also oepenoeo on control over the trocxtcol na-
ture of the settler grave: that sense of the grave full of the presence of the corpse
ano haunteo by the manner of its oeath. Management of the ioea of violent oeath
was one of the key preoccupations of Albany memorials.
Consioer the melancholy example of Thomas Shone. A working-class Cockney,
Shone hao the aooitional oistinction of having spent time as a prisoner in Irance
ouring the Napoleonic Wars. While incarcerateo, he was helpeo by Irench Ireema-
sons, who lovingly tattooeo his booy with complex Masonic symbols. Coincioen-
tally, when Shone ano his family emigrateo to Albany in :8.o, they intruoeo on a
oomain where booily embellishment was perhaps the chief representational lan-
guage. This was an area heavily contesteo by Ngqika Xhosa, who claimeo ances-
tral grazing rights ano access to pits where cosmetic clays were oug. Soon the set-
tlers began to lose cattle to raios. After crop failure left the Shones impoverisheo,
they moveo in :8.8 to join the Nottingham party on the Lushington River, maoe
up of 6 farms, groupeo arouno a central village area ,market place ano chapel
grouno, nameo Clumber.
9
This centripetal arrangement meant that Shones new
property virtually aojoineo the church, ano it was within walking oistance of
Bathurst. Catastrophe visiteo the family again between :8. ano :8:. In Novem-
ber :8., eleven-year-olo Elizabeth Shone was rapeo ano muroereo while out hero-
ing cattle. Iive years later, Thomass beloveo wife Sarah oieo, ano four years after
that, his eloest son orowneo.
10
This catalogue of horrors was not as unusual as it might souno. What is important
for our purposes, though, is the sequence of symbolic funeral practices that followeo
the oeath of the two Shone women. Young Elizabeth was burieo in the Methooist
graveyaro at Clumber. In a pathetic memorial poem written for her, a neighbor,
William Elliott, orew attention to the fate of the chilos booy, using the familiar epi-
taphic trope of prosopopoeia, as though making the chilo speak from the grave:
Beneath this cold clod lies my pereshing clay.
On yonder green hills was my life taken away
And abused unto death in a barbarous way,
While my body in blood it was rold.
When the Kaer he seized me, to escape I tryd;
I struggled, I Mournd, Have pitty, I cried,
But the Monster, he stabd me: I bled and I died,
Then my body he thrust in a hole.
11
o n\\in ntxx
Here the mourners attention is orawn through a series of oeictic rhetorical mark-
ers to the location of the muroer on yonoer green hills, as well as to the brutal
treatment of the booy thrust in a hole. It is an epitaph intenoeo not for conso-
lation, but for the incitement of outrage. Implicit in the poem is a warning that
the supercially picturesque encircling lanoscape is a place of oeep menace.
12
Shones }ootrol also shows evioence of the oeeply traumatic eect of his wifes
oeath. His writing is punctuateo by references to the periooic labor of mourning.
A careful recoro is kept of the cutting of the tombstone, the carving of the epitaph,
letter by letter, the painting of the stone ano the fencing of the tomb, a process that
occupieo the oistraught father of six orphans for some seven months. Moreover,
there is evioence that Shone oislikeo the pompous religiosity of the Bathurst
Methooist community. Unlike the many surrounoing graves in the Clumber
churchyaro that speak of exemplary suering, the force of Goos will in the worlo,
or the allegory of successful settlement, Sarah Shones resorts to the oloer vocative
appeal of the English country churchyaro. It calls out to strangers rather than the
insensitive auoience of local patriarchs: Ah! Stranger, the epitaph beckons, hao
it been your lot to know/ the worth of her whose relics sleep below/ In silent sor-
row oer this grave youo beno / ano mourn.
13
It is customary to think of graves in terms of memorialization ano of the past.
But if we view them as lanoscape features, with a particular oiscursive aooress to
an imagineo subject, they appear to have a oierent temporality. In fact, graves
usually aooress civil society in the future tense. That is to say, their ability to func-
tion within the general syntax of mourning oepenos on the presumption of a sta-
ble civil society in the future, aoministereo by those with roughly the same attituoes
to the booy ano to property. Ior the majority of Methooist graves, this entails ref-
erence to the metaphor of sacrice ano provioential oeath. Ior Thomas Shone,
no such communal unoerstanoing exists. His wifes grave establishes a far less se-
cure enunciative position, preferring insteao to trust to the stranger in the future.
ARTICULATED SPACES
Tensions arouno grave representation in this perioo may also be explaineo by the
fact that settlers hao oisrupteo the entire lo/tto of the western Xhosa, an experi-
ential lanoscape clustereo with sites of symbolic signicance. Recent historians have
argueo that the nine wars fought in the nineteenth-century Eastern Cape together
constitute the longest ano most oamaging conict maintaineo between the white
man ano the black man in Africa.
14
Typically, this conict involveo intense peri-
oos of close-quarter ghting, followeo by guerrilla skirmishing ano cattle raioing,
its overall eect was the catastrophic eastwaro oisplacement of the Ngqika Xhosa
across the Iish River from the lush riverine valleys they hao once occupieo. At rst,
these oisplacements were sporaoic, ano the Xhosa answereo by regularly sweep-
ing back across the frontier. Later, however, the full force of the imperial war ma-
chine, supporteo by settler ano Mfengu irregulars, was rangeo against chiefs like
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r .
Maqoma ano Sanoile. By the late :8os, the remaining coherent elements of the
Ngqika polity hao been shattereo, with remnants oriven as far east as Transkei. His-
torically Ngqika regions like the veroant Kat River valley were given over to
Khoikhoi ano Mfengu allies of the British.
The Zuurvelo heartlano of the Ngqika was heavily inscribeo with symbolic
meaning. It was crosseo by transhumance routes, tributary zones associateo with
cattle clientage, ano traoitional hunting oomains.
15
Visible signs of an oloer Ngqika
presence existeo if you knew how to look for them: there were grain pits, excava-
tions, ano inoistinct grave sites, sometimes inoiscernible among hut ruins. Through-
out the region, moreover, there were physical features associateo with performative
meaning: particular trees associateo with rainmaking, rivers useo in river cere-
monies, ano the strange, ubiquitous stone cairns known as ttctcorc, at which passers
by woulo pause ano aoo pebbles. Lanoscape, in this mooe, was a oomain of per-
formative inscription, or, as Nancy Munn oescribes it, of the practice of locateo-
ness, in sharp contrast to the writerly ano specular habits of the settlers.
16
My main concern here is with the perioo :8o to :88o, ouring which time colo-
nial authority was oirectly imposeo, reinforceo with a griolike system of spatial con-
trol ano substantial reserveo areas.
17
After the seventh frontier war ,the War of
Mlanjeni,, the area east of the original colonial bounoary, between the Keiskamma
ano Great Kei River, was proclaimeo the colony of British Kararia. The region
was oivioeo into counties, ano an oloer treaty system was replaceo by oirect colo-
nial aoministration.
18
By miocentury, therefore, there was a complex overlapping
of symbolic zones, several of which were centereo on signicant Xhosa chiefs
graves, which began to appear as features on British maps. To unoerstano the
signicance of this phenomenon, ano the evolution of an intricate reciprocity be-
tween British monumentality ano Xhosa grave practices, it is necessary to look more
closely at the semiology of Xhosa burial in this perioo.
ABAPHANTSI: THOSE WHO ARE BELOW
While there are many oisparaging accounts of Nguni mortuary practices in the early
colonial perioo, actual oescriptions of grave monuments are quite rare. One of the
earliest is Bernaro Ficarts :.q copperplate engraving for Tlc Cctcmortc oro Rcltgtoo
Cotom of tlc Ioolottoo ôttor, which oepicts a Kar ano Hottentot funeral, with
a procession of mourners carrying a corpse, shown wrappeo ano bouno in fetal
position, into a cave tomb. Some years later, in the :q journal of Robert Jacob
Goroona remarkable Dutch linguist ano observerthere are two signicant rep-
resentations of interment. In the rst, a Khoikhoi corpse is oisplayeo reaoy for bur-
ial. Alreaoy stieneo into its croucheo position, the booy is about to be wrappeo in
its kaross. Iurther on in the journal, there is a sketch of a Hottentot chief s grave.
When a rich Hottentot oies, says Goroon, many cattle ano sheep are slaughtereo
ano eaten at his grave. The bones ano joints are left there as a memorial.
19
This is
perhaps one of the earliest European representations of the memorial stone cairns
: n\\in ntxx
Iigure ... Robert Jacob Goroon, Hottentot chief s grave ,:q,. Irom the journal of
Robert Jacob Goroon, MS. AG.:6.q, National Archives, Cape Town.
Iigure .... Bernaro Ficart, Les funerailles oes Cafres et Hottantots. Copperplate
engraving in Bernaro Ficart, Cctcmortc ct cootomc tcltgtcoc oc pcoplc toolottc tcptccrtc pot
oc ftgotc octrc oc lo motr oc Bctroto Ptcoto ,Amsteroam: J. I. Bernaro, :.q,. Courtesy
Library of Congress.
referreo to by Nguni peoples as ttctcorc, ano one of the very few illustrations of
southern African grave monuments as lanoscape features.
To white settlers ano soloiers accustomeo to vertical grave markers, Xhosa bur-
ial sites were inoistinct features. Moreover, missionary propaganoa against heathen
booily practices contaminates most early European oescriptions of Nguni graves,
making it oicult to trace the material history of mortuary practices. As if this were
not enough, contemporary historians have consistently exaggerateo the problem
of burial in Nguni society, suggesting that there was an inability on the part of
Xhosa metaphysics to come to terms with the material fact of oeath. There was,
says Je Feires, something missing in Xhosa religion, a gap through which some
of the central ioeas of Christianity were able to inltrate.
20
Feiress suggestion that there is a lacuna in Xhosa metaphysics is echoeo by sim-
ilar statements in most of the major twentieth-century ethnographies of southern
Nguni mortuary ritual. Monica Hunters inuential Rcocttor to Corqoct announces
that the Fonoo have a great oistaste for speaking of anything connecteo with
oeath, while others such as W. D. Hammono-Tooke ano Eileen Jensen Krige ano
Jacob Krige oescribe Nguni avoioance rituals that mark the corpse as a oanger-
ously polluting force.
21
Despite such inuential opinions, none of these accounts
reveal the presence of a signicant metaphysical aporia that is altogether oierent
from others elsewhere. Insteao, southern Nguni burial practices simply unoerline
the materiality of relations between the living ano the oeao, a materiality that post-
Enlightenment European Christianity was seeking to mask. Recall that gravesioe
vigils in Victorian popular literature reect a highly oevelopeo bourgeois sense of
what constitutes inoivioual personhooo. However, this ooes not mean that the grave
is no longer a traumatic site. On the contrary, sharp oistinctions between notions
of proper bereavement, on the one hano, ano oestructive melancholia ,especially
as that term came to be applieo to the conoition of womens grief , reveal the ex-
tent to which it was necessary to control the inuence of the oeao over the living.
After all, the early Victorian perioo in Englano is also a perioo in which haunteo
graves, risen corpses, ano a thousano other Gothic stereotypes belie any attempts
to stabilize notions of bereavement. The unquiet grave is one of the key gures of
romantic rebellion in the perioo.
22
Bearing the Gothic counterexample in mino, the oierences between European
ano Nguni notions of the unquiet grave are minimal. There are, however,
signicant variations in the way corpses are imagineo to speak back to the living.
In Harriet Ngubanes account of Zulu funeral ritual, for instance, the corpse con-
tinues to exert a oangerous power over the life of the community. It exerts a neg-
ative inuence, which has asymmetrically genoereo eects. At the moment of
oeath, a ooor opens between the quotioian ano the worlo of the spirit, it is a threat-
ening vortex that has the potential to harm the community. Women, as the center
of reproouctive continuity, are especially subject to pollution at this time: a woman
as a mother of birth ,omolcorc, ano a mother of oeath ,omfclolot,, says
Ngubane, is also oangerous because she is impure.
23
n\\in ntxx
Thus oespite the insistence by early ethnography that European ano African
grave practices oo not resemble one another, the oierences they oescribe have
more to oo with class ano genoer than ethnicity. To this oay, many peasant com-
munities in Europe treat the grave as a oangerous, yawning opening with vertigi-
nous appeal. Naoia Seremetakiss oescription of mortuary ritual in the Inner Mani
in Greece is a case in point: |W|hen ritual proceoures are not observeo, the corpse
can be reanimateo ano enter the oomain of the living as an autonomous entity, a
revenant, introoucing pollution into the social oroer. The corpse that has not been
properly cleanseo ano subjecteo to various prophylactic proceoures . . . can orag
. . . the living into the oomain of the oeao.
24
Once we reouce the oierences between European ano Xhosa grave practices,
it is haro to explain precisely what it was in southern Nguni burial ritual that was
so unsettling to settlers ano missionaries. Most obviously, the ioea of burial begin-
ning a transactional process in which the everyoay is openeo to the worlo of the
ancestors has no exact correlative in Christianity. Even in contemporary Xhosa be-
lief, the oeao appear to pass into a transitional realm in which they are other but
nevertheless accessible: after a time, they change their state ano are referreo to as
o/oplortt ,those who are below,.
25
Several ritual processes enable the passage of
the corpse from one state to another, ano these are highlighteo by the presence of
oistinct lexical items in the Xhosa language. Thus, for instance, a oistinction is fre-
quently maoe between timely oeath ,ologooolo, ololom/o), expresseo in terms of a
metaphor of travel, ano violent oeath.
26
Moreover, the recent oeao are referreo to
as om, ano the corpse itself as ttoom/o ,in Zulu tttlort,, the latter signifying the
fact that oecomposition is not yet complete.
27
Thereafter, within a year or so of
mourning, in the manner of the classic Hertzian paraoigm, the olo/o,to ceremony
signals the entry of the oeparteo into the realm of the ancestors, where they have
a special meoiating power.
28
The oeparteo, by now, have changeo their nature. In
Zulu, they are oescribeo as part of the community of omoolot, to whom one ap-
peals in times of crisis or propitiation.
What is most signicant about precolonial ano contemporary Xhosa funerary
practices, is precisely this emphasis on the corpse o or cccrt, moving through the
process of oecomposition ano through a oiscursive transition in the life of the com-
munity. Moreover, while the corpse itself changes state, it continues to have a oan-
gerous power, ano oisturbance of a grave site was ano is associateo with the
signicant unleashing of malevolent forces. Throughout the nineteenth ano early
twentieth centuries, in Xhosa ano Zulu communities, chiefs grave sites were ritu-
ally guaroeosometimes for a perioo of yearsby appointeo eloers with a spe-
cially selecteo funeral hero of cattle.
29
In nineteenth- ano twentieth-century Xhosa society, burial markeo a process
by which the inoivioual passeo into community memory. Like burial everywhere,
its nal stage, as Maurice Bloch ano Jonathan Farry put it, involveo the reasser-
tion of society manifesteo by . . . the belief that the soul has been incorporateo into
the society of the oeao ano has settleo oown.
30
However, there was one aooitional
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r
ano oistinctive feature of Xhosa burials that was utterly unlike those of the settlers.
Unlike the grave of Richaro Gush at Salem, or that of Sarah Shone at Clumber,
which stano as visible signiers within an architectural oiscourse of heaostones,
most Xhosa graves .ctc rot o/ctoo lorocopc fcototc. Whether eloers were burieo at
oesignateo sites in the cattle byre, in oeliberately ruineo funeral huts, or in com-
munity graveyaros, the grave site was, literally, a matter of communal memory, re-
hearseo in oral poetry. Moreover, graves were frequently incorporateo into the spa-
tiotemporal fabric of the living homesteao. Heinz Kukertzs structuralist analysis
of genoereo space in one Mponoo omt ,homesteao,, has shown how graves are
an integral but invisible part of this system.
31
Eloers are burieo on the perimeter
of the cattle byre, in a mirroring relationship to the main house. Senior men ano
women sit near the ooor of the hut, in oroer, as one informant put it, that they
shoulo see those oown below ,lo mroto mol/orc o/oplortt). Even if overgrown
with bush, Kukertz continues, the graves remain in sight. Throughout south-
ern Africa, ethnography that is sensitive to questions of spatiality reveals evioence
of communities planning village architecture in relation to the neeo to watch over
the invisible graves of eloers.
32
Mponoo homesteaos encompass the hierarchizeo spaces of burial, with men in-
terreo close to the center of symbolic power in the cattle byre ano the genoereo
interior spaces of huts mirroring the oivision of sepulchral space. This ooubling
of grave site ano omt resembles the pattern of oouble obsequies rst ioentieo
by Robert Hertz in which there are two stages to funeral transformation: the rst
oisposal is associateo with the time-bouno inoivioual ano the polluting aspects of
oeath, ano the secono with the regenerative aspects which re-create the permanent
oroer on which traoitional authority is baseo.
33
Grave spaces thus recapitulate the
patriarchal lineages reecteo elsewhere in the habitus, with elaborate llortplo ,avoio-
ance, rules governing genoereo access to these territories. In fact, in some Nguni
communities, there is a metonymic splicing together of terrain ano traoition maoe
possible by the continuing power of eloers graves. Monica Hunter calleo attention
to the spatial articulation of new kraals with olo grave sites over several genera-
tions: |T|he owner of an omt is burieo at the entrance to his kraal ,tt/o,o,, the
olo kraal pulleo oown, ano a new one erecteo, the grave being unoer the fence at
the mioole of the back of the new kraal.
34
In other woros, the spatiotemporal cen-
ter of the community lifeways is the patriarchs grave, which frequently oetermines
the very migration of architectures across the lanoscape.
35
Throughout southern Africa, graves were places of power associateo with lineal
continuity. Unlike many European sepulchral traoitions, however, this oio not nec-
essarily entail the erection of visible monuments. As Terence Ranger has shown, mis-
sionaries like Davio Livingstone complaineo that nowhere in the whole of Central
Africa was there a single stone of remembrance to be founo.
36
To summarize, then,
what is oierent about Nguni graves is that they generally hao a oistinct symbolic re-
lationship to topography, one that oio not involve a metaphoric association between
visible monumentality ano ethics. When the Zulu king Cetshwayo oieo in :88, his
n\\in ntxx
wrappeo booy was taken in slow ceremonial procession to a burial site in the
Nkhanola forest. Freventeo from interring the chief in the ancestral grouno of the
emaKhosini valley, his followers prevaileo on the community of Lukungu to watch
over the grave site in a grove of trees.
37
The funeral wagon was broken up ano the
pieces scattereo over the site, thus aooing the signs of oisunity ano oisrepair to the
subtle funerary markers. Many other royal graves existeo only in this tenuously vi-
sual state. It requireo an unoerstanoing of oral traoition, ano of local patterns of
avoioance, to reao vegetateo thickets or ruineo huts as places of burial.
Not all colonial writers responoeo negatively to the ioea of grave erasure, as
we shall see, the most vituperative comments on Xhosa graves were from mission-
aries. Aoministrators like Irank Brownlee, on the other hano, purporteo to have
aomireo the last resting place of Chief Rharhabe: His grave is in the soft reo soil
at the foot of great grey bouloers. There the mourners planteo twigs from the
tombo treethe wilo g. Those twigs are now grown into stately shaoe-giving trees.
. . . Those not knowing rest unoer their shaoe, those knowing approach the spot
. . . ano respectfully place a small stone on the cairn that is there. In Brownlees
oescription, there is a revealing wistfulness verging on envy ,the soft reo soil, the
great grey bouloers, for the apparently natural association of topography ano
community lifeways that enfolos the chief s booy. The same aective interest is
apparent in his account of Fonoomise river burials, a form of ritual, mortuary prac-
tice in which the booies of chiefs were stakeo to the riverbeo to be eventually
washeo away. Respect for the invisible, watery grave is signaleo, says Brownlee,
by reo-blanketeo women allowing their skirts to trail in the water as they move from
stepping-stone to stepping-stone.
38
The contrast between two oroers of grave observance, the one visible, the other
oiscursive ano symbolic, is at its most intense for ethnographers when they oeal
with African gravesioe rituals associateo with ancestor worship. In :q, far from
the Eastern Cape, Eileen Krige recoroeo from her informants that certain Lobeou
graves were imagineo by the community to be responsible for oissipating rain
clouos: As soon as the vapour-laoen air reaches the grave, it stops or oissolves in
the wino ano it is even believeo that the corpse, thrusting up an arm, waves it about
to cause the wino that orives away the rain.
39
It was precisely this sort of strong
contrast, between the grave as vertical sign on the one hano, ano on the other as
a place associateo with genoereo power exerting its inuence over the spatiotem-
poral rhythms of a community, that proouceo clashes in the nineteenth-century
Eastern Cape. In one community, the grave marker is seen as the visible, symbolic
axis of a lanoscape circuit, in turn associateo with the property-owning sensibili-
ties of English settlers, in the other, it is part of an invisible elo of symbolic force,
exerting a grio of chargeo inuence over the asymmetrically genoereo lifeways of
neighboring communities. Out of the oierent rhetorics of burial, one more spec-
ular than the other, there emergeo a powerfully neurotic form of nineteenth-
century missionary oiscourse, that took as its focus the fear of the neglecteo fron-
tier grave.
MISSIONARY CONCERNS
Eighteenth-century European accounts of Xhosa burial frequently oescribe graves
as abanooneo. John Barrow, for instance, speaks with measureo revulsion about
the interment of chiefs oeep in the oung of their own cattle. Several others echo
his sentiments.
40
But it is not just oisgust at the treatment of corpses that moves
these visitors. Equally oisturbing to them is the apparent ctootc of the grave site as
a visible memorial. Ior Luowig Alberti ,:8o.6,, cattle-byre burial was the rst step
in a process of eacement: Thereupon a number of oxen are oriven into the kraal
ano are kept moving arouno until the surface of the grave is no longer oistin-
guishable from the rest.
41
The horror of pagan burial, therefore, is that it some-
times ceases to be a form of visible inscription altogether, it may no longer be
likeneo to a type of writing. European gravestones, on the other hano, were a man-
ifestation of public ethics: they spliceo together, in epitaph ano graveyaro, notions
of ethical attentiveness with lanoscape semiotics.
In many missionary texts, the abanoonment of corpses to hyenas becomes a key
signier of moral neglect: Oh! To see th unburieo heaps, / On which the lonely
moon-light sleeps! / The very vultures turn away, / Ano sicken at so foul a
prey, / Only the erce hyena stalks / . . . . At mionight ano his carnage plies.
42
It
is inoeeo likely that corpses of commoners were sometimes laio out for oisposal by
scavengers.
43
Nonetheless, by miocentury, this missionary antagonism towaro
Xhosa mortuary practices hao swelleo into the most hysterical forms of propa-
ganoa. Harriet Waro, one of the most opinionateo bigots of the perioo, oers this
account of Ngqika burial: |There| are instances every oay, she says of parents,
husbanos ano wives, oragging their unfortunate sick, in the last mortal agony, into
the bush. I also hearo from a respectable missionary, she continues, that a poor
chilo was burieo three times by its mother, ano each time burst the earthly tram-
mels of the grave, ano returneo home.
44
Of course, such oescriptions tell us more
about changing Victorian conceptions of the booy ano embooieo subjectivity than
they oo about the Ngqika. Given the bizarre fashion in Englano ano on the Con-
tinent at the time for oevices riggeo to graves that woulo warn, with an elaborate
bell ano pulley system, in the event of a still living person being prematurely en-
tombeo, these claustrophobic grave nightmares tell us much about how subjectiv-
ity was becoming somatizeo.
45
Ior missionaries, visible graves were one of the most concrete signiers of Xhosa
conversion. This was true not only in the case of inoivioual heaostones, but also in
the allegorical implications of a neatly arrayeo native graveyaro spreaoing along-
sioe the mission station itself. Missionaries, to put it another way, have a stake in
the politics of lanoscape best emblematizeo by their interest in the spreao of rec-
tilinear architectural features, which are imagineo to replace the oisoroer of the pa-
gan habitus.
46
At the same time, the more visible the trotctoool native grave, the more
oistinct its monumental pretensions, the more likely it was that its architects hao
Christian sympathies. Ior this reason, throughout nineteenth-century missionary
8 n\\in ntxx
recoros, obsessive attention is paio to the representational oetail in Ngqika burials.
Such ceremonies were highly ritualizeo events. Most eyewitnesses agree that pre-
colonial chiefs graves ,tololo, were rouno, oeep holes with a recess . . . in the wall
at the bottom, big enough to take the booy in a squatting position with the knees
orawn up to the chin.
47
In general, the booy was wrappeo in a kaross, or sewn
animal-skin sleeping mat, ano placeo on a beo of stones in the grave recess, its
face turneo towaro the cattle kraal. This form of burial was wioely in use through-
out southern Africa ano was not restricteo to Nguni communities.
48
Ferhaps the
most spectacular late-nineteenth-century example of the traoitional form was in
Cetshwayos burial, a ceremony that I have alreaoy referreo to. A number of eye-
witnesses recall how the kings corpse was alloweo to stien into a fetal crouch be-
fore being placeo in its ceremonial resting place. Moreover, in the treatment of
the booy, ano the oigging of the circular tomb, oeliberate metaphoric associations
between birth ano oeath are maoe. The hut with the corpse ano mourners to-
gether within it, says Ngubane, symbolizes the connement hut as well as the
womb itself.
49
Missionaries careo little for these symbolic associations between
graves ano the womb of the community. They were more interesteo in the
metonymic association between vertical grave markers ano the ioea of access to
transcenoence.
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r
Iigure ... King Cetshwayos corpse ,:88,. Engraving by Charles Eowin Tripp. Iirst
publisheo in Tlc Gtopltc, March .., :88. Thanks to Ian Knight.
All variations from the Nguni burial paraoigm were symbolically signicant to
missionaries. The use of visible memorial inscriptions, prominent grave cairns,
rectilinear grave oesign, the centralization of the booy at the bottom of the pit,
the use of a con, the absence of grave ornaments, all these were taken to be signs
of the aovance of a new ethical oroer of Christian care. However, for the Xhosa
themselves, the semiology of abanoonmentruineo huts, overgrown grave sites,
broken pots, ano selective avoioance of the grave sitewas an important means
by which the oeao, as a metaphysical force, passeo out of the material worlo, into
the memory of the community. Thus the very process of forming ancestors fre-
quently involveo a resistance to visible inscription ano the oeliberate ruin of oo-
mestic oroer.
DEATH COMES TO EMGWALI
Ferhaps the most extraoroinary recoro of contraoictions arouno booies ano buri-
als in the colonial Eastern Cape may be founo in the journal of the Revereno Tiyo
Soga, the rst oroaineo Xhosa Fresbyterian minister. As Ireuo reminoeo us, the
ability to reoirect the psychic oamage causeo by bereavement onto a new internal
object of mourning is one of the keys to psychic health.
50
Ior sensitive proselytiz-
ers like Soga, however, signs of profouno grief among the Xhosa single out inoi-
viouals as targets for conversion. One such example is the case of a bereaveo
Iingo the priest oescribes in a publisheo letter. When the oistraught man appears,
he is weeping, ano has his right hano resting on the crown of his heao, with the
heao itself slightly inclineo. This attituoe, says Soga, to the Cares inoicates
great grief ano oejection of spirit.
51
The Mfengu man is someone whom trageoy
has cast into a new subjective molo: grieving after the oeath of his wife ano chil-
oren, he appears to be in a state of inconsolable melancholia. As such, he is, as it
were, hybrioizeo by oeath, caught between the olo somatic oomain of Care
booy language ano a new form of inoivioual grief. Of course, Soga is quick to re-
mino the man of the comfort of the Resurrection, to which the man gives the fol-
lowing strange reply: Do you know ,he askeo me, why you no me in this place?
Here I burieo them. I came to weep at the graves. I oio it purposely. I oio it be-
cause we have a belief among us that if a frieno comes to weep at the grave of a
frieno, it will not be long until he follows. I woulo go after them if I coulo.
52
Mov-
ing between two oroers of mourning, the oloer, collective patterns of grave avoio-
ance or propitiation, ano a new expressive language of inoivioual grief character-
istic of the postromantic subject, the man becomes victim to oestructive
melancholia. What in another context woulo be a quite conventional form of meo-
itative lanoscape experience ,visiting the grave of a loveo one,, here becomes a
suicioal repetition-compulsion.
An even more important account of the etiology of burial practices ano grave
signication may be founo in Sogas oescription of the oeath of Namba, son of
Maqoma, the greatest Xhosa military strategist of the nineteenth century. After the
,o n\\in ntxx
War of Mlangeni, ano the catastrophic cattle killing movement of :8, which
oevastateo the entire Xhosa nation, most signicant chiefs ano their followers were
penneo into barren, circumscribeo zones. The rebellious Maqoma was conoemneo
to twenty-one years on Robben Islano.
53
In Sogas eyewitness recoro of Nambas
last hours, the oying chief mourns the fact that he leaves his family without a
ploughing elo ,that is to say, lanoless,, ano without frienos among the reo blan-
keteo ,that is, those who resist missionary oress ano oictates,.
54
Distanceo from his
followers, who hao been resettleo in the Crown Reserve, with his father suering
a lonely exile on Robben Islano, Namba seems ooomeo to an incoherent ano lonely
funeral. Soga witnesses pathetic attempts by the family to muster a burial party, but
locals refuse to participate, ano the ceremony oescenos into chaos. At the last mo-
ment, Maqomas half brother Chief Anta arrives to take charge of the ceremony.
He proceeos to go against custom by simply oroering particular inoiviouals to per-
form the ceremony. To one he exclaims, Because we are still living yet our chil-
oren are oyingI kill you tooay. Die with my chiloren.
55
The translation is awk-
waro here, nevertheless, this may be an echo of the chief s attempt to appoint a
grave watcher, for the rigors of living near the grave ano tenoing to it for a year or
more in such a oesolate region may have been tantamount to a type of living oeath.
Nambas burial serves as a reminoer of the fact that chiefs graves playeo an
important role in the symbolic coherence of the Ngqika polity. Ior most commu-
nities, the quiet repose of the chief s bones in a known, orally memorializeo, but
inconspicuous site was a crucially genoereo signier of patriarchal continuity. Ior
the Ngqika, therefore, a grave coulo best be oescribeo as having an illocutionary
existence o tt tt otoct of mcortrg, existing funoamentally within the oomain of com-
munity oral histories ano local avoioance rituals. That is, the function of a grave
might be compareo to what in linguistic terms is referreo to as a performative ut-
terance. Even though chiefs graves are not obvious lanoscape features, they have
an importance existence both in the rhetorical practices of the community ano in
the invisible oivisions of symbolic space in the immeoiate vicinity of the site. Above
all else, a grave imposes an ioea of lineal continuity on the surrounoing commu-
nity. This helps to explain a prophetic remark by Chief Anta. Iaceo with the oivi-
sive squabbling at Nambas gravesioe, he oeclares: |Namba| ooes not have a grave
anymore, you people broke it up.
56
It is to this new gure, of the grave oisrupteo,
the corpse torn from the earth, that the colonial imagination now turneo. The re-
mainoer of this essay examines some examples of symbolic exhumation, moving
from the worlo of missionaries to that of soloiers ano aoministrators.
VIOLENCE AND VISIBILITY
Two contenoing theories of the representational power of graves starteo to
inuence each other in the colonial perioo. Xhosa burial sites became increasingly
implicateo in the British unoerstanoing of graves as visible lanoscape signiers,
associateo with ioeas of inoivioual citizenship, male subjectivity, ano property own-
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r ,.
ership. Conversely, British soloiers graves became linkeo to the Xhosa unoer-
stanoing of the corpse as a source of pollution ano the tomb as a reminoer of lin-
eal authority.
Colonialism ooes not have an entirely autonomous representational elo. Insteao,
in seeking to image its authority, it is forceo into a magpie borrowing from other in-
oigenous visual lexicons, which are maoe available in what Mary Louise Fratt calls
the contact zone.
57
Mortuary symbolism is an important part of that exchange,
ano this alone helps to explain why Xhosa chiefs graves seem to become increas-
ingly visible topographical features by the :8os. In fact, it is in this perioo, when the
Ngqika Xhosa were nally alienateo from their Amatolas heartlano, that we no
the young chief Sanoile rst using his fathers grave as a point of reference in his oe-
bate with the new colonial aoministrators: Why am I severeo from the grave of
my father? The inheritance of a chief is not cattle, it is lanos ano men.
58
This is an
extremely telling remark, for it suggests that by now Sanoile ano others were using
references to graves as a means of speaking back to the abstract, masculinizeo ois-
ciplinary systems of cartography ano colonial lano oivision. What is evioent, too,
in this exchange, is that there are crucial oierences between the representational
function of the grave in military or aoministrative oiscourses on the one hano, ano
those of missionaries on the other. In fact, it is precisely because the graves of elo-
ers ano chiefs represent the invisible oroer of patriarchal authority that they are eas-
ily absorbeo into the conservative, masculine rhetoric of colonial aoministrators.
This is clearly oemonstrateo by the example of Chief Nqeno, who, on his oeathbeo,
persuaoeo Commissioner John Maclean to ensure that he was given a British mili-
tary funeral. Nqeno oio this for extremely complex reasons, not least of which may
have been an attempt to cement an alliance between his son Stockwe ano the colo-
nial authorities.
59
When, ouring the Sixth Irontier War, a British garrison oescenoeo
upon Stockwes Great Flace, ring huts ano crops, something extraoroinary oc-
curreo. The commanoing ocer, H. Somerset notes in his oispatch of June 8, :86:
I oestroyeo the Chief s kraal, leaving the burial hut of the late Chief, Eno |tc|,
untoucheo.
60
Thus begins a new oroer of symbolic exchange /ct.ccr mcr arouno
graves in the Eastern Cape, one centering on either respect for or humiliation of the
last resting places of local leaoers, oepenoing on the state of their alliances with the
colony. As a system of informal empire begins to emerge, ano aoministrators be-
come more involveo in the manufacture ano control of customary law, so too there
is increasing topographical reference to chiefs graves. To take the ioea one step
further, the emergence of the monumental Xhosa grave may be the result of a neeo
for a shareo language of aoministration.
It was ouring the War of Mlanjeni ,:8o,, however, that the gure of the vi-
olateo grave took on crucial ioeological signicance. On Christmas Day :8o, com-
bineo Ngqika forces attackeo the fortieo villages of Woburn, Aucklano, ano Jua-
nasburg, which ringeo the Chumie Mission. In a subsequent British government
inquiry into the causes of the war, the Revereno Henry Renton tolo a oramatic tale
of how the followers of Chief Tyali hao watcheo with growing outrage from one
,: n\\in ntxx
sioe of the Tyumie river as military settlers oespoileo the lano on the opposite bank
they still consioereo their own. In a form of spatial articulation characteristic of the
colonial perioo, the village of Woburn hao been built alongsioe Tyalis Great Flace,
ano the chief s grave was in the immeoiate vicinity, it was markeo on :8o maps
of the layout of the village.
61
Renton oescribes what happeneo next:
After its location the men of [the village of Woburn] . . . dug up the grave, to get
possession of the saddle, and bridle, and guns, and what not. . . . On the other side
of the river, by a spot that could command a view, was the great place of his widow, and
his heir, and the great men of his tribe; and this act of outrage, I was assured by the
missionaries, had excited the Kars . . . to an extent that could not be supposed.
62
Clearly, the oesecration of a chief s grave in full view of his wioow ew in the face
of propaganoa about how colonialism protecteo its native subjects. While we may
never know the full import of what happeneo at Woburn, it is signicant that by
now the rieo grave ano the oisturbeo corpse hao become visible signs of colonial
violence. An interesting inoex of converging mortuary rhetorics is the fact that the
Xhosa are oescribeo as occupying a site that coulo commano a view of the grave.
The Xhosa, it is suggesteo, are being taught a lesson about graves as topographi-
cal features within a lanoscape system.
COLONEL FORDYCE EXHUMED
Having consioereo the peculiar mortuary interests of missionaries, ano the very
oierent monumental concerns of colonial aoministrators, let us now turn to fo-
cus on the military. There is, one might say, a special problematic associateo with
military graves. During the nine main wars that wrackeo the colonial Eastern Cape,
the Xhosa were oriven from plains to mountain fastnesses, ano from fertile valleys
to high forests. Throughout the nineteenth century, there were aooitional skirmishes
between the Xhosa ano settlers oetermineo to take aovantage of the unsettleo fron-
tier by expropriating African cattle. These raios against African cattle thieves
were supporteo by the military. Graoually, as losses accrueo on both sioes, a new
rhetoric begins to emerge, focuseo on the oisposition of enemy booies. In the :8os,
we no Captain Henry Butler mocking the ignominious oeath of a Kar bor-
oerer. Asioe from the mock epitaph provioeo by Butler, there is no funeral mon-
ument for this accomplisheo liar ano enterprising thief |who was| oeserveoly the
iool of his tribe. No mourners atteno his nal moments, for the Hyaena ano the
Vulture alone witnesseo his oying agonies ano inheriteo his carcase.
63
Here, of
course, two entirely oierent rhetorics of burial are in complete antagonism. Ior
the Xhosa, there was a particular evil associateo with the corpses of those who oieo
in battle, a negative force that coulo attach itself to others. Ior this reason, the bat-
tleelo oeao were frequently left unburieo. Ior the British military, the abanoon-
ment of corpses is a sign of primitive moral inferiority ano lack of soloierly ca-
maraoerie.
Iigure ... Henry Butler, The Epitaph ,:8,. Courtesy MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg,
image ./6. Reproouceo by permission.
With the irruption of wioespreao, all-consuming warfare such as that which
emergeo in the Eastern Cape in :8o, violence enters the fabric of oaily life, in-
cluoing the oroer of representation. By :8o, I believe, a oierent epistemic oroer
hao establisheo itself, one in which oeao booies, unburieo, torn apart, or
signicantly mutilateo, hao become important o o mcor of commortcottor between
warring forces.
64
At its most brutal, this language of the corpse meant that enemy
booies were often oeliberately mutilateo or inscribeo, left hanging in trees, oisplayeo
in ranks by the roaosioe, laio out in town squares, or arrangeo oecapitateo ano
truncateo in horric oisplays for returning troops.
The high point of the Eighth Irontier War was the Waterkloof campaign, an
extenoeo guerrilla oensive wageo by British ano colonial forces against the Ngqika
unoer Maqoma in the woooeo fastnesses of mountains west of Iort Beaufort. Ior
the Waterkloof Xhosa, the British oeao were instruments to be oeployeo within a
general language of resistance. When one colonial burial party returneo from its
grim labor, they were confronteo by irate Ngqika warriors: |W|hen they saw us
in the valley below, their anger knew no bounos, ano oragging out the oeao boo-
ies which we hao placeo in graves, they ung them into the air, ano over oeep
ravines after us.
65
Ultimately, to avoio such inoignities to the British oeao, ocers
like Mackay took to camouaging newly oug graves in the Waterkloof.
Maurice Bloch has calleo attention to the ioeological nature of references to pol-
lution in funerary rites: In the representation of the funerary ritual inoiviouality
is what oecomposes ano is what has to be thrown out so that the ioeological oroer
can be createo as an emotional force by rst stressing pollution ano then getting rio
of it. That is to say, insofar as funeral rituals stage inoiviouality in negative terms
in manifestations of grief ano weeping, for instancethey also, by implication,
recreate the symbolic presence of the collective community once mourning is over-
come. It is for this reason, Bloch concluoes, that warring parties sometimes try to
prevent their opponents from burying the oeao: |B|y stopping ones enemies from
performing the funeral rituals one oiminishes their power.
66
He calls this practice
negative preoation. However, given the fact that mutilation or humiliation of the
enemy oeao is also often associateo with castration, I woulo suggest that such con-
tests over booies have much to oo with the language of masculinity.
A logic of mutilation ano exhumation seems to have been at work ouring the
Eighth Irontier War. However, on the sioe of the British, class oistinction became
an important factor in ensuring the security of grave sites. On November 6, :8:,
Colonel Ioroyce, one of the most senior ano respecteo ocers on the frontier, was
shot ano killeo in the Waterkloof. Thomas Bainess painting of this event recoros
not simply its historical signicance, but also its shock value.
67
Trauma is oistrib-
uteo across the gures in the painting, ano a oulling of aect is evioent in the re-
peateo motif of common soloiers boweo by exhaustion ano grief stanoing in knots
arouno their oying ocers ano subalterns.
When Ioroyce oieo, he was rst burieo in a simple grave at the nearby military
settlement of Fost Retief. Now ocers graves stano at the intersection of various
contraoictions. Subject to the variable whims of metropolitan parliaments, mili-
tary force is sometimes quite unevenly applieo: regiments return home, com-
manoers are oisgraceo, troops are rotateo, ano there is no certain stock of mourn-
ers for the military sepulcher. Moreover, without attenoant mourners or a
sympathetic, surrounoing civil society, there is the horrible possibility that the sol-
oiers grave site will be forgotten ano cease to function oiscursively, the corpse within
truly returning to oust. Such a threat unoermines the entire oroer of imperial rep-
resentation ano its inscriptional ability, for with the withering away of mourning,
it is as though all monuments to the benevolent extension of empire are confronteo
with the lie of empire. Ior this reason, perhaps, in many pictorial views of far-ung
soloiers graves in journals like the Illottotco Loroor ^c., lonely burial mounos usu-
ally have attenoant guaros, with bent heaos, poseo over them.
68
Ior the grave to
survive, it is as though it has to remain part of a lanoscape organizeo as a specu-
lar elo, with attenoant ano observing consciousnesses.
Ior Victorian mourners, oeath appears to have been more bearable if it coulo
be perceiveo to have hao an inscriptional eect, as though, ioeally, the loss of an-
other consciousness shoulo be markeo on the lanoscape like a lightning bolt. When
Ioroyce oieo, his regiment immeoiately markeo the spot by means of carving the
Oronance Broao Arrow on a tree.
69
Descriptions of the Ioroyce trageoy were
, n\\in ntxx
Iigure ..6. Thomas Baines, Tlc Dcotl of Colorcl Foto,cc ,oetail,. Courtesy William Iehr
Collection, Cape Town. Reproouceo by permission.
wioely oisseminateo in the British press. However, for colonial painters like Thomas
Bowler, eager to cash in on the taste for views of these foreign battle sites, the iso-
lateo Waterkloof location was a problem. All signicant traces of violence hao ois-
appeareo. Bowlers way out of the oilemma was to use an imaginative form of
prosopopoeia, harking back to the paraoigm of elegiac wanoering. In his painting
Moort Mtct,, Ioroyces oeath site is inoeeo visiteo by a community of mourners:
stray groups of mountain reeobuck, reminiscent of the roe oeer of English park-
lanos, act as prosthetic mourners, pausing in their free passage through the lano-
scape as though calleo to primitive consciousness by the presence of an invisible
epitaph.
Without a community of mourners, all that will save an ocers memory in a
foreign country is the continueo application of military force to guarantee the in-
tegrity of the grave.
70
In the eno, when memorialization coulo not be assureo for
senior ocers graves, their booies were often simply shippeo home. Ior all the
sao rhetoric about beloveo leaoers ano the oemocracy of common graves, the sys-
tematic oroer we know as class oemanoeo that the booies of the ocers burieo at
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r ,,
Iigure ... Graves in the Winterberg, Illottotco Loroor ^c., April :6, :8. Courtesy
South African Library.
Fost Retief be removeo. At the insistence of fellow members of their Masonic
Looge ,like many British ocers ano aoministrators of the time, Ioroyce ano Carey
were Masons,, the three now consioerably oecomposeo booies were oug up, placeo
in leao-lineo cons, ano marcheo one hunoreo kilometers or so back to Grahams-
town, escorteo by a regimental guaro of honor with orums ano pipes. In Gra-
hamstown, two of the ocers were burieo with Masonic ceremony. The thiro, Cap-
tain Goroon, was interreo in the Roman Catholic cemetery. Within ten years, the
location of his grave hao been lost.
71
Ioroyce was not even alloweo to rest in peace
in Grahamstown. His bones were exhumeo again ano shippeo back to his ances-
tral Scotlano.
72
A MONUMENT AT ISIDENGE
Thus far, we have been examining broao changes in the semiology of Eastern Cape
graves, in the context of increasing violence ano a oeep fear, on the part of British
authorities, of grave erasure. In May :88, at the eno of the War of Ngcayecibi
,:8:88,, the Ngqika chief Sanoile, leaoing opponent of British colonial rule af-
ter his brother Maqoma, was killeo in the Firie bush.
73
His booy was left to oe-
compose for two oays before being pointeo out to British authorities by an informer.
This was the symbolic eno of the resistance of the Xhosa nation, for Sanoile was
wioely regaroeo as the last chief with sucient authority to pose a threat to the sta-
bilization of the frontier.
What is most striking about the oeath ano burial of Sanoile is that it reveals quite
oistinct representational languages useo by settler ano military authorities. Of the
several eyewitness accounts of the booy ano the funeral, none is more graphic than
that of George Hay, who also sketcheo the corpse for the Copc Mctcot,. Hay oe-
scribes how Sanoile was given a strangely oistorteo version of a military funeral.
Eight Mfengu soloiers bore the booy to the grave on their guns, ano the traoitional
hollow square of troops was formeo, yet ries were not reverseo in the normal trib-
ute. Shortly before the lling of the grave, Commanoant Schermbrucker maoe a
speech, principally aooresseo to the . . . natives present, saying:
[Sandile] has been killed by our volunteers and has been denied the honours which
are usually accorded even to an enemy. Had he fallen on the side of his Queen . . .
he would have been buried in a manner betting his rank. This is the last chief of
the Gaikas; let his life and death be a warning to you. . . . Instead of being lords and
masters in the country they once owned, [Sandiles followers] will now be servants.
74
Schermbrucker uses the threat of a humiliating burial to remino the Mfengu vol-
unteers of the neeo for colonial loyalty. Lonoon accounts of the burial were, how-
ever, entirely oierent, concentrating insteao on the oecency of the nal rites. An
illustration in the Gtopltc oraws a melooramatic contrast between the ethical in-
stincts of a British ocer ano the fetishistic unoerstanoing of Mfengu soloiers, ap-
parently only too eager to mutilate ano oisgrace the corpse.
75
,8 n\\in ntxx
As far as performances go, Sanoiles burial was meant to oramatize the ability
of colonial aoministration to guarantee civil protection for even the most pagan
booy, guaroing it even from primitive self-neglect. But what is more important for
our purposes is the bizarre architecture of the grave in which the corpse was nally
laio. It is what one might call a trophy grave, where the booy of the chief is cap-
tureo for the purposes of symbolic reburial in a manner calling to mino the supe-
riority of white aoministration. On Schermbruckers instructions, the Ngqika leaoer
was burieo between the booies of Trooper Dicks of the Wooehouse True Blues,
ano Trooper Hillier of Gormons Horse. Reporteoly, the commanoer explaineo
that he put the troopers there to keep the blackguaro quiet.
76
In oeath, the troop-
ers are permanently oeployeo like toy guaros or pillars. This strangely oeliberate
triangulation of graves is reminiscent, too, of the oeep ambiguity expresseo by colo-
nial authorities towaro Sanoiles living booy. While arch-racists like the Gtolomto.r
}ootrols eoitor Robert Goolonton ano his supporters caricatureo Sanoile as a
orunken beast, they were also intrigueo by his picturesque wiloness, prooucing a
contraoiction visible in the monumental canoelabra presenteo to Goolonton on his
retirement. Imperialist ioeology, in such instances, stanos in a complex relationship
to fantasy: conquest is also preoicateo on a oeep, erotic attachment to the ioea of
chiey authority ano feuoal booily relations, gureo as the booy bent in submis-
sion or arrogantly resistant.
77
Iigure ..8. Iingoes viewing the booy of Chief Sanoile. Tlc Gtopltc. Volume ano oate
unknown.
What the Sanoile monument oemonstrates, once again, is the rather contra-
oictory role of graves in symbolizing the spreao of European ethics ano mooer-
nity. Care for the neglecteo native grave in the colonial context is another exam-
ple, therefore, of how the belateoness of the black man is oemonstrateo in terms
of white ontology, to use Homi Bhabhas phrase. As an outrioer of mooernity, im-
perialist aoministration is seen to exteno ethical attention into the premooern
worlo, ano this serves to universalize ano oehistoricize conceptions of the liberal
subject of law. Nevertheless, this narrative is itself inhabiteo by several contra-
oictions. Iirst, the oesire to oepict protecteo native graves is linkeo to an increas-
ingly genoereo form of referencing between colonial authorities ano male chiey
elites that eventually results in the establishment of an elaborate system of native
customary law. Seconoly, the increasing visibility of Xhosa chiefs graves in the
nineteenth century also has its origins in a fantastical imperialist aomiration for
the ioea of oynastic chiey power. Ior a certain class of white aoministrators, a
number of whom woulo have been oriven into overseas service because of pri-
mogeniture inheritance rules, the spectacle of an apparently archaic oroer of male
power, investeo with supposeoly fetishistic ioeas of service to chiey authority, was
oeeply intriguing. Schermbrucker invokeo this fantastical authority when he oe-
ployeo his soloiers booies as imaginary guaros for the oeao chief. Thus the regi-
mental hierarchies of the British military, focuseo on the emblematic oierence
8o n\\in ntxx
Iigure ..q. Sanoiles grave. Fhoto by Davio Bunn.
Iigure ..:o. Goolonton canoelabra ,oetail,. Executeo by Joseph Angell. Courtesy
of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown. Fhoto by Hepburn ano Jeanes.
between commissioneo ano noncommissioneo ranks, converge with a fantastical
ioea of Xhosa chieftainship, prooucing a composite monument.
So the proximity of the chief s memorial to those of the watchful soloiers en-
ables a visual allegory about the benevolent oiscipline of empire. This reoeploy-
ment of the symbolic power of a grave for new ioeological purposes is a strategy
we shall see over ano over again from now on, ano it proouces an eect of ioeo-
logical ompltcottor, in which the value of one sign system is magnieo by a visual
association with another. Increasingly, after miocentury, as Xhosa chiefs graves be-
come more visible, they become associateo with the nostalgic rhetoric of military
monumentality. Late Victorian public memorials everywhere make extensive use
of the gure of the vanquisheo native chief. In specically military memorials, it
is associateo with a nostalgia for premooern face-to-face heroic combat.
Surprisingly, Sanoiles burial was the occasion for the release of far more sur-
plus aect than that oemonstrateo in the ocial trophy grave. In stark contrast
to the picture in the Gtopltc, Eastern Cape settlers circulateo a very oierent im-
age of the oefeateo chief among themselves. George Hays original eyewitness
sketch of the mutilateo booy was maoe into a popular cottc oc ctttc,
78
which takes
us full circle in our unoerstanoing of the language of the risen corpse in the colo-
nial Eastern Cape. Ior the settler imaginary, Hays image was a satisfying icon:
with the chief s remains permanently exhumeo, exhibiteo in the rounos of set-
tler visiting, permanently in a state of oecay, forever humiliateo, the image par-
ticipateo in the logic of revenge. Ior settlers, therefore, it is as though the link be-
tween ioeology ano the imaginary was not through the erotic so much as through
the oeath orive.
My focus thus far has been on issues of violence ano representation. To some
extent, this masks the often ambiguous attituoe that settlers hao towaro frontier
war. Iar from simply oreaoing the repeateo conicts, male settlers often founo in
them opportunities for aovancement: cattle ano large parcels of lano coulo legit-
imately be expropriateo from the oisplaceo Xhosa. This ambiguity arouno the
whole question of war is mirroreo in contraoictory attituoes towaro the booy of
the enemy. Sanoile was, in a sense, a necessary signier for the oiscourse of set-
tlement, ano the circulation of his oeath image is thus far more than a simple act
of gloating. In fact, the very popularity of the image suggests the presence of a
collective process rather like that in Ireuos oescriptions of melancholia, in which
there is an inability to give up the lost object ano the pleasure principle seems ac-
tually to serve the oeath instincts.
79
In other woros, the photograph of this par-
tially consumeo booy oramatizes the inability of the settler imaginary to relin-
quish the corpse for burial. To oo so, woulo mean that it ceases to function as a
signier within the temporal logic of settlement narratives that oemano potential
future enemies. Ironically, therefore, this mutilateo gure comes to satisfy the logic
of the oeath orive itself in a process of oisavowal. In such psychic economies,
Ireuo suggesteo, the ego wants to incorporate |the| object into itself . . . |as
though| by oevouring it.
80
8: n\\in ntxx
In the eno, though, Sanoiles grave no longer operates as a lanoscape sign ao-
oresseo to a potential community of mourners. Rather, its inoexical function came
to be emphasizeo. Just as the trophy military grave faileo to satisfy the oesires for
revenge of the Stutterheim settlers, so too its iconography faileo to take root in the
imagination of the Xhosa themselves. Throughout the late nineteenth ano early
twentieth centuries, rumors abounoeo that the monument at Isioenge markeo an
empty grave. Still tooay, many local villagers believe that Sanoiles booy was se-
cretly burieo in a cave above the forest, or that parts of the booy were taken as
souvenirs to Englano.
81
Despite the presence of ghostly guaros to guarantee the in-
tegrity of this monument, it has no illocutionary aooress, ano is not serveo by com-
munity memorialization. Ior the majority of South Africans, therefore, Sanoiles
spirit continues to walk abroao.
NOTES
The nancial assistance of the Centre for Science Development (HSRC, South Africa) to-
ward this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at
are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Centre. Research for this paper was
also made possible by a grant from the University of the Western Cape. Furthermore, I am
greatly indebted to Jane Taylor, Steven Robins, Dell Upton, Roz Morris, Mark Auslander,
and Martin Hall for their constructive criticism, and to Paul Landau and Deborah Kaspin
for their illuminating editorial suggestions. My Eastern Cape eldwork was made easier by
extensive assistance from Khaya Matyobeni (who produced ne translations of Mqhayi for
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r 8
Iigure ..::. George Hay, Sanoili, cottc oc ctttc. Courtesy of the Albany Museum,
Grahamstown.
me), Drusilla Yekela, Moose van Rensburg, Reverend Zolile August, Denver Webb, Sitati
Gitywa, Colin Coetzee, Manton Hirst, Lita Webley, William Jervois, and the Cory Library.
My thanks also to Jean Beater of the National Monuments Council. The Cory Library,
Rhodes University, Grahamstown, made available the following unpublished Sources: MP
q (Map of Wobum); Cory Library MS 666 (The Massacres in :8o . . . ); GH .8/:, C.
Brownlee to J. Maclean; Tim Stapleton, interview with Chief Lent Maqoma, October ..,
:qq:; and British Parliamentary Papers, Correspondence Relevant to the Fate of the Kar
Tribes on the Eastern Frontier (:8). Newspapers consulted included the Daily Despatch;
Imvo; and the Weekend Post.
:. David Charles Sloane, The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, :qq:), 6q.
.. See Charles Peirce, Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Sign, in The Philosophy of Peirce:
Selected Writings, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Harcourt, Brace, :qo), q8::q. For a brief,
lucid account of motivated signs, see also Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, :q8), ..
. Neo-Durkheimian social theory has generally avoided discussion of graves as repre-
sentational forms. Instead, like its nineteenth-century antecedents, it usually associated them
with the performance of socially signicant mortuary rites. Durkheimian theory, explains
Nadia Seremetakis, localizes death in a specic culture as a determined component of an
overarching social organization (The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq:], :). Most of the inuential recent ethnogra-
phies of mortuary practice continue this trend toward seeing the grave simply as a site of
representative ritual performance. In Robert Hertzs classic analysis (Death and the Right Hand
[:qo6], trans. Rodney and Claudia Needham [Aberdeen: Cohen & West, :q6o]), funerary
ritual is the means by which the shock of individual death is dissipated through a renewed
understanding of community identity. For this reason, he introduces the inuential notion
of the double funeral, in which, as Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry describe it, there is
a phase of disaggregation followed by a phase of reinstallation . . . from which the collec-
tivity emerges triumphant over death (Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Maurice Bloch
and Jonathan Parry [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :q8.], .) Bloch and Parry
themselves favor his description of the reassertion of the social order at the time of death
(p. 6). Thus even in the most sophisticated ethnographic analyses of homologies between
mortuary practice and lineal authority, there is little emphasis on the grave as a spatial or
inscriptional phenomenon.
Recently, especially with the impact of the anthropology of practice, there has been a
more sustained attempt to explore the landscape functioning of graves. For instance,
Seremetakiss nuanced study of exhumation rituals in Inner Mani veers sharply away from
the Hertzian paradigm. Another key recent development has been the understanding of
graves as sites of hybrid representation. Outstanding among these studies are Marilyn Ivys
Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
:qq), and John Pembertons On the Subject of Java (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
:qq), both of which examine the changing function of monumental tombs in various at-
tempts to establish the legitimacy of the modernizing states such as Japan and Indonesia.
. Of the many ne recent studies of the politics of English topographical poetry, Alan
Lius Wordsworth: The Sense of History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, :q8q) is per-
haps the most instructive.
8 n\\in ntxx
. Clifton Crais, The Making of the Colonial Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
:qq.), q..
6. For three very dierent views of patterned movement and meaning in the colonial
context, see Yvonne Brink, Places of Discourse and Dialogue: A Study in the Material Cul-
ture of the Cape during the Rule of the Dutch East India Company, :6.:q (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Cape Town, :qq.), .o.; and David Bunn, Our Wattled Cot: Mercantile
and Domestic Space in Thomas Pringles African Landscapes, in Landscape and Power, ed.
W. J. T. Mitchell, :. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq); and Nancy D. Munn,
Excluded Spaces: The Figure in Australian Aboriginal Landscape, Critical Inquiry .. (Spring
:qq6): 66.
. Crais, Making of the Colonial Order, q:.
8. Rev. John Ayli, Memorials of the British Settlers of South Africa (Grahamstown: Godlon-
ton, :q8), ..
q. The Albany Journals of Thomas Shone, ed. Penelope Silva (Cape Town: Maskew Miller
Longman for Rhodes University, Grahamstown, :qq.), :, .:.
:o. Ibid., ...
::. Ibid., q.
:.. The extent to which the surrounding countryside was imprinted with a sense of men-
ace is graphically illustrated in The Reminiscences of Thomas Stubbs, ed. W. A. Maxwell and R. T.
McGeogh (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, :q8). Acknowledging his intimate knowledge of the
terrain and of guerrilla warfare, the Royal Engineers prevailed on the settler Stubbs to help
them compile a map. In doing so, he says, I drew a line through the map [and remarked]
on this path, my father was murderedon this one Johnstone was murdered, on this one
Anderson was murdered and on nearly all someone had been murdered (p. :).
:. Albany Journals of Thomas Shone, ed. Silva, .:.
:. Nol Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africas Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa Peo-
ple (New York: Knopf, :qq.), xxix.
:. Several excellent recent works have helped to paint a fuller picture of the Ngqika
sense of place in this period. Among others, see J. B. Peires, The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse
and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of .8, ( Johannesburg: Ravan Press; Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, :q8q); Crais, Making of the Colonial Order; Timothy Stapleton,
Maqoma ( Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, :qq); and Mostert, Frontiers. My own forthcoming
Land Acts: Modernity, Representation, and the Making of South African Space deals extensively with
this issue.
:6. Nancy Munn, Excluded Spaces: The Figure in Australian Aboriginal Landscape,
Critical Inquiry .. (Spring :qq6): o.
:. J. S. Bergh and J. C. Visagie, The Eastern Cape Frontier Zone, .o.8o: A Cartographic
Guide for Historical Research (Durban: Butterworths, :q8), 8.
:8. The evolution of this controlling matrix is well documented in Bergh and Visagie,
Eastern Cape Frontier Zone. By the :8os, magistrates had come to displace chiey authority;
amatakhati (native councilors) had been installed; chains of forts and signaling towers had
been linked; trigonometrical surveys had been completed; and mission stations had been re-
inforced with surrounding military villages.
:q. Picart, The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Idolatrous Nations; and Patrick Culli-
nan, Robert Jacob Gordon, .,.,: The Man and His Travels at the Cape (Cape Town: Struik,
:qq.), :o8.
.o. Peires, Dead Will Arise, :.
.:. Monica Hunter, Reaction to Conquest (London: Oxford University Press, :q6), .:;
W. D. Hammond-Tooke, Bhaca Society (Cape Town: Oxford University Press), :q6.; and
Eileen Jensen Krige and Jacob Krige, The Realm of a Rain Queen: A Study of the Pattern of Lovedu
Society (London: Oxford University Press, :q).
... For example, when in Emily Bronts Wuthering Heights ([:8; New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, :q8], .qo), Heathcli digs his way down toward Catherine Earnshaws corpse,
he suddenly feels the warm breath of his dead beloved on his cheek: as certainly as you per-
ceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so
certainly I felt that Cathy was there, not under me, but on the earth.
.. Harriet Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine (London: Academic Press, :q),
8, 88.
.. Seremetakis, Last Word, 6.
.. In the section that follows, I am frequently dependent on the contemporary ethno-
graphic detail collected by Gordon Ndodomzi Zwide in Burial and Funeral Practices in
the Ciskei: An Enquiry Into Present-Day Practices and Associated Ideas (M.A. thesis, Uni-
versity of Fort Hare, :q8). In addition, I have learnt a great deal from my research assis-
tant and friend Khaya Matyobeni, without whose intimate knowledge of the landscape
practices and oral history of the Stutterheim region, this project would not have been pos-
sible.
.6. Zwide, Burial and Funeral Practices, 6q.
.. Ibid., and John Middleton, Lugbara Death, in Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed.
Bloch and Parry, :.
.8. Zwide, Burial and Funeral Practices, o; Ngubane, Body and Mind, o; and Ma-
tyobeni, pers. comm. For Hertz, see note 3.
.q. The best-documented case of grave watchers appointed to attend a chiey grave is
that of Cetshwayo in :88. See John Laband, Rope of Sand: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu King-
dom in the Nineteenth Century ( Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, :qq), 68.
o. Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Bloch and Parry, Intro., .
:. Heinz Kukertz, Creating Order: The Image of the Homestead in Mpondo Social Life ( Johan-
nesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, :qqo). See also Patricia Davidson, Material Cul-
ture, Context and Meaning (Ph.D. diss., University of Cape Town, :qq:), ., for an
analysis of the progressive migration of homesteads across the landscape, in relation to the
burial of chiefs in cattle byres.
.. Kukertz, Creating Order, .8q. In a period of eldwork in Matabeleland, Steven Robins
recorded the eorts of local villagers rebuilding a homestead to enable a better view of
the almost invisible graves of elders. Robins, pers. comm.
. Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Bloch and Parry, intro., ::, citing Robert Hertz,
A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death, in id., Death and
the Right Hand.
. Hunter, Reaction to Conquest, ..8. See also Davidson, Material Culture, o.
. Over the past decade of African studies, there has been a signicant revolution in
the understanding of graves as sites and signs. Bloch and Parrys Death and the Regeneration of
Life contains key examples of this new scholarship. Outstanding among recent studies that
examine graves in their landscape context is Terence Rangers work on the Zimbabwean
Matopos hills; see esp. his Great Spaces Washed with Sun: The Matopos and Uluru Com-
pared, inText, Theory, Space: Land, Literature, and History in South Africa and Australia, ed. Kate
8 n\\in ntxx
Darian-Smith et al. (New York: Routledge, :qq6), ::, and Taking Hold of the Land:
Holy Places and Pilgrimages in Twentieth-Century Zimbabwe (paper presented at con-
ference on Culture and Consciousness in Southern Africa, September :q86); and Jean Co-
maros groundbreaking ethnography of the Tswana, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq). There have also been several intriguing at-
tempts to see African graves as the sites for counterhegemonic negotiation of modernity. For
instance, Deborah Kaspins reading of Nyau mortuary ritual as an attempt to regain rep-
resentational authority denes the graveyard as a halfway point, lying between parallel
worlds, linking the village to the bush and to the spirit world beyond the grave, in Kaspin,
Chewa Visions and Revisions of Power: Transformations of the Nyau Dance in Central
Malawi, in Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, ed. Comaro
and Comaro (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq), :. There is also Brad Weisss
exploration of Haya burial, which describes the grave as a site which encompasses the hori-
zon of the past which has created it, and the future which ensures it, because the occasion
of the return of the body to the land is a way of binding agnates and reinforcing claims to
residential farms: see Weiss, Buying Her Grave: Money and AIDS in Northwest Tanza-
nia (seminar paper, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, .o.); and
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambos Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and
the Sociology of Power in Africa (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, :qq.), in which it is claimed
that the occasion of the struggle over the body of S. M. Otieno brought into an organized
dispute setting the entire moral ground of Luo beliefs about death and Luo funeral prac-
tices (q). The controversy around Otienos burial site reveals the crucial role played by
graves in symbolizing political authority, and it also shows how the idea of the unsettled
burial may be deployed as a gure of resistance.
6. Ranger, Taking Hold of the Land, .
. Laband, Rope of Sand, 68, 8o, nn. and .
8. W. T. Brownlee, Reminiscences of a Transkeian (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter,
n.d.), ..; Burial Places of Chiefs, ..
q. Krige and Krige, Realm, ..
o. John Barrow quoted in Marly Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcul-
turation (London: Routledge, :qq.); Margaret Shaw and N. J. van Warmelo, The Material
Culture of the Cape Nguni (Part ), Annals of the South African Museum 8 (March :q88),
.o.; .
:. Ludwig Albertis Account of the Tribal Life & Customs of the Xhosa in .8o,, Translated by Dr.
William Fehr from the original manuscript in German of The Kars of the South Coast of Africa (Cape
Town: A. A. Balkema, :q68), q.
.. Andrew Steedman, Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa, vol. : (Lon-
don: Longman & Co., :8; reprint, :q66), :qq.
. Similar practices are recorded for the Maasai. The ritual exposure of Parsee corpses
for disposal by vultures was a much discussed phenomenon in Anglo-Indian colonial writ-
ing.
. Harriet Ward, Five Years in Karland, vol. : (London: Henry Colburn, :88), :q,
:q8.
. Philippe Aris, The Hour of Our Death (New York: Knopf, :q8:), 6..
6. Comaro and Comaro, Of Revelation and Revolution, :: .o; Ranger, Taking Hold
of the Land, q:o.
. Shaw and van Warmelo, 8...
+nr srrrr or +nr nn\\r 8,
8. Ranger, Taking Hold of the Land, :o.
q. Ngubane, Body and Mind, 8.
o. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
translated under the general editorship of James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and the
Institute of Psycho-Analysis, :q), vol. :: On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement,
Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, ..
:. Tiyo Soga, The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga (Cape Town:
Balkema, :q8), 8q.
.. Ibid., qo.
. Stapleton, Maqoma, :q.
. Soga, Journal, :6.
. Ibid., :q.
6. Ibid.
. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, .
8. GH .8/:, C. Brownlee to J. Maclean; quoted in Peires, Dead Will Arise, 6..
q. Mostert, Frontiers, 88o.
6o. Ibid., ::.
6:. As shown in Cory Library MP q, Map of Woburn. I am grateful to Colin Coetzee
for drawing my attention to this map.
6.. Imperial Blue Book (Cape of Good Hope: Govt. Printer, :8), 8:, evidence of H.
Renton; emphasis added.
6. Henry Butler, The Epitaph (:8), MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg, image ./6.
6. For an extensive analysis of this language of corpses, see David Bunn, Morbid Cu-
riosities: Mutilation, Exhumation, and the Fate of Colonial Painting (forthcoming).
6. James Mackay, Reminiscences of the Last Kar War (Grahamstown: Richards, Glanvile
& Co., :8:), .8.
66. Maurice Bloch, Death, Woman and Power, in Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed.
Bloch and Parry, .., ..8.
6. Thomas Baines, The Death of Colonel Fordyce (:8.).
68. Illustrated London News, Graves in the Winterberg.
6q. R. A. Wilmot, A Cape Travellers Diary (:86; Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, :q8), :.
o. The only individual soldiers death sites recorded on colonial maps of the Eastern
Cape are those of Fordyce and Lieutenant Bailey. The record of their passing has only been
inscribed because military outposts, namely, Fort Fordyce and Baileys Grave, sprang up at
these locations.
:. The Reminiscences of Amelia de Henningsen, ed. Margaret Young (Grahamstown: Maskew
Miller Longman, :q8q), :o.
.. In piecing together this sequence of events, I have relied mainly on contemporary
sources, such as Captain W. R. King, Campaigning in Karland (London: Saunders & Otley,
:8), :66o; Mackay, Reminiscences, ::, :; and Reminiscences of Amelia de Henningsen, ed.
Young, :o.
. See Mostert, Frontiers, and Stapleton, Maqoma, for this history.
. George Hay, who also sketched the corpse for the Cape Mercury, was the artist.
. Anon. illustration in The Graphic, Fingoes Viewing the Body of Chief Sandile.
6. Jack H. French, The Death and Burial of Sandile, Coelacanth :8, : (April :q8o): .
88 n\\in ntxx
. This point relies on an understanding derived from Slavoj Z
izeks revision of Al-

thusser, in Tarrying With the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, :qq).
8. George Hays original eyewitness sketch, Sandiles Corpse.
q. J. B. Pontalis, Frontiers in Psychoanalysis: Between the Dream and Psychic Pain (New York:
International Universities Press, :q8:), :o..
8o. Freud, Standard Edition, :: .qo.
8:. See Drusilla Yekela, The Sandile Dynasty (South African Museums Association
Annual Conference, Eastern Cape Branch, paper, October :q8). Further attention was
drawn to such rumors during the time of intensive press coverage of the hunt for Hintsas
head by Nicholas Gcaleka. For a detailed discussion, see Shula Marks, Rewriting South
African History; or, The Hunt for Hintsas Head (University of Natal History Seminar
paper, April :qq6).
Chapter
Tintin and the Interruptions
of Congolese Comics
Nancy Rose Hunt
. . . sounds like he waswhat was it again? I completely forgot, although I read about it once
in the Tintin comics.
No [thats not it]. That I saw in the book Tintin au Congo. . . . Those are notions that
were brought [here], notions . . .
+snintxn\ (a Zairean painter) to Johannes Fabian, :q
That he [Tshibumba] aligns me with Tintin is not a gentle jibe.
r\ni\x, Remembering the Present, :qq6
Colonial imagery coulo be saoistic. Saoism can proouce laughter. Not only the Eu-
ropean viewer nos such mocking funny. The colonizeo, especially the mioole gure
enmesheo in mimetic preoicaments ,ano confronteo by the corporeal quanoary
. . . faceo by the |colonial| subject when obligeo to ioentify with an image which
provioes neither ioealization nor pleasure,,
1
laughs at minstrelsy-inspireo carica-
tures, too. The abjectness of these blackface rubrics basic to imperial popular cul-
ture proouces unease in us, their contemporary viewers.
2
It is through such en-
cumbrances that we can begin to fathom the ambivalent semiotics of colonial
comics ano their parooic oisruptions.
3
TINTIN IN BELGIUM
Visit a Brussels BD shopBDs are /oroc octrc, or comicsor a BD gallery-
opening in Charleroi, ano ask about African comics or BDs.
4
Ttrttr oo Corgo, the
only Tintin album not translateo into English,
5
will come right up. Yet most Bel-
gian BD-ists ,BD collectors, will also reel o a string of series titles that have in-
cluoeo a volume or more situateo in Congo-Zaire.
6
These albums range from post-
:q6o refabrications of colonial icons ano scripts to subtle, historically contextualizeo
/oroc octrc for aoults.
7
If the BD-ist you ask is up to oate, ano most prioe them-
selves in being so, he or she will also tell you to buy the most recent volume of the
crossover Congolese cartoon artist Barly Barutis Eco I., a glossy, stylizeo thriller
o
about an African political prisoner of the :qqos battling tropical art thieves in a
ctional oictatorship not unlike Mobutus Zaire.
8
Although you may not learn anything about comics publisheo locally in Congo-
Zaire, any Belgian can tell you plenty about Tintin, incluoing his infamous voyage
to colonial Congo. Ttrttr oo Corgo is notorious for its oepiction of animal slaughter
ano its caricatureo representation of the black booy: Basically, its all to oo with
rubbery lips ano heaps of oeao animals, accoroing to Sue Buswell, Tintins eoi-
tor at the British publisher Methuen.
9
The iconic booies quoteo other caricatures
in aovertisements selling tropical prooucts ano tropical climes, ano this cannibal
humor in turn was baseo on minstrelsy rubrics that hao been in wioe circulation
for oecaoes. The racializeo humor of Ttrttr is elemental, largely arising from con-
traoictory pairings ano episooes of misrecognition. After a parakeet lanos Tintins
oog Milou in the ship inrmary, for instance, the near-human pet mistakes a rgtc
carpenter, entering the room with saws, for his ooctor ano is terrieo. A pitch black
Congolese youth is known as Snowball. He is busy reaoing a copy of the Pcttt
Vtrgttmc, the Brussels-baseo chilorens newspaper for whom Tintinano Herg
workeo, as Tintin ano Milou arrive by ship to a cheering Congolese crowo. A Con-
golese oanoy refuses to help upright his oeraileo train after it collioes with Tintins
stuck car, this inoignant passenger ooes not want to get oirty. If the ioea of a clean
rgtc is a joke, so perhaps was that of a newspaper-reaoing Congolese. Other jokes
are just silly. The gangster car thief oisguises himself as priest. An olo pygmy is mis-
taken for a chilo. To make a lm about giraes, Tintin oresses up like one. Iinally,
the young boy-scout-like prankster of a reporter joins the latex of two rubber trees
to create a gigantic slingshot for launching rocks at enemies. Tintins Congo em-
braceo animals ano oiamono wealth, cars ano trains, international reporters, mis-
sionary priests, Chicago gangsters, ano primitive, oomesticateo, ano oanoieo
Congolese. Colonial mooernity appeareo as farce, an entertaining charaoe of con-
traoictory mixtures in a mixeo ano mixeo-up worlo. The central narrative turns
arouno the absuro alliance between a white villainsuccessively stowaway, car
thief, ano Al Caponeallieo Chicago gangsterwith a Congolese witch ooctor,
who envies the instant prestige of Tintin, an innocent white man hero whose oog
companion is oeclareo a chief by Congolese.
Many have oiscusseo this early newspaper-commissioneo comic strip, with its
weak storyline ano not yet oevelopeo Tintin character, as an anomaly in the oeu-
vre of Belgiums BD hero par excellence. Tintin was born in Brussels in :q.q, the
brainchilo of Georges Rmi, or, as he is better known, Herg ,a pseuoonym baseo
on the backwaro pronunciation of his initials, G.R.,. Herg also was born in Brus-
sels, ano he grew up orawing stories in pictures ano scouting. His rst comic series
appeareo in Lc Bo,-coot /clgc in :q.6. A year earlier, at the age of eighteen, Herg
was alreaoy working for the Catholic nationalist newspaper Lc Vtrgttmc Stclc: }oot-
rol cotloltqoc ct rottorol oc ooctttrc ct otrfotmottor, oirecteo by the resolute ano ener-
getic Abb Norbert Wallez. When in :q.8 this priest oecioeo to create a weekly
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics .
supplement for chiloren, Lc Pcttt Vtrgttmc, he put Herg in charge. Within a cou-
ple of months, Herg hao createo Tintin, a youth with an almost blank face, a strik-
ing qui of hair, ano a fox terrier nameo Milou.
BD critics ano biographers have reconstructeo Hergs colonial library, his
specically Congolese repertoire of icons, ano the instructions he receiveo from his
procolonial priest of a boss in :q.q.
10
Abb Wallez insisteo that Herg, who was
eager to move his hero Tintin from aoventures in Russia to more in America as soon
as possible, rst take time to promote the civilizing mission of the Congo. If Wallez
hao a colonial mission, he also hao a marketing one. Tintins trip to the Congo was
the rst time this comic gure was useo in aovertisingfor Brusselss biggest oe-
partment store of prooucts for colonists. Tintins supposeo return from the Congo
to Belgium in :q: was another occasion for this priest-publisher to promote the
colonial enterprise ano the cartoon hero he helpeo Herg invent. Wallez organizeo
two homecoming stunts in Brussels with actors posing as the returning Tintin. Con-
golese bearers ano a menagerie of wilo animals hireo from a circus escorteo
Tintin ano Milou. Crowos of chiloren oemanoeo their share of an insucient sup-
ply of sweets ano African souvenirs. When the performance was repeateo in Liege,
there was a near riot. Wallez was oelighteo.
11
So were the Belgian chiloren.
Hergs original black-ano-white Congo album, Lc occrtotc oc Ttrttr: Rcpottct
oo Pcttt Vtrgttmc oo Corgo, has been easy to no in Belgium since its facsimile re-
publication in :q8. The color album, Ttrttr oo Corgo, has been wioely available
since it reappeareo unoer a :q copyright. This substantially reviseo ano abbre-
viateo version rst maoe its way into print in :q,
12
at a time when Herg ano his
crew were reooing ano stanoaroizing all of Tintins aoventures for a postwar au-
oience requiring new gloss ano color. The Herg inoustry Europeanizeo the orig-
inal black-ano white version. Most famously, Tintins original geography lesson
about your fatherlano, Belgium to a mission classroom of Congolese became
an impartial arithmetic session. The new version also replaceo the use of Brussels
street vernacular by Congolese natives with a stanoaroizeo pcttt rgtc speech, al-
though it oio not reform the caricatureo, cannibal humor representation of the
black booy.
13
Herg is often creoiteo with being the father of Belgian ,ano Belgo-Irench, BDs.
He transformeo European serial visual stories by no longer separating text from
images as oescription, for the rst time, as in American comics since :8q6, he be-
gan inserting text as action within talking balloons situateo insioe the sequential
orawings.
14
Herg also changeo comics with his ltgrc clottc ,clean line, style, which
combineo very iconic characters with unusually realistic backgrounos.
15
His
highly abstract hero became a transcenoent, nave, boy-scout-like oo-goooer of a
reporter of about sixteen years in age. Tintin never ageo, never submitteo a story,
never loveo a woman, but he traveleo the worlo, from Russia to Congo to Amer-
ica to China ano beyono, even going to the moon in :q.
Herg ano Tintin are as basic ano everyoay to a common Belgian national imag-
inary as Magritte paintings or mussels with fries, no small feat in a country ever
: x\xcv nosr ntx+
more fractureo by linguistic bounoaries, especially since the Belgian state was feo-
eralizeo. Inoeeo, the cuisine, the monarchy, ano Tintin comics join Belgiums post-
colonies, corruption scanoals, wartime occupations, ano Sabena Airlines as some
of the few wioely resonant forms of imagining Belgium as a nation.
16
Tintin is, of
course, a global icon ano business, too. More than :.o million books have been solo
in almost forty languages. There are now Tintin stores in most major European
cities, ano the Irench think of Tintin as Irench.
17
But no one neeos a Tintin store
to no Herg prooucts in Belgium. Even news-ano-tobacco shops have BD sections
with Tintin subsections, selling at least one if not both versions of Ttrttr oo Corgo.
Iull sets of Hergs oeuvre are also available in numerous specialist BD shops of
Belgiums cities ano towns. As in Tintin shops in Brussels, Lonoon, ano Faris, the
albums are solo besioe Tintin posters, postcaros, key rings, T-shirts, ano calenoars.
Most of these prooucts can be purchaseo with Hergs stanoaroizeo colonial icon,
where the youthful reporter ano his oog set out in their car with their African boy,
movie camera, ano gun for slapstick aoventures in the Congo.
TINTIN IN AFRICA, OR NOT A GENTLE JIBE
Fierre Halen has suggesteo that Ttrttr oo Corgo was not colonial because Herg
never went to the Congo.
18
Yet King Leopolo II never went to his Congo either.
Authorship ano the authors location of writing oo not oetermine auoience,
ioentication, ano available reaoingsnor reprinting ano translation oecisions.
Hergs publisher in the Uniteo Kingoom, Methuen, refuseo to translate Ttrttr oo
Corgo into its English-language Tintin album line. Herg also grew embarrasseo by
the albums colonial paternalism, racist caricatures, ano slaughter of wilolife. One
version goes that he was not keen to keep the book on sale in later years, but the
continueo commercial success of the story won him rouno.
19
Another alluoes to
a fairly large perioo of oisgrace when Ttrttr oo Corgo was oicult to track oown.
It was a perioo of often painful oecolonization ano the book oio not seem partic-
ularly relevant.
20
While one version alternates between the colonial banning ano
the commercial quarantining of Ttrttr oo Corgo in the late :qos, another is that
Ttrttr oo Corgo solo better in Congo-Zaire than anywhere else. Harry Thompson
reporteo in :qq:: The biggest market of all was in the Belgian Congo, ano it con-
tinues to sell in great numbers in inoepenoent Zaire tooay. Zairian chiloren, it
seems, consioer it an honour that Tintin incluoeo their country in his list of those
meriting a visit.
21
This latter renoition has hao many wonoering about the comic
strips reception by Congolese, the apparent esteem by which this comic series,
notorious in the West for its exaggerateo imperial blackface rubrics, has been helo
within the Congo itself.
Less obvious within existing treatments has been how important it became to
the Herg-Casterman enterprise to prove the acceptability of Ttrttr oo Corgo to
postcolonial Congolese.
22
Herg playeo an active role in giving the later :q ver-
sion of Ttrttr oo Corgo to Congolese in late :q6q ,as he must have as well in agree-
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics
ing to have several other of his color albums publisheo in serial form in the pages
of _otc, a semi-glossy news magazine publisheo in Kinshasa,. _otc haileo its re-
publication of Ttrttr oo Corgo as a publishing coup ano holioay gift that woulo bring
pleasure to thousanos of reaoers ano their chiloren. The eoitors stateo that the
whitesthey also referreo to them as the colonial authoritieshao stoppeo the
circulation of Ttrttr oo Corgo in the late :qos so as not to oeno Congolese.
23
_o-
tc hao unoertaken a survey to see what Congolese from seven to seventy-seven
years thought. Most, the eoitors reporteo, consioereo Tintin as an integral part
of their patrimony, even a national hero. Moreover, Congolese were noing
material there by which to rioicule the whites who saw them like that! The next
issues installment of pages reminoeo reaoers to carefully save the entire series so
that they coulo assemble ano bino the complete story.
24
A Congolese intellectual baseo in Italy, Bauoouin-Ireooy Kasongo, wrote a let-
ter to the eoitors questioning the politics of a publishing oecision that woulo rein-
force colonizeo mentalities in his home country. He conoemneo Ttrttr oo Corgo as
a vast imaginary venture, which was packeo with prejuoices against the black
man ano stinks of an out-of-oate ano scanoalous paternalism.
25
The eoitors
scoeo at the criticisms of this censorious Congolese nameo after the Belgian king:
Congolese youth oont have complexes |are not complcx|, ano its in this per-
spective that we oecioeo that this series . . . woulo amuse the youth of Congo.
26
Tintin worship continueo to be enoorseo in this Mobutiste magazine in pre-
authenticity Zaire. When Neil Armstrong took his rst steps on the moon in :qo,
_otcs eoitors printeo an image of Tintin walking on the moon from Hergs :q
album, ano the leao story was titleo: Armstrong: : years after Tintin. An inter-
view with Herg ano a special orawing as a New Years gift for _otc reaoers fol-
loweo.
27
About this same time, Congolese youth began oancing Apollo oances, ano
a new comic character nameo Apolosaperhaps Congo-Zaires most popular ano
subversive everwas born on Kinshasas streets.
28
A former railroao employee in Lubumbashi weloeo spitting silhouettes of Tintin
ano Milou out of a thick iron wire some time before :q, when a Belgian profes-
sor remarkeo on the beautifully crafteo BD hero ano his oog on a visit to the car-
icaturists home. When the same historian was leaving Zaire a few years later, the
son of this spontaneous BD sculptor presenteo the outline shapes as a oeparture
gift. When the carefully wrappeo silhouettes subsequently went through security at
the Lille airport in a plastic bag, the agents recognizeo Tintin ano Milou on their
X-ray screen ano laugheo. The same wire gures were later proouceo by a jury
member at the ooctoral oefense of a Irench stuoent who mistakenly suggesteo,
echoing the wish of Bauoouin-Ireooy Kasongo, that Ttrttr oo Corgo was so racially
oensive that it hao been censoreo in Zaire since inoepenoence.
29
That Tintin has become an icon ano a commooity in francophone Africa is ap-
parent in Abiojan, where Tintin albums ano souvenirs proouceo by the Belgian
publisher Casterman are available in one major bookstore. Locally sculpteo color
gures oepicting Tintin are for sale in tourist curio shops, too, alongsioe European
x\xcv nosr ntx+
colonist ano African colonial ooctor, lawyer, big man, ano tttotllcot gures. Who
buys these? I askeo recently in Abiojan, pointing to the Tintin colon statues. Bel-
gians was the immeoiate response. Tintin images are also for sale in anglophone
Africa. When I askeo who bought Tintin colon sculptures in Accra, I receiveo
the same semi-joking answer: Belgians. T-shirts celebrating Tintin in Zanzibar
ano Dar es Salaam were likewise for sale in Tanzanian tourist shops in the late
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics
Iigure .:. Weloeo silhouette by Lubumbashi railway worker, ca. :qo. Cour-
tesy Jean-Luc Vellut.
:qqos,
30
ano Tintin au Congo paintings were reaoily available in Brazzaville in
:qq6.
31
Ttrttr oo Corgo has become a postcolonial jokein Zaire ano beyonoabout
the Western visitors interesteo in colonial nostalgia ano jungle aoventure tales.
32
Tintin gures are also much more than a postcolonial joke in Congo-Zaire. Zairi-
ans in Brussels tolo me in :qq6 how Ttrttr oo Corgo albums were eagerly sought,
though oicult-to-no collector items among the mioole class. Not only oo chil-
oren love reaoing these aoventures, Blaise-Fascal Baruani tolo me, but parents also
buy the album for their chiloren if they can to show them the colonizeo worlo
their parents once liveo in ano how Europeans imagineo Congolese subjects.
33
In :qq6, the creative writer ano literary critic Yoka Lye was imagining Tintin
gures all over Mobutus Zaire. He useo the metaphor for nave urban Zairian in-
tellectuals who were romanticizing rural life as home ano traoition as well as for
the latest boy scout gures without boroersrefugee workers, ooctors, ano jour-
nalistswho lano as heroes ano are airlifteo out when they are reaoy for their sto-
ries to eno.
34
That he aligns me with Ttrttr is not a gentle jibe, Johannes Iabian aomitteo
about his ethnographic confrontation of :q with the popular historical painter
Tshibumba Kanoa Matula. That Tshibumba was an avio reaoer of Hergs
comics is signicant. So, too, is the fact that Ttrttr oo Corgo hao become vital to
local unoerstanoings of colonial oiscourse. Yet Tshibumbas ungentle alignment
was also a way of poking fun at the anthropologists categories ano earnestness, of
teasing Iabian that his habits of consuming ano reprooucing serial images ano oi-
alogues, as well as his appearances ano oisappearances by airplane, maoe him too
just one more Tintin.
35
VIEWING A COLONIAL ARCHIVE
It woulo be nice to know exactly lo. Congolese hao access to Herg comics prior
to :q. One can surmise that Ttrttr oo Corgo must have founo its way onto coee
tables ano chilorens beos in Belgian homes, into bookshops catering to Europeans,
ano perhaps into libraries ano kiosks catering to Congolese. Belgians who were
living in the Belgian Congo woulo have hao copies of BD albums ano Ttrttr ano
Spttoo magazines.
36
Yet how ano when these Belgian BDs came into native hanos
is not clear, even if aective ano surreptitious moments in oomestic service rela-
tionships woulo have representeo opportunities for looking ano reaoing, borrow-
ing ano theft.
Bogumil Jewsiewicki evokes the walls ano living rooms of Congolese urban sub-
jects, asserting that pictures cut from magazines ano catalogues, have oecorateo
Zairian homes since at least :q.o. Yet with what kinos of images oio people oec-
orate their walls, we shoulo ask. Certainly, we neeo to know more about what
colonists reao ano vieweo. Yet we shoulo not assume that what Congolese con-
sumeo were always items oiscaroeo by whites, that only urbanizeo Congolese
x\xcv nosr ntx+
hao access to such screens of blackness, ano that such imagery exposeo only
the authoritarianism of inoustrial mass culture. Jewsiewickis chronology on
Congolese interior oecorationonly magazine ano catalog illustrations from
the :q.os, still photographs from the :qos, ano paintings from the :qosis surely
too circumscribeo. It seems unlikely that African urban culture was really
crusheo ouring the :qos.
37
The evioence below suggests that visual culture at
least ourisheo ouring this oecaoe, ano not only in cities, but wherever newspa-
pers traveleo.
What access oio Congolese have to comics? Dio they glimpse BDs in shops or
schools? Dio they oraw comics themselves? Here I focus on the proouction of car-
icatureo images in newspapers ano periooicals publisheo in the Congo, orawing
on a small portion of Jean Berlages bibliography of some 6oo titles.
38
Such an
exercise places the colonial-minstrelsy rubric of Tintin within a larger context. It
also reveals a wioe circulation of forms, multiple prooucers ano authors, ano mo-
tivateo icons ano meanings. My rst questions were simple: What was out there?
Ano, how was the booy gureo within these images? The recursive iconic ele-
ments ano symbols
39
that I trace are those of a cannibal-humor-oeriveo, highly
abstracteo, cheerful blackface gure ano his counterpart, an inoignant oanoy
gure. Each of these is a male gure, although their genoer meanings oier. I also
ask how subject ioentication was formeo. Was it involuntary or oio it allow for
multiple ioentications ano reaoings? What kinos of quanoaries ano refusals oio
such ioentications proouce?
Scott McClouo suggests that there are two central aspects to comics. One is at
the level of the cartoon, the single frame that makes up a comic strip or sequence
of panels.
40
The other aspect is the contiguity of the sequential form. Comics, he
says, are composeo of cartoons ,icons, useo to represent a person, place, or thing.
The key characteristic of a cartoon is amplication through simplication. It ab-
stracts an image through simplifying its form, meanwhile accentuating a particu-
lar meaning. These abstractions pctmtt reaoer-ioentication with a character or an
object. Most comics use cartoons for characters, for the worlo within.
41
Tintin
is such an abstract gure, McClouo explains, that the worlo within ,him, the sub-
ject, remains quite open to multiple reaoings. Hergs ltgrc clottc combination, which
combineo realism ano abstractions,
42
alloweo reaoers to travel the globe ano planet
with his boy scout, while masking themselves in the oblique character of Tintin.
What happens if we turn McClouos logic towaro the blackface characters in Con-
golese comics? One wonoers if the historical context of colonial racism, segrega-
tion, ano minstrel imagery obligeo Congolese to ioentify with the iconic characters
who gure in the rest of this chapter. A key question neeos to be consioereo in fu-
ture research. As Congolese increasingly interveneo in the proouction of blackface-
ano oanoy-relateo icons, ano as the contexts of viewership changeo over time, oio
reaoers remain subjecteo, involuntarily ioentifying with oe-ioealizing screens of
blackness? When ano how oio ioentication grow more polysemic, opening comics
to writerly reaoings, infringements, ano inversions?
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics ,
THE ICONS AND AESTHETICS OF INTERWAR CONGO
The rst Ttrttr oo Corgo comics appeareo in :qo:, we saw, in a Belgian Catholic
newspapers special chilorens supplement publisheo on Sunoays in Brussels. The
rst cartoons proouceo by Congolese appeareo in :q in a Congolese Catholic
newspaper publisheo on Sunoays in Leopoloville. Lo Ctotx oo Corgo, publisheo by
the Scheutist congregation of missionary priests, was one of the rst newspapers
to try to create a Congolese reaoership. Its news items alternateo between Irench
ano Lingala, ano it incluoeo special stories, articles, amusements, ano comic strips
for African reaoers.
On September , :q, Le match oe Jako et Mako, appeareo beneath a blow-
by-blow account by Gabriel Elongo of a July football match between two Stan-
leyville teams with ever-so-Belgian names, the Count of Ilanoers ano the Duke of
Brabant. Elongo listeo each players Congolese name, noting that Alexis Njolo re-
placeo Antoine Sinoano after a knee injury.
43
The cartoons composition ,text,
was by Louchet, while the linocut
44
was by Faul Lomami of Kinshasa.
45
The
six frames in the single panel oepict two gures kicking a ball between them unoer
a palm tree, the text explains that they are members of a soccer team preparing for
Sunoays game. Jako ano Mako are monkeys percheo in a tree watching this game
of kicking ano stopping this rouno machine of a ball. When Fierre ano Faul leave
to rest, Jako ano Mako come oown from the tree with a coconut as their ball. When
Mako kicks the coconut ano Jako blocks the shot with his heao, they shriek in pain.
This rst Congolese comic strip, at least partly proouceo by a Congolese, is about
the oangers of mimicry. Like Tintin, Jako ano Mako was for the young at heart,
was publisheo by priests, ano hao an eoucational goal, while poking fun. Fierre ano
Faul appear as whites, counterposeo to the two aping monkey gures who climb
out of the tree as Africans. Given the comic form ano the colonial context, incluoing
the ubiquity of blackface rubrics that animalizeo blacks as near apes, this visual
reaoing is the oominant one. Only the text ,Fierre ano Faul are preparing for Sun-
oays match, ano aooitional context ,Elongos report, allow the viewer to alter this
reaoing. The text, if reao, allows the spectator to shift among the alternativevi-
sual ano textually meoiateoreaoings provioeo by the comics-plus-segregateo-text
form, thus to shift from the visual reaoing of white ,man, versus black ,monkey, to
the textually meoiateo one of mioole / not quite colonizeo, with a European
name, versus low/ quite colonizeo, with a Congolese name.
46
Little attention has been paio to the range of ironic representations of the
booy available in francophone colonial worlos. Some were slapstick, some were
wry. Some were for aoults, some were for chiloren. Often this oivioe was a
European-African one, too, as if all Africans are chiloren. Some icons were in
the form of aovertising, some maoe fun of aovertising. Some teaseo about Eu-
ropean colonial life, some laugheo at the colonizeo, some oio both at the same
time. In the interwar perioo, Europeansano Congolesemay have been sat-
urateo with the icons of colonial cannibal humor ,incluoing Ttrttr oo Corgos
8 x\xcv nosr ntx+
Iigure ... Le match oe Jako et Mako by Louchet, with
linocut by Faul Lomami, from Lo Ctotx oo Corgolot ,Kinshasa,
,September , :q,: .
blackface abstractions,, yet these were not the only icons available, nor the only
aesthetic. This was also the heyoay for a more high culture, sometimes surre-
alist fashion for lott rgtc.
Comics about colonial oanoy gures oate back as far as the :8qos in Belgian
colonial publications. In the :q.os, cartoons in colonial newspapers were rare, ano
those that oio appear tenoeo to be European imports.
47
By :qo, minstrel jokes
began to appear inoepenoently of colonial aos. Jim, Jim, a mammy gure says
to her son with big lips ano curly hair in a cartoon calleo Illusion: You will al-
ways be the white sheep of the family.
48
European colonial life, however, was cos-
mopolitan, even if oierently so in Kinshasa ,Leopoloville, than in Elisabethville.
By :q:, a multilingual weekly calleo Como-Itr appeareo, with special attention
paio to cultural news ano the international, multilingual nature of Kinshasa life
ano its jazz-lleo nightlife.
49
An exhibition of art maoe by Congo-baseo European
painters receiveo much attention, while aovertisements featureo Josephine Baker
lms ano jazz clubs. Comic blockprint-baseo orawings by Narib with Linos by
Como-Itr were a regular feature. One featureo a nocturnal scene of bar life in
the mioole of Lent with tipsy canoles ano tipsy white men ano one white woman
listening to an African jazz bano. Another was a parooy of an ao for whiskey ano
sooa, serveo by a quick, stylish Congolese waiter to a smiling white man, all with
an art oeco feel. Yet another teaseo about the citys smells with an image of a group
of colonial-helmeteo Europeans oonning Worlo War I gas masks in a Kinshasa
street, they were busy rescuing a frieno who hao passeo out from the pungent ooor
of salteo sh, oropping helter-skelter from the large, overlleo sack of a hurrieo
African porter.
50
A taste for this kino of wry colonial image soareo in the :qos in journals as oi-
verse as this cosmopolitan, Leopoloville literary magazine ano Lc Coq Clortc, a mis-
sionary publication for Congolese Mongo. Lc Coq Clortc oio not carry publicity, rather
only Church news ano catechist writings, but it oio incluoe whimsical linocut art about
colonial lifea Congolese soloier, a whirling trumpet player in a uniform, a smoker.
There was no text. These were not cartoons that maoe viewers laugh, their abstracteo
icons proouceo ironic smiles, whimsical aection. They were not exaggerateo, black-
face stick gures, even though the technology relieo on black ano white impressions
to create a wry, sometimes even sensuous aesthetic.
51
Lo Ctotx oo Corgo began to appear every Sunoay in :q.. ^gorgo, the }ootrol oc
Irotgrc oo Corgo Bclgc, or Botoo ,o 1oto .o Iorgo Bclct, began to appear every Sat-
uroay in Elisabethville in :q. Lo Ctotx oo Corgo was a Catholic publication, ano
part of it was publisheo in Lingala. ^gorgo was oirecteo ano owneo by A. Ver-
beken, an honorary oistrict commissioner in Katanga, it appeareo with texts in
Irench ano Swahili, as well as carnal blackface aovertisements,
52
ano cartoons
by SAV. One SAV cartoon, Elgances ou oimanche, shows a oanoieo, sex-
ualizeo African woman with hanobag, tight short oress, ano umbrella walking with
such allure in front of Salomon 8 Cos open shop that even a tennis-racket-
clutching oanoy gure pauses to take a look. Another shows a group of chaineo
.oo x\xcv nosr ntx+
Iigure .. Vision oe guerre by Narib, in Como-Itr ,Kinshasa, :, :6 ,April :q, :q,: :6.
Iigure .. Congolese
soloier in fez cap, in Lc Coq
clortc ,Coquilhatville, , .
,October :, :qq,.
prisoners being knockeo against trees ano one another because one of them has
trieo to run away.
53
Neither Jako ano Mako or Ttrttr oo Corgo is similarly saoistic. Tintins fanci-
ful, self-mocking aoolescent humor is always wholesome. There are no women ano
no sexuality in Tintin comics, even if colonial relations are problematizeo in Ttrttr
oo Corgo.
54
Likewise, the gures in Jako ano Mako were neither the sensuous,
ironic booies of colonial art blockprints nor the sexualizeo or terrorizeo ones of
SAVs cartoons. Jako ano Mako are slapstick gures who caricature the male gen-
oer, the black race, ano the preoicaments of mimicry in the colony.
The aesthetic range of the interwar years incluoeo room for accioents, space for
surprise, even the surreal playing with the oebris of war to cope with smelly Ki-
nois sh. Still, there were at least two oierent styles at work, whether visible in
oierent newspapers or meoiateo by oierent cities.
55
In Leopoloville ,Kinshasa,,
Como-Itr wisheo to be roaring with its jazz, its wilo, cosmopolitan scenes suggest-
ing that colonial splenoor coulo be fun ano urbane. Meanwhile, Lo Ctotx oo Corgo
provioeo chilorens play for Congolese, further separating them from this segre-
gateo worlo of European leisure. In Elisabethville, the bilingual newspapers reao-
ing publics were multiracial, ^gorgo provioeo sexualizeo ano colonial aoult humor
for Congolese ano Europeans alike, while poking ambivalent fun at the oroeals of
colonial connement.
.o: x\xcv nosr ntx+
Iigure .. Les enchains by SAV, ^gorgo ,Elisabethville, :, .q ,December :, :q,: ..
POSTWAR 1: MBUMBULU
One of the rst comic strips explicitly proouceo for Congolese was the Aoccrtotc
of M/om/olo. It appeareo in the state-publisheo ,although missionary-inuenceo,
photographic magazine for Congolese, ô Imogc, which circulateo wioely in the
colonys four major vernacular languages from :q6 on. ô Imogc severeo typical
links between listening ano reaoing publics in the Congo. Anyone who coulo see
coulo reao ô Imogc photographic ano cartoon texts. Fackeo with photographs,
this biweekly was in a sense the Belgian Congos Ltfc magazine. Reaoers coulo seno
in photos of themselves, ano many of these were publisheo.
Mbumbulu became the newspapers mascot from its rst issue, when the front
page announceo that his aoventures woulo soon begin. His highly abstract, black-
face image, with oversizeo white lips ano eyeballs ano a white circle of a nose, was
useo to aovertise subscriptions ano seno holioay wishes. Ior the rst forty-two
episooes, M/om/olo was signeo by Masta, a pseuoonym likely chosen as parooy
by Irere Marc, the rst of the four graphic artistsano the only missionarywho
orew the series orawings.
56
The Masta signature oisappeareo with the forty-fourth
issue of ô Imogc in :q:, just as the images lost their ltgrc clottc aesthetic for a busy,
muooieo look. By :q ,with issue no. 8,, the BD series carrieo a new title, Tlc Ao-
ccrtotc of tlc M/om/olo Fomtl,. Mbumbulu hao grown up, becoming not only father
but granofather, enmesheo in a purposive narrative in search of a oioactic plot.
Mbumbulu announceo that he was a fotccota practical jokerin the rst of
Mastas episooes, ano he acteo like an inoignant oanoy in the secono. When he went
hunting with his white boss in the thiro, he accioentally hit him with an arrow in
his behino. In the fourth, he thought he hao come across a new magic pen, ano he
enoeo up squirting some onlookers, incluoing a European boss, with ink. After these
rst few episooes, space to rioicule colonial authority gures oisappeareo. The con-
trolling intentions of Mastas images became blunter as Mbumbulus aoventures
turneo to the classic oioactic tropes of Belgian colonial propaganoa: the oangers of
excessive orinking ano the virtues of saving money, marrying in a church, ano turn-
ing over a gooo share of ones wages to ones wife. Mbumbulu, the colonizeo Gooo
Samaritan, receives colonial meoals for his righteous oeeos, he fathers accomplisheo,
colonial-traineo chiloren. By their close, Mbumbulus aoventures hao settleo oown
into a colonial how-to strip oemonstrating a mooel, mooest colo family.
M/om/olo, like most colonial BDs of the time, oio not integrate text ano images
through the use of talking balloons. Insteao, explanatory texts ran below each car-
toon frame. The text remaineo superuous, usually unoerlining the visual point,
quite unlike the textual aooitions of Jako ano Mako that enableo new reaoings.
Mbumbulu remaineo a colonial-maoe, bumbling, minstrel-like pcttt rgtc gure.
He hao many of the slapstick, repetitive, ano narrative-weak characteristics of
Ttrttr oo Corgo. He oio not speak, ano he was a solitary fotccotwas no Milou, no
Mako, no Filipili. Yet M/om/olo was in many ways a semiotic oiminutive of Ttrttr
oo Corgo. While there are no car thefts in Mbumbulus aoventures, a toy car crashes
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics .o
Iigure .6. Les aventures oe Mbumbulu by Masta, in ô Imogc ,Kinshasa,
:, ,September :, :q8,.
ano bicycles are plentiful. One M/om/olo episooe is about a bicycle theft, another
features a too-stylishly embellisheo one. Tintin orives a car, Mbumbulu rioes a bi-
cycle. The rst, more comical episooes, createo by Irere Marc, were also similar
to Motomoto oro Ptltptlt, a popular burlesque missionary-proouceo lm series rem-
iniscent of Laurel ano Haroy ano proouceo with Congolese actors in Luluabourg.
57
Catholic missionaries were keen to proouce eoucational ctional forms for ano
about Congolese subjects, ano several priests became involveo in the proouction of
narrative, ctional lms for Congolese spectators such as Motomoto.
58
Whereas
Mbumbulu is an authoritarian husbano ano father,
59
Matamata is harasseo by his
oomineering wife, who chases after him on payoay, hitting him ano reproaching
him for wasting his wages in bars. The next payoay, Matamata outifully gives her
his pay in front of their colo house. Other comic episooes have Matamata ano
Filipili oefying colonial authority, even running away from chasing Congolese po-
lice. Matamata enjoys the prestige of reaoing newspapers, but it makes him an
absentminoeo father. One oay his wife tells him to take the chiloren for a walk. As
he pores over the pages of Lo Ctotx oo Corgo, each chilo wanoers o ano gets into
trouble without his noticing. One by one they oisappear, his baby crawls out of
the pram, ano a European baby climbs in insteao.
60
M/om/olo, except in its rst
few episooes, ooes not come near the humor of these spoofs.
61
Immeoiately after M/om/olo enoeo, with its :.th episooe in December :q,
the series was reprinteo as an album. Reaoers of ô Imogc were aoviseo to hurry
to buy one because few of the q,ooo copies printeo were left, ano the many aos for
it show a beaming colo couple reaoing theirs together. Does the narrative of Bel-
gian colonial ocials censoring Ttrttr oo Corgo relate to the oisappearance of M/om-
/olo? There is no evioence of a Congolese reaoing ano viewing public ever ob-
jecting to this oe-ioealizing screen of blackness. Nor oio blackface rubrics oisappear.
ô Imogc reaoers hao access to new comics especially oesigneo for them. The ao-
ventures of Mayele ,Clever, ano how he built a house, for example, were equally
oerivative of minstrel icons ano equally patronizing in their oioacticism. Others
in LArttlopc, a chilorens paper, were Congolese-orawn animal stories. Allin racial
termswere miloer than M/om/olo.
THE FIFTIES: A CONGOLESE SUPERMAN
AND AN INTERRUPTED COMIC STRIP
Klim aos by Boroen showeo a male oomestic worker beneath a talking cow, the
strip oetaileo how to mix the powoereo milk. Blue Bano featureo a young boy,
Makasi, ano the breao ano margarine sanowiches his mother maoe him to make
him strong while swimming. Youthful Lon cures a migraine after his boss, the white
owner of a truck repair shop, suggests Aspro tablets. Such comic-baseo aovertise-
ments, common in Congolese newspapers ano magazines, were among the comics
proouceo by Europeans ano intenoeo for Congolese in the :qos. The blockprint
aesthetic oeclineo, at least in newspapers ano magazines, although it surviveo as a
feature of some colonial novels.
The new phenomenon of comics for Congolese gave birth in :q to a Con-
golese Superman calleo Sao, orawn by Faul Merle. Aoventure ano bravery with
Sao the aovocate who vanquishes ano reoresses wrongs |lc ottctct| appeareo in
the Actualits africaines ,African news, pages of the Elisabethville paper LAccrtt.
Sao is a loyal colonial subject who punishes vice, he even helps a white store-
keeper solve a theft problem. He is portrayeo as a hanosome black man, with
noncaricatureo facial features ano a hypermuscular booy, ano wears a Super-
manlike outt of tight-tting shorts, belt, ano singlet, with metal wrist banos.
Blackface rubrics haroly oisappeareo, however. If the oanoy gure as embooieo
by Sao lost his transgressive inoignation, the cannibal was infantilizeo ano oo-
mesticateo. Sao maoe his oebut at the same time as the joyous owarf . . .
Tshibamba, an abstract, thick-lippeo, happy circus elf of a gure wearing a
checkereo suit ano bowtie. We neeo only reao Fatrice Lumumbas oeant state-
ment at inoepenoence in oroer to recall that Congolese colo hao become very
sensitive to icons ano texts comparing colonizeo black men to monkeys. Soo was
an early compromise. It maoe room, for the rst time, for a hyperbolic, phallic,
black masculinity.
In the :qos, the rare BDs orawn by Congolese resembleo comic strips more than
Faul Lomamis linocuts oio. In :q, well before M/om/olo ceaseo, the rst
Congolese-orawn BD since Lomamis :q. Jako ano Mako appeareo. Like the
latter, M/o oro Mpto was printeo in Lo Ctotx oo Corgo. F. MBila was the native il-
lustrator of this series about the escapaoes of a rascally pair of twins, not unlike
Hergs Brussels urchins Quick ano Ilupke.
62
MBila orawings were ruoimentary,
accompanieo by a nonballooneo explanatory storyline. Each episooe hao three
panels. Iew of the orawingsano none of the frameswere inherently comic,
even if proportion was often oistorteo ,perhaps unintentionally,.
Whereas the white colonial superego is always in the backgrouno in M/om/olo
in the shape of the authors pseuoonym Masta, in M/o oro Mpto, European
gures ano ethics oisappear. The story begins one Sunoay in Kinshasa. The mis-
chievous twins, who wear shorts ano caps ano have Kikongo names, are boreo be-
cause they cant no any biros to shoot at with their slingshots Suooenly, they hear
the voice of Fierre Monoko, shown wearing his tie on the other sioe of the urban
resioential enclosure: Unooubteoly another palaver with his wife . . . poor Faulina,
she has alreaoy seen plenty with her nitwit of a husbano . . . what else is she going
to unoergo? Mbu ano Mpia approach, witnessing the couples spat. Mbu ano
Mpia oont like the pretentious Monoko, who is shown shaking his nger at his wife
as she goes o to buy fooo to prepare for him.
The twins oecioe to play a memorable trick on this arrogantano Tshiluba-
speakingcolo. Fercheo on a chair, Monsieur Monoko practices a speech that
.o x\xcv nosr ntx+
he hopes will leao to his election as presioent of The Ilower of Kasai, the par-
ooic name of an ethnic association of Luba resioents. While Monoko continues his
preparations, shaving over a large china bowl in his backyaro, young Mbu takes
aim. His slingshot is much smaller than Tintins was, but the stone shatters
Monokos shaving bowl. Iurious, the half-shaveo Monoko chases after the twins.
The two Bakongo pranksters hioe behino a policeman in a reo fez cap. He oe-
fenos them against the rioiculous-looking Monoko, his razor in hano ano his black
face still covereo with white soap. A colonial soap joke about the impossibility of
cleaningwhiteninga rgtc is embeooeo in this image.
63
The young villains continue playing pranks of this sort for another ten episooes.
They leave the policeman with a calabash hanging from his behino, before wrap-
ping up a brick as a mysterious gift for the speech-preparing Luba upstart from Ka-
sai. Again furious, Monoko aims the brick at these young scounorels. He misses.
They apologize. Satiseo, the pompous Monsieur Monoko goes o to search for
his speech, hoping to persuaoe these trickster boys to leave him alone. They pre-
pare a new escapaoe, involving the chair ano a rope. Ferhaps the ioea was to make
Monoko tumble to the grouno when he next mounteo the chair to practice his
speech, but there is no next frame! Insteao, the eoitors reporteo in the next issue
that the strip hao to be interrupteo because the native illustrator hao faileo to
supply his orawings: We hope that the interruption will not last long.
64
MBilas illustrateo sequential story never reappeareo. Ferhaps his oefection
or removal?was oue to the very plot he was enmesheo in prooucing. The reo-
fezzeo city policeman may have been the butt of one prank. However, Mbu ano
Mpia oirect most of their farcical scorn at the nger-waving, brick-hurling, tie-
wearing, speech-inclineo colonial parvenu Monoko. This ostentatious colo is a
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics .o,
Iigure .. Mbu et Mpia. . . . espiegles Kinois by F. MBila, in Lo Ctotx oo Corgolot ,Kin-
shasa, ., :6 ,April .6, :q,: .
Luba ,while his wife shops in a Bakongo market at Camp Cito,. The text implies
that the two young pranksters are members of an urban gang of thieves. Regaro-
less, the pair make fun of a rising colo ethnic group of immigrant urban elites in
a colonial story where all the charactershusbano ano wife, Mbu ano Mpia, ano
the policemanare Congolese.
65
The relationship between text ano image was also more complicateo than in
M/om/olo. It was the accompanying text, more than the images themselves, that
maoe this strip oangerous. Because the images are weak, unable to carry a central
storyline, the text more than supplements the images, its specicities exceeo them.
Ferhaps the eoitors stoppeo the M/o oro Mpto series because it seemeo to be en-
couraging juvenile oelinquency. But it was the text that insisteo that reaoers un-
oerstano the pranks against Monoko as ethnic mockery. Was the interruption a mis-
sionary oecision? Or oio MBila stop prooucing the work because he became
frighteneo? At the time he ceaseo prooucing his orawing, the eoitors ioentieo
MBila as the native illustrator? Who was writing the script? Ano which came
rst? We shall never know. But we might surmise that it became untenable for two
unruly boys to poke fun ano aim slingshots at the ostentation of an colo in :q
ano oangerous to valorize anti-Luba juvenile oelinquency as fun. The fact that
a blackface soap joke aoos to the rioicule of Monoko also reminos us of how stock
an icon this hao become in Congolese visual vocabularies.
POCO RETURNS
Try to no an eoucateoeven semi-eoucateofrancophone African who has not
hearo of Tintin. Try to no a Nigerian or Ghanaian, never mino an American,
who ooes not express surprise at the glossy, colorful, witty, sequential graphic nov-
els coming out of francophone Europe ano Africa. The rst major African graphic
novelists are coming out of Kinshasa, Libreville, Abiojan, ano Dakar. Ano Irench
ano Belgian cultural agencies are helping to create comic artists, just as their preo-
ecessors proouceo novelists ano water-colorists in the interwar ano postwar peri-
oos.
66
There has been an explosion of comic forms proouceo in the Congo since in-
oepenoence, ranging from oevelopment comics, to the use of serial, caricatureo
juxtapositions in popular paintings, to Mobutus life story, to ephemeral street
comics. Multiple circuits, markets, ano sites of authorship are implicateo in the pro-
ouction ano consumption of comics, especially those of postcolonial Congo. Any-
one can scribble cartoons. Some scribbles approach art. What makes its way into
print is an inoication of at least minimal access to printing presses or photocopy-
ing machines, orawing tools, ano consumers. BDs, wherever they get reproouceo,
wherever they circulate, have markets. Not all reaoers or viewers are purchasing
consumers, but sales oetermine auoiences as well as creation ano publication oe-
cisions. Unless BDs are proouceo as gifts, as schoolbooks, or as oevelopment hano-
outs, that is, ano this kino of proouction has not been slenoer. Inoeeo, one of the
.o8 x\xcv nosr ntx+
most important publishers of postcolonial BDs by Zairians since :q8: has been
the Belgian cooperation ano oevelopment agency, the Aoministration gnrale
oe la coopration au oveloppement ,AGCD,. Even more important has been
Congo-Zaires largest publisher, Saint Faul Afrique, a Catholic-owneo press with
the only chain of bookstores ano the most reasonable prices in the country. They,
like their Catholic counterparts worlowioe encourage ano publish BDs o /or Dtco.
,Brusselss monumental basilica promotes its BD shop ano research center as you
enter the catheoral ooors!,
67
Herg went out of his way to proouce the impression in :q6q that Congolese
wanteo Ttrttr oo Corgo reprinteo. _otc also publisheo other Tintin albums in serial
form in the early :qos ,incluoing Lc Tcmplc oo olctl ano Lc , /oolc oc ct,tol ,. Tintin
has hao institutional ano economic legacies on the cultural proouction of
Congolese-createo BDsin ano outsioe of Congo-Zaireever since. Barly Barutis
rst major album, for example, resembles Ttrttr oo Corgo, ano he createo Lo cottotc!
Cct loccrtotc while ooing an internship in the Herg Stuoios in Brussels in the mio
:q8os. Both are African oetective-like aoventure stories replete with animals, au-
tomobiles, ano chases after wickeo men. Race is much less central in Barutis al-
bum than class pretensions, oestitution amio colonial oebris, ano abuse of wealth
ano power.
68
In :q8, youth using the library of Kinshasas Irench Cultural Cen-
ter tenoeo to go there to reao BDs.
69
Tintin albums were certainly available. In
the :q8os, wealthier Kinois youth were noing a rental market for their most re-
cently importeo BD albums.
70
Herg ano his largesse also fostereo the careers of two of the major Congolese
cartoon artists, Mongo Sis ano Barly Baruti. Not until :q. oio _otc begin to pub-
lish its rst BDs written ano orawn by a Zairian. Mongo Awai Sis reviveo the
missionary-inventeo, fat-ano-thin colonial movie buoons as his own cartoon
gures, ano _otc was the rst to publish these Accrtotc oc Moto Moto ct Ptlt Ptlt ,e.g.,
Le cheque in :q. ano La pouore oe chasse in :q,.
71
By the early :q8os,
Mongo Sis was receiving his rst contracts from the Belgian cooperation funos of
the AGCD.
72
Baruti seems at rst glance to be Mongo Siss heir as the most successful car-
toonist of oevelopment contracts. In quite similar ways, the talents of these two
cartoonists came to the attention of the AGCD ano were pusheo forwaro by in-
ternships at the celebrateo Herg Stuoios. These BD-for-oevelopment contracts
ano visits to Belgian BD-oom enableo them to enrich their contacts with Belgian
ano Europeancartoonists. Each went on to publish their own humorous aoven-
ture BD albums. Whereas Mongo Sis oevoteo a BD to Mobutu in a Kinshasa
weekly at one point, Barly Baruti moveo to Kinshasa about :qqo, just after oe-
mocratization began ano a liberalizeo press appeareo. Virtually all ocial Belgian
cooperation in the city but a single francophone Belgian cultural center hao closeo
oown. Baruti beneteo from this young Belgian cultural milieu, interesteo in pro-
moting culture as ,sometimes subversive, oevelopment. His activities in encour-
aging youth to make BDs, like the BD association he helpeo founo, became sus-
pect. There were seven BD associations ano some sixty cartoonists in Kinshasa at
the time. Some work leaneo towaro the oioactic, health-relateo NGOs ano anti-
AIDS funos tenoeo to support these. Other BDs treateo popular urban lore, espe-
cially those by Mfumueto. Many Congolese novelists aspire to high culture, but
only the low-brow popular novelist Zamenga was turning to BDs, incluoing an in-
triguingly ironic one ,orawn by Masioni, about a white man who becomes the tri-
umphant hero of a crowo of Zairian women after teaching them about the oan-
gers of skin-lightening cream ano encouraging prioe in their black skin.
73
Ephemeral street comics were fairly common in Mobutus Zaire, ano youth con-
sciousness ano BD speech unoerlay the military raios on BD artists ano associa-
tions in :qq:. Looting was both ranoom ano highly strategic, ano the BD associa-
tion to which Baruti belongeo ano his home were both pillageo by soloiers. He is
nonetheless, in the eyes of many, an African success story as a comic strip artist.
His internship at the Herg Stuoios leo to the publication of the rst BD album in
color by a Zairian cartoonist. Shortly after he came to live in Belgium in :qq., Brus-
selss francophone oaily, Lc Sott, ran a small feature on him.
Barly Barutis Lokele father, of oistant Arab oescent, was nameo Livingstone
at birth.
74
He was a painter ano, at least in his sons eyes, a well-heeleo profes-
sional who workeo for international organizations baseo in Kisangani, with a pri-
vate library of books ,ano BDs, at their home. In :qq6, Baruti liveo on the out-
skirts of Brussels, was cutting his rst musical CD, nishing the thiro volume of Eco
I., ano aliateo as an active ortmotcot with Ti Suka, an unusual, nonprot Brus-
sels culture ano oevelopment association. As well as assisting Ti Suka with the
politicizeo BD contest Corcoot BD Btoxcllc-Itrloo,
75
Baruti was also noing
an international, primarily Belgian auoience for the prize-winning Eco I. This lav-
ishly proouceo album cost arouno BEI o ,about U.S.$:, a copy, so only Zaires
slenoer class of ruling thieves woulo have been able to aoro it at the time.
CATHOLIC AUDIENCES
Herg once wonoereo why he receiveo so much fan mail from Inoia.
76
In Maoa-
gascar, a Jesuit priest informeo him, schoolchiloren leo past a volume of Ttrttr
oisplayeo unoer glass, a missionary turning over a new page each oay.
77
We can-
not, of course, trace such aooration to Ttrttr oo Corgo ano the eects of its contin-
uing circulation within ano outsioe of Congo-Zaire. Nor is Baruti the only Con-
golese comic artist with a transnational career. Maurice Kalibiona, a Belgian-born
cartoonist of Congolese oescent, went on a pilgrimage to Meojugorge in Bosnia-
Herzegovinia in the early :qqos ,just before the war began, ano became a Catholic
witness of Virgin Mary apparitions ano cartoonist in one go, prooucing two BD
albums about his transnational religious experience.
78
The rst Congolese-authoreo BD in Lo Ctotx oo Corgo may be long forgotten.
But the Catholic theme has remaineo central to cultural proouction in postcolo-
nial Congo-Zaire, as any Muoimbe reaoer knows. Reaoers of the most popular
..o x\xcv nosr ntx+
Congolese novelist, Zamenga, know so, too, most of his over twenty novels, stories,
BDs, ano poems have been publisheo by Saint-Faul Afrique.
79
Saint-Faul Afrique
even has its own BD line, consisting of Congolese folk tales, biblical stories, ano a
historical series about Congolese-nameo saints.
80
A Catholic strano rst met a BD
strano in the Congo with Tintin, ano this squeaky clean worlo traveler is still alive
in Congolese imaginations ano quotations. Less well known is the role of Catholic
mission priest-publishers ano lmmakers ano the subversive potential of some of
the twinneo, farcical gures that they ano their protgs helpeo create: Jako ano
Mako, Mbu ano Mpia, ano Matamata ano Filipili.
Comics proouceo in the Congo began to appear in Belgian colonial newspapers
from the late :q.os on, ano Congolese hao access to these meoia, especially Lo Ctotx
oo Corgo. Congolese began orawing ano imitating European forms, incluoing comic
strips. Belgian ocials ano missionaries also sought ways to tcct Congolese eyes
towaro publications createo ano meant for them. Such tccttrg became more oi-
recteo with the appearance in :q6 of the ocial lay publication for natives, ô
Imogc, ano its oioactic, blackface-baseo M/om/olo cartoon. The range of comics
in circulation, however, was wioe. An American boy who grew up in South Africa
was able to pick up a Batman comic book in a Mataoi hotel in :q, as if he hao
never seen American comics before.
81
Yet Catholic ,or Catholic-inuenceo, news-
papers oominateo the proouction of BDs. In :q6, Lo Ctotx oo Corgo was reserial-
izing one of the Tintin comic series, Ltotlc m,tttcoc. This Catholic newspaper
also featureo a puzzlelike game, asking if reaoers coulo remember in which Tintin
album oierent characters hao appeareo. If the colonys Catholic Congolese reao-
ing public was not recollecting Tintin ano his aoventures, it was at least being en-
courageo to oo so.
82
MIRRORS AND CAMERAS, SCREEN AND GAZE
A ^c. 1otl Ttmc journalist recently expresseo surprise at the enigmatic Congolese
fononess for Tintin that he uncovereo ouring a visit to Kinshasa. How coulo Tintin
possibly be popular? he wonoereo, while repeating a familiar canaro: Ttrttr oo
Corgo hao once been so oetesteo that it was banneo.
83
The assumption behino this
nave wonoer is akin to the surprise of realizing that native colonial Africans who
watcheo Tarzan movies oio not no them oensive, at least when they watcheo
them in a colonial-baseo viewing situation ,of a segregateo African auoience,.
These colonial subjects ioentieo themselves with the hero Tarzan, not with the
oegraoeo savages of these jungle aoventure lms. Yet, as Irantz Ianon ano Kaja
Silverman have suggesteo, the context of spectatorship can oramatically shift the
meanings of screen ,mirror,, gaze ,camera,, ano the ever-lurking white look, ano
thus shift the sense of necessity to ioentify with an image which provioes neither
ioealization nor pleasure. Ianons personal example is of traveling to the colonial
metropole of Faris, where he realizeo in a movie theater that he was being observeo
through images of a stereotypically menial blackness even before the lm began.
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics ...
These not-yet lmic representation|s| from which any subject woulo recoil . . .
turn|eo| into a mirror, ano inouce|o| a highly unpleasurable reoenition. His
violent corporeal reoenition, a oecomposition . . . precipitateo by an obligatory
ioentication with an intolerable imago, was experienceo through the fantasy of
the booy in bits ano pieces.
84
As M/om/olos reformulations of Tintins colonial vocabulary suggest, colonial
cartoons intenoeo for natives signieo colonizing control ano oiminution, achieveo
in part through a colonial gaze ano, in no small way, through bicycles. Ttrttr oo
Corgo cartoons placeo a camera center stage. This oevice was capable of captur-
ing girae shots as well as lmic evioence about the plots of the gangster ano witch
ooctor team. When cartoons became oioactic messages for Congolese subjects, the
fact of a colonial gazeano the possibility of a writerly reaoingwas no longer
representeo within the cartoon through a camera ano movie screens. Ironic refer-
ences to colonial screens of blackness oisappeareo. Insteao, the gaze became tran-
scenoental ano omniscient, removeo from the text. Only a reaoerly ,singular, co-
erceo, reaoing became possible. Likewise, when the central jester gure turneo from
Tintin to Mbumbulu, the other-gazing camera became a self-reecting mirror.
There was no gangster, no witch ooctor, no plot. The focus turneo to bicycle-rioing,
monkey-resembling Mbumbulu. Gaze was no longer ironizeo through a weapon-
reminiscent camera. Nor oio Mbumbulus self-reexivity proouce a public specta-
cle of viewership in BD frames. The viewing situation insteao appeareo as a soli-
tary frame of Mbumbulu facing into an obligatory, oe-ioealizing mirror with a
puzzleo expression, asking himself: Who am I? In M/om/olo comics, we saw, a
screen of menial blackness as self became the only necessary reaoing. Rather than
a teasing camera of a gazea synecooche for lucioity in Fierre Halens
woros
85
Mbumbulus view, like the reaoers view of him, was obligeo to see this
other in the mirror of a comic o self.
There is also a mirror in M/o oro Mpto, but it is Monokos shaving mirror.
Mbumbulus mobility is limiteo to a bicycle, he has no car. In M/o oro Mpto,
Monokos social mobility extenos to a speech, yet like all the signs of Monoko
his speech ano chair, his shaving mirror, his porcelain bowl ano razorthe per-
formance of this oiscourse is a joke. Monokos receipt of a brick wrappeo as a gift
is likewise a mean, violent prank, just as the image of Monoko falling o his chair
of a stage woulo have been if the storyline hao gotten that far.
INTERTEXTUALITY AND STREET COMICS,
OR, WHY BOTHER?
The explosion of street comics in Kinshasa from :q68 or so on, an explosion in
which Chri Samba took part,
86
cannot be tolo without returning to the kinos of
source material that I have oiscusseo here. Congolese colonial comics also give
us a capacity to reao postcolonial images intertextually. Ano such an archival
entry onto potential ioentications ano rejections is necessary if the silencing of
..: x\xcv nosr ntx+
Mbumbulu in explicit memory ano the celebration ano appropriation of Tintin is
to be explaineo. The contrast in the remembering of Mbumbulu partly oerives
from a novel context of spectatorshippostcolonialitywhere suooenly the pos-
sibility of ioentifying with the herowhether Tarzan or Tintinis immerseo in a
new positioning of laughter. Tintin permitteo laughter with ano at the subject as
self. M/om/olo only alloweo laughing ot, while the subject imposeo a oe-ioealizing
self, even if the orawings themselves serveo as mooels of juxtaposeo sequential art
that schoolchiloren like Barly Baruti copieo so as to learn formal comic orawing
techniques.
87
The cultural proouction of Congolese BDs within ano outsioe of Congo-Zaire
remains a neglecteo popular art, while the acaoemic literature on painting grows
ever bigger. Jewsiewicki has noteo the use of cartoon panels in Congolese popular
painting, especially by Chri Samba of Kinshasa, who once orew cartoons.
88
Iabian has wonoereo about the comic-like juxtaposeo sequential nature of
Tshibumbas historical painting series.
89
Each of these specialists in Congolese ver-
nacular art has, therefore, suggesteo that more attention shoulo be paio to forms
of leakage among meoia ano genres.
90
Iour assumptions ano one question have guioeo the small selection of comics
oiscusseo here. Iirst, we must atteno to the wioer genre of images, caricatures,
ano semi-caricatures that were part of colonial literaturesincluoing newspapers
ano periooicalswritten by ano for Europeans in the colony. Secono, ironic, aec-
tionate representations of the black booy represent a striking oierence from black-
face caricatures ano oeserve special care, especially since these alternative ott r-
gtclike conventions preoateo ano postoateo the cannibal-like humor of Tintin.
Thiro, we neeo to take into account the kinos of caricatures ano cartoons that Eu-
ropean colonials explicitly maoe for colonial subjects, since such visual steering tells
us about conventions of appropriateness ano the mimetic oesires of colonial peo-
agogy. Iinally, it is important to consioer when ano how Congolese were alloweo
to oraw ano publish caricatures. How oio their themes, rubrics, ano booily gura-
tions relate to these other genres?
My central question is: Who skirtsor escapesthe blackface iconic rubric,
ano when? A central theme of steering within colonial mimicry was how to pro-
ouce a proper, not quite/not white, semi-civilizeo native: a gooo mioole gure. The
liminality of this gure went along with corporeal reconguration, that is, with ei-
ther the laughter that surrounoeo the icon of the cannibal-with-his-cooking pot
or the inoignant, exaggerateo oanoy gure. Mbumbulu as oanoy gure never knew
inoignation, just ostentatious paraoing in fancy clothes. Mbumbulu coulo never es-
cape the blackface rubric, even if he was billeo as semi-civilizeo. Ano unlike Mata-
mata ano Filipili, he has no comic counterpart. His liminality is conoenseo into a
solitary gure, he is a pcttt rgtc objectieo.
An inoignant oanoy gure is part of Ttrttr oo Corgos humor, it is he who in the
name of cleanliness refuses to help upright a oeraileo train. Ano this oanoy is jux-
taposeo to more noble savages, while the cannibal with cooking pot becomes the
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics ..
witch ooctor villain. But the central comic gures are the incongruous European
pair: Tintin ano Milou. Although Ttrttr oo Corgo also has its share of practical jokes
ano a gigantic slingshot, M/o oro Mpto took inspiration from another of Hergs
comic strips as well, the Brussels street urchins Quick ano Ilupke.
91
The inoig-
nant oanoy gure of M/o oro Mpto, Monoko, is mockeo ano simultaneously ethni-
cizeo by a comical pair of Kinshasa street boys. The gooo mioole gure of colonial
steeringa Luba speech writerbecomes stark antihero in this Congolese-createo
comic strip.
What has happeneo to the inoignant oanoy ano cannibal gures in postcolonial
street comics? There is space for two of these parooic reformulations here, both
from Jean-Fierre Jacquemins collection. By the early :qos, a comic book subcul-
ture was thriving among youth in urban Zaire. The rst issue of }corc poot }corc
appeareo about :q68, after a Catholic priest oecioeo that it woulo be interesting
to publish BDs in the Hinoubill argot.
92
}corc poot }corc became Iolc in the early
:qos, when it began to feature Sima Lukombos BDs, incluoing his character the
immortal Apolosa.
93
Apolosa, a comic character still maoe use of tooay, is a
tca copwhose picaresque aoventures marvelously incarnateo the countrys
humor.
94
Apolosa seems to have hao more than one incarnation. Sima Lukombo
also orew ,while Inampunoe wrote, Apolosa moniteur ,Teacher Apolosa,. This
Apolosa is a realistically orawn, hairy moutheo, clownlike schoolteacher who speaks
broken Irench ano proposes a lesson in verb conjugation as though it were a tempt-
ing, lustful act. His snobbish, sophisticateo stuoents laugh at him, while one sketches
cartoonlike images of him. Another aunts his ngernails ano perfect Irench, while
threatening to tattle to his father if he cannot ask his question.
95
Apolosa moniteur, with its unevolveo savage of a teacher, simultaneously plays
with ano mocks blackface rubrics ano colonial eoucation. The teacher becomes an
apelike savage, while the elite stuoent is more of the inoignant gure. The blackface
rubric is renoereo realistically rather than abstractly, amplication through sim-
plication oisappears just as the apelike image becomes tieo to the almostbut not
at all quitewhite man gure, the oubious bearer of colonial eoucation, ois-
pensing oerangeo Irench language ano Belgian colonial history lessons. Shoulo we
call this postcolonial cannibal humor?
As striking in Jacquemins collection are two :qqo installments of a BD zine
by Mfumueto about a sugar oaooy big man. Here, the cannibal gure reappears
as sorcerer ano oanoy at one ano the same time, while the pretentious big man
gure is oomesticateo into a sexualizeo, preoatory snake. ,Mfumueto tenos to
comment on current political events, another of his cartoons is about the airplane
that crasheo into a Kinshasa market., This man with sumptuous car transforms
himself into a boa in his beoroom ano proceeos to consume not Milou but his sex-
ual prey, a young marrieo woman who, missing the cash of sexual transactions,
has eagerly accepteo his invitation home. The sequel begins with images oepict-
ing Kinois reaoers eagerly buying Super-choc zine no. . in oroer to no out if
the story is true. True ano ongoing it is, they no out. The woman-eating boa is
.. x\xcv nosr ntx+
Iigure .8. Apolosa moniteur, orawings by Sima Lukombo ano text by
Inampunoe, in Lo Rccoc oc }corc ,Kinshasa,, no. . ,n.o., ca. :q,, ..
now vomiting up his meal as cash. Billsoollars?by the hunoreos ll his beo-
room as shockeo city people reao the unfoloing news.
96
Age-olo sorcery ioioms of ingestion, power, wealth, ano malevolent human
agency are implicit in this cartoon. Yet as Barly Baruti saio to me about his own
take on sorcery, unjust wealth, ano sexual conquest in Loccrtotc! Cct lo cottotc,
These are everyoay Zairian realities. These things happen every oay. One of
the very few Congolese artists to conjure up the meanings of this sexualizeo, money-
mao perioo of Mobutus nal years is Yoka Lye.
97
I know no writer who has bet-
ter expresseo the collective mentality that unoerlines such imagery of a powerful,
big man consumingoevouring as fooowomen/sex in oroer to proouce his ob-
scene, booily oeriveo wealth. Of course, he symbolizes Mobutu, Jacquemin saio
in a Brussels restaurant of the boa/man cartoon gure, while a Kinoise nameo
Bijoux broke into unmanageable laughter. It was not laughter of oenial or con-
tempt but rather of unexpecteo recognition ano fantastic amusement.
NOTES
I am grateful to Barly Baruti and Tshibanda Wamuela Bujitu, who agreed to interviews in
Brussels on December :8, :qq6, and January :, :qq; Vincent Romain, who combed through
colonial newspapers and magazines in Brussels in search of comics for me; Blaise-Pascal Ba-
ruani, who helped me fathom Congolese fondness for Tintin; Jean-Luc Vellut and his father
for their Tintin and Herg memories; Bob White for his Mfumueto comics; and Marie-
Hlne de Wilde for keeping me up to date on Barly Baruti. I also owe much to the Belgian
cultural critic Jean-Pierre Jacquemin, a key animateur of Congolese studies in Brussels, for shar-
ing his insights and extensive :q8os:qqos Congolese BD collection with me. His :q86 essay
remains one of the best treatments of Congolese and other francophone African comics, and
one can only hope that he will update and expand it soon; see Jean-Pierre Jacquemin, BD
africaine: Masques, perruques, in Lanne de la bande dessine 88,, ed. Stan Berts and Thierry
Groenstein (Grenoble: ditions Glnat, :q86). Otherwise, there is precious little on the sub-
ject of Congolese comics; see Paul Herman, Bande dessine et Congo: De la passion au
irt discret, in Zare .88.8: Cent ans de regards belges (Brussels: Coopration par ducation
et la Culture, :q8); and the brief Barly Baruti and Jacquemin essays in Un diner Kinshasa:
Concours BD Bruxelles-Kinshasa (Brussels: dition Ti Suka asbl, :qq6).
:. I draw throughout this essay on the feminist lm critic Kaja Silvermans rereading of
Lacans mirror stage and bodily ego in light of Frantz Fanons Black Skin, White Masks.
See Kaja Silverman, The Threshold of the World (New York: Routledge, :qq6), .:, esp. ..
.. On the performance of blackface rubrics within colonial life, see Nancy Rose Hunt,
A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, :qqq).
. See Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, :q8).
I pay attention to the motivated signs and subjections of these semiotics and draw on Sil-
vermans use, for reading lm, of Roland Barthess distinction between readerly and writerly
readings; ibid., ..o. My understanding of ambivalence owes much to Homi Bhabha;
see his Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse, October .8 (:q8):
:..
.. x\xcv nosr ntx+
. BD is the shorthand for bande dessine, French for comic strips and albums, a genre well
recognized as an art form since the :q6os in the francophone world, where there is a con-
siderable and dierentiated market of ctional album series for adults; the latter are often
called graphic novels in the anglophone world.
. Methuen, Hergs U.K. publisher, always steadfastly ignored it (Harry Thompson,
Tintin: Herg and His Creation [London: Hodder & Stoughton, :qq:], .). Yet the color album
Tintin au Congo was published in many other languages, including a Swahili edition printed
by mission priests in Usumbura (Bujumbura, Burundi), Pierre Assouline notes in Herg: Bi-
ographie (Paris: Plon, :qq6), 8. Assouline provides no date, but the name Usumbura dates
it as a colonial publication. According to the Bibliothque royale de Belgique (see
http://opac.kbr.be/), Castermannot Methuenpublished an English edition of the orig-
inal black-and-white album in :qq:: The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter for Le Petit Vingtime in
the Congo (Tournai: Casterman, :qq:).
6. Congo-Zaire or Congo-Kinshasa (as distinct from Congo-Brazzaville, formerly part
of French Equatorial Africa) was known as the Congo Free State from :88 to :qo8; the Bel-
gian Congo from :qo8 to :q6o; the Republic (and the Democratic Republic) of Congo un-
til :q:; and Zaire from :q: until :qq, when Laurent Kabila renamed the country the De-
mocratic Republic of the Congo. This chapter alternates been Congo and Zaire, as well as
Congolese and Zairian, as appropriate.
. See, notably, Pierre Halen, Le Congo revisit: Une dcennie de bandes dessines
belges (:q8.:qq.), Textyles, no. q (:qq.): .q:o6; and Anouche Martirossiantz, LAfrique
centrale vue par la bande dessine: Notes de lecture, in Papier blanc, encre noire: Cent ans de
culture francophone en Afrique centrale (Zare, Rwanda, et Burundi), vol. ., ed. Marc Quaghebeur,
E. van Balberghe et al. (Brussels: ditions Labor, :qq.), 6.:. See, too, Christian Jan-
none, Les hommes-lopards et leurs drivs dans la bande dessine, in Lautre et nous: Scnes
et types, ed. Pascal Blanchard et al., :q.oo (Paris: Association Connaissance de lhistoire
de lAfrique contemporaine and Syros, :qq); Edouard Franois, Raoul et Gaston, le mythe
africain, Phnix: Revue internationale de la bande dessine, no. : (:qo): :; Michel Pierre, Un
certain rve africain, Les cahiers de la bande dessine, no. 6 (FebruaryMarch :q8): 886.
8. Frank Giroud and Barly Baruti, Eva K., vol. :: Les hommes du train; vol. .: Amina (Toulon,
France: Soleil/MC Productions, :qqq6). Frank Giroud, a well-known French cartoon
scriptwriter (scnariste), collaborated with Baruti on this (thus far, two-part) graphic novel.
Since then they have turned to the Swiss publisher Glnat with a new album seriesnot set
in Africacalled Mandrill.
q. Buswell in the Mail on Sunday, November ., :q88, quoted in Thompson, Tintin, 8.
:o. Pierre Halen, Tintin, paradigme du hros colonial belge? (A propos de Tintin au
Congo), in Tintin, Herg et la belgit, edited by Anna Soncini Fratta (Bologna: Cooperativa
libraria universitaria editrice Bologna, :qq); Marie Rose Maurin Abomo, Tintin au
Congo, ou la stratgie dune dmarche coloniale, also in Tintin, Herg et la belgit, ;
Philippe Chanson, Tintin au Congo, cest quand mme un peu GROS! Une relecture critique de limagerie
ngre en perspective crole (Cartigny: Tribune Libre, :qq); Assouline, Herg; Thompson, Tintin;
Frederic Soumois, Dossier Tintin: Sources, versions, themes, structures (Brussels: Jacques Antoine,
:q8); and H. van Opstal, Trac RG: Le phnomne Herg (Brussels: Lefrancq, :qq8).
::. Thompson, Tintin, :. See, too, Assouline, Herg, ..
:.. Herg, Les aventures de Tintin: Reporter du Petit Vingtime au Congo (Tournai, Belgium:
Casterman, :q8. [facsimile of the original edition, Brussels: ditions du Petit Vingtime,
:q:]); and Herg, Les aventures des Tintin: Tintin au Congo (:q6; Paris and Tournai, Belgium:
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics ..,
Casterman, :q). These dates come from examining the currently available versions; Rosella
Grillenzoni gives :q, :q6, and :qo for the rst through third editions of Castermans
Tintin au Congo, in Bibliographie Herg, in Tintin, Herg et la belgit, edited by Anna Soncini
Fratta (Bologna: Cooperativa libraria universitaria editrice Bologna, :qq).
:. On cannibal humor, see Hunt, Colonial Lexicon.
:. Hergs biographers have not failed to notice that it was Lon Degrelle, the leader
of the Belgian francophone fascist (Rexist) movement during World War II, who handed
Herg his rst examples of American comics in the :q.os. Degrelle brought them home with
him after a trip to Mexico; Assouline, Herg. Whether Herg was himself fascist has been the
subject of considerable debate. Some point to his anti-Semitic comics, some to Tintin au
Congo, some to his friendship with Degrelle, and many to his work for Le Soir, a collabora-
tionist newspaper, during the war. Most biographies moderate with the word nave.
:. This combination allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter
a sensually stimulating world. These are Scout McClouds words; see his Understanding
Comics: The Invisble Art (New York: HarperPerennial, :qq), esp. ., .
:6. The key source on Tintin, belgit, and belgitude are the conference papers published
by a center for francophone Belgian literature in Bologna. Ruggiero Campagnolis distinc-
tion between belgit (francophone Belgian-ness) and belgitude (Belgian-ness without a linguis-
tic distinction) was rejected by Marcel van de Kerchove, who insisted on seeing the global
vision and Belgian provincialism that were combined in Hergs pre-:q6o BDs as a mirror
of a predominant Belgian mental universe. See Ruggero Campagnoli, Prsentation du
quatrime numro de Beloeil ; and Marcel van de Kerckhove, Tintin en voyage: Une vi-
sion belge des mondes exotiques? in Tintin, Herg et la Belgit, ed. Anna Soncini Fratta
(Bologna: Cooperativa libraria universitaria editrice Bologna, :qq), :, ., esp. 8.
:. Charles de Gaulle once told Andr Malraux: In the end, you know, my only in-
ternational rival is Tintin. Jean-Marie Apostolids, Les mtamorphoses de Tintin (Paris:
Seghers, :q8), :, as cited in Fedwa Malti-Douglas and Allan Douglas, Lidologie par la
bande: Hros politiques de France et dEgypte au miroir de la BD (Cairo: Centre dtudes et de doc-
umentation conomique, juridique et sociale,:q8), :. And in :qqqthe year of Tintins
seventieth birthdaythe French National Assembly debated whether and how to recog-
nize Tintin, given the debate over his procolonialist, anti-Semitic, and collaborationist past.
Norimitsu Onishi, Tintin at o: Colonialisms Comic-Book Puppet, New York Times, Jan-
uary 8, :qqq, .
:8. Halen, Tintin, paradigme, . Thus Herg was unlike Fernard Dineur, a Bel-
gian cartoonist who authored Tif et Tondu au Congo in the :qos after living in the colony; see
Fernard Dineur, Tif et Tondu au Congo belge (Brussels: ditions Jonas, :qq).
:q. Thompson, Tintin, :..
.o. Benot Peeters, Tintin and the World of Herg (London: Methuen, :q8q), :.
.:. Thompson, Tintin, :.
... Assouline is the most detailed in his Herg, 8q. Peeterss comment within his
Herg industry-produced book reveals the kind of impression Herg or this enterprise did
want to create: But amusingly it was in a Zairean magazine that the story reappeared for
the rst time and from then on the quarantine of Tintin au Congo was over. From :qo, it was
once again easy to obtain (Peeters, Tintin, :).
.. It is more likely that the publisher withdrew it from circulation to avoid bad press.
.. Editorial: Tintin revient au Congo, Zare, December .q, :q6q, ; see too, Tintin
et Herg dbarquent, ibid., 6:6. Pages of the :q album were printed unchanged. In
..8 x\xcv nosr ntx+
the late :q6os, Herg received a letter from a missionary in Kinshasa, Pre Lannoy, seeking
permission to whiten the black skin of the devils in Loreille casse before publishing the se-
ries in his journal Afrique chrtienne so that he would not have to contend with Congolese ask-
ing him why angels were white and devils black (Assouline, Herg, ).
.. Tintin au Congo in the letters to the editor, Zare, August :, :qo, .
.6. Ibid. Baudouin became a household word in the Congo from at least the time that
the young Belgian king toured the Congo in :q.
.. Benedicte Vaes and Ignace MBoma, Rendez-vous chez Tintin, Zare, January ::,
:q:, .6q.
.8. On Apolosa, see below.
.q. Jean-Luc Vellut, personal communications, December :qq6 and March .ooo.
o. They seemed bloody racist, & hilarious, too; Jon Glassman, personal communi-
cation, September o, :qqq.
:. Personal communication with accompanying slides from the art historian Joanna
Grabski, then of the University of Indiana, :qq6.
.. So ubiquitous has this joke become that even Sabena and Casterman have been able
to reappropriate the icon in their marketing. On Sabena, see Onishi, Tintin at o. See,
too, Les carnets de route de Tintin: LAfrique noire (Tournai, Belgium: Casterman, :qq.), a Tintin
au Congo retake refashioned as an introductory guide to the continent.
. Blaise-Pascal Baruani, Brussels, January :., :qq; at the time, Baruani was doing re-
search on attitudes to AIDS in Brusselss Congolese neighborhood, Matonge, at the time.
. Yoka Lye, Lettres dun Kinois loncle du village, in Cahiers Africains : (Brussels: Institut
Africain; Paris: LHarmattan, :qq6).
. Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, :qq6), o:6, o n. :, :..
6. Tintin and Spirou are household words in Belgium. They refer rst to these comic
gures, created in :q.q and :q8 respectively, yet also to the competitive comic journals
named after them (Le Journal de Spirou, created in Charleroi in :q8, and Le Journal de Tintin,
created in Brussels in :q6); they also refer implicitly to the two major schools of Belgian
comics, the Charleroi, or Marcinelle, and the Brussels, or Herg, school. For such basic his-
tory of Belgo-French BDs, see Claude Moliterni, Philippe Mellot, and Michel Denni, Les
aventures de la BD (Paris: Dcouvertes Gallimard, :qq6); and the excellent Annie Baron-
Carvais, La bande dessine (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, :q8).
. Jewsiewicki only mentions book illustrations and engravings in old travel books. Bogu-
mil Jewsiewicki, Painting in Zaire: From the Invention of the West to the Representation
of Social Self, in Africa Explores: Twentieth-Century African Art, ed. Susan Vogel (New York:
Center for African Art, :qq:), esp. ::, :, :, :., :, and :8.
8. Jean Berlage, Rpertoire de la presse du Congo belge (.88.8) et du Ruanda-Urundi
(.:o.8) (Brussels: Commission belge de bibliographie, :qq).
q. Fabian, Remembering the Present, :q:.
o. Some say a comic is only a comic if talking balloons are integrated into the visual
caricatures as action and dialogue. Some say that it is the serial nature of a strip that makes
for comics. In this essay, I have not limited BDs to a humorous storyline told in panels nor
to Scott McClouds more inclusive denition of juxtaposed sequential art. I have also in-
cluded single comic illustrations so as to broaden my tracing of recursive iconic forms.
:. McCloud, Understanding Comics.
.. A style not yet fully developed when Herg created Tintin au Congo.
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics ..
. Le match de Jako et Mako, with Composition Louchet and Lino Paul Lomami
(Kinshasa), La Croix du Congo (September , :q): ; and Gabriel Elongo (Stanleyville),
Correspondance de Stanleyville. Match Comte de FlandreDuc de Brabant, ibid.
. I assume a linocut was a linoleum cut made on the basis of the drawing and thus
was closely related to a blockprint technically. I gloss the two forms here as the blockprint
genre.
. Paul Lomami Tchibamba disappeared for about twenty years from the reading pub-
lics view after playing a role in making the rst Congolese comics. By the :qos, he had be-
come one of the Congos premier volus and its rst prize-winning novelist. Lomami never
mentioned his foray into comics when he won the Grand Prix littraire for his novel Ngando
during the :q8 Colonial Fair in Brussels. He took his peers to task instead for suggesting
that he might be interested in the prize money rather than in the sake of art. In addition
to being a creative writer, Lomami was an active writer in La Voix du Congolais, who identi-
ed with colonial power. See Hans-Jrgen Lsebrink, Le Congo belge souvre la lit-
trature: Impact et contexte historique des concours littraries de La Voix du Congolais en
:qo:q:, in Littratures de Congo-Zare. Actes du colloque international de Bayreuth, ::: juillet
., ed. Pierre Halen and Janos Riesz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, :qq), .o.
6. Not quite is a reference to Homi Bhabhas fertile not quite/white formulation,
so useful for condensing the ambivalencesthe subjections and desiresof colonial mim-
icry and translation. The shorthand I include here plays with the rigidities of ocial colo-
nial categoriesvolus and indignesand of subalternist academic categories by introduc-
ing the terms middles and lows.
. See, e.g., the imported cartoons with European themes in the Lactualit humoris-
tique section of the Elisabethville paper, Ltoile du Congo, May .o :q..; or LEssor du Congo,
no. 8, January :qo.
8. Illusion, Essor du Congo , no. 6, May :6, :qo.
q. This hebdomadaire polyglotte, with material printed in French, English, Italian, and
Portuguese, was edited by M. Dubois and J. Laxenaire; it only lasted for a few years.
o. Cosmo-Kin, :q:..
:. Le Coq Chante, :q88.
.. Simba beer ad; Ngonga,, :q.
. SAV cartoons; Ngonga, :q.
. Benot Denis, LAfrique lAmrique: Lodysse mentale des hros chez Herg et
Cline, in Tintin, Herg et la belgit, ed. Anna Soncini Fratta (Bologna: Cooperativa libraria
universitaria editrice Bologna, :qq).
. The distinctiveness of Lubumbashi and Kinshasa urban cultures needs more re-
search. Jewsiewicki has called Kinshasa painting comic-strip-inspired as opposed to
Lubumbashi painting, which is more historical, although the contrast seems to be a Samba
vs. Tshibumba one. See Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Chri Samba: The Hybridity of Art / Lhybridit dun
art (Westmount, Quebec: Galerie Amrad African Art Publications, :qq), and Painting in
Zaire, :q.
6. The only evidence on authorship is in the album version, where the front matter in-
dicates that the book is intended for Congolese youth and that the book is the fruit of
work done by a team, members of the personnel of the Services dInformation du Gou-
vernement Gnral du Congo belge. Credit for conceptualization and editing are given to
R. R. Antoine, R. J. Antoine, J. Collard, J.-M. Domont, A. Scohy, and E. Warnier. It adds:
The drawings were executed successively by Frre Marc, M. A. Carpentier, Mlle Brebant,
.:o x\xcv nosr ntx+
Mme Colette. Frre Marc (Victor Wallenda) was an artist and missionary who went to the
Congo as a member of the Institut des Frres des Ecoles Chrtienne, a teaching congrega-
tion, in :qq. He taught sculpture classes in :q at the cole Saint-Luc de Gombe-Matadi,
a professional school; the student art exhibitions that he organized were so successful that
he was asked to relocate the school to the capital, where it became the Acadmie des Beaux-
Arts de Lopoldville in :q. See Joseph-Aurlien Cornet, Histoire de la peinture zaroise,
in id et al., Soixante ans de peinture au Zare (Brussels: Les diteurs dart associs, :q8q).
. The lmmaker, Father Van Haelst of the Scheutist order, became Congos Father
Cinema. Up until that time, most lms available to show to Congolese were American im-
ports, and Van Haelst thought that their pace was too rapid for Congolese subjects. Yet Con-
golese were born actors in his mind, so why not put one of the missions machete-wielding
grass cutters to good use? Of his :o some lms, more than a dozen were Matamata and
Pilipili comedies. See the lm/video by Tristan Boulard, Matamata et Pilipili (Brussels: Libra-
tion Films? :qq6), min. (available from African Library of Cinema, California Newsreel),
and Francis Ramirez and Christian Rolot, Histoire du cinma colonial au Zare, au Rwanda et au
Burundi (Tervuren, Belgium: Muse royale de lAfrique centrale, :q8), q, .6q, .:, ::, 68.
8. Ramirez and Rolot, Histoire du cinma colonial au Zare.
q. In various episodes, Mbumbulu accidentally batters his wife with a ladder, repri-
mands her for looking at Nos Images rather than tidying up, and smacks his children.
6o. Boulard, Matamata et Pilipili.
6:. Yet Mbumbulu did become a movie.
6.. Mbu et Mpia . . . . espigles Kinois, illustrated by P. MBila, rst appeared in La
Croix du Congo .:, : (April , :q): :. The nineteenth and last episode appeared in La Croix
du Congo .:, . (August ., :q): . Monoko suggests to the policeman that the two brigands
might belong to the compagnie Kitunga in episode q.
6. In addition to advertisements that used this trope, a colonial proverb went: A
blanchir un ngre, on perd son savon. Robert Detry, Les mots franais dsignant les noirs du Congo
belge (.:o.), Mmoire en philologie romaine, Universit Catholique de Louvain, :q6,
:o. Bakongo, or Kongo, unlike Luba were from the lower Congo (including Kinshasa) re-
gion.
6. The language was ambiguous; P. MBila was restant en dfaut.
6. On the history of the Luba, see Bogumil Jewsiewicki, The Formation of the Polit-
ical Culture of Ethnicity in the Belgian Congo, :q.o:qq, in The Creation of Tribalism in
Southern Africa, ed. Leroy Vail (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, :q8q).
66. Jacquemin discusses such institutional postcolonial patronage for comics in his BD
africaine. Jewsiewicki provides fascinating material on Kinshasa-based Belgians who were
Chri Sambas major patrons in his Chri Samba. For the Lubumbashi postcolonial expatri-
ate academic-as-art consumer scene, Fabians book of and about Tshibumbas paintings is
revealing. Not until :q did Belgian colonists take a serious interest in the drawings of Con-
golese children; Jean Leyder, Le graphisme et lexpression graphique au Congo Belge (Brussels: So-
cit royale belge de gographie, :qo). For colonial forms of patronage for graphic arts,
see also Jean-Luc Vellut, La peinture du Congo-Zare et la recherche de lAfrique inno-
cente, Bulletin des Sances de lARSOM6, (:qqo): 66q.
6. The Petit Muse de la BD Chrtienne was publicized in :qq6 with a cartoon image
of the Basilique du Sacr-Coeur raising welcoming hands and saying in a BD balloon, .ooo
bandes dessines en toutes langues. Brother Roland Francart is in charge; see his La BD
chrtienne (Paris: ditions du Cerf, :qq).
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics .:.
68. Barly Baruti, La voiture! Cest laventure (Brussels, :q8?).
6q. Mata Masala, Zamenga, ..
o. Jacquemin, BD africaine, :86.
:. Mongo Awai Sis, Les aventures de Mata Mata et Pili Pili: Le portefeuille (Kinshasa: Mon-
goproduction and Ed. Mama-leki, :q8), and Le Boy: Les aventures de Mata Mata et Pili Pili
(Ecaussines, Belgium: Euraf ditions, :q8.).
.. Mongo Awai Sis, dessinateur, Bingo en ville, Les aventures dun enfant africain (Brussels:
AGCD, :q8:), and Bingo Yama-Kara: Les aventures dun enfant africain (Brussels: AGCD, :q8.).
. B. Zamenga, scnariste, and Masioni, dessinateur, Belle est aussi ma peau noire (Zaire:
ditions Zola-Nsi, n.d. [:qq?]). See, too, B. Zamenga, scnariste, and Alain-Mata and A.
Mushabah Mass, dessinateur, Pourquoi tout pourrit chez nous? (Luozi, Zaire: Zola-nsi, :qq.).
. This would have aligned him with the more powerful, early Zanzibari colonizers of
the region, known locally as BaTambatamba. Jewsiewicki notes the importance of estab-
lishing a professional and spiritual genealogy among urban painters ( Jewsiewicki, Paint-
ing in Zaire, ::).
. Baruti drew the spectacular coverMobutu at dinnerto the published results of
the contest, Un diner Kinshasa: Concours BD Bruxelles-Kinshasa (Brussels: dition Ti Suka
asbl, :qq6).
6. See Peeters, Tintin.
. Pol Vandromme, Le monde de Tintin (Paris: La Table Ronde, :qq), :o:.
8. Maurice Kalibiona, Marie reine de la paix (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: ditions du
Moustier, :q8q), which was translated into ve languages, and Le triomphe du coeur immacul de
Marie (Marquain, Belgium: ditions Hovine, :qq). According to an authority on Catholic
BDs, Kalibionas albums please youth and contain an African sensibility; see Francart,
La BD chrtienne, .
q. In :qq, Zamenga had more than . published works, including novels, poetry, es-
says, stories, some which were illustrated as BDs. His Carte postale of :q, reprinted eight
times by Saint-Paul Afrique, sold some o,ooo copies; Catherine M. Mata Masala, Za-
menga Batukezanga: Anatomie dun succs populaire, in Littratures de Congo-Zare: Actes du
colloque international de Bayreuth, ::: juillet ., ed. Pierre Halen and Janos Riesz, Matatu
:/: (Amsterdam: Rodopi, :qq), .., .. On his conversion to Catholicism and his own
press (ditions Zabat, for works not published by Saint-Paul Afrique), see Nadine Fettweis,
Le phnomne Zamenga, in Papier blanc, encre noire: Cent ans de culture francophone en Afrique
centrale (Zare, Rwanda, et Burundi), vol. ., ed. Marc Quaghebeur, E. van Balberghe et al. (Brus-
sels: ditions Labor, :qq.). See, too, Wyatt MacGaey, Zamenga of Zaire: Novelist, His-
torian, Sociologist, Philosopher, and Moralist, Research in African Literatures : (:q8.): .o8:.
8o. On this genre, see Jacquemin, BD africaine; and Bande dessine et Tiers monde. Spe-
cial issue of Vivant Univers, no. 6 and Coccinelle: La BD bon dieu. Revue dinformation et danalyse
sur la bande dessine, no. :: ( JanuaryFebruary :q8).
8:. Drury L. Pifer, Innocents in Africa: An American Familys Story (London: Granta Books,
:qq8), ..
8.. La Croix du Congo began to publish Ltoile mystrieuse on May .o, :q6; it continued
through July .:, :q. Jos Lobeya was the chief editor at the time. The puzzle advertise-
ment appeared on July :, :q6.
8. Onishi, Tintin at o.
8. All quotations come from Silvermans important rereading of Fanon in her Thresh-
old of the World, .:.
.:: x\xcv nosr ntx+
8. Halen, Tintin, paradigme, o.
86. See Jacquemin, BD africaine, :qo. The magazine was Bilenge, not exactly a suc-
cessor to Jeunes pour Jeunes and Kake, but more of a disco-music magazine featuring BDs, not
unlike Disco-Magazine, which included ve BD supplements under the title Yaya.
8. In :qq., Baruti recalled devouring colonial Mbumbulu cartoons as a boy, alongside
American and Belgian comics strips, furiously copying as he went. He was more circumspect
when I spoke with him in Brussels in December :qq6, wary of simplistic conclusions about
models and inspirations that this earlier newspaper quotation might inspire. The Mbumbulu
album had survived in his fathers library. Barly Baruti, interview with Colette Braeckman
in Le Soir. Barly Baruti: Dessiner envers et contre tous Kinshasa, Le Soir, n.d. [:qq.?];
from Marie-Hlne De Wildes Congolese comics le, with many thanks.
88. Jewsiewicki, Painting in Zaire, :.
8q. Fabian, Remembering the Present, o n. :.
qo. Karin Barber, Popular Arts in Africa, African Studies Review oo (:q8): :8, :o..
q:. Perhaps, as Jacquemin suggests, a Congolese Herg enthusiast also sent his version
of a Quick et Flupke cartoon in Lingala to Le Petit Vingtime in the late :q.os ( Jacquemin,
Jeunes pour Jeunes, .o).
q.. Jacquemin stated :q6 in :q8 (in his BD africaine, :qo) and :q68 in :qq6 (in his
Jeunes pour jeunes). Tshibanda was among those who told me, disapprovingly, that the
rst popular BD magazines, carrying names like Rasta and Jeunes pour Jeunes, encouraged ju-
venile delinquency because the balloons featured characters speaking Hindubill, a coded
youth language that playfully deforms French orthography and grammar (Tshibanda Wa-
muela Bujitu, Brussels, December :qq6). Tshibandas workif compared to Mongo Siss
or Barutisdoes suggest that popular art from Lubumbashsi or Shaba may well be more
historical than the more ludic BDs of Kinshasa. I am unable to give Tshibandas work the
attention it deserves here; he is a social psychologist with books on social problems like pros-
titution to his name, who has adopted the form of comics (Nsenda Kibwanga has done the
drawings) to popularize this work. See Tshibanda Wamuela Bujitu and Nsenga Kibwanga,
Alerte Kamongo ou un accident dans la mine (Lubumbashi: ditions Lanterne and Imprimerie
Saint Paul, :q8q), and Les refouls du Katanga (Zaire [Brussels?]: Impala, n.d. [:qq?]).
q. Jacquemin, Jeunes pour jeunes et compagnie . . . , .o.:; and Barly Baruti, Sou-
venirs, avenirs . . . , :.:, both in Un diner Kinshasa: Concours BD Bruxelles-Kinshasa (Brus-
sels: dition Ti Suka asbl, :qq6).
q. Jacquemin, BD africaine, :qo.
q. Sima Lukombo, dessinateur, and Inampunde, scnariste, Apolosa moniteur, La Revue des
Jeunes, no. . (n.d. [ca. :q; cost in kuta: :o K Kin and : K lintrieur]), .:..
q6. Mfumueto, Nguma ameli Muasi na Kati ya Kinshasa, Mensuel de Bandes Dessines
:, no. : (Kinshasa: ditions Mpangala Original and Oest MGS, April :qqo [cost in zaires:
:o Z]), and Nguma ameli Muasi na Kati ya Kinshasa, Mensuel de Bandes Dessines et de D-
tente :, Super Spcial Choc no. . (Kinshasa: Oest MGS and Union Chrtienne, Le journal
des petits pour lducation et le savoir vivre, [May?] :qqo).
q. Yoka Lye was born in Kinshasa in :q; he has won literary prizes for his plays and
stories and is the author of many essays on cultural questions. In :qq, he was rector of the
Institut Universitaire Cardinal-Malula.
+ix+ix \xn +nr ix+rnntr+ioxs or coxoorrsr coxics .:
Chapter
Cartooning Nigerian
Anticolonial Nationalism
Tejumola Olaniyan
Akinola Lasekan ,:q:6, was Nigerias pioneer political cartoonist. Irom :q
through the early :q6os, Lasekan publisheo eoitorial cartoons nearly every single oay.
This legenoary prolicacy is explicable if we carefully piece the historical puzzle to-
gether. Lasekan was part of the new clamorous nationalism that grippeo the country
from the :qos on. He workeo ouring the pivotal perioo of nationalist struggles for
Nigerian inoepenoence, a perioo when nationalism hao the aura of oivinity ano the
nationalists of its anointeo saints. The virulent competition among the nationalist par-
ties for legitimacy is another no less signicant catalyst. Lasekan the cartoonist was a
major part of the mammoth anticolonial nationalist political machinery of his em-
ployer ano mentor, Nnamoi Azikiwe ,:qoq6,, oistinguisheo Fan-Africanist, a pre-
eminent Nigerian nationalist, leaoer of the rst ano for more than a oecaoe the only
countrywioe Nigerian anticolonial political party, the National Council of Nigeria ano
the Cameroons ,NCNC,, ano the rst inoigenous governor-general ano commanoer-
in-chief of inoepenoent Nigeria. Lasekan was convinceo he was working at a mo-
mentous perioo in history, ano he threw himself heaolong into his political project. I
suggest that only the mirror stage of nationalism, that stage of burning passion
ano unquestioneo self-justication that an anticolonial nationalism goes through be-
fore it gains the nations rulership, coulo explain Lasekans prooigious exertion.
1
Fartly out of conviction ano partly out of oevotion to his mentor, Lasekans
ioeology closely follows that of Azikiwe: a bleno of liberal oemocratic, welfarist,
ano socialist precepts forgeo by the master in the crucible of black racial protests
ano cultural renaissance in the Uniteo States of the :q.os ano :qos, where Azikiwe
was stuoying, ano in the context of the obscene injustices in colonial Africa. This
bleno was coucheo in the language of pan-African racial nationalism.
Azikiwes return to Nigeria in the interwar years profounoly energizeo Niger-
ian nationalism ano oecisively reorienteo it away from the reformism of oloer
.:
gures like Herbert Macaulay to a strioent call for total Africanization. His Rc-
roccrt Afttco ,:q,, oesigneo to rouse Africans to their historic responsibilities in
overthrowing the colonial oroer, became the nationalist bible for a whole gener-
ation across the continent. But what is a raoical nationalism without an appro-
priate propaganoa organ? Ferhaps more important to the spreao of Azikiwes fame
ano brano of nationalism was his highly successful newspaper, the 1ct Afttcor Pt-
lot.
2
Emboloeneo by the hypocrisies of colonial rule, the Ptlot was inuenceo in
its uncompromising raoical stance by the black American militant press of the pe-
rioo. It introouceo a new urgency to nationalist oemanos totally in tune with
the yearnings of the swelling group of eoucateo young Nigerians impatient with
the graoualism of Macaulay ano his generation. Some scholars have creoiteo
the newspaper with being the most crucial single precipitant of the formative
Nigerian awakening. This was the party newspaper for which Lasekan workeo
for over two oecaoes. The conceptual universe of Lasekans cartoons is anchoreo
on three broao polemical axes: ,:, colonialism is not simply unjust but also un-
natural, ,., nationalism is a necessity that is self-evioent ano thus neeos no
justication, ano ,, the NCNC is Nigerias only true nationalist party, ano Nnamoi
Azikiwe, Nigerias leaoer.
3
Irom these come the specic thrust of inoivioual car-
toons: the rst authorizes attacks against the colonizers from all imaginable angles
,economic exploitation, political oomination, the hypocrisy ano racism of colo-
nial policies, ination, unemployment, ano so on,, the secono unoerwrites the mes-
sianism of the cartoons anticolonial nationalism, ano the thiro wages a relentless
war of legitimation against other parties, especially the Action Group heaoeo by
Obafemi Awolowo.
Ior the iconographic resources to prosecute the all-out war, Lasekan orew on a
wioe spectrum of sources, from the culturally inoigenous to the colonial ano Eu-
ropean. He was, however, working in a meoium, cartooning, that hao no inoige-
nous provenance but was part ano parcel of the colonial mooernity that oeneo
his historical context. All his mooels were European. Ano so, even with oomesti-
cation, many of the borroweo visual cooes aovertise their foreignness. One of the
most obvious is the symbolization of freeoom, inoepenoence, or oemocracy
as woman, which has more to oo with European history than Nigerian. But this
was not necessarily a problem for Lasekans auoience, for, from the highest to the
lowest strata, that auoience was bonoeo together in one gigantic process of West-
ernization, in which the Western foreign ano strange was often quickly learneo ano
assimilateo. Thus even though a critic of European cultural imperialism, Lasekan
also contributeo substantially to that imperialisms consolioation by the repeateo
broaocast of its visual cooes in sensuous ano interpellative ,i.e., subjectifying, artis-
tic form. But this paraoox was not Lasekans alone, it was what eectively struc-
tureo the colonial experience wherever the colonizeo, even to speak against the col-
onizer, hao to use the tools of the latter, it was a process of constructing subjectivity
from subjection, agency from suboroination.
c\n+ooxixo xiorni\x \x+icoroxi\r x\+iox\risx .:
Lasekans conventions of physiognomic representation, especially musculature
ano the equation of largeness with hierarchical oominance, have strong inoigenous
resonance, but they were also common in the cartoons publisheo in many British
,Dotl, Mtttot, Dotl, Exptc, Dotl, Hctolo, ^c. Cltortclc, ano Eccrtrg Storooto) ano
American ,1oltrgtor Pot) newspapers of the :qos ano :qos. His oramatic use
of contrast between light ano oark, ano sumptuous labeling, are oweo wholly to
these Euro-American cartoonists. Ample though his inoebteoness was, it was far
from wilo, for Lasekan was very particular about his aesthetic preferences as an
African artist. Ior one thing, he was against anything outsioe of realismthe
largest number of African people seem to prefer realistic art, he argueoano
poureo scorn on abstract styles because they aoro charlatans the greatest op-
portunity to hioe their meoiocrity unoer the guise of mooernism.
4
Realism in
Lasekans cartoons manifests itself in the comparatively ample oegree of iconicity
of the images. There is usually a wealth of visual oetails. Very often, the human
subjects are easily recognizable public ocials, or maoe recognizable accoroing
to the generic features of race, ethnicity, or profession. Typical stereotypes in-
cluoe the bloateo white colonizer, the muscular black nationalist, the scrawny, over-
exploiteo worker, the gaunt ano raggeo poor common man or woman. Lavish
labeling or commentary practically claries any lingering obscurity. Because the
cartoons grant the viewer such an express visual access without much intellectual
challenge, they are generally viewer-frienoly ano so were quite popular with reao-
ers of the 1ct Afttcor Ptlot.
But Lasekan oio not start out as the comparatively iconic cartoonist he was
later exclusively oeneo as being. His earliest cartoons, such as Ioreign Capi-
talist, are stylizeo ano largely conceptual, ano apart from woros in the speech
balloons, labels ano a lengthy explanatory narrative besioe or below the cartoon
panel are the other viewer-frienoly features.
5
Otherwise, the cartoon panel is
neeolessly cluttereo, the preponoerance of light or white areas gives the impres-
sion of starkness, the lines that make up the images are overly straight ano se-
vere ano far less oynamic than in his later works, ano the letters look as if carveo
laboriously ano clumsily out of wooo or stone. Although the cartoons are far
less iconic, they are by no means lacking in raoical nationalist rhetoric. I sup-
pose then that a problematic Lasekan must have confronteo at the time was con-
veying a raoical populist peoagogythe type to wake up a nation to a new
oawn, as NCNC iconography repeateoly communicateoin a more or less ab-
stract form, a form he believeo to be elitist, un-African, ano antagonistic to
progressive mass politics.
An attempteo realism was Lasekans solution. His cartoons began to be more
iconic. The starkness gave way to more oetaileo ano visually richer images, with
more oramatic ano nuanceo oeployment of possible shaoes from light to oark. The
woroy explanatory narrative outsioe the cartoon panel became obsolete ano was
oiscaroeo, as the increasingly iconic images say ano clarify more with graphics.
The use of woro balloons gave way to a neater ano spatially more economical
.: +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
placement of a characters speech close to that character, without encasement. A
hano-lettering style in harmony with the now more supple ano oynamic lines of
the images replaceo the earlier gawky lettering. The speeches oio not reouce
signicantly in the new aesthetic oispensation, ano neither oio the extensive use of
labels ano placarosin fact, it coulo be saio that Lasekan never completely trusteo
graphic images alone to convey exactly what he wanteo, mainly because images,
by their very nature, are more susceptible to fanciful interpretations than woros.
The young ioealistic nationalist simply coulo not aoro such a luxury in what ap-
peareo to him to be an implacably Manichean context.
6
It is this unoerstanoing
of the colonial relation as one structureo by inexorable opposition that organizes
the tripartite oivision I ioentieo earlier as oening the conceptual universe of
Lasekans cartooning.
THE UNNATURALNESS OF COLONIALISM
Ior Lasekan, it is not simply that colonialism is tyranny, injustice, exploitation, ano
other staple expletives of stanoaro nationalist rhetoric, but that it is funoamentally
c\n+ooxixo xiorni\x \x+icoroxi\r x\+iox\risx .:,
Iigure .:. Akinola Lasekan, Ioreign Capitalist, 1ct Afttcor Ptlot ,Lagos,,
August o, :q.
unnatural. Accoroing to this logic, that the stranger shoulo be the loro over the
inoigene, that the European shoulo be the master of the African in Africa, is noth-
ing but a sign of the worlo turneo upsioe oown. The most popular political insti-
tutionalization of this oiscursive logic is, of course, Marcus Garveys slogan Africa
for the Africans. But it woulo be unwise to take the simplicity of the formulation
for granteo. The resort to heavy-hanoeo positivism here in the language of a sup-
poseo natural oroer of things is a clever strategy to provoke in the colonizeo an
anticolonialist sentiment with a reserve of self-righteousness so oeep that it will
never stop for a moment to ooubt itself. Its subversive potential is limitless, for what
it implies is that if colonialism is unnaturalmeaning an anomalythen the
most natural thing in the worlo to oo is put an eno to it. It also means that the
unnatural oroer, precisely because it is unnatural, is sustaineo ano sustainable only
by abnormal means, by oint of a great array of bayonets ano cannons, in
Ianons worosthe brute, vulgar power of the colonizer.
7
Irom this conceptual
anchor, inoivioual cartoons are freeo to pillory colonialism ano its retainers on a
.:8 +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Iigure ... Akinola Lasekan, Eternal Servituoe? 1ct Afttcor Ptlot ,Lagos,, December
:q, :qo.
variety of matterspolitical, economic, aoministrative, juoicial, moral, religious,
ano so on.
Ferhaps no Lasekan cartoon better represents the unnaturalness of colonial rule
than the one whose title is, most appropriately, a rhetorical question, Eternal Servi-
tuoe? Centereo in the rectangular frame is a muscular black man, on whose shoul-
oers sits an oloer, balo-heaoeo white man. The white man, Imperialist, holos over
his own heao a capacious umbrella labeleo Imperial Frestige. The black man,
African Colonial, looks up at the white man with a querulous, agonizeo expression,
ano the latter responos: I quite appreciate your agitation for freeoom, but frankly
youll aomit that it is very oicult to part voluntarily with a loyal servant. African
Colonial is bearing his Imperialist buroen along Imperial Highway, a name that
resonates ominously with the cartoons title, as if Lasekans real meaning, simultane-
ously a statement ano a rhetorical question, is Highway to eternal servituoe?
Although Imperialist is supposeo to be sitting on the shouloers of African Colo-
nial, his weight ano most of his torso is actually rather low. In fact, the cartoon ooes
give the impression of the colonizer as sitting on the back rather than the shoul-
oers of the colonizeo. On this score, Lasekan oraws upon a conception of unnat-
uralness with oeep local provenance. In the rst place, back porterage is a genoereo
practice in most parts of Nigeria, because it is oone only by women. Seconoly, it is
a nurturing practice, as it is the main way women carry their infants as they go
about their oaily business. Which is to say that it is only chiloren who are so car-
rieo. That the African colonial man is forceo into a role of the African woman is,
to the nationalist, a lamentable feminization of African muscular virility. There is
also a violent age reversal, as it is the youthful African who bears the oloer, lan-
guorous exploiter in this struggle to the oeath. To make matters worse, the man is
not carrying a chilo, that gure of guarantee of both familial ano national futures
for whom all tooays struggles are worth their last orop of blooo, but a balo-
heaoeo vulture who is oetermineo precisely to make that future impossible. Back
porterage, which in the natural cultural oroer of things is nurturing ano life-
arming, becomes, in the unnatural oroer of colonial rule, a thwarteo, blooo-
sucking, muroerous practice.
In Democracy versus Communism, which works in a similar way, the histor-
ical subtext is the hypocrisy of Winston Churchill in keeping his strangleholo on
the colonieshere he is bloateo from feeoing o themwhile ghting for freeoom
in Europe against Josef Stalin. ,He stanos on a gure labeleo Coloureo Feople,
ano his woros, illegible here, are You are a warmonger!, Stalins riposte is to un-
furl a scroll proclaiming Equality ano Ireeoom of All Feoples, a principle for-
mulateo ano agreeo to by Fresioent Iranklin D. Roosevelt of the Uniteo States ano
Churchill at the height of Worlo War II in :q:, but which Churchill later, infa-
mously, qualieo as applicable only to European states ano not the colonies.
8
Hence,
in the cartoon, Churchill hioes behino his back the Atlantic Charter in which the
principle is inscribeo.
c\n+ooxixo xiorni\x \x+icoroxi\r x\+iox\risx .:
THE NECESSITY OF NATIONALISM
If colonialism is unnatural, then the colonizeo neeo no more justication than this
to overthrow it. In the worlo of Lasekans cartoons, anticolonial nationalism is a
necessity with a self-evioent status. Of course, Lasekan is in gooo company here,
ano inoeeo, the NCNC, ano especially its religious wing, the National Church of
Nigeria, often maoe ample use of that famous rst oocument of anticolonial na-
tionalism, the American Declaration of Inoepenoence, composeo by Thomas
Jeerson ano others.
9
It is this self-righteous self-evioence that unoerwrites the per-
vasive messianic oiscourse with which the cartoons unselfconsciously aoorn na-
tionalism. Anticolonial nationalism is the inextinguishable re of the human soul,
as a cartoon bearing that legeno woulo have it. While the imperialist fails to
quench the vibrant, burning re of Nigerian nationalism with the water of im-
prisonment ,of nationalists,, Iather Nigerianus, an olo sage some Olympian
height away in a tree, looks on with the self-assureo patience of a oestineo win-
ner. His expression perfectly matches his philosophical rumination on national-
ism: The fact is, it is an immortal re which no earthly element can extinguish.
Ano in an untitleo cartoon in :qo, a foregrounoeo giant, The Blackman, pur-
.o +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Iigure .. Akinola Lasekan, Democracy versus Communism, 1ct Afttcor Ptlot ,Lagos,,
January .6, :q:.
sues imperialists, ant-sizeo in the backgrouno, out of the frame ano presumably
out of Africa. Their panicky prayer, Loro have mercy on our souls! is appar-
ently too banal to be eective.
Lasekan knew very well that the univocal voice against colonial rule he gave to
the nationalists was more of a wish than a reality. In fact, that careful orchestra-
tion of unanimity coulo be reao as a monumental oesireartistically, that is, sym-
bolicallyto oroer a reality oierent from the factious ano ioeologically oisparate
nationalisms that he saw. He saw party politics, the only means by which inoe-
penoence struggles coulo be fought ano won in the circumstances, as an unneces-
sary oissipation of nationalist energy that only bought more time for the colonizer.
The garish way he represents partisan party politics is apparently oesigneo to leave
no room for ooubt about its counterproouctivity. Farty politics is a solioarity-
oestroying monster, ano Lasekans suggesteo solution is literally spelleo out in
A Suggestion.
10
c\n+ooxixo xiorni\x \x+icoroxi\r x\+iox\risx ..
Iigure .. Akinola Lasekan, Nigerian Nationalism: The Inextinguishable Iire of the
Human Soul, 1ct Afttcor Ptlot ,Lagos,, January 8, :q.
THE TRUE PARTY, THE TRUE LEADER
One meaningful historical irony is that even as Lasekan maligneo party politics in
cartoon after cartoon, he never ceaseo his partisan glorication of the National
Council of Nigeria ano the Cameroons as the countrys only truly national ano na-
tionalist party, ano Azikiwe as the nations messiah. Inaugurateo in :q, ano un-
til :q the leaoing all-Nigerian nationalist organization, the NCNC was the
rst political party to have a national rather than merely regional spreao.
11
The
party long oefenoeo pan-Nigerian ano transethnic politics, even as the British,
through the many constitutions, continueo to foist an ethno-regional political
structure on the country. Of course, like the parties with rm ethno-regional bases
ano no national pretensions such as the Action Group ano Northern Feoples
Congress, the NCNC too woulo quickly master the game of ethnic politics, ano
invoke ano accept its privileges, even while accusing other parties of tribalism.
12
Ior Lasekan the NCNC coulo oo no wrong. It was the party that, like its symbol,
the rooster, heraloeo a new oawn with its crowing, a new oawn of One Nigeria,
One Constitution, in contrast to the other partiestribalists allwhose quest
for power at any cost leo them to campaign for a loose feoeration of the regions
with a weak feoeral government. The NCNCs nationalist sincerity is the sharp
knife that rips through the |p|ropaganoa wall of reactionary nationalists in
.: +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Iigure .. Akinola Lasekan, A Suggestion, 1ct Afttcor Ptlot ,Lagos,, June :, :q:.
Thin Wall of Lies Smasheo. Azikiwe, the party leaoer ano oeliverer-saint, ap-
pears in another cartoon as the only tting husbano for oainty Miss Inoepen-
oence.
13
Lasekans nationalist is always male, ano his work is markeo by a surfeit
of signications of woman as oesire, as the object of competition between colo-
nizers ano the colonizeo ano among the colonizeoall males. In this masculinist
vision, Lasekans African woman, stanoing for abstractions such as freeoom, in-
oepenoence, Nigeria, is always mute ano neutral, meaning oottoc the historical
antagonisms being wageo by the men.
14
Ior Lasekan, Azikiwes sincere nationalism is a protective armor against the
arrows of both the imperialist ano the local careerist, as one cartoon puts it.
Thus in another cartoon, Leaving Us at the Mercy of the Big Wolf ? the Nige-
rian masses are no more than sheep without their loro ano shephero when Azikiwe
feigns at retiring from politics. This cartoon is merely one of the more striking
among the many in the grano project to beatify Azikiwe. The imperialist wolf lies
in ambush on the Roao to Inoepenoence Fasture Lano, while a ock of sheep
labeleo Nigerians look back anxiously at Zik.
On the other hano, the Action Group, NCNCs main political opponent, is often
representeo as a monster sowing tribalism, oisunity, ano all kinos of unspeakable
c\n+ooxixo xiorni\x \x+icoroxi\r x\+iox\risx .
Iigure .6. Akinola Lasekan, Thin Wall of Lies Smasheo, 1ct Afttcor Ptlot ,Lagos,,
October , :q.
horrors in the booy politic. The Action Groups leaoer, Obafemi Awolowo, a ois-
tinguisheo legal luminary ano a notable aovocate of feoeralism as the only just way
to oeal with the countrys untamable political oierences, is repeateoly portrayeo
as a breaker of Nigerian unity, ano the name of his party often altereo to Aocttor
group.
It remains a matter of great historical interest that neither the NCNCs oppo-
nentsthe colonial rulers or other nationalist parties, particularly the Action
Groupever responoeo in like manner. The Action Groups newspaper, the ^tgct-
tor Ttt/orc, was establisheo in :qq, but it oio not begin to have regular cartoonists
until well after inoepenoence. The colonial governments silence might be eas-
ier to unoerstano. It was part of a carefully cultivateo attempt to avoio giving the
NCNC any legitimacy by muo-wrestling with it in the cartoon pages of the popu-
lar press. Inoeeo, Lasekan once complaineo in a cartoon of the hypocritical
Olympian oetachment of the colonial establishment, as if it were a neutral en-
tity in the matter of oecolonization. Whatever low opinions the colonizers hao
of the militant nationalistsano there were reams of themwere expresseo only
in the colonial recoros. The government newspaper, the Dotl, Ttmc, publisheo car-
toons all right: the British comics series Bruin, Fingo ano Fercy, was a favorite
. +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Iigure .. Akinola Lasekan, Leaving Us at the Mercy of the Big Wolf ? 1ct Afttcor
Ptlot ,Lagos,, January ., :q:.
ano appeareo with great regularity, perhaps to palliate colonial oesire for less hot
ano humio ano more homely climes, with such titles as Where is the North
Fole? ano Its all snow!
But there was a comic strip worthy of note that was political in an oblique sense
ano subtly responoeo to nationalist oemanos. }ocpl Holtoo, Aoccrtotc, publisheo
in the Dotl, Ttmc between :q ano :q6, was probably the rst comic strip with
inoigenous characters ano subject matter. Ano although it ran nearly oaily for more
than fteen months, it was billeo as an aovertisers announcement, so that the
artist remains unknown tooay. While clearly responoing to nationalist oemanos for
the reform of the colonial economy, it was oesigneo, both in story line ano visual
language, to appeal largely to the young. Although publisheo in the government
newspaper ano representing the closest response in the visual meoium to the
Lasekan/NCNC challenge, its connection with the government was anything but
straightforwaro, because it was issueo by a private enterprise, the famous colonial
multinational Uniteo Africa Company ,UAC,.
The connection between the UAC ano the colonial regime may not have been
straightforwaro, but the nationalists, oespite all protests to the contrary by colonial
aoministrators, always refuseo to make any sharp oistinction between the two. As
James Coleman rightly notes, the nationalists saw only a close association between
alien political control ano an alien economic oligopoly.
15
Ano for gooo reason, be-
cause colonial economic ano traoing policies were regularly fashioneo by the colo-
nial government to ensure the oomination of, ano maximum prots for, the foreign
companies. In fact, nationalist economic complaints especially targeteo the com-
panies exploitive ano monopolistic conoucts, refusal to employ Nigerians, ano
racist ano oiscriminatory hiring practices.
The UAC hao been a oominant force in the Nigerian economy since :qo. It
garnereo over o percent of Nigerias import-export traoe by the eno of that
oecaoe, ano by the eno of the :qos, it controlleo percent of all Nigerian non-
mineral exports on behalf of that notorious leech of the Nigerian farmer, the Mar-
keting Boaros. In large measure, African resentments ano grievances stemmeo
from the concentration of economic power in the hanos of expatriate rms, par-
ticularly the major rm, the Uniteo Africa Company, Coleman observes. The
UAC subsequently teameo up with other European companies to form the Asso-
ciation of West African Merchants ,AWAM,, which controlleo about two-thiros of
Nigerias traoe. This near-totality of economic power exerciseo by a small group
of European rms, together with apparent governmental support or toleration of
that power, writes Coleman, gave rise to the popular image of alien collusion ano
exploitation.
16
After oetailing the unbrioleo exploitation of Africans by the com-
panies, Walter Rooney concluoes with laconic plainness: In a way, the compa-
nies were simply receiving tribute from a conquereo people.
17
}ocpl Holtoo, Ao-
ccrtotc was an ioeological eort by the UAC to represent itself in a oierent light
ano to make its existence ano activities in Nigeria seemingly coextensive with na-
tionalist goals: the eno of job oiscrimination, employment of more Nigerians at
the managerial level, economic prosperity, ano general economic mooernity.
18
The
comic has no storyline as such that is followeo with any consistency. It is, partly as
the title says, an aoventure story, ano partly oetective ction. Thus in both genre
matters as well as visual economythe oetaileo realism of the images, the melo-
oramatic use of extremes of light ano oark, ano a oeliberate, almost ostentatious
use of the lineit closely follows two popular internationally circulateo Ameri-
can comics of the perioo: Totor ano Sopctmor. In the resulting hybrio, what is re-
ally important are the moral-laoen episooes rather than an explicit expository plot,
although there is a thin link of continuity between the episooes, namely, Josephs
encounter with a notorious gang of thieves, leo by the terrifying Scarface. As both
an aoventure story ano a sort of crime thriller, the comic strip is full of action
ano suspense ano street-smart language, all appealing ingreoients to the aooles-
cents of Josephs age, although aoults of various classes areseconoarilytar-
geteo too.
19
Ior all its action ano excitement, the pace of the comic strip is extremely con-
trolleo, even to the point of rigioity, for the cartoon panelsas inoicators of spa-
tiotemporal passagevery rarely number more than four of even size in any is-
sue.
20
It is as if the UAC oivineo that it coulo not aoro to let its message get lost
in the spell of a thrilling action narrative. In spite of the variety of episooes, the
structure within each one rarely changes: the young Joseph is involveo in a trying
circumstance, which he ultimately overcomes. His heroism, honesty, oefense of law
ano oroer, respect for constituteo authority, ano above all, unquestioneo belief in
the gooo things the UAC is ooing shine brilliantly forth. He ano his uncle, Sam-
son, an employee of the UAC, who hopes to soon become a manager, are frequently
involveo in similar circumstances with similar outcomes. Most of the information
about the UAC comes from Uncle Samson.
In the opening aoventure, which ran for ve oays, Joseph oiscovers a small box
in the hollow of a tree ano picks it up to turn it in to the police. He is soon hotly
pursueo by two thieves, who have apparently hiooen their loot in the box. Joseph
easily oors them with blows ano karate chops. Other thieves from the same gang
appear ano Joseph aoroitly escapes. He then meets Uncle Samson, who praises
. +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Iigure .8. Uniteo Africa Company, Joseph: Joseph Learns Something New, ^tgcttor
Dotl, Ttmc, January 6, :q6.
him, saying, We want clever boys like you in the U.A.C. Uncle Samson also, as
the title of this last installment of the episooe says, teaches Joseph something new.
The olo thing Joseph knows is that My frieno says they |the UAC| oont give gooo
jobs to Africans. The new thing that Uncle Samson teaches him is Thats not
true! Ive got a gooo job. Ill soon be manager! Iour times as many of us are man-
agers as when you were born fteen months before the war. Ever the nice, creo-
ulous boy, Joseph promptly responos, I oiont know thatI must tell my frieno.
We can easily imagine what gooo things about the UAC Joseph will tell his frieno.
In another installment, Joseph is congratulateo for helping the police to capture the
gang. Ano in Joseph Talks to the Chief, a local chief thanks Joseph for protect-
ing his oaughter, while Joseph marvels at the many new builoings the UAC has
put up, which, he says, quoting his uncle, enrich our country.
The comic strip carefully erects a complete ioentity of interests between the
UAC ano various segments of Nigerian society: workers, such as Uncle Samson,
prospective workers ano managers, such as young Joseph, inoigenous chiefs ano
the towns they govern, ano law enforcement agents. As a multinational company
interesteo mainly in exploiting the colonies, it is not surprising at all that these
groups fall into the two main categories crucial to the unfettereo reign of colonial
capitalism: exploitable labor, whether current or projecteo , Joseph ano Samson,,
ano the agents of oiscipline ano coercion ,the police ano the chief,. Those who
obstruct the progress of colonial capital are either oamneo ,the gang of thieves, or
totally ignoreo ,the nationalists,. The UAC may not have been owneo by the British
colonial government, but it certainly serveo its interests.
With the benet of hinosight, it is oicult not to say that the circumstances of
historymeaning, really, the conoitions of a grossly unjust worlofavoreo the
colonial government ano the UAC more than the nationalists. The UAC, through
its prooucts, profounoly altereo the consumption patterns of Nigerians, so that their
purchases became signicantly more outwaro-oirecteo. Certainly, the nationalists
acquireo political power, but colonial economic interests became more entrencheo
than ever, so that the nationalists coulo not chart the economic path of their own
new nation.
c\n+ooxixo xiorni\x \x+icoroxi\r x\+iox\risx .,
Iigure .q. Uniteo Africa Company, Joseph: The Gang Have Been Captureo, ^tgcttor
Dotl, Ttmc, March .., :q6.
There is a popular saying, attributeo to Kwame Nkrumah, that Azikiwe was
fono of repeating ano that aptly captures the spirit of Lasekans cartoon corpus,
inoicating both the oepth ano limitation of the nationalist vision: Seek ye rst
the political kingoom ano all things shall be aooeo to it. The problematic is both
aesthetic ano political. In his cartoons, with the righteous impatience of militant
nationalism, Lasekan transformeo human beings from political animals into ois-
tilleo political positions. The UAC, in its cartoons, proouceo from a political pro-
gram ioealizeo human beings with personal ambitions.
We have then two oierent entities ghting for the soul of the nation in the
context of empire, both using images. Although no two agenoas coulo be more op-
poseo, popular cartooning was the meoium for both as they competeo to capture
popular aspirations. Lasekan ano the nationalists attempteo to free the nation from
the colonial empire through nationalist cartooning. The UAC ano the colonial gov-
ernment mockeo, or cartooneo nationalism, in the patient knowleoge that bat-
tles are won ano lost in the belly.
NOTES
:. R. Radhakrishan, Nationalism, Gender, and the Narrative of Identity, in Nation-
alisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker et al., q (New York: Routledge, :qq.), makes a
useful distinction between nationalism in antagonistic and protagonistic phases. What
I call the mirror stage here would closely approximate the antagonistic with its resolute
sense of conviction and moral and historical right to overthrow the colonizers (886).
.. James S. Coleman contends in Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (:q8; Benin City:
Broburg & Wistrom, :q86) that Azikiwes
combative ano provocative journalism was the principal source of his fame ano power. . . . His
was the rst major eort to Nigerianize journalism. The Nigeria-wioe circulation of his 1ct
Afttcor Ptlot . . . was crucially signicant in the spreao of racial consciousness ano ioeas of na-
tionalism in the interior. Nigerian political activity was still Lagos-centereo, but Nigerians through-
out the country were for the rst time permitteo the stimulation of vicarious participation.
At its inception in :q, this paper, described as an instant public success, topped the
circulation supremacy of the Daily Timess 6,ooo with its own q,ooo readers. See Fred I. A.
.8 +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Iigure .:o. Uniteo Africa Company, Joseph: Joseph Talks to the Chief, ^tgcttor Dotl,
Ttmc, April :q, :q6.
Omu, Press and Politics in Nigeria, .88o., (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
:q8), 8.
. On Azikiwes inuences and political ideology, see Ray Ofoegbu, Azikiwes Intellec-
tual Origins, in Azikiwe and the African Revolution, ed. Michael S. O. Olisa and Odinchezo
M. Ikejiani-Clark (Onitsha, Nigeria: African-Rep Publishers, :q8q), :; and M. S. O.
Olisa, Azikiwes Political Ideas: The Dream of the African Revolution, in ibid., .8q.
Benedict Anderson discusses the contributions of print capitalism to the origins and spread
of nationalism in Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Lon-
don: Verso, :q8), 8q. See also Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, .. (quotation),
and ..o..
. See Roy Douglas, The World War, ..: The Cartoonists Vision (London: Routledge,
:qqo), and David Low, A Cartoon History of Our Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, :qq); and
Akinola Lasekan, Problems of Contemporary African Artists, Kurio Africana: Journal of Art
Criticism (Ile-Ife, Nigeria) :, : (:q8q), :., reprinted from an unstated earlier source, proba-
bly :q6os. I am referring specically to cartoons, because Lasekan knewin his capacity as
a cartoonist rather than as a painter, which he also wasthat a technical gap exists between
realism as artistic philosophy and as cartooning practice. For if realism emphasizes the rep-
resentation of reality as empirically observed, cartooning is dened precisely by some meas-
ure of distance to actuality, often achieved by caricaturing, by amplication through simpli-
cation. In other words, realist practice in painting is not the same as in cartooning. Embodied
in cartooning is a simultaneously prescriptive and proscriptive challenge, in which to be most
naturalistic is to lose its caricaturing essence, while to be too abstract is to lose referential
power. On the graphic representation of the picture plane and the several possibilities be-
tween the poles from a survey of actual practices of cartoonists, see Scott McCloud, Under-
standing Comics: The Invisible Art (Northampton, Mass.: Kitchen Sink Press, :qq), ..
. The lengthy explanatory narrative was one of the hallmarks of the great American
artist Rube Goldberg in his famous series of the :qos, Inventions of Professor Lucifer
Butts. See Thomas Craven, Cartoon Cavalcade (New York: Simon & Schuster, :q), .6.
6. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, :q6), :.
. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 6. For Roosevelt, see Olisa, Azikiwes Political Ideas, 6.
q. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, o..
:o. Under the rubric Coalition Party, the placard reads as follows:
Pre-Independence Programme
:. Suspension of Present Political Bodies.
.. Formation of a Country-wide Coalition Party to Expedite Independence.
Post-Independence Programme
:. Resuscitation of Political Parties.
.. Full Scale Development of the Country.
::. Ibid., .6, .6q.
:.. A succinct account of rivalries among the nationalist parties is given by Kunle Lawal,
Britain and Nationalists Conicts in Nigeria in the Age of Transfer of Power: :q8 to :q6o
(African Studies Association conference paper, :qq.). Perhaps indicative of how far ethnic
politics in Nigeria have gone, there has not been another instance of a Yoruba cartoonist
(like Lasekan) working single-mindedly for an Igbo political leader (like Azikiwe) whose prin-
cipal opponent was a Yoruba.
:. In the cartoon (not shown), the husband/Azikiwe gure is labeled United Nigeria
and stands between a man in a top hat labeled Papa U.K. and Miss Independence.
United Nigeria is saying: Papa, who has to decide when Im to marry, you or I? (Lasekan,
The Big Question, n.d.)
:. In the ght against the enemy from the outside, something within gets . . . repressed
and woman becomes the mute but necessary allegorical ground for the transactions of na-
tionalist history (Radhakrishnan, Nationalism, Gender, and the Narrative of Identity, 8).
:. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, 8:.
:6. Ibid., 8o, 8:; and Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, D.C.:
Howard University Press, :q.), :68o.
:. Ibid., :8.
:8. Anderson, in Imagined Communities, shows in suggestive ways the strong anities be-
tween religious imaginings, which are, characteristically, willfully ahistorical, with national-
ist imaginings (:.).
:q. I have beneted here from Ernest Mandels insightful study Delightful Murder: A Social
History of the Crime Story (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :q8).
.o. Generally, the greater the number and the smaller the size of the panels, the faster
time and space pass; while the lesser the number and the bigger the size of the panels, the
slower the time-space change.
.o +rtxor\ or\xiv\x
Chapter
Empires of the Visual: Photography
and Colonial Administration in Africa
Paul S. Landau
Many of our people were killed in this ght. I saw four of my cousins shot. . . . One was hit
between the eyes; another here, in the shoulder; another had part of his ear shot o. We made
many charges but each time we were beaten o, until at last the white men packed up and retreated.
But for the Maxims [machine guns], it would have been dierent. The place where we have been
making the lm is the very place where my cousins were killed.
xn\xsi ktx\ro, who played the Ndebele king Lobengula in the lm Rhodes (:q6)
There were two interfaces for Westerners contacts with Africans ouring the colo-
nial era. The rst was actual: traoing, working, having sex, sharing a joke or a beer,
policing, killing, ano negotiating, requesting, releasing or oenying consents ano li-
censes, paying taxes, prevaricating, appealing, juoging, ano so on. The secono was
virtual: the paper-thin barrier composeo of photographs, woros on stationery, ano
images projecteo onto screens. Both interfaces supporteo a kino of two-way trac,
as the essays in this book show. Nonetheless the secono one most often positioneo
Europeans as observers of Africans. In fact, it was only by way of the written woro
ano of the printeo image that most Europeans knew anything at all about the places
their countrymen were busy ruling.
No one ooubts that writing became an inoispensable tool in European em-
pires. Consioer, for example, the subject of real estate. Sub-Saharan Africans fully
unoerstooo that various kinos of rights in lano coulo be granteo ano oenieo. What
was foreign to most of them was the embooiment of rights in paper representa-
tions of the lanoscape: maps, title oeeos, morgen counts, written laws, ano so
forth. A constant appeal to the treaties signeo by agents of mercantile compa-
nies ano nineteenth-century chiefs was novel. Ultimately Europeans familiarity
with ano enforcement of the conventions governing the use of all these signs gave
them an insurmountable aovantage. After the establishment of European over-
rule, carbon copies, telegraphy, typewriters, ano printing continueo to be critical
to the everyoay functioning of colonial institutions. Mimeographeo oirectives oe-
personalizeo oemanos. Famphlets of native law ano court reports legitimizeo
jurispruoence. Triplicate forms valioateo transactions, secureo funoing, ano sta-
..
bilizeo institutional memories. Back in the Colonial Oce in Lonoon, the printeo
signs that aoministrators shueo arouno on their oesks serveo them more surely
than living people for conveying their wishes. One oispatcheo them ano went to
lunch.
The other meoium for colonialisms representational encounter was the image.
Unlike the publisheo ano printeo woro, the mechanically reproouceo image relieo
on contemporary oevelopments in technology: cameras, celluloio lm, half-tone
screens. Daniel Heaoricks wioely reao book Tlc Tool of Empttc oiscusses various
inventions in the nineteenth century that permitteo Europeans to exteno their im-
perial power, he oescribes breech-loaoing ries, Gatling guns, steamships, ano qui-
nine as inoispensable colonizing tools. In much the same way, it might be argueo,
the technologies for prooucing images were tools of empire too. Heaorick oiscusses
the great changes brought about by the laying of submarine cables. Between Africa
ano various Western metropoles those lines transmitteo not only written woros
,ano later, speech,, but also wire-service pictures.
1
Other images traveleo more
slowly, by ship or by airplane, but chromolithographs, lantern slioes, stereoscopy,
private photographs, cinema, ano thousanos of postcaros all crosseo great ois-
tances. All of them bore images of the new imperialism that were otherwise inac-
cessible to various Western publics.
2
What exactly all those images oisplayeo is, of course, something else. The way
Africans were pictureo ano the selection of which pictures circulateoano where
were the results of many inoivioual oecisions, ano they cannot be reouceo to a
formula. Moreover, while pictures appear very specic in their oenotations, they
are vulnerableeven more than are textsto wioely varying interpretations. In
other woros, if photography became a concrete tool of empire, it is also true that
the apparent meaning of particular photographs is a slippery matter. This essay
seeks to unite these two ioeas into a single approach to unoerstanoing the role of
photography in the colonial era in Africa.
THE RESOLUTION OF CATEGORIES
Who but I shoulo sing of you, your brother in arms, in blooo? Leopolo Senghor
wrote of the tttotllcot Srgolot, Irench colonial African troops whose image hao
been useo in aovertisements for a cocoa breakfast orink. I will tear oown the /o-
rorto smiles from every wall in Irance.
3
The hallmark of the mio-Victorian age
was the impulse to classify nature ano man into types,
4
ano the African soloier,
before he became a logo, hao been a type: staunch, oepenoable, loyal, Irench, ano
oisposable. This sort of reouctiveness was not by any means applieo only to blacks
or Africans. Robert Knox, Fierre Faul Broca, John Beoooe, ano most famously Lin-
naeus ano later Gobineau, all sought to arrange, rank, ano essentialize all hu-
mankino, Caucasians incluoeo. Each of their eorts relieo on an assumption:
that a useful classicatory scheme must be capable of being inoexeo by visible signs
of oierence.
5
.: r\tr s. r\xn\t
Iigure .:. Aovertisement for Banania, a brano of cocoa breakfast orink. Bestfooos
Irance.
Martin Jay has referreo to the results of such synechoochic connections as con-
stituting empires of visualization.
6
The simile of empire is more than appro-
priate, for while Broca ano Knox were oebating the relative purity of humanitys
various oistinct types, the ,British East Inoia, Company School of painting, in
that empire calleo the Raj, was reoucing Inoias humanity to visual categories.
7
Just
as zoologists ano botanists orew ano catalogueo species from life, so such painters
oepicteo peoples. Emblematic types were not necessarily caricatures. The mio-
Victorian British Fre-Raphaelites, for instance, praiseo the benets of painting from
nature, ano when Holman Hunt sought to renoer biblical scenes with complete
visual ano archaeological correctness, he scrutinizeo the faces of living resioents
of Falestine. Yet he too must have thought in terms of a catalogue of human va-
riety when he wrote to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Think how valuable pictures of
the social life of the tribes of men who are in this age unoergoing revolutions woulo
be in aftertimes.
8
Fhotography arriveo at this juncture. Fainters soon useo photographs in their
stuoies, ano by the eno of the nineteenth century, the simpler proouct of camera-
work eclipseo the labors of reportorial painting.
9
Allan Sekula has argueo that the
photograph was rst imagineo as a tool for recoroing possessions. He calls this its
repressive function. Henry Iox Talbots thiro plate in his pioneering :8 book
Tlc Pcrctl of ôtotc was of articles of china, an image that coulo be proouceo in
court as evioence of ownership. But very soon, Sekula suggests, photography also
became a mooe of portraiture: its honoric function. The unsteaoy combina-
tion of the repressive ano the honoric contributeo to the oevelopment of pho-
tographic arrest recoros in law enforcement. John Tagg has argueo that such a
history of photographys use, rather than any of its intrinsic properties, is what
has maoe photography realistic. Thus from police recoros, the photograph ma-
tureo in institutions concerneo with the establishment of truthful ioentities: secu-
rity clearances, meoical recoros, state permits, ano the like, often in the service of
institutional power.
10
In this same composite mooe, photography froze images of primitive people
whom the universalizing ano homogenizing tioes of mooernity were otherwise wash-
ing away. Davio Livingstones instructions to his brother, a photographer, transpose
William Holman Hunts ioeas into the incipient scientic language of the next
era: he askeo Charles Livingstone to secure characteristic specimens of the var-
ious tribes, using a camera, for the purposes of ethnology.
11
In :888, the in-
vention of the half-tone grio system alloweo such photos to be reproouceo by me-
chanical means in newspapers ano books. The :oc magazine revolution then
began to let great numbers of urbanites see pictures of the tribes of men living
far away from them, from Africa to the Orient. Until then, citizens curious for vi-
suals hao hao to rely on mobile collections of artifacts or oisplays of exotic people.
Like such traveling oisplays, photography transferreo the location of analysis
from oistant places to the comfort of the mioole-class West. Unlike exhibitions
ano museums, however, photographs were inoivioually possesseo.
12
Fostcaros,
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
magazines, tobacco caros, white hunters books, ano illustrateo travel stories all
yieloeo their messages in the safety of urban living rooms ano stuoies. The transi-
tion from painting to mechanical reproouction, whatever else it accomplisheo,
clearly engineereo a shift from public oisplay to private viewing.
13
Fhotography also emergeo as a scientic mooe of representing human types.
As racial ioeologues accommooateo Charles Darwins theory of evolution to their
ways of thinking, the concerns of physical anthropology were joineo to the power
of photography in oroer visually to type inoigenes in Australia, Africa, ano Asia.
The style of the police mug shot was aoapteo to anthropological photography
ano slowly replaceo cottc-oc-ctttc style poses. Fhotography was also useo to mea-
sure peoples booies. John Lamprey aoopteo the measuring grio of eighteenth-
century anthropometry as a backgrouno to full-booy images. Carl ano Ireoerick
Damanns portfolios of :86, releaseo in an eoiteo English-language version as
Etlrologtcol Plotogtopltc Gollct, of tlc Vottoo Rocc of Mor, began with romantic por-
trait genres of inoiviouals ano segueo into stark proles for its typeo lower races.
14
Iurther examples can be seen in Gustav Iritschs Dtct }oltc tr So-Afttlo ,:868,, in
coee-table books such as Afttco Illottotco: Sccrc ftom tlc Dotl Corttrcrt ,:8q,, ano
in serious stuoies such as the philologists W. H. Bleek ano Lucy Lloyos Spcctmcr of
Bolmcr Folllotc ,:q::,. Some of the same photographs even appear in Isaac
Schaperas Tlc Ilotor Pcoplc of Sootlctr Afttco, publisheo in :qo.
15
Fhotographic anthropometry hao only limiteo success in typing races. Tech-
nical oiculties inhereo in the practice, ano no clear pictorial commonalities
emergeo in the categorization of human types. Despite Irancis Galtons singu-
lar attempts to overlay photographs in his :88 stuoy Irqotttc trto Homor Focolt,
oro It Dccclopmcrt, the specicity of photography unoercut generalizations baseo
on social anities. More important, the bounoaries arouno aggregations of meas-
urable traits ,long labias, short arms, skin color, oio not accoro with the impera-
tives of colonial governance.
16
The problems of aoministration were more clearly
in mino ouring the compilation of the massive colonial stuoy Tlc Pcoplc of Iroto
,:868,. The eight-volume work replaceo the Company Schools paintings of In-
oian types with over oo photographs ano oescriptions of every Inoian group
ano caste. Ior Africa, Sir Harry Johnstons Bttttl Ccrttol Afttco ,:8q, useo photo-
graphs to oemonstrate Africans racial oierences, in contrast, Duoley Kioos
Tlc Ecrttol Ioftt ,:qo, presenteo Africans in South Africa as a variegateo but sin-
gle race, oepicteo in his own somewhat ranoom photos. In the text in these treat-
ments, racial ano ethnic hallmarks were expresseo as oepartures from a familiar
Western normfrom the white, male, ano mioole-class selfano as reections of
colonial interests, registering the oiculty or usefulness of a population. All such
observations were gureo as insights into the immutable natures of oierent na-
tives, which photographers sought to make visible at a glance.
17
Mobile photographers trieo to illuminate what hao previously gone unseen by
the growing mioole class not only in Africa but in American ano European
working-class city slums. In :8qo, Jacob Riis publisheo his famous expos of the
rxrinrs or +nr \ist\r .
conoitions of the poor in New York. Some of his pictures oeriveo from near-military
attacks, with Riis ano the police charging in, Riis ring his gun-shapeo ash, the
cops oischarging their revolvers into the night air.
18
The violence that literally lay
behino his oepictions of the unoerclass in the West overlappeo with the violence in
mooes of representing Africans. Elsewhere, from Walker Evans to August Sanoer,
photographers preserveo images of populations that were subject to policing, clear-
ance, or economic haroship, ano coulo be approacheo en masse. Appalachian farm-
ers, German peoolers, lower-class Cockneys, befeathereo American Inoians, ano
Kalahari Bushmen were all oying out. Ano when evangelists traveleo to working-
class European neighborhooos to give salutary magic lantern lectures about Chris-
tianity or temperance, they woulo sometimes project pictures of Africans or Foly-
nesians on the screen.
19
Exotic peoples might be preserveo in visual recoros, but
mooernity, whether oriven by reform or not, rageo against them. In the woros of
the Austrian ethnologist Ruoolf Foch in :q:o, the Kalaharis primitives hao stoppeo
on a lower step of cultural evolution, a oescription that mioole-class reformers also
applieo to tavern-going Europeans, to Americas poor, ano to women.
20
Since such categories of humanity shaoeo into one another or even overlappeo,
it is remarkable that the classicatory criteria of botany or zoology were thought to
provioe the controlling paraoigm. In fact, as James Ryan argues, in many nineteenth-
century stuoies, the terms of racial classication were confuseo, even in the con-
text of the state of ethnographic knowleoge at the time. The major work titleo Tlc
Pcoplc of Iroto, for instance, mixeo tribe, race ano caste inoiscriminately.
21
Vastly
oisparate human capacities, qualities, ano ascriptions were juxtaposeo as equivalent
within the same pictorial frames, in the same type of nomenclatures. In natural his-
tory museums, there were, ano in some there still are, oioramas in which both non-
white human ano animal families are oisplayeo virtually sioe by sioe, the one in
sculpture, the other in stueo skin. The form of plates of reproouctions of Africans,
Asians, ano Inoians verge towaro the trophy wall in a hunters stuoy.
Other writers have oeploreo the juxtaposition of animal ano human images.
Here, I woulo like to suggest that both sorts of collections might usefully be ap-
proacheo through the history of their assembly. As we shall see, the use of moo-
ern rearms in big game hunting establisheo the technology, ano the practices, that
accommooateo the proouction of photographs of Africans ano other colonizeo
people. Fhotography became a tool of empire by following the gun into Africa.
SHOOTING TYPES AND TROPHIES
In an interview tooay, Mr. Harvey recounteo how he ano his colleagues followeo
|Frincess| Diana relentlessly for years, taking pictures of her at the gym, on the
street, on vacations, with boyfrienos, accoroing to a :qq ^c. 1otl Ttmc article.
With woros that evoke the brutal language of sexual assault, they use ooing Di
to mean taking pictures of Diana, to bang, to blitz, to hose, to rip, to smuoge,
or to whack are all ways of saying to take pictures rapioly.
22
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
Susan Sontag has pointeo out that the vocabularies of photography ano hunt-
ing overlap. Loaoing, stalking, aiming, cocking, ano clicking are all appropriate
examples of their shareo linguistic ano conceptual terrain. Even snap shot oes-
ignateo a military technique before it meant an o-hano photo. Sontag traces this
corresponoence between shooting ano shooting to the great appetite of pho-
tography for capturing the worlo. There are however also more specic connec-
tions between violence, guns, ano camera work in the perioo of the new imperial-
ism, which allow us to exteno Sontags observations further.
23
The photography of Africa shareo some of the same personnel, techniques, ano
even technology with hunting. By hunting African big game, men of leisure as-
serteo their oomination of nature ano by extension, the manly, European oomi-
nation of Africa.
24
Towaro the eno of the nineteenth century, their hunting re-
treateo from its openly commercial purposes ano began to assume the essential
features of visual collection. By the :q.os, a simple hunting trip might somehow
turn into a scientic enterprise of a certain magnituoe, replete with photogra-
phers, for which extra funoing coulo be secureo.
25
Iull-booy ano mounteo animal
trophies were crafteo by skinners ano taxioermists to hioe their own restorative la-
bor. They fashioneo them to look untoucheo. The photography of animals
achieveo a similar feat: the labor of porters, guioes, ano gun-bearers almost always
fell outsioe the frame of vision of the white traveler ano his photographs ano so
was excluoeo from notice.
Styling themselves as conservationists, big game hunters forgeo new ties to the
expanoing mioole class through museums ano cinema. Their eorts to represent
the vanishing heros of wilolife in Africa to paying Western auoiences were wioely
unoerstooo as unimpeachable. It scarcely mattereo whether the job was oone with
skins or with photographs ano lm. Like the photographs of tribal types that
Davio Livingstone askeo his brother to make, their trophies became specimens,
ano inoeeo categories of animals ano people were often oepicteo in the same books
ano lms.
26
Western conservationists freely oecrieo Africans supposeoly wanton
oestruction of game, but beyono that, they hao little reason to interrogate the po-
litical ano economic structures responsible for changing the environment, after
all, their hunting was a part of the problem. The simple mimesis of animals oio
not invite introspection. Colonial regimes founoeo protecteo parks when wilo beasts
became oepenoent on the stewaroship of men ano lost their apparent nastiness.
27
Fictures ano trophies were selective in what they revealeo ano obscureo about the
forms of agency unoerwriting colonial rule.
The technologies of the gun ano the camera themselves evolveo in lockstep. The
:86os saw the perfection of the breech-loaoing rie ano shotgun, using chemicals
encloseo in a casing with an interior striking pin, which preventeo the emission of
gasses into the face ano hanos of the user. The :86os also saw the oevelopment of
ory-plate photography. Freviously, most photographers hao hao to hano-coat their
plates with collooion, a volatile compouno rst maoe in Germany by combining
ether with guncotton ,cellulose trinitrate,, which was itself the inammable result
rxrinrs or +nr \ist\r .,
of oissolving cotton wool in nitric acio. Such chemicals were unpleasant, ano when
pre-preppeo gelatin ory-plates became available in :8:, they founo an immeoiate
market, for much the same reason rie cartrioges hao. Within a few years, cameras
like the Scovill, the Blair, the Anschutz, ano the Eclipse coulo take faster shots.
28
In gunnery, the British Martini-Henry rie, oeriveo from the American Feabooy,
set a new breech-loaoing stanoaro ano became the favorite of white hunters in
Africa from the :8qos on, ano the Remington ano Soper were close competitors.
Repeating ries helo multiple ammunition reaoieo for even faster ring, the best
makes being the Spencer, Colt, Kropatschek, ano Winchester.
29
In all these guns, reaoy-maoe cartrioges, proouceo by factories, left the shooter
free to speno time stalking ano setting up his shot. Some of the most innovative
ory-plate cameras were baseo explicitly on the mechanism of the Colt revolver, ano
cinema cameras woulo later oraw elements of their oesign from the machine gun.
30
The founoer of Eastman Kooak, George Eastman, was familiar with guns, ano he
hao a regular shooting box near Norfolk, Virginia. But in contrast to the ease with
which the sporting traveler prepareo a shot, photographing was still a cumbersome
process in :8o. Eastman himself, for instance, cancelleo a visit to Santo Domingo
because of the bulk of the paraphernalia requireo to take a picture. It seemeo
that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack horse-loao, he later wrote.
31
The casual traveler coulo bring along elo glasses ano a gun without much oiculty,
but a tripoo ano heavy boxes of coateo glass plates were a oierent matter.
In :88:, Eastman formeo a partnership with William Walker, the rst camera
maker to aoopt the manufacturing methoos pioneereo by gun makers in the Uniteo
States, which permitteo the use of interchangeable parts. As Rolano Barthes sug-
gests in oescribing photographys revelatory function, however, its chemistry was
of greatest importance.
32
In :88, Eastman ano Walker oevelopeo a exible pho-
tographic meoium, a paper negative substrate coateo in guncotton, which per-
mitteo twenty-four serial exposures. In a parallel oevelopment in :886, a Irench
inventor rolleo pure gelatinizeo guncotton into sheets, cut it into narrow strips, ano
maoe the rst mooern smokeless gunpowoer. In :888, Eastman releaseo the Ko-
oak Camera, which took :oo exposures on a meoium of paper-backeo sheets of
ory, etherizeo guncotton.
33
In March :88q, Eastmans chief chemist Henry Reich-
enbach aooeo amyl acetate ,a milo solvent, C
H
:
O
.
, to guncotton, ano createo
celluloio, a tenuously stable ano transparent meoium that coulo be poureo out
into separable sheets ano cut into strips. That same year, two Englishmen aooeo
nitroglycerine ano acetone ,C
H
6
O, to guncotton, ano maoe the explosive,
coroite.
34
Thus breech-loaoing guns ano the Kooak Camera not only orew on the
same language, they both sealeo the same sort of chemicals in their cartrioges.
The camera owner sent the whole Kooak Camera to the Eastman Company,
which oevelopeo the pictures ano maileo everything back. The watchworos of Ko-
oak aovertisements from :888 onwaro were caught ano instantaneous.
35
The
subject was to be caught on the y, snaggeo like a sh or trappeo like an animal.
Ior taking pictures of people without asking, as one woulo if one wisheo to shoot
.8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
another person with a gun, one useo oetective cameras, ano the early aos for
the pocket Kooak presenteo it in the visual vocabulary of the pocket revolver. It
yieloeo twelve shots, two barrelsful. The event of the snapshot ano the resulting
picture were both creoiteo to the shooter, who captureo the oening moments
of signicant experiences or occasions. A single instant of travel coulo then become
the visual metonym of the entire holioay. Eastmans rst eort to write a slogan
for the Kooak roll-lm camera was You pull the trigger, well oo the rest.
36
No longer a pack horse-loao, Kooaksano subsequently Leicas ano Minoltas
ano so ont easily into travelers bags. Even more important, photography hao
been reoesigneo, Eastmans copy tolo customers, so that the mechanical work can
be entirely separateo from the chemical work.
37
Breech-loaoing guns ano the Ko-
oak camera kept the hanos of the shooter clean. In :888, Eastman tolo Walker,
perhaps a bit optimistically, that he woulo rather keep the patent to roll lm than
own the patent to the telephone. In Englano, the most inoustrializeo nation in the
worlo, one out of four families bought a camera by :qoo.
38
The whole range of ser-
vices once oereo by the stuoiothe backorop cloth, the Sunoay suit, the furni-
ture, the braces for support, the box of plates, the professional operatorwas even-
tually oone away with, just as the telephone oemoteo the courier, the clerk, ano the
typist. Even more, since the amateurs brief click of the shutter was all that counteo
in taking a picturemuch as the click of the trigger was enough to proouce
a hunting trophythe Kooak revolution causeo the apparent erasure of Kooaks
own factory workers. Skilleo ano semi-skilleo chemists, contractors, packagers, ano
service people were no longer encountereo by the customer, ano so, eectively ois-
appeareo. Eastman regureo the consumer as a prooucer. The photograph was at-
tributeo to the shooter, just as paio safaris gave the trophy to the rieman with the
rst clean shot.
The oevelopment of mooern photography in Africa thus followeo several par-
aoigms central to hunting. In both enoeavors, consumers stalkeo ano stoppeo ele-
ments of the worlo, ano a wonoerfully wioe capacity to signify was granteo to their
pictures ano trophies. Nevertheless, the skilleo aio behino the scenes ano the po-
litical ano economic context for both projects were obscureo in both meoia. While
liveo experience in Africa embarrasseo such pretenses, as the immense local infra-
structures for every colonial activity coulo haroly be ignoreo, images ano ioeolo-
gies serveo to shore them up. The constancy of such repair work was inoispensa-
ble to mooern colonial rule.
THE IMAGE AND COLONIAL UNDERSTANDING
Fhotography aecteo the practices ano institutions that composeo empires because
of its imagery. Yet historians have haroly begun to consioer the practical involvement
of visual images in the structures of power that composeo imperialism. How shoulo
they oo so? It might be best to begin by examining the circulation of images in itself,
as opposeo to their placement in juoicial or aoministrative forums. Cinema ano still
photography carrieo messages to ano from Africa ano the West, ano their images
were repeateo ano reproouceo in ever new ano oistant contexts. Ior instance, Carl
Akeleys ano Kermit Roosevelts images of the Nanoi ,Kalenjin-speakers in western
Kenya, oirectly inuenceo Eogar Rice Burroughss Totor stories, ano later also in-
formeo Osa ano Martin Johnsons many lms.
39
At least two of those lms, the John-
sons Corgottllo ,:q., ano Stm/o ,:q.8,, which incluoeo further Akeley footage, in turn
inuenceo Irving Thalbergs Totor tlc Apc Mor ,:q., ano Merian Coopers Itrg Iorg
,:q,not to mention the Fygmy-mooeleo Ewoks of George Lucass Rctotr of tlc
}cot ,:q8, ano the jungle chieftains of his Plortom Mcrocc ,:qqq,.
40
The oepictions of
gooo ano bao African kings in the Koroa brothers Soroct of tlc Rtcct ,:q, can be
founo again in Itrg Solomor Mtrc ,:q, ano _olo ,:q6,. Stately, cattle-keeping
Africans appeareo in Unoerwooo ano Unoerwooos stereoscope caros in :qoq, ano
the same gures still trackeo for Motool of Omolo 1tlo Itrgoom in the :q6os, which
was hosteo by Marlin Ferkinsa close frieno of Osa Johnsons.
41
Minstrelsy begat
the loose-limbeo cartoon native in Ttrttr, Bctt, Boop, ano Bog Borr,, who then be-
came the witch ooctor in Disneys hugely successful Tlc Ltor Itrg ,:qq6,, this time in
the guise of a baboon.
The connections between such lines of popular representation, ano the history
of actual colonialism, are rather more oicult to outline. Ethnography, the aomin-
istration of tribes unoer colonial rule, ano photography ano cinema, all impingeo
on one anothers oomains.
42
My general sense of the current literature is that there
is little consensus beyono the ioea that they were genoereo, racist, contemporary,
ano thus in some way mutually constituteo phenomena. Some scholars, striving to
go further than this, have granteo immense power to the Western gaze, ano ap-
proach the position that seeing itself is tantamount to state control. The ioea oerives
from a strange misreaoing of Michel Ioucault.
43
It is clear enough that action ano
the essence of picturing are oierent things when we consioer representations of un-
oeroogs outwitting the powerful. Tintin ummoxes hostile Congolese in the frame
of a comic strip, an African gure oefeats a white man in a game of chess in a sculp-
ture fronting a Ghanaian womens cult, a white colonial masqueraoer is a gure
of fun in a Gure oance performance in Harare. The same kino of oistinction must
also be orawn when white people photographeo ano catalogueo Africans in books
ano reports: such acts of control were locateo in the oomain of signs.
44
Yet the virtual ano actual of colonial engagements oio aect one another.
After all, one can learn about history from photographs, as several recent treat-
ments have oemonstrateo, which woulo haroly be possible otherwise.
45
But the
overlap was also instrumental. This was so rst in the intuitive sense that the ma-
nipulation of people in the mechanics of colonial aoministration supplieo the
grounos for representing ethnic groups on paper. Inoeeo, the very notion of tribe
oeriveo from the process by which inoiviouals in inoigenous hierarchies, some of
which were quite complex, were groupeo into types subsequently seen as recog-
nizable. In the basement of the University of the Witwatersranos meoical school,
one can still no a library of Bushmens skulls, Frofessor Raymono Darts Gallery
.o r\tr s. r\xn\t
of African Iaces ,a trophy wall of plaster-cast life masks collecteo in the :q.os,,
ano other photographic examples of the oynamic. Ethnic oistinctions in meoical-
izeo tableaux are presenteo as if they were analogous to the oivisions among bio-
logical species, but in fact, skulls, facial masks, ano plates of photographeo types
are groupeo together in this bizarre museum accoroing to the logic of conquest ano
aoministration.
46
The same arrogance oeneo the aggregateo nature of even the in-
oivioual pictureo subject. In most colonial-era photographs that achieveo circula-
tion, Africans were organizeo into aoministrative categories, either ethnic or other-
wise: oock worker, weaver, krio, Wolofs, marimba players, youths. One neeo not push
the point too far, since photographers were oiverse in their aims ano their aliations:
there were important oierences among missionaries oioactic photographs, fashion
ano commercial images, cinematic propaganoa, ano major motion pictures.
47
Yet
much of the time, with gooo photographers ano with hacks, Africans in pictures
were ano are oeinoivioualizeo ano nameless.
48
In Allan Sekulas terms, they were
frameo within the honoric paraoigm of portraiture, but they were homogenizeo
accoroing to photographys repressive function, that of possession or control.
rxrinrs or +nr \ist\r ..
Iigure ... Lake Chrissie San. Fart of Frofessor Raymono
Darts Gallery of African Iaces, University of Witwatersrano
Meoical School. Fhotograph by Faul Lanoau.
This reouction of oierences to the level of variations in genera was not simply
a taxonomic expeoient. It was a function of oistance. Ior while scientic typo-
logical stuoies were of limiteo use to colonialism, the remote commano structure of
metropolitan overrule maoe the ioea of an authentic ano timeless Africa extremely
appealing. It crystallizeo after the era of rst-person accounts of exploration. This
imaginary place not only helpeo compensate for the ugliness of genuine colonial en-
counters, but suggesteo that Africans who appeareo carnal ano impure ano oevious
hao been corrupteo by colonialism. What is authentic always lies at a safe remove
from the experience of the observer, Africans that exist in the pristine mooe for Eu-
ropeans are by oenition still unfamiliar, still far away. It might seem as if oistant
people are again, by oenition, people who are not yet unoerstooo very well: this
woulo be a commonsense view. In fact, however, Europeans have often purporteo
to know authentic Africans quite well, ano to oo so even from their mere pictures.
Because images of oeinoiviouateo people were ano nearly always are images of
the oisempowereo, the pinnacle of authenticity in colonial representations of
Africans woulo be a revealing portrait of a oistanceo ano generalizeo gure.
Again, this is a contraoiction, but it nevertheless perfectly oescribes a great oeal of
colonial photography ano most portraiture. The impacteo ioea was so compelling
to Margery Ferham, the biographer of Ireoerick Lugaro, that she useo a photo-
graph of a nameless eloerly African man as a frontispiece to her book Tcr Afttcor,
a work which aimeo at revealing the inoiviouality of the persons she oescribeo. The
photographs caption is The Authentic Sculpture.
49
Only if an inoiviouals per-
sonal ioentity is oenieo can he or she be such a sculpture: an image to be experi-
enceo as potent, authentic, knowable, ano reprooucible.
Masseo ano oistant types such as Fernhams authentic sculpture can mean
many things. They have an aura of authenticity about them. In a much-citeo es-
say, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproouction, Walter Benjamin
elaborateo this concept of aura. He oiscusseo aura as the quality of arts hano-
wrought originality, as an eect similar to what Marx saw as the initial impulse to-
waro commooity fetishism. In Benjamins terms, the aura of an original work of
art was the meaning createo in situ by the traoition of the apprehension of that
art: it was its historical testimony, which was reao back into the artwork as an in-
trinsic quality of it.
50
Ferhaps because authenticity is always in retreat, Benjamin
oescribes aura almost entirely in the past tense. It is something that receoes from
view: we may encounter it, but we cannot quantify or contain it. It is a unique
phenomenon of oistance.
51
In much the same way, the authentic African is also unpossessable, woroless,
ano oistant, ano so always subject to contamination. By the turn of the century, the
colonial traveler hao to make an eort to get behino the scenes, o the tourists
path, yet once he reacheo the hopeo-for setting, his own intercourse began at once
to transform it ano oispell its aura. The establishment of genuine intimacy eraseo
all authenticity, ano the search for authentic primitives can ano coulo never be
fullleo. It seems to me that photography in Africa has often been a technique for
.: r\tr s. r\xn\t
Iigure .. The Authentic Sculpture. Irontispiece in Margery
Ferham, Tcr Afttcor ,Lonoon: Iaber ano Iaber, :q6,. Reproouceo by
permission.
oerailing just this eect. In other woros, the photography of the authentic was an
assertion of a permanent aura, a permanent intrinsic oistance. The more re-
mote from Western experience a photographeo person appeareo to be, the truer,
because more authentic, he was, regaroless of the circumstances of the taking
of the picture. When images of the Fygmy ano Bushman became icons in
books, slioes, magazines, ano postcaros, they perpetuateo aura in oirect proportion
to its erasure in the lives of people calleo Fygmies ano Bushmen.
In this sense, photography was much better than oirect observation. Martin
Johnson ano Carl Akeley proveo the point in their arrangement ano lming of a
Lumbwa lion hunt in Tanzania in :q.. They paio for young Kipsigis men
close relations of the Nanoito walk all the way oown into the Serengeti from
Narok, Kenya, ano then, with motor cars, they helpeo orive the quarry into the
Kipsigis mens spears. The footage appeareo in the Johnsons successful :q.8 movie
Stm/o, as well as in Johnsons book Sofott, backeo up by a phony story explaining
the backgrouno to the traoitional hunt, which just happeneo to be captureo
on lm. Fictures from the same series subsequently appeareo in other books with
yet other inventive captions, some atly contraoicting Johnsons.
52
Such photo-
graphs coulo maintain their authenticity against all ooos. Fhotography also ex-
ceeoeo observation in the ubiquitous expeoitions that workeo their way through
the Kalahari Desert oistributing tobacco to everyone they met. Writing in :q.,
Ernest Caole commenteo on the anachronistic purity of the Bushman, writing: I
think the most funoamental thing in bushman life is that he is pristine . . . he is al-
ways giving expression to the elements that were rst, when consciousness oawneo
upon man as a sentient being.
53
The photography of Bushmen in coee-table books coulo show this authentic-
ity better than life ever woulo. The author Laurens van oer Fost became wioely
known for his elaboration of the nature of Bushmens authenticity. Bushmen were,
like other primitives, everywhere unoergoing revolutions ,as William Holman
Hunt hao put it,. Their purity woulo be ruineo or they woulo vanish altogether,
ringing their images with aura. We now know that not even the most authentic
bushmen were untoucheo. The nineteenth-century gure of the South African
Bushman only came into being after the oispossession ano muroer of oiverse
Khoe- ano San-speaking peoples in the rst place. The Bushmen whom the :q.
Denver African Expeoition of Ernest Caole encountereo were olo pros in their
oealings with whites. By :qo, even the most remote of them beggeo cigarettes
from Western travelers.
After Elizabeth Marshall Thomass Tlc Hotmlc Pcoplc was publisheo in :q8,
camera-toting travelers continueo to erase authenticity everywhere outsioe the pho-
tographic frame. It was but a short step to ask Bushmen to perform their pho-
tographeo type for the pleasure of tourists. This is inoeeo the oaily routine at
Kagga Kamma Fark in South Africa, where Bushmen exhibit the skin-clao image
of their own authentic lost selves.
54
They can then reappear in tourists photo al-
bums of exotic holioays, which further frame the experience of faraway, inoigent
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
peoples by cropping from memory the oeaoweight of travel ano the oiscomfort of
extraneous visuals such as branoy bottles ano Coke cans. In the eno, the image of
the Bushman attaineo its mature form by completely erasing the historical cir-
cumstances of its own proouction.
The extreme examples citeo above involving the Kipsigis ano people calleo
Bushman point to the general function of photography as a tool of empire.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION
The most recent treatment of photography in southern Africa unoerscores the
complexity of the relationships between picturing ano colonialism, the oiculty in
pinning them oown. It focuses on the haphazaro photographic traces left in
Namibia by a oefeateo colonial power, Germany, ano by a regional subcolonial
power, South Africa. In the eno, it shows that the processes of prooucing |visual|
knowleoge were very straineo ano ambivalent ano oio not necessarily feeo into
the colony itself.
55
While the volume goes on to some excellent analyses, it is also
worth suggesting that the very inattentiveness to African particularity that charac-
terizes the pictorial archive in Namibia was a conoition of the making of the vi-
sual sign of the tribe, which was so useful to colonial rule.
In magazines ano books from the turn of the century onwaro, the emblem of
the African tribe was an aoult man in authentic ano customary regalia. His image
oereo white colonial culture some grounos for cooperation with the gerontocratic
patriarchyleaoership of senior menof many African societies.
56
Irom the :8qos
through the :qos, the stereoscopic Zulu warrior, the equestrian Iulani, the
hunter San in Duggan-Cronins beautiful photographs, all accompanieo by ex-
planatory captions, metonymically ioentieo their tribes.
57
The visual infatuation
with pastoralists was manifesteo most of all by the popularity of EastCentral
African Maasai, mainly mottor ,male youths, orapeo in skins ano leaning on long
spears. At the same time that they were recollecteo in pictures ano memoirs, Maa-
sai mottor lost their hunting grounos to whites ano assisteo colonial ocials in
maintaining oroer among the Luo ano Kalenjin peoples. Maasai iconography
hao no place at all within it for the Maasai loose women who were supposeoly
corrupting Nairobi by the :8qos, just as the picture of the warlike Zulu oio not
reect secono- or thiro-generation Christians like George Champion or Albert
Luthuli.
58
Fictures of traoitional Africans moreover supporteo the view that the tribal
economy operateo inoepenoently of the colonial economy. It followeo that mo-
bile, male tribesmen might form a brioge between the two, taking up wage labor
ano returning home to oevelop their tribes. Irom the colonial stanopoint, the
:q lm Soroct of tlc Rtcct representeo the ioeal alliance between paunchy white
men ano noble-formeo black men. Faul Robeson is an African chief who, unlike
his howling neighbors, is interesteo in progress ano therefore cooperates with
Sanoers, the unassuming, steaoy oistrict ocer.
59
In actuality, colonial economies
hao always relieo on African labor. They secureo it largely through state legislation
ano subsequent interventions of chiefs, merchants, ano oistrict ocers in the la-
bor market. Mining, plantations, ano cash-cropping useo corve ,forceo, labor from
their beginnings.
60
The ioeology of the tribe workeo to mask such oepenoence.
It ensureo, for instance, that there was no formal means of acknowleoging that
the entity calleo customary law hao been altereowhile colonial inoustries re-
lieo on customary African authorities to oeliver workers to them ano to govern
over increasingly impoverisheo rural oomains. The performeo or photographeo
tribesman was the visual manifestation of the phony stasis of custom, neatly con-
cealing the oepenoence of whites on the coerceo or semi-coerceo labor of Africans.
The tribesman also cloakeo the increaseo buroens in farming ano chilo-care
that fell on African women. Behino the ethnic face, chiefs fought to formalize their
control over their statutory minors. Often enough, therefore, the unprogressive na-
ture of tribes was representeo by images of women. In ôttorol Gcogtopltc Mog-
otrc for instance, social life, labor, beauty, ano oomestic space were often representeo
as female ano perennial oomains. Because African women occupieo the traoitional
economy from which men coulo supposeoly come ano go with ease, they were oou-
bly alienateo from colonial policy makers, as Africans ano as women.
61
Catherine
Lutz ano Jane Collins have subjecteo ôttorol Gcogtopltc to a close reaoing, for in-
stance, ano suggest that the magazine showeo women of color in a similar manner
to postcaros of North African harems at the turn of the century, with much ois-
play of brown-skinneo female breasts. In both meoia, the camera is aimeo from a
public, employing, peoagogical, male point of view, ano African women are simul-
taneously sexualizeo ano maoe to stano for cultural oierence. If pictures of tribes-
men concealeo the economies of African men, those of tribeswomen obliterateo
those of women.
62
Even beyono these senses, the pictureo African type hao a politically repres-
sive function. Christrauo Geary tells us that even before :q:, the German Reich-
skoliatamt oemanoeo rst rights to any photograph snappeo by government per-
sonnel. Soon enough each colonial power hao its own photographic service, not
to mention the oe facto ability to censor unoesirable news pictures.
63
Most pro-
founoly authentic Africana obfuscateo local politics for metropolitan publics ano
policy makers. By inltrating the circuits of money ano power in the colonial era,
images of oeinoiviouateo Africans became part of what James Scott has calleo the
public transcript of oomination, the acceptable presentation of the colonizeo. It
was a transcript that imperialism relieo on even more than Africans.
64
As the West-
ern image of Africa matureo in the :q.os ano :qos, the only mooe of African na-
tional oiscourse that many colonial authorities tolerateo was that reecteo in the
typological photograph: traoitionalism. Thus in Swazilano, the British ano South
African governments forecloseo on the progressive strategies of King Sobhuza,
leaving him with no choice but to mooel his authority on a frozen picture of the
worlo of his parents.
65
Because traoition meant homogenization, such strategies
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
coulo cut both ways, ano public transcripts were inoeeo useo by subject peoples
to oissimulate ano to conceal. Thus when the Bechuanalano Frotectorate trieo to
insinuate oces of aoministration into chiefooms, some rulers in Botswana in-
sisteo, in response, that they only hao unoierentiateo tribal councillors.
66
More
often, however, images of authentic African culture militateo against political ac-
tivity ano so favoreo the state. They were most often taken in rural areas, ano so
they obscureo urban spaces, they were anachronistic, ano so they oisableo Africans
from speaking from within their own time. In Zaire, Sese Seko Mobutos authen-
ticity policy asserteo the primacy of a living past, oisguising the origins of the
Zairean state ano marginalizing oebates about contemporary life.
67
Malawis Dr.
Banoa ano Kwazulus Chief Buthelezi similarly experimenteo with ways of re-
placing political oebate with monolithic recreateo traoitions. Images playeo a role
in all these substitutions.
The origins of such eorts lay in imperial rule. Metropolitan European control
over Africa requireo that the traoitional oomain of governance be relieo upon,
ano at a oistance. This necessity was oevelopeo into the theory of inoirect rule
by the rst governor of northern Nigeria, Ireoerick Lugaro.
68
Ocials resioent in
Africa took their most general oroers from oistant ocials, in the Ioreign Oce in
Lonoon ano the Colonial Ministry in Faris. After the turn of the century, when
the telegraph hao reouceo intervals of communication from several weeks to a mat-
ter of minutes, metropolitan authorities involveo themselves more in their African
possessions, but the chief aim was to limit expenoitures. European oces useo
maps, reports, ano leogers to organize their policies, which were only imperfectly
implementeo by local ocials.
69
Closer to the ambit of oroinary Africans, bu-
reaucrats in colonial capitals such as Lagos or Mafeking meoiateo between utterly
oissimilar constituencies, ano often saw no prot in questioning the supposeo ho-
mogeneity of tribal law, custom, ano personality. The regular preoictability of ois-
tant types was a useful ction.
Most European aoministrators ano ,quite obviously, Africans knew better. Ac-
tual engagements between Europeans ano Africans were full of contingency, ano
colonial personnel prioeo themselves on their insioer knowleoge. To aoopt ,ano
aoapt, James Scotts terminology once again, from the point of view of the metro-
pole, there were multiple hiooen transcripts in Africa. Some lay sioe by sioe, oth-
ers one behino the next like the layers of an onion. The integration of oistrict
ocers ano resioent magistrates into Afttcor politics, for example, playeo accoro-
ing to transcripts hiooen beneath that half of Lugaros oual manoate that
specieo the improvement of African jurispruoence by example ano by appeal. A
Iulani emirs trac in slaves or a clerks reliance on oashes were best painteo out
of public oiscourse ano hiooen from metropolitan observers.
70
The booily intimacy
between whites ano African servants createo further representational problems.
The boy who removeo the mistresss night soil hao to be trusteo in quite an-
other way than as a tribesman. Clerks, cooks, meoical aioes, valets, ano wet nurses
were inoispensable, ano also founo their way into images, businesses ano missions
both aovertiseo with icons of colo, some of which Africans transformeo into lib-
eratory ioeals.
71
Yet they were unsettling gures, leaning to oanoyism, mireo in
opaque traoition, tragic gures, unable to t in. Africans concealeo transcripts
from Europeans on many levels, but Europeans also averteo their eyes.
72
My point is that tr tlc colortol mcttopolc, the uncomfortable knowleoge of African
realities, ano the intimate reliance on real Africans, were, as much as possible, sub-
oroinateo to oepictions of qualities projecteo onto African types. The public tran-
script of the tribesman was a solution to the problem of unoerfunoeo imperial
rule over oiverse ano numerous peoples. Not only oio it provioe an interface, how-
ever imperfect a one, for Africans to make themselves visible, it also, paraooxically,
helpeo assuage the subterranean fears of whites.
The pagans now sprang from hiding in all directions and, with blood-curdling yells,
leapt in pursuit. . . . From my position beside Roddie, I could not repress a shudder at
the bloodthirsty and menacing aspect of this dark and savage people. How very eas-
ily they could demolish the lot of us, I thought. And yet, such is the power of the white
man, when Barkie raised his megaphone and shouted Cut! they immediately re-
laxed and peacefully awaited further instructions.
73
The more Africans might be imagineo to be lockeo into preoictable habit, the
better it was for everybooy. The reouction of people to types even manoateo the
insistence, on occasion, that celluloio or paper was more real than people. How else
can we unoerstano the oiculty involveo, for instance, in getting Africans to per-
form as Africans? In their guioe to colonial ano evangelistic lmmaking in Africa,
L. A. Notcutt ano G. C. Latham tell us that Bantu women were too self-conscious
to act out their own type, but Zanzibari Africans oio better. Our experience of
native actors was that at least one in ve can give quite a creoitable performance
of any action which is customary in his life. . . . One native actress |from Zanz-
ibar| acteo well the part of a woman of her own type.
74
The oegree to which an African coulo act like her type, as oeneo by others,
coulo itself become a oistinguishing feature of the type ,or image, she portrayeo.
The absuroity of the above example shoulo not obscure how common a process
this was: as with Darts Bushman Iaces, the colonial power in Africa eliciteo fea-
tures from groups createo by the compromises of its rule, ano then countenanceo
those observations as the supposeoly anteceoent, organizing principles of its rule.
As a result colonial ano metropolitan ocials sometimes ruleo less over populations
than over images, like the Queen of Hearts in Altcc tr 1oroctloro.
When the public transcripts of authenticity intersecteo with Africans genuine
politics, the results coulo be oisastrous. The Kenyan governments oraconian re-
sponse to the Mau Mau uprisings was conoitioneo by the ioea that the Kikuyu
were exhibiting a kino of pathology resulting from their collective, tribal nature,
in its encounter with mooernity.
75
In Burunoi ano especially in Rwanoa, com-
plex forms of patronage were reouceo to two masseo ioentities, Tuutsi ano
.8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
Hutu, essentializeo with sets of physical traitsano representeo in photographs
by Jacques Maquet ano others. The utility of this public transcript contributeo
a necessary preconoition for the genocioal conicts in those countries, in some of
which Hutu extremists claimeo authenticity solely for themselves.
76
The naoir
of the conuence between xeo images ano malleable, oiscriminatory policies was
perhaps reacheo in separate oevelopment in South Africa. Only the tribe as a
whole might progress, so that in the ocial mino, articulate inoivioualssuch as
the Zulu chief Albert Luthulihao no stanoing as Africans. Frogress ano tribe
amounteo to antithetical notions. Tooay, the South African Tourist Boaro contin-
ues to oer pictures of its ethnic plurality, replacing apartheios language of con-
trol with happy talk of rainbows ano ioentity.
THE BUFFERING EFFECT OF THE SPECTACLE
The ioea that Western photographs objectieo colonizeo peoples in Africa is cor-
rect, if also banal. Fhotographs, like perspectival paintings before them, can just as
easily be saio to have objectieo observers.
77
The immobile perspective of the pho-
tograph cements the ctc.ct in a single position: it holos the eye static, unblinking,
ano xateo.
78
More important, when Africans were representeo in a stageo
tableau, they hao usually oecioeo to participate in it, just as an African actress in
a lm proteo from her collaboration in making her public transcript. Christrauo
Geary has shown that the king of Bamun in Cameroon quickly learneo what the
camera was for, ano mastereo it for his own enos, oisplaying himself in stageo poses
ano carefully selecteo clothing.
79
Male youths in Kenya, Botswana, or Zimbabwe
were glao to sit together in solioarity for a portrait, ano if paio a wage, were often
willing to perform a caricature of their ioentities. None of these people hao evi-
oent cause to worry about the eects of their oepiction.
80
The negotiations between Africans ano Europeans in the creation of images
also blurs the question of what constitutes a Western- versus an African-proouceo
picture. Christrauo Geary ano Virginia-Lee Webb make an important point in this
regaro in their oiscussion of colonial-era postcaros. Whether an image was maoe
by a Senegalese Creole photographer such as Alphonso Lisk-Carew or a promi-
nent Western photographer such as Volkmar Wentsel, sponsors shippeo scenes
of the colonies to large cities ano the centers of empire, where they were turneo
into postcaros by specializeo rms in Europe or by big companies in the Uniteo
States. . . . |ano| shippeo back to the oistant sponsors in foreign territories, |where|
Westerners bought them.
81
The forces that marshaleo ano oistributeo images were the same ones that prop-
agateo the oominant interpretations of what the images were taken to mean. In
the eno, the ethnic status or even the class aliation of a given photographer was
not that important. The oominance of an interpretation corresponoeo with power
more generally. Lutz ano Collins, in their alreaoy mentioneo analysis of images of
womens booies in ôttorol Gcogtopltc, stress the importance of the particular choices
Iigure .. Noebele Warriors. Two young men in batttle oress, ca. :8qo. Cour-
tesy Zimbabwe National Archives. Fhotographer unknown.
maoe by magazine eoitors. Surely, however, the larger context for the circulation
of the magazine oio more to oetermine where the camera lookeo. Dark-skinneo
colonizeo people, who oio not sexualize the seeing of breasts, were photographeo,
their images were brought home to miowestern American families in which glimps-
ing breasts was highly chargeo with sex, American money then encourageo the fur-
ther photography of nakeo brown-skinneo women in future ôttorol Gcogtopltc,
ano inoeeo in cinema ano postcaros, too.
82
Ultimately, the role of photography in
the colonial project emerges not from who maoe images, nor even ,ano this is re-
ally the central point, from the graphic content of the images themselves. Rather,
it lay in the appropriation of tribal images into structures of oistribution ano in-
terpretation.
83
Ano it is precisely the constant possibility of appropriation that char-
acterizeo mechanically reproouceo images of Africans.
In this essay I have trieo to suggest lo. visual iconography, ano especially pho-
tography, was involveo with colonialism in Africa. The mechanics ano marketing
of guns ano cameras concentrateo agency in a common way: they shot ano
took emblems of the wioer worlo, they maoe claims to own the worlo by virtue
of shooting ano taking it, they reouceo it to archetypes, ano they suboroinateo ano
concealeo the infrastructure necessary to the process. The seemingly objective vi-
sual presence of Africans, ano the plangent specicity ano realness of photographs,
stabilizeo authenticity ano obscureo a worlo of politics ano labor that people in
Europe oio not wish to see. Africans mooes of ioentity were complex, stackeo ano
overlapping. Western colonial photography, suitably captioneo ano contextualizeo,
atteneo them into comparable tribes. It reecteo the ioeology that mooern
economies were naturally oivorceo from tribes ano createo a buering illusion of
control, facilitating the aoministration of those tribes. A very political history has
arrayeo images of Africa in a wioening gyre arouno Western urbanites, until pol-
itics ano class have all but oisappeareo from view.
Iinally, the trac in images unoer colonial rule serveo the colonial project in
Africa, alongsioe not only guns ano steamships, but raoio, newsreels, presses, ano
carbon paper. Images oereo the sympathetic magic of manipulating personhooo
through visual replicas.
84
Like other symbolic interfaces, visual images gave rise
to the oppcotorcc of immeoiacy, while safely blocking the metropole from those el-
ements of colonial life over which it hao little control anyway. Walter Benjamin
once preoicteo that moving pictures woulo allow common people to calmly ano
aoventurously go traveling anywhere they likeo.
85
A pioneering oeveloper of the
Internet preoicts more to come: Imagine some kino of a chair thats connecteo
to this system that you sit in ano y arouno wherever you want to go.
86
In the same
sense, the cumulative eect of pictures orawn from oierent parts of European em-
pires was to give the Western eye a total mobility over the African lanoscape, to un-
moor its locality in metropolitan booies.
This was an illusion. Every beholoer of prepareo information is ensconceo in
a tenoentious ano nite archive of representations.
87
Both in Africa ano in the West,
the preferreo visuals often obscureo real politics, the struggles ano compromises that
rxrinrs or +nr \ist\r ..
operateo accoroing to unoetecteo scripts. If we may think once more in terms of
tools of empire, we might say that images ano actions impingeo upon one an-
other, ano orove one another forwaro, but they never quite mesheo. Mooern im-
perialism in Africa inhabiteo their chronic misalignment.
NOTES
Thanks go to Patricia Hayes, Emily Epstein Landau, and Deborah Kaspin, for reading and
commenting on parts of this essay; to Yale University, for nancial support; to William
Beinart, for helpful suggestions; and to Cathy Connor, the archivist at the George Eastman
House in Rochester, New York. Epigraph: Margery Perham, Ten Africans (London: Faber &
Faber, :q6), , quoting Ndansi Kumalo, who played the Ndebele king Lobengula in the
lm Rhodes (:q6), recalling the :8q6 uprising known as Chimurenga.
:. Daniel Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth
Century (New York: Oxford University Press, :q8:).
.. See Peter Marzio, The Democratic Art: Chromolithography, .8o.oo (Boston: D. R. Go-
dine, in association with the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, :qq);
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :qqo), esp. ::., :q; A. D. Bensusan, Silver Images: History of Pho-
tography in Africa (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, :q66); To Catch a Sunbeam: Victorian Reality
Through a Magic Lantern, ed. G. A. Household (London: Michael Joseph, :qq); Elizabeth
Shepard, Magic Lantern Slides in Entertainment and Education, :86o:q.o, History of
Photography ::, . (AprilJune :q8): q::o8; David Prochaska, Fantasy of the Photothque:
French Postcard Views of Colonial Senegal, African Arts ., (:qq:): o, q8; Delivering
Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards, ed. Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, :qq8); and recent special issues of Cahiers
dtudes africaines, African Arts, and African Research and Documentation.
. Leopold Senghor, Preliminary Poem, Prose and Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, :q6), :.:. On Banania and its context, see Jan Nederven-Pieterse, White on Black: Im-
ages of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
:qq.), and Catherine Hodeirs chapter in this book.
. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, :q8), :. .
. See Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London:
Routledge, :qq); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, :q8:);
Joseph-Arthur, comte de Gobineau, Essai sur lingalit des races humaines (Paris: Firmin Di-
dot, :8); John Beddoe, The Races of Britain: A Contribution to the Anthropology of Western
Europe (Bristol, U.K.: Arrowsmith, :88); John Knox, The Races of Men: A Philosophical In-
quiry into the Inuence of Race over the Destinies of Nations (London: Renshaw, :86.). For the
current state of scholarly knowledge on the relationship between biological dierences and
human societies, see Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages (New York: North
Point Press, .ooo).
6. Martin Jay, Scopic Regimes of Modernity, in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (Seat-
tle: Bay Press, :q88).
. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, :qq), esp. qq:oo; and Stuart Cary Welch, Room for Won-
der: Indian Painting during the British Period, .,o.88o (New York: American Federation of Arts,
.: r\tr s. r\xn\t
:q8). Thanks to Jock McLane. See also the exhibition catalogue The Raj: India and the British,
.oo.,, ed. Christopher Bayly (London: National Portrait Gallery, :qq:).
8. George P. Landow, William Holman Hunts Oriental Mania and His Uzi Self-
Portrait, Art Bulletin 6, (:q8.): 6 for both quotations. As the great critic John Ruskin
wrote, Preraphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute, uncompromising truth in all
that it does, obtained by working everything, down to the most minute detail, from nature,
and from nature only(quoted in Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography [:q68; New York: Pen-
guin Books, :q86], o:, and see also ). See also Van Deren Coke, The Painter and the Pho-
tograph (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, :q6). On Holman Hunt, see also
Linda Nochlin, The Imaginary Orient, Art in America, May, :qq, :., cited by James Ryan,
Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, :qq), :.o; and Mary E. Coleridge, Holman Hunt (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack;
New York: F. A. Stokes, :qo8).
q. Millais incorporated the use of daguerreotypes into his work, and Delacroix and De-
gas used photos in theirs.
:o. Allan Sekula, The Body and the Archive, in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histo-
ries of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :q8q), 8q; John
Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (:q88; Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, :qq).
::. David Phillips, Art for Industrys Sake: Halftone Technology, Mass Photography and
the Social Transformation of American Print Culture, :88o:q.o (Ph.D. diss, Yale Uni-
versity, :qq6); and Ryan, Picturing Empire, :6, citing David Livingstone to Charles Living-
stone, May :o, :88, in The Zambezi Expedition of David Livingstone, .88.8, ed. J. P. R. Wal-
lis (London: Chatto & Windus, :q6), ..
:.. Terence Wright, Photography: Theories of Realism and Convention, in Anthro-
pology and Photograph, .8o.o, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale, :qq.), .:.
:. Reading similarly slowly shifted from a social activity, done out loud, to a private,
internal act, Roger Chartier argues in Texts, Printing, Readings, in The New Cultural His-
tory, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, :q8q), :.
:. Melissa Banta and Curtis Hinsley, From Site to Sight: Anthropology, Photography and the Power
of Imagery (Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, :q86); Ryan,
Picturing Empire, :q, and Frank Spencer, Some Notes on the Attempt to Apply Photogra-
phy to Anthropometry during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, in Anthropology
and Photography, .8o.:o, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
:qq.), :oo; Ray McKenzie, The Laboratory of Mankind: John McCosh and the Begin-
nings of Photography in British India, History of Photography ::, . (:q8): :oq:8; Elizabeth
Edwards, Representation and Reality: Science and the Visual Image, in Australia in Oxford,
ed. Howard Murphy and Elizabeth Edwards (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, :q88). See also
Saul Dubow, Scientic Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
:qq); A. M. Duggan-Cronin, The Bantu Tribes of South Africa: Reproductions of Photographic Stud-
ies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :q.8:), and id., The Bushman Tribes of South-
ern Africa (Kimberley: Alexander McGregor Museum, :q.) for further examples. John Lam-
prey published Method of Measuring the Human Form in :86q, and Carl Damann published
Anthropologisch-Ethnologisches Album in Photographien . . . Herausgegeben mit Untersttzung aus dem Sam-
melungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fr Anthropologies, Ethnologies und Ungeschichte in :86.
:. Gustav Fritsch, Drei Jahre in Sd-Afrika: Reiseskizzen nach Notizen des Tagebuchs zusam-
mengestellt. Mit zahlreichen Illustrationen nach Photographien und Originalzeichnungen des Verfassers, nebst
einer bersichtskarte der ausgefhrten Routen (Breslau: F. Hirt, :868); W. H. I. and Lucy Lloyd Bleek,
Specimens of Bushman Folklore [Spine: Bushman Folklore] (London: George Allen, :q::); Isaac
Schapera, The Khoisan Peoples of Southern Africa (London: Routledge, :qo); Spencer, Some
Notes on the Attempt to Apply Photography to Anthropometry; and in general, Banta and
Hinsley, From Site to Sight.
:6. South African apartheid stands as a major exception to this statement (see Saul
Dubow, Scientic Racism in Modern South Africa), but even here, Deborah Posels recent research
(so far unpublished) suggests that the bizarre minutiae of color charts did not have much to
do with the cataloguing of statuses under South Africas :qo Population Registration Act.
:. Africa Illustrated: Scenes from the Dark Continent. From Photographs Secured in Africa by Bishop
William Taylor, Dr. Emil Holub, and the Missionary Superintendents (New York: Ross Taylor, :8q);
and see also Duggan-Cronin, Bantu Tribes of South Africa; H. A. Bryden, Gun and Camera in
Southern Africa (London: Edward Stanford, :8q); Sir Harry H. Johnston, British Central Africa
(London: Methuen, :8q); and Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kar, with sixty-three full-page il-
lustrations from photographs by the author (:qo; .d ed., London: A. & C. Black, :q.). For
dierence as a matter of utility, see Nicolas Thomas, Colonialisms Culture: Anthropology, Travel,
and Government (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :qq). See also Sander Gilman,
Dierence and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (London: Routledge, :q8), and
Health and Illness: Images of Dierence (London: Routledge, :qq).
:8. This does not do justice to the muckrakers particular goals. See Jacob A. Riis, How the
Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (:8qo; New York: Penguin Books, :qq).
:q. See James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (:qq, :q:; Boston:
Houghton Miin, :q88); and August Sander,In der Photographie gibt es keine ungeklrten Schat-
ten! ed. Gerd Sander (Bonn: Kunstmuseum Bonn, :qq); Sander represented not only dy-
ing provincial and farmer types but also industrialists and scholars as types. Paul Augustus
Martins photos are discussed in Roy Flukinger, The Formative Decades: Photography in Great
Britain, .8.:o (Austin: University of Texas Press, :q8), :o. See also Christopher Ly-
man, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis (New York:
Pantheon Books, :q8.), and Daile Kaplan, Enlightened Women in Darkened Lands: A
Lantern Slide Lecture, Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication :o, : (:q8): 6:.
.o. Paul Landau, The Illumination of Christ in the Kalahari Desert, Representations
(Winter :qq): .q; Christopher Pinney, Colonial Anthropology in the Laboratory
of Mankind, in The Raj, ed. Bayly. Rudolf Pch quoted in Christraud M. Geary, Images
of Bamun: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroun, West Africa, .o:..
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, :q88), :.
.:. Ryan, Picturing Empire, :6.
... Sarah Lyall, Dianas Hunters: How Quarry Was Stalked, New York Times, Sep-
tember :o, :qq, :.
.. See Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Dell, :q), esp. . Snapping a shot
meant the same thing as to snipe, to shoot at a moving target: see the Oxford English Dic-
tionary (:q), s.v. snap-shot.
.. John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, :q88); and William Beinart, Review Article:
Empire, Hunting and Ecological Change in Southern and Central Africa, Past & Present
:.8 (August :qqo): :6.86.
.. Dr. H. Lang to resident commissioner, Pretoria, February :, :qo, Vernay Kala-
hari Expedition, :qo, DCF :/., Botswana National Archives (BNA). The expedition col-
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
lected specimens for the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Field Mu-
seum (Chicago), the British Museum, and the Transvaal Museum.
.6. I explore this logic more fully in With Camera and Gun in Southern Africa, in
Miscast, ed. Skotnes. The actual hunting of Bushmen, and occasionally the marketing of
their skins as trophies, is also taken up in other essays in that book. Mimesis is in a sense the
skin of the thing represented, Michael Taussig argues in another context in Mimesis and
Alterity (New York: Routledge, :qq), ch. , and :o.; and see Ryan, Picturing Empire, ::. .
.. Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, :q8).
.8. Reese V. Jenkins, Images and Enterprise: Technology and the American Photographic Industry,
.8 to .: (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, :q); Brian Coe, The Birth of Pho-
tography (New York: Praeger, :q6).
.q. See Paul Landau, Hunting with Gun and Camera, in The Colonising Camera: Pho-
tographs in the Making of Namibian History, ed. Wolfram Hartmann et al. (Cape Town: Uni-
versity of Cape Town Press; Athens: Ohio University Press, :qqq).
o. For instance, the naturalist Carl Akeleys famous Akeley Camera was modeled on
a turret-mounted machine gun and was immortalized by the photographer Paul Strand in
:q.. For Strands photograph, see Sarah Greenough, Paul Strand: An American Vision (Wash-
ington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, :qqo), .
:. Eastman wrote this in :8. See James Ackerman, George Eastman (Boston: Houghton
Miin, :qo), 8 and passim; and Elizabeth Brayer, George Eastman (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, :qq). Eastman had a shooting box in the :8qos.
.. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Jonathan Cape, :q8.), :. This must be un-
derstood in terms of Barthess understanding of the photograph as a peculiarly uncoded
message, an unmediated imprint of part of the world.
. P. Z. Adelstein, From Metal to Polyester: A History of Picture-Taking Supports,
in Pioneers of Photography: Their Achievements in Science and Technology, ed. International Museum
of Photography (Springeld, Va.: Society for Imaging Science and Technology, :q8); and
Encyclopedia of Firearms, ed. Harold L. Peterson (New York: Dutton, :q6), o.
. Coe, The Birth of Photography, :, 88; Peterson, Encyclopedia of Firearms, o; and George
Eastman to W. H. Walker, March , :88q, Eastman House archives, Rochester, N.Y.
. James E. Paster, Advertising Immortality by Kodak, History of Photography :6, .
(:qq.): :q.
6. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the
Beginning of the Modern Era (:q; Oxford: Oxford University Press, :q6q), .. The Kodak
ought to be in every Christian home, Eastman wrote to his partner Henry Strong (April ::,
:8q). The Kodak slogan You pull the trigger, well do the rest was cited by Elizabeth Brayer
(pers. comm., :qq); it was eventually changed to You push the button, well do the rest.
. Ackerman, George Eastman, .6.
8. Patents would actually be more accurate than patent, since Eastman patented every
step of the production process. Eastman to W. H.Walker, Rochester, March .., :88q, Papers
of George Eastman, Eastman House, Rochester, NY.
q. Burroughs rst wrote his initial book Tarzan of the Apes (:q:.; New York: Ballantine
Books, :q8) in serial form in :q::, a year after Teddy Roosevelt published African Game Trails
(New York: Dutton, :q:o), a partly photographic account of Roosevelts famous hunting sa-
fari. Gail Bederman, Tarzan and After, Cameron, Africa on Film, and also James Patterson,
Africa on Film, African Research and Documentation 68 (:qq): q.
o. Osa and Martin Johnsons lms can be rented directly from the Osa and Martin
Johnson Safari Museum, in Chanute, Kansas.
:. Prochaska, Fantasy; Neal Sobania, But Where Are the Cattle? Popular Images of
Maasai and Zulu across the Twentieth Century (forthcoming in Visual Anthropology).
.. See the University of Manchesters excellent Studies in the History of Imperialism
series. For relevant points on the professionalization of anthropology, see Henrika Kuklick,
Tribal Exemplars: Images of Political Authority in British Anthropology, :88:q, in
Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking, q8.
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, :q8); Edwards, Anthropology and Photography, In-
troduction, 6 ., and for missionary photos, see Rory McLachlan Bester, Insecure Shad-
ows: CPSA Mission Photographs from Southern Africa c. :8q:q (M.A. thesis, Uni-
versity of the Witwatersrand, :qq).
. It is true that seeing may be an aspect or stage of control, as it was intended to be
in Jeremy Benthams proposed prison, the Panopticon, as well as in Benthams attempts
to recognize the realities of human behavior and create a code of law in accordance with
them. Knowing that one is being seen may also feel invasive and discomting. Unless some
action on the body of the seen is implicated, however, seeing is a rather passive activity.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, :qq).
The problem is also approached by Chris Jenks, Visual Culture (New York: Routledge, :qq),
Introduction, ::6.
. Nancy Hunt, this volume; Kramer, The Red Fez: Art and Spirit Possession in Africa (New
York: Verso, :qq), .:o::; and Eric Worby, personal communication. The same case has
been made for oral performance by Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Power and the Praise Poem:
Southern African Voices in History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, :qq:); a large lit-
erature on carnival, commencing with Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, is also relevant here.
. See, e.g., Gwyn Prins, The Battle for Control of the Camera in Late Nineteenth-
Century Western Zambia, African Aairs 8q ( January :qqo): q:o6; Fotograa e storia del-
lAfrica: Atti del Convegno internazionale, NapoliRoma, .. settembre .:, ed. Alessandro Triulzi
(Naples: Instituto universitario orientale, :qq) (thanks to Moore Crossey); Colonising Camera,
ed. Hartmann et al.; and Geary, Images from Bamun.
6. For more on the relationship between photography, anthropometry, and colonial
anthropology, see Christopher Wright, Visible Bodies: Anthropology and Photography,
:8o:qoo (M.A. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,
:q8); and the essays by Pinney, Poignant, and others in Anthropology and Photography, .8o.:o,
ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq.). The Peoples of In-
dia was compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye; see Roy Flukinger, The
Formative Decades: Photography in Great Britain, .8.:o (Austin: University of Texas Press,
:q8), . Grace Sieberling and Carolyn Bloore, Amateurs, Photography and the Mid-Victorian
Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q86), , describe the eect of such pic-
tures as similar to an antiquarians portfolio. For the milieu of Darts and others Bushmen
collections, see the forthcoming work of Ciraj Rassool and Patricia Hayes, esp. Gendered
Science, Gendered Spectacle: /Khanakos South Africa, :q6, delivered at the Gender
and Colonialism conference at the University of the Western Cape, January :qq.
. See my introduction to this book, An Amazing Distance: People and Pictures in
Africa.
. r\tr s. r\xn\t
8. For instance, see Eliot Elisofons work in Life magazine and Duggin-Cronins lovely
plates, cited above; but also the work of Senegalese photographers such as A. Lisk-Carew,
discussed by Chris Geary in Delivering Views and in her paper, Betwixt and Between: Post-
card Representations by Western and African Photographers, delivered at the Images and
Empires conference.
q. Photograph by Margery Perham from her book Ten Africans (London: Faber & Faber,
:q6).
o. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in
Illuminations: Essays and Reections, ed. Hannah Arendt (:q68; New York: Schocken Books,
:q6q), ... In Benjamins argument, the attribution of aura to photographs and cinema is
counted as a mystication and even as fascistic. I suggest something similar below.
:. Ibid., .... Hannah Arendt comments: unapproachability is indeed a major qual-
ity of the cult image (ibid., . n. ).
.. George Eastman, Chronicle of an African Trip (Rochester: private printing, :q.), ;
Mary L. Jobe Akeley, Carl Akeleys Africa (New York, Dodd, Mead, :q.q), :o. See also Mar-
tin Johnson, Safari: A Saga of the African Blue (New York: Putnam, :q.8).
. Robert Gordon, Picturing Bushmen: The Denver Africa Expedition of .: (Athens: Ohio
University Press, :qq), , citing E. Cadle to L. Fourie, November :6, :q., Fouries Col-
lection, Museum Afrika, Johannesburg. In addition, see Gordons essay in this volume.
. Gordon, Picturing Bushmen, passim. The preceding points about authenticity owe
much to Gordon. On Bushmen, see further Edwin Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political
Economy of the Kalahari (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q8q), and Robert J. Gordon,
The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, :qq.).
For Kagga Kamma, I am drawing on Hylton White, The Homecoming of the Kagga
Kamma Bushmen, Cultural Survival Quarterly (Summer :qq), and Barbara Buntman, Bush-
man Images in South African Tourist Advertising: The Case of Kagga Kamma, in Mis-
cast, ed. Skotnes, .:8o.
. Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Sylvester, and Wolfram Hartmann, Introduction, and pas-
sim, in Colonizing Camera, ed. Hartmann et al.
6. The point is a general one. Gerontocratic and senior are not really equivalent
terms, since seniority was more often a matter of statutory kinship or wealth, rather than age.
. See Duggan-Cronin, Bushman Tribes of Southern Africa.
8. A. E. Agbo, The Establishment of Colonial Rule, :qoo:q:8, in History of West
Africa, ed. J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder (New York: Columbia University Press, :q),
.: .8; G. W. B. Huntingford, Nandi Work and Culture (London: HMSO for the Colonial
Oce, :qo), para. .q; Sobania, But Where Are the Cattle? For examples of Maasai pho-
tographs in memoirs, see, e.g., Frederick Courteney Selous, Travel and Adventure in South-East
Africa (London: Rowland Ward & Co., :8q); Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate (Lon-
don: Hutchinson, :qo.); and A. Blayney Percival, A Game Rangers Note Book (London: Wind-
ham, :q.); and see Being Maasai, ed. Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (Athens: Ohio Uni-
versity Press, :qq). Loose women: Luise White, Domestic Labor in a Colonial City:
Prostitution in Nairobi, :qoo:q., in Patriarchy and Class in Africa, ed. Sharon Stichter and
Jane Parpart (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, :q88), :.; Champion and Luthuli: Shula
Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism, and the State in Twentieth-
Century Natal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, :q86).
q. Zoltan and Alexander Korda, Sanders of the River (:q). There are some anomalies
in this example. For instance, the chief s wife favors a modern education for her son.
6o. Giovanni Arrighi, Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Prole-
tarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia, in Essays on the Political Economy of Africa,
ed. id. and John Saul (New York: Monthly Review Press, :q), 8o.6. (Since Arrighis im-
portant essay there have been many more nuanced appraisals, and the consensus is that
African laborers did exercise choice, albeit under extra-market constraints.) For custom,
see Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition Revisited, in Legitimacy and the State in
Twentieth-Century Africa: Essays in Honour of A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, ed. id. and Olufemi Vaughan
(Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, in association with St. Antonys College, Oxford, :qq),
:o:.; Sally Falk Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications: Customary Law on Kilimanjaro, .88o.8o
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :q86), ::8; Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and
the Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, :q8); and Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy
of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :qq6), ch. .
6:. Limiting ourselves to Bushmen in the matter of gender, see Edwin Wilmsen, The
Real Bushman is the Male One: Labour and Power in the Creation of Basarwa Ethnicity,
Botswana Notes & Records .. (:q8q): .:, and Donna Harraway, Remodelling the Human
Way of Life: Sherwood Washburn and the New Physical Anthropology, :qo:q8o, in Bod-
ies, Bones and Behavior: Essays on Biological Anthropology, ed. George Stocking (Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, :q88). The best discussion of the hidden gender of the citizen
in the modern state is Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Politi-
cal Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, :q8q).
6.. Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, :qq), ::; Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, :q86). Appearing too late for my full consideration is Laura Wexlers long-
awaited book on photography and gender in America, Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an
Age of U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, .ooo).
6. Christraud Geary, Photography: Development, in Encyclopedia of Africa South of the
Sahara, ed. John Middleton (New York: Scribner, :qq), oq.
6. James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, :qqo). I am altering Scotts meaning somewhat. He writes about pub-
lic transcripts to indicate performances that create the appearance of consent among sub-
ordinates (; see also o).
6. Christopher Lowe, Swazilands Colonial Politics: The Decline of Progressive South
African Nationalism and the Emergence of Swazi Political Traditionalism, :q:o:qq
(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, :qq8), 6.
66. Michael Crowder, Tshekedi Khama and Opposition to the British Administration
of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, :q.6:q6, Journal of African History .6 (:q8): :q.:.
6. Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Painting in Zaire: From the Invention of the West to the Rep-
resentation of the Social Self, in Africa Explores: Twentieth-Century African Art, ed. Susan Vo-
gel (New York: Center for African Art; Munich: Prestel, :qq:), :8q; K. A. Busia, The Chal-
lenge of Africa (New York: Praeger, :q6.), cited in Victor C. Uchendu, The Passing of Tribal
Man: A West African Experience, Journal of Asian and African Studies (:qo): :6.
68. Lugard was high commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria from :qoo
to :qo6, and the governor of Nigeriawhich then included the south as wellfrom :q:.
to :q:q.
.8 r\tr s. r\xn\t
6q. Andrew Roberts, The Imperial Mind, in The Colonial Moment in Africa: Essays on the
Movement of Minds and Materials, .oo.o, ed. Andrew Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, :qqo), .6 . Robert Thornton, Narrative Ethnography in Africa,
:8o:q.o: The Capture of an Appropriate Domain for Anthropology, Man, n.s., 8, (Sep-
tember :q8): o.:q, usefully discusses the discovery on paper of Africans by Western-
ers. My discussion here is inuenced not only by Scotts Hidden Transcripts, but by James Scott,
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq8), especially Scotts discussion (chs. : and .) of the states
imperative to see and organize space in a synoptic and replicable manner (8:), and in-
deed by many conversations with Scott himself.
o. Sean Stilwell, Amana and Asiri: Royal Slave Culture and the Colonial Regime
in Kano, :qo:q.6, in Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Martin A.
Klein (London: Frank Cass, :qqq), :688; Frank Salamone, Colonialism and the Emer-
gence of Fulani Identity, Journal of Asian and African Studies .o (:q8): :q.o..
:. Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Zarian Popular Painting as Commodity and as Communi-
cation, in African Material Culture, ed. May Jo Arnoldi, Christraud Geary, and Kris L. Hardin
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, :qq6), q; and see Hudita Mustafa, this volume.
The artistic work of Santu Mofokeng in Johannesburg also makes this point; but one might
also reference the sexy fashion photography in Drum magazine, Mike Nicol, A Good-Looking
Corpse (London: Secker & Warburg, :qq:); and see Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women:
Commodication, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, N.C.: Duke Uni-
.. See Nancy Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the
Congo (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, .ooo), esp. ch. ; and Jock McCulloch, Colo-
nial Psychiatry and the African Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :qq), ch. .
. Natalie Barkas, Behind the Camera (London: Georey Bles, :q), :8. The descrip-
tion refers to a Nigerian set piece in an unnamed lm.
. L. A. Notcutt and G. C. Latham, The African and the Cinema: An Account of the Work of
the Bantu Educational Cinema Experiment during the Period March . to May ., (London: Edin-
burgh House Press for the International Missionary Council, :q), :.
. John Lonsdale, Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya,
Journal of African History : (:qqo): q.:.
6. Jacques J. Maquet, Le systme des relations sociales dans le Rwanda ancien (Tervuren, Bel-
gium: Muse royale du Congo belge, :q); A. Barns, The Wonderland of the Eastern Congo (New
York: Putnam, :q..); and see also the photographs in Jean Rumiya, Le Rwanda sous le rgime
du mandat Belge, ... (Paris: LHarmattan, :qq.), and the discussion by Liisa Malkki in Pu-
rity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, :qq), esp. ch. .; and nally, David Newbury, Understanding
Genocide, African Studies Review :, : (:qq8): q.
. Images in the modern world no longer signify outside their disassociated chains of
resonance and are lost to the real, Guy Debord argues in The Society of the Spectacle (:q6;
trans., :qo; New York: Zone Books, :qq). This section and the subhead draw from his work.
8. Jay, Scopic Regimes of Modernity, . The growth of snapshot photography might
then be said to have recapitulated the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, with
its unframed images and lack of a clearly situated viewer. See Norman Bryson, Vision
and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :q8), q; Svet-
lana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, :q8), :8, cited by Jay; and Suren Lalvani, Photography, Vision, and the Produc-
tion of Modern Bodies (Albany: State University of New York Press, :qq6), ...
q. See Nicolas Thomass discussion of photos of Andaman Islanders in Colonialisms
Culture, ch. :; and my discussion of the photographs of Osa Johnson in Paul Landau, With
Gun and Camera in South Africa; and Christraud Geary, Images from Bamun. Two of my
Nigerian students pointed out King Njoyas evocation of Hausa-ness in several full-dress
photos, which Geary does not remark. Njoya apparently understood the cameras eye in a
complex way, sometimes as public and formal, and other times as private and candid. See
also Jan Vansina, Photographs of the Sankuru and Kasai River Basin Expedition Under-
taken by Emil Torday (:86:q:) and M. W. Hilton Simpson (:88::q6), in Anthropology
and Photography, .8o.:o, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
:qq.).
8o. Kenya youths: see, for example, Martin Johnson and A. Blaney Percival, Kenya Colony:
Camera Studies no. . (Nairobi: Government Service, :q6). Other examples from Botswana
and other countries may be found in picture books in every major European and American
bookstore. South Africa: Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz, South Africa: A World in One
Country: Moments in International Tourist Encounters with Wildlife, the Primitive and
the Modern, Cahiers dtudes africaines : (:qq6): .8.
8:. Delivering Views, ed. Geary and Webb, Introduction, .; see also Philippe David, ed.,
Inventaire gnral des cartes postales Fortier (Saint-Julien-du-Sault: Fostier, :q868), and Raymond
Corbey, Wildheid en beschaving: De Europese verbeelding van Afrika (Baarn, Netherlands: Ambo,
:q8q), cited by Geary and Webb (not seen by me). This is not to disparage eorts exempli-
ed in the recent conference in St. Louis, Senegal ( January .., :qqq), The Preserva-
tion and Promotion of the Photographic Heritage of West Africa.
8.. Sometimes Lutzs and Collinss analysis verges on self-parody: the centrality of the
race-gender code to decisions about whose breasts to depict cannot be denied, they write,
even though it would have been absurd for National Geographics photographers to have asked
Polynesian and Maasai women to cover themselves. See also Eric Savarese, La femme noire
en image, in Lautre et nous: Scnes et types, ed. Pascal Blanchard et al. (Paris: Association Con-
naissance de lhistoire de lAfrique contemporaine and Syros, :qq), 88. I would in fact
argue that the nonsexual attitude of photographed peoples exerted a real inuence on pho-
tographers.
8. As a mode of record-keeping, photographs were important to the expansion of the
United States in the American West, Alan Trachtenberg argues in The Incorporation of Amer-
ica (New York: Hill & Wang, :q8.), .o, cited by Rosalind Krauss in her essay, Photographys
Discursive Spaces, in id., The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :q8), :. I have omitted the photographing (and imagining, and
painting) of landscapes from this discussion, but one should consult Ryan, Picturing Empire,
chs. : and ., and the forthcoming work of Hermann Wittenberg.
8. Allen Feldman, Violence and Vision: The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror,
Public Culture :o, : (Fall :qq), .q, citing Michael Taussig, Malecium: State Fetishism, in
Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, ed. Emily Apter and William Pietz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, :qq).
8. Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, .6. [T]he high
point in the diusion of panoramas coincides with the introduction of [Paris shopping] ar-
.,o r\tr s. r\xn\t
cades, Walter Benjamin observes in Expos of :q, in The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiede-
mann (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, :qqq), .
86. John Marko, An Internet Pioneer Ponders the Next Revolution: Talking the Fu-
ture with: Robert W. Taylor, New York Times, December .o, :qqq, C8.
8. On archive, see Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon
Books, :q.), and Sekula, Body and the Archive. Whereas Edward Said implies in Orien-
talism that an actual Orient stood in opposition to the distortions of Orientalism, Timothy
Mitchell argues in The World as Exhibition, Comparative Studies in Society and History : (:q8q):
.., that colonial expositions created an eect called the real world, rejecting the distinc-
tion between a real of representations and the external reality which such representations
promise. See Thomas, Colonialisms Culture, .:..
rxrinrs or +nr \ist\r .,.
Chapter 6
Portraits of Modernity: Fashioning
Selves in Dakarois Popular Photography
Hudita Nura Mustafa
PICTURING ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS
On my trips over the past several years between Senegal ano the Uniteo States,
my bags have been lleo with photos on my way to Dakar ano with rolls of exposeo
lm on my way back to the Uniteo States. These photos are research oocuments
ano tools, as well as souvenirs for my frienos ano myself. They are seemingly in-
nocent ways to navigate the social terrain of ethnographic research.
1
Ano yet, like
other visual practices, photography is neither purely scientic nor politically inno-
cent. As Jonathan Crary writes, problems of vision . . . |are| funoamentally ques-
tions about the booy ano the operation of social power.
2
Fostcolonial practices
arouno visuality provioe glimpses of reclamations of subjugateo booies ano selves.
Iurthermore, accoroing to Abigail Solomon-Gooeau, photography brought into
being new congurations ano articulations of the booy, ano new images of mas-
culinity ano ,especially, femininity which intersect with oloer mooes of represen-
tation to proouce their own potent ano transguring aomixtures of mooernity.
3
A mooernist technique of archiving the booy, photography is rife with contraoic-
tory potentials, as it reveals ano conceals, xes ano transforms, subjugates ano lib-
erates.
4
This essay examines the creation ano oistribution of popular photographic por-
traiture in Dakar. Defying easy classication, Dakarois portrait photographs are
masks ano gifts, archive ano fetish, conformity ano recuperation. Women collect
ano oisplay photographs of themselves oresseo as elegantly as possible, a practice
calleo oc. The weooing album is at the center of the practices that surrouno por-
traiture in Dakar, ano fashion ano comportment are at its center. Inoeeo, I came
to this topic in the course of my elowork on the expansion of garment proouc-
tion ano fashion in Dakar. As I cultivateo frienoships ano oevelopeo a network, I
stuoieo the arts of self-presentation, while my interlocutors attempteo to ,re,form
.,:
mc through oress, booily carriage, work habits, ano social obligations. I began to
take photographs at important social events to recoro the occasions for myself ano
my frienos, ano as my collection of photographs grew, my photo album became
my introouction as a researcher. Eventually I realizeo the importance of photog-
raphy in the lives I was stuoying.
5
A oening moment in this regaro came in :qq, when I attenoeo a family gath-
ering in a poor suburb of Dakar. I was introouceo to the father of the house, an
eloerly man who, only a few months after a major stroke, was nonetheless oresseo
up in a sky blue boubou for the occasion. Iamily from arouno the country hao gath-
ereo, as they oio every three months, oresseo in ne clothes ano anticipating a lav-
ish miooay feast. At rst I askeo others to take pictures of myself ano my frienos
as mementos. I then approacheo the younger women for permission to photograph
their sanse.
6
They agreeo ano aoopteo formal poses for me, as they woulo for any
photographer. As I hao the only camera ano plenty of lm, soon I was askeo to
take pictures of everyone, inoivioually ano in groups. Still mentally alert, the fa-
ther spotteo me ano struggleo to raise himself up to join in the picture taking. His
oaughter calleo me in to his room as she trieo to help him, but to no avail, ano since
there was not enough light by his beosioe, we abanooneo the eort. The image of
the eloerly man battling his crippleo booy to join the photo taking remaineo with
me, a haunting illustration of the importance of pictures to this Senegalese family.
Tooay photographic collections are commonplace in Senegalese householos, ano
an important form of cultural capital in the several spheres of local life that involve
oisplay ano exchange. It is crucially linkeo to the practice of sanse, whereby Sene-
galese, especially women, craft their social personae. This essay examines such por-
traiture to show how booies ano selves, once subjugateo within a colonial imaginary,
have been reclaimeo ano reformeo through postcolonial strategies of self-invention.
I begin by sketching the historical trajectory of photography in Senegal, from the
colonial era, when Europeans useo the camera to catalog ethnic types, up to the
postcolonial present, when Africans use the same technology to oepict their own cul-
ture of oistinction. Next I oiscuss the transformations of Dakar, from cosmopolitan
showpiece to site of socioeconomic collapse, as the context of the inoigenization ano
transformation of photographic imaging ano its meanings. Against this backgrouno,
I show how African photography broke with the history of colonial representations
by imaging oroinary Africans as eective subjects who have mastereo the con-
ventions of being ctctlt. Through these novel images, Africans incorporate photo-
graphs into their own commercial, ceremonial, ano self-making practices, linking
global ano local circulations of gooos ano images. In this context, the photographic
collection, in the form of the album, becomes an African womans prize property
ano familial archive, continually reinvigorating sartorial oisplay ano oistinctions. Ii-
nally, I argue that the subjects practices of portraiture subverts the colonial male
gaze with its own techniques ano reframes the feminine booy.
Ultimately, I wish to argue that the photographs of well-oresseo persons, rather
than simply instancing colonial oomination or the postcolonial crisis, represent
ron+n\i+s or xonrnxi+v .,
Iigure 6.:. Amateur portrait of a well-oresseo person, illustrating oc, Dakar.
Fhotographer unknown, Iebruary :qq.
agents who oeliberately engage with practices of wealth, transnationalism, ano
charisma.
7
Here I follow recent cultural critics who reject questions about authen-
ticity ano insteao consioer power ano the institutional oynamics of image proouc-
tion, whether by Europeans or Africans.
8
I also concur with Stuart Hall, who reminos
us to think of how these cultures have useo the booyas if it was, ano it often was,
the only cultural capital that we hao. We have workeo on ourselves as the canvases
of representation.
9
Sanse is a vigorous instance of such practice, the creation of an elegant ano
reneo presentation of self. Fortrait photography extenoeo its reach into multiple
mooes ano contexts. Tooays photographic images are inoeeo complicit with local
ioeologies of wealth ano status, colonial ioeologies of civilization, ano patriarchal
ioeologies of the feminine as the site ano sight of family honor. In the context of
socioeconomic crisis, womens strategies rely on complicities with hegemonic con-
structs of femininity ano elegance ano with local inoices of oistinction. It is through
such complicities that I reao the weave of power ano ask, Whose apparatus?
Whose fantasies?
10
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN SENEGAL
The practice of photographic recorokeeping in Irench West Africa began with
colonialism, when Irench settlers, ocials, ano ethnographers useo photographs
as oocuments ano memorabilia for circulation in the colonies ano in Europe. Fho-
tography shapeo narratives of progress ano brought the oark continent to light for
purposes of oroer ano terror, eciency ano pleasure. Fhotos oocumenteo
progress ano savagery by showing African lano mastereo by railroaos ano
scarieo African booies still in neeo of taming. Fhotos became postcaros, personal
memorabilia, ano ethnographic oocuments, tying home ano colony together for
the European ocials ano the mioole classes to which they presenteo Africa.
Colonial-era postcaros, missionary photos, ano ethnographic photos provioe a
wealth of images of persons, builoings, ano lanoscapes.
11
Fostcaro images mostly
oocument Irench installation in the four Irench West African communes ,aomin-
istrative sectors, of Gore, Saint-Louis, Rusque, ano Dakar ano expansion into
rural peanut cultivation. Of the total estimateo postcaro proouction ouring the
colonial perioo8,o for West Africa,.:o were maoe between :qo: ano :q:8.
During this perioo, postcaros were proouceo by Irench photographers baseo mostly
in the rst ano secono colonial capitals, Saint-Louis ano Dakar.
12
That such im-
ages are so plentiful ano oate from the early colonial perioo suggests an anity
between the purposes of photography ano colonial installation unoer the rubric
of lo mttor ctctlotttcc.
The few archival photographs of Africans or their activities are of the crc ct
t,pc genre of women in supposeoly traoitional oress.
13
These incluoe :o stuoies
of women ano young girls, many semi-nuoe ano embellisheo with both romantic
or racist commentary. One caro of an African woman sitting on the grouno next
to a basket of local plants has the Irench caption I remember the sweet smell of
their hair. Another shows three young Serer women, uncharacteristically oresseo
only in loincloths, with the printeo caption West Africa-Senegal-Serer-Nones,
while the written message reaos, on front, Samples of beauty, ano on the back,
We can say without exaggeration that these are crocooile mouths.
14
Malek Al-
loula writes of the relationship between postcaros of stageo, semi-nuoe Arab
women ano the colonial gaze in Algeria that though it be an atomizeo rerun of
this ,colonial, oiscourse, it is, in each instance, its total ano accomplisheo expres-
sion, its ever reneweo reiteration. The apparent triviality of the postcaro, as a
mere picture or a simple note, belies its force to circulate images ano meanings be-
tween colonizer ano his constituency at home.
15
Fhotography entereo African circuits of circulation ano oisplay through African-
owneo, urban stuoios. In Senegal, stuoios ano presumably the oisplay of portraits
on walls, oate from the :q.os, but most images that remain in stuoios collections
oate from the :qos. Exquisite stuoio portraits from the :qos reveal objects, poses,
ano images that linger in tooays portraiture. In these early images, European ob-
jects such as pens, phones, or owers oesignate high status in the way that current
images oisplay exotic Swiss cloth, Faloma Ficasso sunglasses, or Sauoi golo.
16
By
the :qos, a practice calleo xo,mct in Wolof hao maoe portraits part of brioal trans-
fers in Saint-Louis.
17
On her weooing night, a brioe was carrieo to her husbanos
home. His room woulo be temporarily oecorateo with ornaments ano portraits
borroweo from her neighbors ano relatives. This must have provioeo a kino of in-
troouction of her social network to the new family. Fortraiture accentuateo local
preoccupations with self-presentation ano provioeo new forms of interior oecora-
tion as urban society oevelopeo ano stratieo.
The internationally acclaimeo portrait photographer Seyoou Keita of Bamako,
Mali, has oeoicateo fty years to this form. His work is very similar to that of early
Senegalese stuoio photographers. Women came in their fancy oress, he saio. So,
I positioneo them ano then spreao out the oress. Above all, the attire hao to come
out in the photo. Hanos, long slenoer ngers, jewels . . . were very important. It was
a sign of wealth, elegance, ano beauty.
18
He kept European suits, pens, raoios,
plastic owers, telephones, ano chairs as props for his clients.
19
Clients chose from
a variety of poses oisplayeo in photos in the stuoio. These incluoeo stanoing poses
with one hano on a chair, poses with hano helo to chin as if musing, chin leaning
on foloeo arms, heao tilteo to one sioe, speaking on a phone. Others recline in im-
itation of the leisurely women of Saint-Louis. Some shots are taken on a oiagonal.
Those who coulo, aoorneo their hair ano booies with golo jewelry, their own or
borroweo.
20
Womens images oio not rely on European props as much as those of
men. The focus on the heao, with elaborate African hairstyles ano golo oecora-
tions, ano the hano, with locally hewn golo rings ano bracelets suggests that even
though Irench cloth was often bought ano sewn into large frocks, Irench aesthet-
ics were never hegemonic in womens style. Keita claims that he spent time posing
clients ano guioing them away from bao choices of props ano poses, suggesting
., ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
that the stuoio portrait was a lengthy, negotiateo aair. The works of Mama Cas-
set, the rst Senegalese stuoio photographer, use the same poses. Recent critics sug-
gest that such positioning ano shorter focal length in early African portraiture
oemonstrate a mutuality between sitter ano photographer that is absent from colo-
nial photos.
21
In the :q8os, photography came out of the stuoio ano arriveo at everyones ooor.
The introouction of color laboratories in oowntown commercial avenues maoe it
wioely accessible, even though few people own their own cameras. Only very
auent families engage professional photographers or stuoios. Improvising with
borroweo -mm cameras, itinerant amateurs now oominate the market. Most im-
ages are stanoaro facial portraits, ano print quality has oeclineo. Stuoios are usu-
ally empty, ano their owners are obligeo to hit the roao in search of business. Every-
oay life ano canoio shots are of no interest as photographs. Usually, householo
interiors provioe the settings for the multiple poses that the woman of honor re-
quires. Behino very oroinary ooors, vastly oierent agenoas from those of colonial
postcaros bring photography into womens beoroom cupboaros ano social spheres.
Africans have useo a mooern technology for their own purposes, oefying the logic
of colonial inoexing in favor of their own version of cultural sophistication.
COSMOPOLITAN DAKAR: A SNAPSHOT
The history of photography in Senegal reects ano shapes larger processes of col-
onization, oecolonization, ano mooernization. These processes, ano their imprint
upon photographic practice, are revealeo in the oevelopment of Dakar as a cul-
tural project. Dakar emergeo through colonial investment as the capital of Irench
West Africa. The traoing enclaves of Gore, Saint-Louis, Rusque, ano Dakar were
for centuries part of coastal Eurafrican societies of Fortuguese, Irench, Wolof, ano
Arab inuence. They became Irench communes at the eno of the nineteenth cen-
tury, soon after Irench West Africa was oeclareo a colonial holoing. African resi-
oents in the communes became Irench citizens, while rural Africans were consio-
ereo subjects. Dakar became a focal point of mooernization with a solio
infrastructure of schools, clinics, commerce, ano military bases. This was to ao-
vance what was calleo in the early colonial perioo ,until the :q.os, the assimila-
tion of Africans to superior ways of life. A lively intellectual life, an elegant oown-
town, ano a seasioe location give Dakar the name, the Faris of Africa. It is a
regional ano, inoeeo, African center of statecraft, traoe, ano cultural proouction.
As such, Dakar is a gateway for colonial ano transnational connections ano proj-
ects. It is both a center of Irench mooernization ano civilization in Africa ano a
part of centuries-long trans-Saharan, Eurafrican, ano regional exchanges.
But, as is often true of major metropoles, Dakar is also a center of crisis.
Notwithstanoing its cosmopolitan atmosphere, it exhibits oeepening poverty, ois-
integrating builoings ano infrastructure, ano, accoroing to resioents, oegraoeo so-
cial relations. The expanoing metropolitan region is now home to a quarter of
ron+n\i+s or xonrnxi+v .,,
Senegals population. Since the :qos, regional oroughts have turneo the city into
a magnet for rural ano regional migrants. Since the :q8os, the Worlo Banks struc-
tural aojustment programs have leo to the oismantling of the eoucational ano em-
ployment bases of the urban mioole class. In mioole-class urban communities, there
is a crisis of class ioentity ano patriarchy. Social relations, work, ano morality, es-
pecially of women, are subjects of rapio change ano of oebate. Social networks
have both proliferateo ano become more brittle, incapable of meeting oeepening
neeos. As mioole-class women became entrepreneurs, especially in garment pro-
ouction, they became pillars of familial survival ano targets of moral critique. Their
work in public spaces, their patterns of consumption, ano their oress ano cere-
monies are seen as oangerous signs of autonomy ano even narcissism.
22
At the same time, new kinos of cultural capital have become important mark-
ers of class. As eoucation becomes a less certain path to aovancement, commerce
ano small business have become the new grouno of the mioole class. New com-
mercial elites with rural Mourioe origins are emerging as economic ano cultural
leaoers,
23
their consumption habits ano worlo travels setting the pace for the urban
mioole class.
24
Matters of oistinctioncultural capital, cosmopolitan air, spe-
cializeo knowleoge, hierarchies of objects ano taste, prestige oisplay, booily excel-
lenceare increasingly important. Within the oomain of cultural capital, surface
matters.
In the terrain of oistinction, the booy is a key site for oeveloping various ioe-
ologies of propriety, civility, ano elegance. Grounoeo in a regional as well as local
Dakarois history of beauty, prevalent conventions of the elegant person incluoe the
oistinct restraint ano booily aoornment valueo by Wolof society, norms of moo-
esty saio to be Islamic, ano Irench stanoaros of fashionability. It is no surprise that
ctctlt, Irench for civilizeo, has entereo the lexicon of urban Wolof to mean
cleanliness, sophistication, ano oroerliness. The epitome of civilis is the elegant,
fashionable woman with her carefully tenoeo ano aoorneo booy. Fhotographic por-
traits of these booies have graceo Africans walls ano picture albums since the :q.os.
No longer solely a program of reform of Africans, civilization in the form of moo-
ern techniques like photographic imaging is now enmesheo in African communi-
ties ano practices.
I situate photography in the long history of colonial civilizing projects ano the
recent emergence of what I call the sartorial ecumene. By this I mean linkages
between local ano transnational circulations of images, objects, events, ano ois-
courses of oress ano aoornment. Womens circulation practices are critical to these
linkages. Like fashion, photography has been amenable to womens strategies of
self-representation, oiversication of wealth forms, ano status aovancement. Rather
than assimilating Africans to Europe, photography reinvigorateo long-stanoing
local contests for prestige ano respectability. To be worthwhile, the oress ano con-
ouct of the civilis must be recognizeo in collective eorts such as social events, vi-
sual recoros, ano gossip. Iurthermore, the popular practice of the civilis is inoe-
penoent of eoucation, language, ano other signs of francophilic civilization, which
.,8 ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
barely reach oroinary women. Their images speak not to Irench interlocutors, but
to local rivals, albeit with a lexicon partially wrought through the colonial experi-
ence.
WEDDINGS, TAILORS, AND TELEVISION
As Africans have taken photography into their spheres of circulation, photography
has both restructureo ano been restructureo by their practices. The culture of ois-
play involves the interweaving of images, commooities, booies, stories, ano per-
formances in practices arouno photographs. In the sartorial ecumene, the photo-
graph is both an image of a performance ano an object with its own trajectory.
Fhotographs are bought, collecteo, oisplayeo, ano exchangeo like other prize com-
mooities such as cloth.
25
As mementos of cloth ano events, they fuel nostalgia, oe-
sire, rivalry, ano commooication. This is most evioent in ceremonial events, per-
sonal collections, ano fashion circuits. As a new valueo commooity ano a
mechanism of commooication, photography heightens the pace ano allure of
fashion ano ceremonies throughout social networks. Men are peripheral to womens
circuits of collection, gift-giving, ano socializing, which now incorporate photos. In
this way, photography invigorates African traoitional practice, while inserting
African communities into global trenos such as fashion, ano provioing another el-
ement in womens spheres of exchange ano representation. Ior the mioole classes,
this oomain is critical for consolioating networks, claiming ano oistributing wealth,
competing for status among peers, ano contesting elite oistinction. Women both
control commooities ano commooify themselves. Fhotographs exteno the circula-
tions of the sartorial ecumene to larger networks ano over time.
Despite the crisis in marriage ano patriarchy, marriage remains a formative in-
stitution in genoer ano familial relations ano is relevant to issues of oisplay ano
appearance in three ways. Iirst, fashion, as competition among women, is seen as
a oirect result of a crisis of marriage. Ior young people, marriage is now only a ois-
tant possibility, because new householos have increasingly become nancially un-
feasible. Ior young women this means competition for eligible bachelors, or at least
for their resources in courtship. Frostitution in various forms is also prevalent. Sec-
ono, a marrieo womans physical appearance is seen as a oirect reection of her
husbanos well-being ano his esteem for her. Iamily reputation ano access to creoit
ano networks is linkeo to womens appearance ano conouct. Three, ano crucially,
womens inuence upon male authority is seen to occur privately ano in part
through the power of beauty ano charm. This is encapsulateo in the saying that
men are the heao of the householo ano women are heao of the beoroom. This
complex relationship between social reproouction, authority, inuence, ano ap-
pearance is wioely recognizeo. Yet the rise of fashion is wioely seen as part of a cul-
ture of narcissism ano moral oecay.
Fhotographic techniques have migrateo through many contexts ano purposes
in Senegal. In oroer to answer the questions, Whose apparatus? Whose fantasy?
we must look at the specic practices for which photography is useo. The staging,
circulation, ano interpretation of socialities ano selves in Dakarois womens pho-
tography relates to what Rosalino Krauss calls the oiscursive space of photogra-
phy.
26
In the sartorial ecumene, a woman is alloweo a oay of unchallengeo ele-
gance ano fame at her weooing or her rst chilos naming ceremony. In portraits,
the social space that grounos beauty institutionally is representeo not by its inclu-
sion in the image ,i.e., money changing hanos, gifts of cloth being given, but
through the extraoroinary beauty of an inoivioual. Such beauty is known to be pos-
sible only through either collective eort or, in the case of new businesswomen,
commercial success.
Fhotography has restructureo the funoing ano timing of social events to high-
light inoivioual oisplays of sartorial excellence. Tooay, the paraoe of entrances
are also photo shoots with congregations of amateurs awaiting guest arrivals. Ior
most guests, it is a time to appear, pay ones respects, ano nothing else. In fact, the
music is so louo ano the crowos so great that intimate socializing is oicult. The
woman of honor, in each of her two to four outts, makes the rounos of her guests
for photo shots. Young men circulate, oering to take portraits of guests seateo.
Then they rush o to one-hour labs ano return to sell the photos, or, if they can-
not make it back in time, oeliver them to their customers the next oay. In :qq.q,
photos solo for CIA oo each but coulo be bargaineo oown to CIA o ,U.S.$:.o,.
Before going to such ceremonies, women try to siphon coins o a male suitor, a
frieno, or the householo buoget to buy a photo. I have never been to a weooing or
baptism without photographic recoroing.
I oiscovereo that photos are a form of womens property in my interviews about
weooing expenses ano negotiations. Although the cost of visual recoroing is covereo
by the groom, the vioeos ano photos are kept by the brioe, to be brought out from
lockeo cupboaros ano other hioing places on social occasions. Visual recoroing is
expensive. One vioeotape taken over a oay or evening, cost CIA :.,ooo for the man
ano equipment ano CIA .,oo for the blank tape. This is a hefty price gaugeo against
a small businesspersons income of CIA o,ooo per month or even a bureaucrats
salary of CIA 8o,ooo. Ior amateurs, this can provioe a family income. One man
tolo me that he hao long been unemployeo ano now supporteo his family with week-
eno photography, earning a mooest but respectable CIA o,ooo a month. Ior con-
sumers, the neeo for photos, like the neeo for feminine aoornment, justies claims
maoe on anothers income, not only for private enjoyment, but also for reoistribu-
tion as gifts. Several of the photos in my own album were given to me as gifts. This
pattern of claims ano reoistribution is often oeemeo wasteful, but, as with clothing
oemanos, it gives those without income access to resources. Ior income-earning
women, expenses relateo to oisplay secure their reputation ano are part of their own
self-aggranoizement. Women traoers oisplay large portraits of themselves at home
ano in their shops, impressing guests ano customers with their elegance.
While the most important use of photographs is the sartorial oisplay of cere-
monial life, other moments are sometimes oocumenteo. One unique image I was
.8o ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
shown oocuments the process of gift exchange. This was an image of a young
frieno, sixteen years of age, whose fashion oesires were subsioizeo by her wealthy
sister ano her mother. She prouoly showeo me her warorobe of clothing ano a
photo album that was alreaoy full. Among the pictures was one of her on the fam-
ily couch, orapeo only in a long, green cloth, with one bare shouloer, normally an
improper oemeanor. She explaineo to me that her sister hao given her the cloth for
a religious holioay ano she loveo it so much that she wanteo a picture of it before
it was cut. The cloth was subsequently embroioereo as a ceremonial garment at an
elite shop at her sisters expense. I took a photograph of her in the nisheo boubou
ano gave her a copy for her album. Her rst album ano emerging collection of gar-
ments markeo her initiation into the fashion system with familial support. This was
a rare case in which the sequence of exchanges leaoing to sartorial oisplay was ex-
plicit rather than implicit.
Garment prooucers albums present garments at another point in their circu-
lation. In the oomain of proouction in the market ano atelier, garments are pre-
senteo as a portfolio of styles for potential consumption, objects outsioe of a con-
text of use. Clients choose styles from tailors albums for copying or mooication.
Such images often show just the necklines with embroioery or garnishes. Garment
prooucers are ambivalent about photography because itinerant photographers own
the negatives, putting what we might call intellectual property at stake. Once the
images are taken, they can be reproouceo ano solo for CIA .o. Even portraits
taken at events are solo for the sake of the embroioery oesign, without the knowl-
eoge of the subject. Because this practice places original oesigns in public circula-
tion, some tailors oo not allow photographs of their work. Fhotography extenos
the circuit ano pace of fashion but oeprives artisans of control over their original
prooucts.
Visual culture pervaoes urban popular culture ano contributes to the oenitive
role of sartorial practice. Like photography, television fuels local exchange ano
channels global images into local fashion. As I learneo the lexicon of urban mate-
rial culture, I began to see oouble in the saris ano straight hair lifteo from Inoian
lms, ano the slit skirts calleo Alexis after the character from the American soap
opera D,rot,. Television oisseminates the prooucts of elite Dakar oesigners. They
oress the nightly news broaocasters as well as political ano religious elites for o-
cial functions.
27
Inoeeo, the televiseo fashion contests hosteo by the national tex-
tile rm SOTIBA are creoiteo with having intensieo fashion in the :q8os. Olo
Faris fashion journals as well as those from Abiojan ano Dakar also serve to inter-
nationalize local fashion. Other eects are not simply oissemination but the con-
tinual presence of images, which serve as mooels upon which their copies, actu-
ally realizeo styles, are juogeo. Ior instance, as I photographeo a neighbor at a
weooing, I realizeo that he was stanoing unoer a portrait of the family marabout,
his own owing white embroioereo robe ouplicating the picture. On another oc-
casion, while observing the work process in a hair salon, I lookeo beyono to the wall
calenoar, which oepicteo the same hairstyle that the stylist was shaping in front of
ron+n\i+s or xonrnxi+v .8.
me. Such unplanneo ooublings oemonstrate the pervasiveness of fashion as a cul-
tural practice.
COLONIAL ARCHIVES, FAMILIAL ARCHIVES, FIELD NOTES
Crucial to the power of the image as object is the capacity for both stimulating ano
channeling remembrance.
28
How, for whom, ano with what consequences ooes this
channeling occur? If African women have been subjugateo through colonial regimes
of visuality, they now actively position themselves through photography. In the prac-
tices arouno such image-objects, women turn an assigneo responsibility, to appear,
.8: ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
Iigure 6... Sotiba fashion show. Fhoto by Huoita Mustafa,
:qq..
into a space from which to make intense oemanos on familial resources ano to as-
sert their own excellence ano prestige. Their practice asserts a local vision of mooer-
nity that places its subjects thickly amio current events, global ows, ano personal
trajectories. Displacing the inoexical booy of ethnic types, they play with the booy
surface to weave truth ano masking as self-mastery. Fortraits position oroinary
women as ctctltt enacteo through the booy. The colonial archive, always oistant from
African spheres of circulation, remains so even as its technologies have been mobi-
lizeo for multiple local projects of making selves, hierarchies of oistinction, ano fa-
milial archives.
The collecting of photographs by womenunoer mattresses, in wallets, in al-
bumsreinvigorates the power of beauty to celebrate inoiviouals ano communi-
ties as well as enforce hierarchies of oistinction. Fractices arouno photographs such
as posing, borrowing money, oressing, collecting photos in albums, exchanging them
as gifts, ano scrutinizing them suggest that the power of the photographic script
extenos, in oisperseo ways, to oaily life. Although men maintain small collections
of photographs, women collect, archive, ano continually refer to photos in albums.
The album as an archive extenos the power of the portrait through time ano ex-
tenoeo networks. Albums, kept in cupboaros, unoer beos, or unoer tables, are
brought out for visitors as part of recounting recent events or even as a welcoming
gesture to a less familiar guest. Oloer urban families holo olo stuoio photographs
from the :qos ano :q6os, which they keep ano prize for their elegance ano
granoeur. In Dar-Refayils narrative memory, time is punctuateo by the quotio-
ian use of oomestic objects ano relationships, Joelle Bahloul writes of family re-
unions in Algeria. It is a slow time, interrupteo only by imprecise oates. . . . The
narration of family reunions is a verbal family reunion: time in oomestic memory
is woven into the structure of genealogical history. As performeo memory, these
reunions cover the system of objects, incluoing wall photographs.
29
Olo stuoio por-
traits often oecorate walls in Dakar. In many homes, oeceaseo male bureaucrats
from the :q6os ano :qos have left impoverisheo wioows ano unemployeo chiloren.
In these oark living rooms, which now oouble as sleeping quarters, portraits frameo
with peeling paint are reminoers of the proper mioole class status that shoulo have
been.
In everyoay use, albums remino one both of oays of splenoor ano times of sor-
row. Not only clothing but personal fates are scrutinizeo ano compareo. During
an interview of a frieno about her weooing, she soon pulleo out her ceremonial
boubous, alreaoy relegateo to everyoay wear. Then she pulleo out her album from
the same lockeo cupboaro. She oescribeo with prioe the cloth, money, ano golo
that hao been exchangeo. As we went through the album, image after image of
splenoor ano artice, she remembereo the fortunes of some of her guests. In ex-
amining photos ano remembering persons, many lives are rehearseo, from oivorce
to oeath to rich suitors. Albums are also part of the circulation of gifts ano of nos-
talgia. Fhotos are pulleo spontaneously from albums ano given away. Many album
photos are given as mementos or paio for by frienos or suitors. Several frienos
ron+n\i+s or xonrnxi+v .8
ioentieo important relationships as we went through albums. Leang through an
album locates a viewer within the owners personal history of courtship, ceremony,
ano sartorial practice.
Tooays proliferation of portraits of African women relishes specicity ano pres-
ence in contrast to the typologizing of the colonial archive. The form of images
may be stanoaroizeo, but their purpose is to memorialize specic moments in in-
oivioual life histories. The portraits that ll albums ano aoorn walls tooay show
women oresseo in their nest ceremonial wear: embroioereo boubous, golo jew-
elry, elaborate coiures, ano heaoscarves ,see gure 6.:,. As archives, photographs
renew the beauty ano charisma of the person portrayeo ano oocument the soli-
oarity of communities that proouce events ano persons. They exteno the magi-
cality of oress ano events through time, place, ano networks. Souvenirs, writes
Susan Stewart, are metonyms of the original object or event, ano require supple-
mental narration.
30
Fhotographs operate in this manner to refer to an event ano
enable its continual retelling ano oispersal. Sometimes, the fragility of liveo ex-
perience is in poignant contrast to the commemorative capacity of photographs.
.8 ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
Iigure 6.. Wall in the atelier of an olo tailor, Dakar. Fhoto by Huoita Mustafa,
:qq.
I hao acquaintances who separateo after a few months oue to nancial haroship.
Yet the vioeo of their week-long, Toucouleur weooing circulateo ano was replayeo
among relatives long after their marriage hao oeteriorateo. In this case, visual im-
ages not only createo memory, but were the last traces of a eeting eort to founo
a householo amio socioeconomic collapse.
The weooing album is the pillar of the system of objects that surrounos por-
traiture. In my view, it has its preceoent in the xo,mct ,Wolof , practice in brioal trans-
fer of the :qos, :qos, ano :q6os. A frieno, Deinaba, showeo me a weooing al-
bum lleo with her portraits. She wore three outts with oierent hairstyles in the
morning, afternoon, ano night. Ior each outt in a sequence, she was photographeo
in oierent poses ano perspectivesheao shots, torso, full lengthano she also
hao group photos with guests. This portfolio with some .oo photos cost about CIA
o,ooo, again, a months wage for a low-level bureaucrat or traoer, two weeks wages
for the mioole-class bureaucrats who inoulge in them. This family liveo in a vil-
lage outsioe Dakar. The patriarch was a technical manager ano rst-generation ur-
banizeo. The weooing was acclaimeo as one of the most lavish in recent times. She
spoke to me not just of the eect, but of the labor ano pain that it hao requireo.
When another frieno showeo me her weooing album, she oetaileo to me the cost
of the cloth ano the cost ano time requireo for the hairstyle: This was the evening
oress, it cost CIA 6,oo a meter. Mati Gueye |an elite oesigner| maoe it. . . . I hao
to go to the salon three times to try it. The hair took two hours in the morning ano
it cost :,ooo. I went to the salon in the morning ano evening. . . . I was so, so tireo,
I was crying just before this photo. The photograph was still very poiseo, ano it
was impossible to tell the oistress that she was experiencing.
The narratives structureo through albums highlight personal mastery of the signs
of beauty, fashion, ano composure. In a weooing or baptism album, multiple poses
of the woman honoreo occupy at least the rst half of the album, while group shots
might be placeo in the secono half.
31
Householo spaces appear in images to oisplay
expensive beoroom suites, brioewealth, or the living room furniture of wealthier
homes. Another popular pose is seateo on a beo or stool facing a mirror or looking
o into the oistance away from the camera. Foses are copieo throughout the range
of eoucational ano income ranks. Iacial expressions were grave ano yet inoirect.
Young women are most likely to smile or look straight at the camera. Heao ano
shouloer shots, usually at a slight angle to the face, were common. The most com-
mon pose is of the subject seateo in a chair at ceremonies. Reclining poses on beos
or sofas recur in the :qos images ano even now as imitations of the otrt-loottcrrc
woman of leisure. Most group shots are of brioes or new mothers with a group of
guests. Shots of sisters, close frienos, or, less frequently, co-wives are not uncommon.
An album might contain one picture of a woman together with her husbano or new
baby. Mixeo-genoer images, canoio shots, or scenes of everyoay life are very rare.
Visual oocuments have powerful inculcative eects. They make community
lifethe oress, music, social eventsaccessible to chiloren before they can unoerstano
language or atteno such events. Ior instance, I hao a neighbor who often playeo
the vioeo of her two-year-olos baptism. The chilo coulo not fully unoerstano lan-
guage, but she coulo alreaoy ioentify the vioeo as her own baptism ano recognize
herself wrappeo up in the ceremonial cloth. As chiloren imitate their mothers hair
care rituals in their own gestures, they also learn to pose correctly from seeing pho-
tos. In my own experience of picture taking, even young girls of ten who hao not
been to many ceremonies hao alreaoy oevelopeo a sense of conouct ano of pos-
ing for photographs. Ior a picture that I took, a young frieno of mine aoopteo a
grave face ano carefully helo her shouloers at an angle to the camera. Through vi-
sual mementos, chiloren are inoucteo into fashion ano ceremonial life as witnesses
before they can participate. As girls are initiateo into the fashion system, they start
going to tailors, attenoing ceremonies ano oances, ano collecting photos. One
young man saio that he hao noticeo his teenage sisters starting albums, ano oress-
ing in fancy clothes ano golo, ano he realizeo that his mothers resources were now
focuseo on their social aovancement. Iacing a collapseo university system ano hop-
ing to atteno a school overseas, he lookeo upon his mothers investment of CIA
o,ooo in fashion with sour oisapproval.
Iigure 6.. Weooing photo of a brioe with guests in a living room. Fhoto by Huoita
Mustafa, :qq.
Again, my own inculcation into local life both came from ano resulteo in the
formation of my own album. I began to take pictures, receive them as gifts, ano
buy them from itinerants. Without any strategizing on my part, this quickly became
a very eective introouction ano research tool, ano I often carrieo it with me to in-
terviews. After my rst year, I bought the usual cheap, Taiwanese album in the mar-
ket, its plastic cover showing a little blonoe girl, playing grown-up in a big hat ano
pearls. ,Other covers oepicteo what I thought woulo be controversial images such
as couples walking on the beach, playing tennis, or kissing in a park., My album
began with pictures of myself, family, ano frienos, incluoing informal ano canoio
shots. I incluoeo lanoscapes of places that I frequenteo ano scenes from my stu-
oent life. I then starteo to collect photos of frienos ano events that I attenoeo in
Dakar. During my interviews I woulo often ask about a womans warorobe, to get
a sense of what she owneo, how she acquireo it, what styles or colors she preferreo.
Women often showeo me their clothing, ano albums always accompanieo any ois-
cussion of ceremonies or clothing. In short, photography, without my realizing,
came to pervaoe my life as well.
ron+n\i+s or xonrnxi+v .8,
Iigure 6.. Seateo guests at a naming ceremony. Fhoto by Huoita Mustafa, :qq.
REFRAMING THE BODY
Like masks, portraits are strategic presentations of partial truths:
32
women work on
themselves as canvases of representation, navigating the relative risks of oisplay
ano concealment to forge their social selves.
33
The loan askeo for oiscreetly, the
boubou balanceo oelicately on the shouloer, these are acts of mastery ano oignity.
Fosing, whether in the mirror, ouring a ceremony, or for a portrait involves a posi-
tioning, both material ano representational. I leno myself to the social game, I
pose, I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, Rolano Barthes
writes. But where Barthes fears the alteration of his inoiviouality, I see such mo-
ments of ,self-,objectication neither as loss nor as gments of generic ioeals or
cloaks of true selves, but as self-transformations.
34
Dakarois women claim their
proper place in the hierarchy of elegance with portraits.
In the postcolonial context, posing, as a oeliberate performance of the self, points
to what Okwui Enwezor calls a negotiateo space between colonial ano post-
colonial ioentities. On the one hano, popular photography is complicit with colo-
nial inoexing insofar as it uses colonial techniques ano lexicons for African pur-
poses of self-oenition ano self-assertion. On the other hano, African ano European
photographic projects reveal oierent political intentions ano ambitions, reecteo
in the focus on subjects who are nakeo or clotheo, savage or sophisticateo, anony-
mous or nameo. The image ano its politics are consequential.
35
Fhotos ano fashion are brioges for the emergence of other selves. Fhotos enable
women to inhabit themselves as elegant, oignieo beings, outsioe of the grueling
routine of housework, social relations, ano nancial haroship. Their portraits pre-
serve the extraoroinary. Again quoting Enwezor, portrait photography is the
recoro of the mooels self-inquiry . . . |portraits are| archetypes, mooels for the way
their sitters wanteo to appear . . . the portrait is therefore the outcome of an elab-
orate constitutive process.
36
Fhotographer, sitter, ano viewer not only bring pre-
conceiveo ioeas of the elegant to bear upon the image but proouce such ioeas
through the image. Fortraits reconstitute the booy of labor, reproouction, ano pa-
triarchy into that of beauty, elegance, ano wealth. In so ooing, they both reveal ano
conceal the essential self.
The viewing of portraits is, therefore, as important as their creation. It involves
what Allan Sekula calls the private sentimental moment of inoiviouation ano cel-
ebration of the inoivioual, as well as a look up ano a look oown across so-
cial scales.
37
This is evioent in the kinos of juogments that portraits elicit. While,
typically, in the Uniteo States, one comments upon the likeness of the photo to
the person, or on the beauty of eyes or hair, in Senegal the issue is the execution
of the techniques of sanse. Assessments of the nesse of eye makeup are com-
mon, as are comments on the styling of satin brioal ensembles. With portraits,
women thus situate themselves ano one another in hierarchies of taste, placing
themselves unoer public scrutiny in oroer to make ano remake their public per-
sonae.
If extraoroinary public selves are createo through sanse, portraits locate these
selves ano their prototypes in multiple archives, from private weooing albums to lo-
cal newspapers to international television shows. Fhotography has thus assisteo the
sartorial ecumene that links local ano transnational circuits of exchange ano
has reinvigorateo the social practices through which Senegalese womenano
menshape their lives. It has also assisteo the reoenition of civilis away from
the mastery of neocolonial institutions, which are falling apart, to the mastery of
public reputations, which can always be reclaimeo ano reformeo. With oress ano
photos, Dakarois women construct selves that are as fashionable as European oth-
ers ano as sophisticateo as the ensconceo African elite, exemplars of oistinction,
composure, ano creativity amio the social ano economic oangers that surrouno
them.
NOTES
:. This essay draws on eldwork conducted in Dakar between :qq: and :qq with pri-
marily Wolof, Muslim, middle-class garment-producers and -consumers. Dissertation re-
search was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the
Social Science Research Council Africa Program. I consider my transactions in the eld-
work context treacherous because they involve multiple agendas on both my part and my
interlocutors part. I oered my small gifts both in friendship and as compensation for as-
sistance. The issue of compensation, as with any kind of monetary or gift exchange in that
society, was complicated. While many persons were supportive of me and my work, it was
also understood and brought up that my work was of no use to them.
.. This is the central argument of Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision
and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :qq.). In a
Foucauldian analysis, he argues that modern European practices of vision emerged as part
of new disciplinary forms of power that reshaped the relationship between the subjects body
and society.
. Abigail Solomon-Godeau, The Legs of the Countess, in Fetishism as Cultural Dis-
course, ed. William Pietz and Emily Apter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, :qq), .o.
. In a provocative formulation, Allan Sekula challenges liberal histories of the democ-
ratization of photography. He suggests that in the nineteenth century, it introduced the
panoptic principle into everyday life. Allan Sekula, The Body and the Archive, in The Con-
test of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, :q8q), 6. I also recall here Stuart Hall, What Is This Black in Black Popular Cul-
ture? in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, ed. Valerie Smith (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, :qq), who characterizes diasporic black popular culture as inter-
nally contradictory because of its use of dominant forms to express resistance or self-
denitions.
. In another case, however, I faced vehement accusations that Youre going to take that
back to Paris by a woman trader as I tried to photograph the sheep trade during the :qq
Id-ul-Hajj season.
6. Sase, which is actually Wolof-French Creole, refers to a total outt of dress, hair, and
jewelry.
. I have argued elsewhere that the rise of fashion and ceremonial exchange indicates
both the mediation of socioeconomic crisis by women and the use by women of a desig-
nated responsibility to secure resources and status for themselves. The navigation of eco-
nomic hardship in a dignied manner is enabled through practices and principles that man-
age social relations and their own selves. Many people told me that appearances are deceiving
in Senegal, and I found this to be the case. Elegance in appearance is not necessarily a sign
of education, worldliness, or wealth.
8. See Anthropology and Photography, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, :qq.), on the intertwined histories of these two elds. See Malek Alloula, The
Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :q86), on French colonial post-
cards in Algeria.
q. Hall, What Is This Black in Black Popular Culture?
:o. Who owns the image? Okwui Enwezor asks in In/Sight: African Photographers from
.o to the Present (New York: Guggenheim Museum, :qq6), a catalogue of works by and dis-
cussions of modern African art photographers.
::. Each genre had its own circuits of producers, consumers, and exhibitions. See Chris
Geary, Missionary Photographs: Private and Public Readings, African Arts ., (:qq:):
8q.
:.. See David Prochaska, Fantasia of the Photothque: French Views of Colonial Sene-
gal in African Arts, ., (:qq:): o. Prochaska tells us that there was a steady drop in
such images in the early and mid twentieth century. He suggests that one or two photogra-
phers were working in This, Rusque, Ziguinchor, and Kayes, all regional centers or towns
associated with the peanut trade. When World War II began, besides a couple of studios in
Saint-Louis, all photo producers were to be found in Dakar.
:. There are no photos of urban elites, traditional elites, or mixed-race persons reported
in the research from the Dakar archives so far. Gearys work on missionary and colonial pho-
tos does show many of royalty. I found several also of tailors, and of school children in class-
rooms.
:. Prochaska, Fantasia of the Photothque.
:. Alloula, Colonial Harem, :o. Even today there is a separate sphere of photography
that is unavailableor of no interestto Africans. Tourist postcards and expensive coee-
table books are sold in the elite Plateau district. The pornographic imagination continues
today in these books and cards with studio shots of bare-breasted African women, usually
staged.
:6. See Jean M. Borgatti and Richard Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and
the World (New York: Center for African Art, :qqo), for a review of portraiture across cul-
tures, which place several African art forms in this genre.
:. Niang Fatou Niang Siga, Reets de modes et traditions saint-louisiennes (Dakar: ditions
Khoudia, :qqo). Such hybrid practices abound in Africa for ceremonial use, for instance in
egies or shrines.
:8. Andr Magnin, Seydou Keita, African Arts .8, (:qq): qoq. An oshoot of this
genre of portraits are the glass paintings Senegalese artists began doing in the :qos, which
duplicate studio photographs or other images. These are popular among the local elite, ex-
patriates, and tourists.
:q. One of my early snapshots of friends shows the grandmother of the house holding
the phone receiver to her ear as if conversing. She did this as I was about to take the picture
as a pose. Phones are still signs of wealth and modern lifestyles.
.o ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
.o. The editors were unable to secure permission to reprint an image that exemplies
this trend.
.:. See Enwezor in In/Sight.
... I have elsewhere argued that such practices can be better seen as stemming from
deliberate strategies for increasing incomes; see n. ..
.. The Mouride, an Islamic brotherhood, is a powerful social organization in Senegal.
From a base in rural peanut cultivation during the colonial period, it has grown into a part-
ner of the state. In response to ecological crisis in the region, it has expanded into urban
and, since the :q8os, transnational bases in the informal sector and trade. Mourides now
form a powerful and wealthy trade diaspora with enormous political clout in Senegal.
.. Hudita Mustafa, Practicing Beauty: Crisis, Value and the Challenge of Self-Mastery
in Dakar, :qo:qq (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, :qq8), uses the case of garment pro-
duction and fashion to examine these shifts.
.. Photographic amulets of religious leaders display yet another logic of charisma as the
crystallization of dynastic power. The maraboutic leaders in Senegal all have their pictures
made and sold in the form of photographs, posters, and amulets. There is a vigorous econ-
omy involving tithing, prayers, and amulets of various kinds, from washed Koranic fragments
to photos. These circuits commodify the sacred and also extend maraboutic presence.
.6. Rosalind Krauss, The Discursive Space of Photography, in The Contest of Mean-
ing: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, :q8q).
.. The most eminent woman designer in the city dresses the television newscasters.
They are usually in embroidered robes, called boubous locally, which have spread her fame
much further than the small circle of Senegalese and African elites that she regularly serves.
.8. Jolle Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory: A Jewish-Muslim Household in Colonial Algeria,
.,.: (New York: Cambridge University Press, :qq6), :.
.q. Ibid.
o. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Col-
lection (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, :qq), :o.
:. Jean Franois Werner, Produire les images en Afrique: Lexample des photographies
de studio, Cahiers dtudes africaines 6, : (:qq6): 8:::., discusses studios in Bouake, Ivory
Coast. Werner sees portraits, outside of the ritual of studio staging, as signs of growing in-
dividualism. In this case, I see them as a sign of tension between a culture of narcissism
and the collective eort that the event represents.
.. In Borgatti and Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond, Jean Borgatti identies three overlap-
ping genres of African portraiture. First, anthropomorphic portraits assemble objects, such
as a deceaseds possessions, to portray not the human gure but its accomplishments and so-
cial position. Second, representational forms present a physical likeness to the person such
as life-size egies. Third, emblematic portraiture uses objects or portions of a gure, such
as tusks carved with symbols of a character trait. Photographs have been incorporated into
these African forms of portraiture. Borgatti presents examples of their use instead of egies,
as replacements for twin statues, and in composite shrines that combine photos and local
artistic products. In general, Borgatti claims that African portraits emphasize community
ideals of beauty and conduct, whereas, while photographic portraits in the modern West
also rely on conventions, they do so in celebration of the autonomous bourgeois individual.
. I paraphrase here from Hall, What Is This Black in Black Popular Culture? who
writes of the excellence in diasporic black popular culture of using the body in cultural
production.
ron+n\i+s or xonrnxi+v ..
. Ritual masking stops with the Diola in the Casamance. There is no Wolof or
Toucoleur practice of masking, where art instead relies on either performance or adorn-
ment such as jewelry, weaving, hair braiding, and cloth dying.
. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reections on Photography (New York: Hill & Wang, :q8),
::, .
6. In/Sight, .
. Sekula, Body and the Archive, 6. Every look at the frozen gaze of the loved
one is shadowed by a look up and a look down, evoking both ambition and fear.
.: ntni+\ xtn\ xts+\r\
Chapter
Mami Wata and Santa Marta:
Imag(in)ing Selves and Others in Africa
and the Americas
Henry John Drewal
Sometime soon after their rst fteenth-century encounters with European visi-
tors from across the seas, people in Africa aooeo to their ancient pantheons of wa-
ter oeities a spirit that has come to be know as Mami Wata, piogin English for
Mother of Water. Since then they have been oeveloping a complex ano elabo-
rate iconography, taking exotic ,ano inoigenous, images ano objects, interpreting
them, investing them with new meanings, ano then re-presenting them in inven-
tive ways to serve their aesthetic, oevotional, ano social neeos. Among those im-
ages were nineteenth-century European images of a snake charmer. More recently
in the Americas, Vouooun oevotees in Haiti ano Santeria followers in the Uniteo
States have taken that same image in oroer to oene ano represent an African
Santa Marta / Saint Martha. This essay explores this circumatlantic visual history,
tracing its evolution, contexts, ano signicances in shaping personal ano commu-
nity ioentities. Combining the object-orientation of art history, the contextual-
orientation of anthropology, ano the inoivioual case stuoy perspective of psy-
chology, I consioer three episooes in the visual history of Mami Wata: ,:, a
European representation of an exotic other that became implicateo in Mami
Watas art history in Africa, ,., case histories of the assemblages of this European
image ano other alien objects on Mami Wata shrines in Africa, ano ,, the re-
presentation ano transformation of Mami Wata into an African Catholic saint in
the Americas.
1
Iinally, I consioer my own practices of analysis ano interpreta-
tion of others visual culture as homologous with those of Mami Wata followers
ano suggest what implications this may have for transcultural stuoies in general.
In all these stories, I argue that images are expressions of agency ano self-
actualization.
By agency, I mean the instrumentality of creating ones realitythe process
of turning aspirations into practices ano prooucts. Such agency never occurs in a
vacuum or by accioent. Rather, it emerges out of what alreaoy exists. It is a re-
.
sponse to events ano situations, some that open up possibilities, others that close
them o. Thus people shape culture ano history, just as culture ano history shape
them in complex ways. In oening others, people simultaneously oene themselves.
A peoples visual culture consists of all images ano objects useo by them, whether
locally proouceo or importeo. Those from elsewherecreations of other systems
of thought ano action that have been recontextualizeoreveal as much about the
users as objects proouceo by them. Moreover, people intentionally or uninten-
tionally use the objects of others to oene themselves. Museums, oeneo as insti-
tutions intenoeo for the storage, analysis, ano oisplay of the objects of others, are
gooo examples. As George Stocking explains, we as alien observers collect the ob-
jects of othersof human beings whose similarity or oierence is experienceo . . .
as in some profouno way problematic.
2
As we begin to reect on our own uses of the objects of others in oening our-
selves, we may explore how others engage in similar practices. Ior example, in Togo,
the Ewe ano Mina peoples have a number of societies ,ttgott, goto, loroc, for the oe-
tection ano control of antisocial persons. When spirits come ouring possession
trances, the Ewe or Mina oevotees speak, oress, eat, oance, ano sing as foreign-
ers, that is, as Hausa or Mossi. Thus Ewe ano Mina meoiums become outsioers
in oroer to oeal with antisocial insioers.
THE SNAKE CHARMER IMAGE IN EUROPE
The West has hao a long ano enouring fascination with exotic societies, which serves
to satisfy its own internal neeos. The romantic movement of nineteenth-century
Europe was a form of escapism, a reaction against the harsh realities ano social up-
heavals associateo with the early Inoustrial Revolution. Material about the exotic
appeareo in many travelers accounts, some of which, as Fhilip Curtin remarks,
contain an interest blenoing genuine intellectual curiosity with a libioinous fasci-
nation for oescriptions of other people who break with impunity the taboos of ones
own society.
3
By the secono half of the nineteenth century, the European interest in the ex-
otic hao spreao beyono the upper ano mioole classes to a much wioer auoience.
In the Victorian era of rigio social norms, strict moralistic tenets, ano represseo oe-
sires, people turneo to the exotic to provioe a temporary fttor, a circumscribeo
experience of the bizarre.
4
Institutions such as botanical ano zoological garoens,
ethnographic museums, ano especially circuses provioeo the means of such an es-
cape. One of the most important centers for these oevelopments was the northern
German port ano traoing center of Hamburg. Hamburg, in many ways, was Eu-
ropes gateway to the exotic. It was an important member ano leaoer of the
Hanseatic League, a group of wealthy inoepenoent city-states on the North Sea
that oevelopeo powerful export/import companies, whose vessels plieo the worlos
oceans. Hamburgs contacts with oistant lanos feo the popular European appetite
for things exotic. Ior one, illustrateo accounts of aoventures abroao proliferateo
. nrxnv onx nnrv\r
in books, magazines, ano newspapers. Ior another, the exotic became literally tan-
gible as a growing number of African, Asian, ano Inoian sailors appeareo in the
port of Hamburg ano other maritime centers in Europe.
5
As the fascination with
the exotic grew, so oio the neeo to clarify it.
A man nameo Carl G. C. Hagenbeck realizeo the business potential of the sit-
uation. Hagenbeck was a sh merchant in the port area of Hamburg ,St. Fauli,
that was also noteo as an entertainment center for sailors ano others. In :88, a
sherman who workeo the Arctic waters brought some sea lions to Hagenbeck,
who exhibiteo them as a zoological attraction. The immeoiate success of the ven-
ture leo to a rapioly enlargeo menagerie of exotic animals from Greenlano, Africa,
ano Asia.
6
Sensing the publics enormous appetite for things bizarre, Hagenbeck oecioeo
to expano his imports to incluoe exotic people. The rst, in :8, were a family of
Laplanoers, who accompanieo a shipment of reinoeer. This was the mooest be-
ginning of a new concept in popular entertainmentthe Vollctcloocr, or people
shows.
7
In oroer to aovertise these attractions, Hagenbeck turneo to Aoolf Irieo-
lanoer, a leaoing printer, who quickly aoapteo the multicoloreo lithography tech-
niques pioneereo in Germany in the :86os to cheaply reproouce posters aovertis-
ing Hagenbecks circuses ano people shows.
8
Hagenbeck was soon prooucing a series of ambitious shows, involving a Nu-
bia Caravan from the Goroon-Fascha expeoition to the White Nile in :86, Es-
kimos in :88, ano people from the Suoan, Inoia, ano Ceylon in :88o, ano from
Somalia in :88. In :886, Hagenbeck proouceo a minispectacle, trumpeteo as his
International Circus ano Ceylonese Caravan, which incluoeo seventy artists or
craftspersons, jugglers ano magicians, musicians, ano many wilo animals, ano was
seen by over a million people within a six-week perioo.
9
In about :88o, Hagenbeck hireo a famous hunter nameo Breitwiser to travel to
Southeast Asia ano the Facic to collect rare snakes, insects, ano butteries. In ao-
oition to fauna, Breitwiser brought back a wife, who soon began to perform as a
snake charmer in Hagenbecks show unoer the stage name of Malaoamajaute.
A photograph of her, taken about :88 in a Hamburg stuoio, shows her attireo for
her performance.
10
In it, various accoutrements of oress ano ornamentation ou-
plicate the features of a well-known snake charmer chromolithograph, the origi-
nal of which almost certainly came from the Ireiolanoer lithography company.
These incluoe the style ano cut of Malaoamajautes booice, the stripes maoe of
buttons, the coins about her waist, the armlets, the position of the snake arouno
her neck ano a secono one nearby, the nonfunctional bifurcateo ute helo in her
hano, ano her facial features ano coiure.
11
There can be little ooubt that Malaoamajaute was the mooel for the chro-
molithograph. Her light brown skin placeo her beyono Europe, while the bolo-
ness of her gaze ano the strangeness of her occupation epitomizeo the otlctrc, the
mystery ano wonoer of the Orient, a name cognate with the woro orientation
ano oeriving from the Wests construction of the East.
12
As Malaoamajautes
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ .
Iigure .:. Snake charmer chromolithograph. Original is nineteenth-century. Frobably
Ireiolanoer Lithography Company, Germany.
fame as a snake charmer spreao, her image began to appear in circus yers ano
on billboaros in Irance. Soon afterwaro, ano probably unknown to Mal-
aoamajaute, her image spreao to Africa, but for other reasons, ano with a new
ioentity.
THE SNAKE CHARMER BECOMES
MAMI WATA IN AFRICA
Mami Wata oevotees in Africa are particularly concerneo with alien things, be-
cause their water spirit is most often perceiveo to be foreign. Their shrine rooms
are lleo with exotica from overseas intimately associateo with Mami Wata. These
intriguing or problematic objects provoke reection ano action. Densely packeo
ano fastioiously arrangeo, the shrines are spiritual magnets to attract ano please
Mami Wata so that her presence ano support are assureo. While Mami Wata fol-
lowers possess a certain awareness of foreign ways, they oo not use alien objects
primarily to analyze or unoerstano the ioeas or values of the other, but rather
to examine ano oene themselves ano their own society. As persons who are of-
ten troubleo by questions of self-ioentity, Mami Wata oevotees evaluate ano trans-
form external forces to shape their own interior lives ano the lives of those arouno
them.
Not unlike anthropologists ,or Africanist art historians,, Mami Wata oevotees
stuoy othersoverseas visitorsano formulate generalizations about them from
impressions, experiences, ano other evioence as if they were proouceo by some
external thing. This invention is an objectication or reication of that thing.
13
Their stuoy of others ways, incluoing lore, writings, possessions, or patterns of
worship, is actually a resymbolization of them, transforming others symbols into
their own.
14
This essay is my own objectication of the process by which people,
European auoiences of snake charmers, oevotees of Mami Wata in Africa, ano fol-
lowers of Santa Marta Africana in the Americas, shape their unoerstanoings of
an exotic other for oierent reasons. That process is, at the same time, one of
self-oenition.
In Africa, Mami Wata generally represents a free, unencumbereo spirit of
nature oetacheo from any social bonos. She is broaoly ioentieo with Europeans
rather than with any African ethnic group or ancestors. Although her name
Mami is usually translateo as Mother, she has no chiloren, nor family of any
kino, ano it may be this aspect of her that attracts those concerneo with sexual
matter: impotence, barrenness, ano homo- or bisexuality. She is entirely outsioe
any social system. Her appellation of Mother connotes her sexual ioentity, her
oomination over the realm of water, ano those who come unoer her sway. Her
relationship with her oevotees is more as a lover than as a parent.
15
In Ghana,
she is notorious for her jealousy. She is saio either to orive a mans wives out of the
house or to kill them. In the Congo, she oemanos total sexual abstinence in return
for richesprot in exchange for progeny.
16
Likewise, the benet she brings, mon-
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ .,
etary wealth, is acquireo rather than inheriteo ano is, therefore, outsioe the kin-
ship system. As a foreigner, she provioes alternatives to establisheo cultural av-
enues. Her otherness ano her inoepenoence together legitimize novel mooes of
action.
She personies unattainable, exquisite beauty, vanity, jealousy, sexuality, ro-
mantic not maternal love, limitless gooo fortune, not health, long life, or progeny,
but material ano monetary riches. She is thus very much part of the international
traoing system between Europe ano Africa ,ano other regions of the worlo as well,
that began in the late fteenth century.
Substantial evioence suggests that the corccpt of Mami Wata has its origins in the
very rst encounters of Africans ano Europeans in the fteenth century. Her rst
representations were probably oeriveo from European images of mermaios ano
marine sculptures. As an Afro-Fortuguese ivory shows, an African sculptor ,prob-
ably Sapi, on the coast of Sierra Leone, was commissioneo to create a mermaio
image for his European patrons as early as :qo:o.
17
Ano an eighteenth- or
nineteenth-century ships gureheao now in Ijebu-Ooe, Nigeria, is calleo Mami
Wata by its owners.
By the secono half of the nineteenth century, the establishment of colonial em-
pires ano the rapio expansion of traoe linking Africa with both Europe ano the
East provioeo the setting for the rapio spreao of the images ano ioeas about Mami
Wata. Not long after its publication in Europe, the chromolith reacheo West Africa,
where the snake charmers skin color ano long, straight black hair ioentieo her for
African viewers as someone from beyono Africa. In Africa, the print became the
primary icon for Mami Wata, the piogin English name for an African water spirit
believeo to come from overseas, that is, Europe. A :qo: photo of a water spirit
heaooress taken in the Niger River Delta town of Bonny shows clear evioence of
the prints inspiration. Note especially the long, black hair parteo in the mioole, the
garments neckline, the earrings, the position of the gures arms ano the snakes,
ano the low-relief renoering of the inset with a kneeling ute player surrounoeo
by snakes.
The conuence of multiple factors helps to explain the prints rapio accept-
ance ano oispersal in Africa. One is the corresponoence between inoigenous
African images ano ioeas about water spirits ano those of European explorers ano
traoers who arriveo along African shores in the fteenth century aboaro ships that
were oating art galleries oepicting reptilian creatures, sh-leggeo gures, ano mer-
maios. These icons corresponoeo closely with those that many African peoples as-
sociateo with water oivinitiesreptiles ano amphibians such as turtles, frogs, croc-
ooiles, ano especially serpents, as well as half-human, half-aquatic creatures such
as mermen ano mermaios.
The mermaio seems to have been the primary icon for Mami Wata until the ar-
rival of the Snake Charmer print, which quickly superseoeo the mermaio as Mami
Watas primary image in many parts of Africa. Both the style ano iconography of
.8 nrxnv onx nnrv\r
the print help to explain its rapio, wioespreao acceptance. Its naturalism con-
tributeo to its interpretation as a photography of a foreign spirit by Africans.
Someone must have gone unoer the water to snap it, one priest tolo me. Being
a proouct of Western technology, this photography was thus a meoium that re-
inforceo the message.
The snake is an important ano wioespreao African symbol of water ano rain-
bow oeities.
18
The serpent linkeo Mami Wata with the rainbow oeity complex
among the Mina, Ewe, Aja, Ion, Yoruba, ano Igbo in West Africa. The rainbow is
regaroeo as a celestial serpent or, more specically, the Royal Fython. As a spirit,
the rainbow controls the waters of the sky ano unites them with the waters on earth,
while Mami Wata oominates the seas ano other booies of water. Mami Wata fol-
lowers therefore consioer them an inseparable pair. The iconography of the Eu-
ropean print perfectly reecteo inoigenous beliefs about rainbows, water snakes,
ano water spirits in this area. In the print, a multicoloreo python arches like the
rainbow over the heao of the snake charmer. Thus importeo talcum powoer con-
tainers with rainbow motifs are favorite oecorations for Mami Wata shrines, unit-
ing a sweet-smelling foreign proouct ano an inoigenous symbol of the Royal
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ .
Iigure ... Water spirit heaooress, Bonny, Nigeria, :qo:. Fhotographer unknown.
Fython. The print thus contributeo to reshaping the rainbow complex ano ex-
tenoing it to incluoe a foreign spirit.
In aooition, the thick black hair may have evokeo associations with certain sa-
creo chiloren in the region of the Niger River Delta saio to be chiloren of the sea
ano ioentieo by their abunoant locks, which are likeneo to seashells.
19
Other elements in the print linkeo it with myths ano images of mermaios. The
snake charmer shareo the complexion, facial features, long, owing hair, ano
breath-taking beauty of mermaios. Icons of wealth also contributeo. Goloen arm-
lets, earrings, neckline, penoant, ano waist ornaments combineo to evoke the riches
that Mami Wata promises to those who honor her. The theme of wealth that un-
oerlies much of Mami Wata worship is sometimes exaggerateo in her sculpteo im-
ages, specically in Igbo masking heaooresses from Onitsha ano in some Ibibio
sculptures.
Since Africans usually oepict complete gures in their visual arts, the half-
gure renoering of Mami Wata was taken to be signicant by African viewers.
Devotees in oiscussing this aspect of the print pointeo out that Mami Wata in her
mermaio manifestation was half woman, half sh. What was not shown became
important. The unseen lower portion of the snake charmer conveyeo to oevo-
tees that Mami Wata was hioing her secret, the shtail. The ambiguous ren-
oering of the cloth below the waist, reminiscent of sh scales, probably reinforceo
this ioea.
The use of an overall blue-green backgrouno ano the absence of any contex-
tual features, like lanoscapes or builoings, contributeo to the impression of an un-
oerwater scene. In one Igbo shrine, the worshipper recreateo Mami Watas worlo
by lling the aquamarine-coloreo space with mirrors, canoe paooles, sh nets, ano
low relief snakes oating across the walls. Near the center of the raiseo platform
is a coileo-up stueo cloth snake. In procession, the priestess wraps it arouno her
torso, orapes it over her shouloers, ano holos it aloft in her right hano, just as the
snake charmer ooes in the print. Also imaging the print, the priestess wears a long
black wig parteo in the center, a profusion of goloen bangles arouno her neck,
ano a European-style formal gown trimmeo in golo.
The shrines of Mami Wata oevotees express their unique ano very personal re-
lationship with the spirit ano the history of this involvement. Irequently, this in-
volves oreams ano visions of journeys to Mami Watas fabulous unoerwater realm.
These excursions are evokeo in shrines that recreate aquatic settings. The blue-
green backgrouno ano the absence of any contextual features in the snake charmer
print contributeo to the imagining of such unoerwater scenes. In one Igbo shrine,
the priestess, Mrs. Margaret Ekwebelam, sits holoing a fan with an image of Mami
Wata baseo on the snake charmer chromolith. Behino her the space is transformeo
into Mami Watas worlo by the blue-green color of the walls, so similar to the back-
grouno of the print. In the back corner is a stack of basins, whose color blenos with
that of the wall ano oor. In the center of this aquamarine environment, there is
a blue mooel of a European steamer raiseo on two columns to give the impression
:oo nrxnv onx nnrv\r
Iigure .. Contemporary Igbo shrine to Mami Wata. Fhoto by Henry Drewal.
Iigure .. Mrs. Margaret Ekwebelam ano her Mami Wata shrine. Fhoto by
Henry Drewal. With permission of Mrs. Ekwebelam.
of oating. The priestesss personal experiences with Mami Wata require its pres-
ence.
In the priestesss oreams Mami Wata came in human form, either ying or swim-
ming through the water. Sometimes, she came in her canoe ano took the woman
on long voyages. Bothereo by these frequent visitations, the latter consulteo a oi-
viner, who instructeo her to get a European steamer to put in her house. The
steamer oissuaoeo Mami Wata from insisting that the woman travel with her by
canoe, a less prestigious vessel. As one Igbo man explaineo, she has it in oroer to
avoio rioing in those spiritual canoes. She thus uses her steamer to control the
spirit.
At Lom, Togo, an Ewe priestess, Mamisi Walas, oescribeo her rst encounter
with Mami Wata as a vision of a seascape. She went on to explain how, insteao of
going to school as a chilo, she woulo go to the beach ano remain there for hours,
gazing into the water. When her father learneo of her unnatural behavior, he
punisheo her. Soon afterwaro, she became seriously ill. The following oay, she went
oown to the sea again ano this time went in, because she felt compelleo to cover
herself in water. Some shermen hao to rescue her. After this incioent, her father
took her to a priest, who oivineo her ioentity as a chosen one of Mami Wata. She
was later initiateo into the Mami Wata priesthooo.
In Mamisi Walass oreams, Mami Wata woulo tell her to collect clay, rst from
one river, then from another, ano also from a thiro. Then Mami Wata instructeo
her to go to the sea. When she reacheo shore, the waters parteo, making a roao,
ano she went insioe. She came to a ooor, openeo it, ano saw Mami Wata, who
gestureo to her with a sweeping arc over her heao. Mami Wata tolo her to make
a clay stool ano then a gure of a girl. She maoe both, but when she saw some-
one coming to look at what she hao maoe, she trieo to chase her away. Then she
woke up.
Since that oream, Mamisi Walas has hao many others in which Mami Wata tolo
her to make clay sculptures of what she sees. In one oream, she was tolo to gather
leaves associateo with the oeity Danthe celestial water serpent or rainbowfor
they were powerful. The very next oay, she began to gather them ano put them in
the statues. During her oreams, she saw water, Mami Wata with a snake, ano leaves
on the surface of the water. These leaves she representeo on the shouloers or in
the hanos of some of her gures, ano in this way oepicteo Mami Wata as she was
coming out of the water. She also puts other plants in pots to oecorate the space.
The wavy lines in the clay-covereo oor of her shrine evoke a beach, rivulets of
water, ano snakesall central themes in her visions. Some of these oream visions
represent Mami Wata as in the chromolithograph wearing costume jewelry. Oth-
ers are beautiful women in brightly coloreo bikinis or seateo men with snakes in
their hanos or wrappeo arouno their necks.
20
Gin, Schnapps, ano soft orink bot-
tles line the walls, each lleo with liquios to be useo in ceremonies. The space is
pristinefreshly swept ano meticulously arrangeo. Bamboo painteo white ano
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ :o
spotless white cloth constitute the walls of the shrine room, creating a space that is
oistinctly otherworloly.
In the century since the prints arrival in Africa, it has been reprinteo in large
numbers in Inoia ano, more recently, Englano, ano it continues to be oistributeo
wioely in sub-Saharan Africa, where its inuence can be oiscerneo in at least fty
ethnically oierent areas in twenty countries.
:o nrxnv onx nnrv\r
Iigure .. Contemporary Mami Wata clay sculptures by Mrs. Mamisi Walas. Fhoto by
Henry Drewal. With permission of Mamisi Walas.
THE SAINTIFICATION
OF MAMI WATA IN THE AMERICAS
As the worship of Mami Wata continues to change on the African continent, our-
ishing in some places ano oeclining in others, her nineteenth-century snake
charmer imagewith new meaningshas reacheo ano begun to inuence view-
ers/believers in the Americas.
Sometime in the :q6os or early :qos, the manufacturers of popular plaster stat-
ues of saints for sale in Latino religious gooos stores, known as /otortco, aooeo an-
other to their inventorySanta Marta, or Saint Martha. In contemporary popular
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ :o
Iigure .6. Clay Mami Wata wearing costume jewelry. Sculpture by Mrs. Mamisi Walas.
Fhoto by Henry Drewal. With permission of Mamisi Walas.
Catholic iconography, Santa Marta is ioentieo with the meoieval saint of Taras-
con in Frovence, Irance, who was canonizeo for having suboueo a oragon that
threateneo her community. In one of her popular chromoliths, she is shown stano-
ing unafraio before a oragon.
At the same time, this European Saint Martha has an African oouble known
unoer several appellations: Santa Marta la Dominaoora ,Saint Martha the Dom-
inator,, Santa Marta Africana ,the African Saint Martha,, ano Santa Marta la
Negra ,Black Saint Martha,. As numerous people explaineo to me, There are
two Saint Marthas, one white, ano one black. The juxtaposition of African ano
Catholic sacreo entities ano icons has a long history in the Americas.
21
The African
Saint Marthas image is baseo upon the Hamburg Snake Charmer com African
Mami Wata one in the form of a painteo plaster statue.
The story of this gures arrival in the Uniteo States associates it with a Havana,
CubaNew York City orug-running operation. It is saio that it was rst useo to
transport contrabano ano money ano only later became a popular religious icon
of an exotic saint.
The black or African Saint Martha is known as La DominaooraThe Dom-
inatorbecause of her attributes ano particular powers. She is calleo upon when
one neeos spiritual assistance in establishing, maintaining, or breaking relationships
concerning ones signicant other. She is very much linkeo with matters of the
heart. As the owner of a famous botanica in Miami tolo me recently, when you
work with lo oomtroooto, you are working with re . . . she can oo bao as well as
gooo. Thats why oerings ano prayers are at mionight, since she can go either
way. A new aooition to her paraphernalia is a brass meoallion that has recently
appeareo for sale in botanicas. Arouno the perimeter is inscribeo Santa Marta la
Dominaoora. Its use was not explaineo to me.
In Haiti, Fierrot Barra, a Vooooo artist/priest ano presioent of a Bizango se-
cret society, createo a work in her honor.
22
Santa Marta is a spirit that comes from
Santo Domingo, he says. She works with the snake, who is not Danbala, but is
very lot ano cannot be stoppeo by secret societies. In Barras picture, Santa Marta
ano the snake are shown on their sacreo mountain. There is a small gure on
her right, perhaps a reference to the ute-player of the chromolith, who becomes
a small chilo in some plaster statues in North America.
It appears that the iconography of the statue ano other Santa Marta images, to-
gether with aspects of Islamic ano Juoeo-Christian ioeologies, have combineo to
shape these ioeas ano attituoes. There is an unmistakably sensual ano erotic treat-
ment of Santa Marta Africana that is quite oierent from the image of the white
Saint Martha, or any other female Catholic saint for that matter. Note especially
her tight booice, plunging neckline, ano splayeo legs ,g. .,. The snakesymbol
of carnal knowleoge, original sin, as well as the phallushas enormous evoca-
tive power, as it oio for represseo Victorian viewers in the :886 Hamburg image of
the sensuous snake charmer.
:o nrxnv onx nnrv\r
Iigure .. Contemporary Saint Martha. Manufactureo object. Fhoto by Henry
Drewal.
ENVOIREFLECTIONS
What implications might the Mami Wata phenomenon holo for stuoies of visual
culture in Africa or elsewhere? As stateo at the outset, this essay is my own reication
of some of the ways in which peoplewhether Europeans, Mami Wata ano Santa
Marta believers, or myselfobjectify others in constructing themselves. The
process is funoamentally the same, even though our motivations ano goals may be
very oierent. We are all engageo in creative constructions: I have selecteo frag-
ments from my oiscussions with Mami Wata followers, my participation in their rit-
ual performances, ano my observations ano interpretations of their shrines, they
with their fragmenteo, personal encounters with foreigners from overseas ano/or
their visual culture. In other woros, we allas inoiviouals, communities, groups,
nations, or multinationalsare continually involveo in the oenition, the reication
of others. In the process, we resymbolize aspects of the other, translating ano
transforming them into our own symbols on our own terms. Dening others is thus
inextricably implicateo in self-oenition. As Mikhail Bakhtin wrote, we constantly
ano intensely . . . oversee ano appreheno the reections of our life in the plane of
consciousness of |the| other.
23
One of the revealing things about this history is that the West has no mo-
nopoly on the oenition of selves in terms of others.
24
Mami Wata followers have
been oening themselves in terms of overseas strangers all along, ano I, being one,
became part of that process. One particular conversation illustrates the point. In
the winter of :q, a Mami Wata priest was remarking how ouring certain seasons,
large numbers of water spirits seem to gather at the Hotel Tropicana near Lom,
an expensive beachsioe resort hotel favoreo by European ano American tourists.
When I askeo how he knew they were for Mami Wata, he seemeo surpriseo at my
navet ano replieo, Go there ano see for yourself ! It was then that I realizeo he
was referring to people sitting or lying on the beach for hours facing the seasjust
as in the life histories of many Mami Wata oevotees, like Mamisi Walas of Lom.
My many questions about Mami Wata beliefs ano practices were probably often
interpreteo as an expression of oevotional involvement. Ano this research into the
history ano impact of Mami Wata ano her spirit sisters in the Americas has, in fact,
shapeo my practices ano beliefs in various wayslike this presentation, my own al-
tar in her honor, ano my performance of her at the :qq6 Greenwich Village Hal-
loween Faraoe in Manhattan. One might say I om truly oevoteo to her.
Mami Wata oevotees are consciously ano passionately engageo in self-oenition.
They are not oenying their Ewe-ness or Igbo-ness, or trying to become European
in their use of foreign objects, any more than Ficasso trieo to become African in
aoopting an African visual vocabulary in his own workeven though he oio cre-
ate fetishes that were venerateo in the art worlo!
25
Rather, Ficasso ,for various
motives, useo African images to oene himself as an enfant terriblea raoical icon-
oclast whose actions t his cultural mooel of an avant-garoe artist. Mami Wata ano
Santa Marta believers are similarly creatively assessing ano oening their position
:o8 nrxnv onx nnrv\r
in the global colonial, neocolonial, postcolonial, ano capitalist systems that are the
outgrowth of long, complicateo histories of African ano Latin American interac-
tions with others from across the seas, whether Europeans for Africans, or Eu-
ropeans ano Africans for Latinas ano Latinos.
Yet a history of asymmetrical political, technological, ano economic relations,
compounoeo ano magnieo by oeep-seateo racist ioeologies, has fostereo author-
itarian ano authoritative accounts of other cultures, presenting them as static, pas-
sive, ano powerless anachronisms in a worloview epitomizeo by such phrases of
oenigration or negation as, the West ano the rest or the non-Western worlo.
Moving from such a mino-set to one of global interoepenoencies in constant ux,
scholars are searching for ways to transceno culturally createo prisms ,some might
say prisons, in a elo of multiple perspectives.
Collaborative research of a new oroer may be requireo, intercultural as well as
interoisciplinary, not simply the oouble regaro of insioers working with outsioers
on particular topics, but equivalences in oynamics. Another strategy might be to
reevaluate the relationship between participation ano observation in our research
methoos. Experiential knowleoge may be crucial, especially in the unoerstanoing
of expressive, that is, sensorial, culturethe prooucts of processes that often must
be experienceo to be unoerstooo more fully. Yet observation ,ano theorizing ano
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ :o
Iigure .8. Henry Drewals personal altar to Mami Wata. Fhoto by Henry Drewal.
interpretation, have often been privilegeo at the expense of booily experience.
26
Reoressing this imbalance may have important implications for stuoies of visual
culture. In these ano other ways, ethnographies in general ano stuoies of expres-
sive culture in particular may sheo light on the countless oevices people oesign in
oroer to oene, assert, ano empower themselves.
In closing, there woulo seem to be few popular images in the history of art that
have hao an impact comparable to the one we have consioereo here. Within a hun-
oreo years, a German poster for Europeans of an exotic Oriental snake charmer
became both the principal icon for Africans of an exoticthat is, Europeanwa-
ter spirit nameo Mami Wata oro an exotic African-Catholic saint calleo Santa Marta
la Dominaoora in the American. The image has charmeo many, allowing minos
ano imaginations to construct the reality of an other as an integral part of the
process of self-oenition ano empowerment in three very oierent cultural worlos.
NOTES
I wish to acknowledge the following institutions and persons for their help in shaping this
essay: the National Endowment for the Humanities (for grants F. and RO-
.oo.8:.:8); Cleveland State University; the Nigerian Museum; Obafemi Awolowo Uni-
versity; the University of Ibadan; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the University of Wis-
consinMadison; the Martens family in Lom, Togo, in :q; Wilhelm Zimmermann,
Margaret Thompson Drewal, and especially, the priestesses and priests of Mami Wata who
shared their views and lives with me during the course of eldwork. Some parts of this es-
say were previously published in African Material Culture, ed. Mary Jo Arnoldi et al. (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, :qq6). The Wilhelm Zimmerman material is housed at the
Circus Archive, Ellerbek, Germany.
:. For more on case studies of psychology, see Henry Drewal, Art, History, and the Indi-
vidual: A New Perspective for the Study of African Visual Traditions, in Iowa Studies in African
Art, ed. C. Roy (Iowa City: School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa, :q8), :: 8::.
.. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking Jr.
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, :q8), Introduction, ; and see also Anthropology
and the Colonial Encounter, ed. Talal Asad (New York: Humanities Press, :q).
. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, :q), ..
See, e.g., the Rev. John Adamss travelers account in his Curious Thoughts on the History of
Man (:8q; reprint. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, :qq).
. James Cliord, On Ethnographic Surrealism, Comparative Studies in Society and His-
tory . (:q8:): ..
. Urs Bitterli, Die Wilden und die Zivilisierten: Grundzge e. Geistes- u. Kulturgeschichte d.
europ.-berseeischen Begegnung (Munich: C. H. Beck, :q6), and H. C. Debrunner, Presence and
Prestige: Africans in Europe: A History of Africans in Europe before ..8 (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibli-
ographien, :qq).
6. G. Niemeyer, Hagenbeck (Hamburg: H. Christians Press, :q.), ..
. S. Benningho-Luhl, Die Ausstellung der Klonisierten: Vlkerschauen von
:8:q., in Andenken an den Kolonialismus: Eine Ausstellung des Vlkerkundlichen Instituts der
Universitt Tbingen, ed. Volker Harms et al. (Tbingen: ATTEMPTO, :q8).
:.o nrxnv onx nnrv\r
8. Cf. R. Malhotra, Manege Frei: Artisten- und Circusplakate von Adolf Friedlander (Dortmund:
Harenberg Kommunikation, :qq).
q. Niemeyer, Hagenbeck, .:.
:o. Henry Drewal, Performing the Other: Mami Wata Worship in West Africa, Drama
Review, T::8 (:q88): :6q, pl. 8.
::. The whereabouts of the original edition of this image are still unknown. :,.oo copies
of the version illustrated here were printed in :q in Bombay, India, by the Shree Ram Cal-
endar Company, without changing a line even from the original (manager of the Shree
Ram Calendar Co., Bombay, India, pers. corresp., June :, :q).
:.. James Cliord, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, :q88), :.
:. Roy Wagner, The Invention of Culture (:q; rev. ed., Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :q8:), .6.
:. Ibid., o.
:. See C. Gerrits, Conceptions and Explanations of sii-EpilepsyA Medical-
Anthropological Study among the Bassa and Kpelle in Liberia, Curare 6 (:q8): 6; R. M.
Wintrob, Mammy Water: Folk Beliefs and Psychotic Elaborations in Liberia, Canadian Psy-
chiatric Association Journal : (:qo): :o.
:6. Johannes Fabian, Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures, Africa 8,
(:q8): :q.
:. D. Fraser, The Fish-Legged Figure in Benin and Yoruba Art, in African Art and Lead-
ership, ed. id. and H. Cole (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, :q.), g. :.:o.
:8. Cf. Wilfrid D Hambly, Serpent Worship in Africa (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural
History, :q:; reprint. New York: Kraus, :q68).
:q. Henry Drewal, Flaming Crowns, Cooling Waters: Masquerades of the Ijebu-
Yoruba, African Arts .o, : (:q86): .:, qq:oo.
.o. Some Mami Wata pantheons of water spirits contain a Papi Wata as well, a com-
plex subject for another study.
.:. Roger Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, :q8).
... Sacred Arts of Haitian Voudou, ed. Donald Cosentino (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Mu-
seum of Cultural History, :qq), 8:, pl. Q-6.
.. Mikhail Bakhtin, as quoted in Tsvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Princi-
ple (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :q8), q.
.. Cf. Occidentalism: Images of the West, ed. James G. Carrier (New York: Oxford Uni-
.. Paul Landau, conversation, April .., :qq.
.6. Cf. James Cliord, Predicament of Culture, :; and Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind:
The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
:q8, :qqo).
x\xi v\+\ \xn s\x+\ x\n+\ :..
Chapter 8
Captured on Film: Bushmen and the
Claptrap of Performative Primitives
Robert J. Gordon
Dont look now, oeath is oancing me raggeo is the haunting refrain in John Mar-
shalls classic lm ^!ot, tlc Stot, of o Iorg 1omor. If there is a single feature of in-
oigenous life that has been the subject of the cinematographercommercial, pro-
fessional, acaoemic, or touristit has been oancing. As far back as :qo6, the
Austrian ethnologist Ruoolf Foch, reecting on his New Guinea experiences be-
fore making the rst Bushman movies in the Kalahari, suggesteo that oances are
the simplest ano most eective subjects for cinematography ano the best means of
practicing the meoium since they enable one to recoro what is most visual ano eec-
tive when reproouceo.
1
Iatimah Rony suggests that such a fascination with oance as spectacle arose
out of the inoustrial worlos interest in the booies of inoigenes, booies that were to
be watcheo at a oistance. The native was ioentieo with the booy, ano the na-
tives oance was imagineo as frenzieo movements by people lacking rationality,
giving rise to an image that became common in commercial lms.
2
It is perhaps
not incioental that the one scene in ^!ot that incluoes tourists has them photo-
graphing a trance oance, or, that the most recent Bushman oocumentary oealing
with the relations between people ano carnivores is titleo Dorctrg .ttl tlc Fototc.
Iaceo with the problem of promoting tourism, the Northern Cape Tourist Asso-
ciation hireo an American to oevelop a Bushman tourist show with the ex-
military Bushmen of Smitsorift.
3
Not unreasonably, he focuseo on healers ano their
associateo trance oancing.
4
If there is one thing tourists expect when visiting Bush-
manlano, it is to see Bushmen oance. A oance, many tourists believe, allows Bush-
men to sheo their Western accoutrements ano sham behavior ano reveal an au-
thentic primeval Africa. Authentic Bushmen, these tourists believe, are those who
oance exactly as they oo in the countless ,real ano pseuoo-, oocumentary lms maoe
about them. This essay is about these performative primitives,
5
about how they
:.:
have become caught up in a oance that contains steps of their own oevising but is
at the same time stageo by colonialism.
Death is oancing me raggeo also references oance as a form of language,
of ritual communication, in which both Bushmen ano Europeans participate.
6
A
oance is preeminently a social gathering in which a series of rhythmic ano pat-
c\r+tnrn ox rirx :.
Iigure 8.:. N!ai. Irom ^!ot, Tlc Stot, of o Iorg 1omor ,oir. John Marshall, :q8o,.
Courtesy John Marshall ano Documentary Eoucational Resources, Watertown,
Mass.
terneo booily movements are performeo.
7
The performances we see in lms in
fact involve choreography ano a complex grammar, yet they can also oevelop
into what Eowaro Hall calls entrainment, the process whereby two or more
people become engageo in each others rhythms until they synchronize. Like epic
ballaoeers, those labeleo Bushmen oo not memorize all their steps, but rather
combine stock phrases, formulas, ano etiquettes in patterns improviseo accoro-
ing to the responses of one another ano their auoience.
8
Each performative en-
counter creates a new route through olo themes. Ano by using oance as a site for
focuseo interaction with Europeans, inoigenes are able to oivert attention away
from areas ano concerns on which they woulo prefer the Europeans not to in-
truoe.
In a larger sense, Bushmen are part of a oance that they only control partially.
At the same time, the Western spectator/participant is, like Bushman oancers,
placeo unoer restrictions ano forceo to act the role expecteo of the tourist. Greg
Dening points out that the roots of the oistinction between observer ano observeo
lie in the emergence of the theater ouring the Enlightenment, in which burlesques,
pantomimes, ano satires taught people to perspectivize, to see the strange. Den-
ing further aoopts the term claptrap to signify the moment when a performer is
trappeo in a clap when he or she evokeo applause in the mioole of a oramatic
scene.
By a gesture, a pose, a look, a pause, an actor drew the attention of the audience away
from the part being acted to the acting of the part. Mimesisthe representation of
realitywas broken or changed. [Claptrap] is the moment of theatricality in any rep-
resentation . . . in which the audience . . . participates in the creative process of repre-
senting.
9
Theatricality still runs oeep in every cultural encounter between inoigenes ano
Western strangers. In the claptrap of the representations of those labeleo Bush-
men, it inuenceo ano reoirecteo the nature of the relationship with the wioer
worlo.
One of the most important backorops to the performance of Bushman oance
is that createo by the ,cine-,camera, with its tenoency to frame performances.
The movie camera is a critical part of the legacy of the Graphic Revolution, in
Daniel Boorstins phrase, it helpeo renoer the spectacle available for mass con-
sumption.
10
In the late nineteenth century, ethnographic exhibitions were a
popular form of eoucational entertainment, but the cinema proveo to be a
more cost-eective way of circulating primitive booies in inoustrial society. The
camera has provioeo a meeting place for science ano fantasy, if only because the
Western empirical traoition assumes that visualizing a society is synonymous for
unoerstanoing it.
11
Fhotography recoros experience very oierently than lan-
guage, a photograph cannot be out of context, because photographs ano other
visual images create their own contexts. Visual images thus have the power to ois-
member reality ano juxtapose events ano things that have no historical or logical
:. nonrn+ . oonnox
connection. They create pseuoocontexts ano give fragmenteo ano irrelevant in-
formation an automatic utility.
12
MOVIES AT HOME AND ABROAD
Visual images have oierent meanings for ano impacts on oierent auoiences. The
cinemas central characteristic entails movement ano changing images. The cin-
ema takes us away from the where we are to the scene of the action, yet in a sense,
it is too close to the real for us to inhabit it like a story. Cinema pulls us into the vis-
ible present, while still photographs are about the past. Movies hioe their ex-
ploitative natures with a self-tolo quality.
13
One can gaze upon ano contemplate
a still photograph, whereas movies encourage not gazing but glancing: shallow,
accumulative looks. As Walter Benjamin puts it, before a frame of a movie, no
sooner has ones eye graspeo a scene than it is alreaoy changeo.
14
It is glancing,
not gazing, that has encourageo ano shapeo the way tourists now look at those they
label Bushmen. The lack of oepth, the inability to gaze, is what makes movies fun-
oamentally oierent from both still photographs ano texts.
Still photography has a longer history in the Kalahari than movies, ano in the
case of the Bushmen, it goes back to the :86os, when James Chapman pioneereo
the use of stereoscopic pictures. Soon afterwaro came Gustav Iritsch, who in :8.
publisheo his paraoigmatic Dtc Etrgc/otcrcr So-Afttlo ,Natives of South Africa,,
baseo on three years of travel in :8666. Iritsch acknowleogeo his oisappoint-
ment at how inoigenes reacteo to his eorts at photographing them. In the rst
pages of his book, he remarks that Bushmen oio not like removing their clothing
for the camera: | I|t was the feeling of shame that one hao to struggle against.
However, many natives, especially the chiefs ano the stuoents of the mission schools,
showeo themselves to be extraoroinarily prouo of the not-at-all-becoming rags that
civilization orapeo upon them.
15
As regaros cinema, the pioneer was Ruoolf Foch, an Austrian ethnologist, who
not only maoe the rst movie about Bushmen ,:qoq, but also amasseo the worlos
largest Bushman skull collection.
16
After traveling from Swakopmuno through
Winohoek ano the Kalahari to the Victoria Ialls, Foch returneo to South Africa
ano then maoe a rapio foray up to the southern Kalahari. At the conclusion of
his eighteen-month expeoition, he gave a triumphal interview to the Copc Ttmc
1ccll, of November , :qoq. Entitleo The Bushman Tribes, the interview por-
trayeo the anthropologistlong before Bronislaw Malinowsias a heroic gure.
,Foch aoviseo that the earnest stuoent shoulo learn the language of the people
forming the subject of his inquiries, ano oo everything possible to obtain their
conoence. Investigations of this oescription necessarily entail consioerable time
ano no little amount of labour., Foch founo that the physical structure of the
Bushmen was absolutely oierent from that of all the other low races he hao pre-
viously seen. His researches into the physical appearance of the Bushmen ano
their habits ano customs was facilitateo by photography:
c\r+tnrn ox rirx :.
Not only were the camera and cinematograph requisitioned for this purpose, but the
phonograph was utilized in order to aid the study of the Bushmens language. The
Bushmen did not object to being photographed, nor was any diculty experienced
in getting them to speak into the phonograph. By aid of the cinematograph pictures
were taken showing the natives dancing.
17
There are two grainy halftone photographs incluoeo with the article. One is of
a Bushman speaking into a phonograph by Fochs tent. On the far left is the cine-
matograph, ano on the right, an assistant measures a young laoy. The secono pic-
ture is entitleo Colonial Bushman ano Hottentot Location, Frieska. Iar from por-
traying pristine primitives, the photograph shows Bushmen in rags. Yet in Fochs
lm footage, all the Bushmen are oeckeo out in loincloths, with no vestiges of West-
ern contamination at all.
Even though his work was largely neglecteo by anglophone acaoemics, Foch
set the parameters for lm oocumentaries on Bushmen. His lm work ano his large
collection of skulls was much oiscusseo in the League of Nationss creation of the
manoateo territory of South West Africa after Worlo War I. More signicantly,
Foch epitomizeo what was to become an increasingly popular genre of juvenile
literature ano lm, namely, the aoventures of the photographer explorer. Bur-
ton Holmes, the inventor of the travelogue, later maoe over $ million in the :qos
from his eight thousano or so illustrateo lectures. The same genre accommooateo
the likes of Robert E. Ripley ,Believe It or Not, ano Lowell Thomas, the latter
reputeo to have hao more frienos among the powerful than anyone else in the
worlo. A signicant part of the auoiences of these men were youths, for whom
they became inspirational mooels. It is no surprise that one of the most popular
interwar movies, Itrg Iorg ,oir. Merian Cooper, :q,, begins with a scientic cin-
ematographic expeoition, which enos up capturing the giant ape.
By :q., Kooak cine-cameras ano oo-it-yourselfers were all the rage. The
interwar years were characterizeo by aggressive marketing by companies like
Eastman Kooak ano Bell 8 Howell of new camera technologies, ano they useo
the forum of ôttorol Gcogtopltc to oeliver aovice on how to oeal with camera-
shy natives. This was the milieu of the trenosetting Denver African Expeoition,
which arriveo in southern Africa in :q. to oiscover ano lm what was termeo
the missing link. The expeoition maoe a lm calleo Tlc Bolmor ano took some
ve hunoreo still photographs. Through the successful commercial marketing of
both movie ano stills, the expeoition hao a major impact on creating ano sus-
taining the pristine iconography of Bushmen that persists tooay. After the Den-
ver African Expeoition, practically every American, British, Italian, or Irench
expeoition to Namibia ano the Kalahari incluoeo a cinematographer or at least
a still photographer.
18
Local settlers ano ocials were not always overaweo by the creoentials or
aims of these expeoitions. Dr. Louis Iourie, the South West African territorial
:. nonrn+ . oonnox
meoical ocer, ano the foremost authority on Bushmen of the time, was instru-
mental in guioing the Denver Expeoition o.o, from those he consioereo the
purest Bushmen. In a letter to the South African guioe to the expeoition, Don-
alo Bain, Iourie lamenteo that cinemas attempt to please its auoiences woulo
bring rioicule.
c\r+tnrn ox rirx :.,
Iigure 8... Dr. Caole ano two average size Kalahari Bushmen. Also titleo Caole ano
Kung Bushmen. Fhoto by C. L. H. Hahn. No. A :::. This image appeareo in several
publications in :q., incluoing Mortctpol Foct, Tlc Lttctot, Dtgct, ano Ato.
[The] only way to get good Bushman records is not to attempt to stage-manage them.
[Native Commissioner of Ovamboland C. L. H. Cocky] Hahn has told me of the
scene he witnessed. Where on earth have you ever heard of six Bushmen stalking
the same animal in Indian le etc. etc. The whole aair is ridiculous. The boy [Au-
gust] I gave you as guide knows . . . what stu you require and drop the lm.
19
The micropolitics of lming neeos to be placeo in the settler context. How oio
settlers ano ocials see movies? How oio the state frame perceptions ano shape
what was lmeo ano shown? In the colonies, ano certainly in the manoateo ter-
ritory of South West Africa, there was much trepioation about what the cinema
coulo oo.
20
WHITE MANS MAGIC
The battle of the bioscope in Namibia was long ano tortureo. In :q:q, two colo-
nial NCOs applieo for a license to builo a native cinema in the Winohoek loca-
tion. It is recognizeo by us that the native in this country is inferior in intelligence
ano by installing an entertainment such as herein suggesteo it woulo in our opin-
ion have a tenoency to raise them to a higher stanoaro eoucationally they wrote,
ano oereo to show only pictures of high eoucational value which hao been pre-
viously scrutinizeo. The bioscope, they argueo, woulo reouce native crime. De-
spite enoorsements from ocials, the aoministrator turneo oown their application
because he felt that the time was not yet ripe for such an experiment.
21
The campaign was protracteo, ano a secono issue that hao to be resolveo was
who shoulo control the cinema. The personality of the person authorizeo to run
the Bioscope is a very important one, one magistrate wrote. The natives have
impressionable minos ano are in many respects like big uneoucateo chiloren.
Bioscopes, he felt, were best run by local authorities, who woulo be able to exer-
cise better control, thus, too, natives can be preventeo from spenoing more than
a reasonable portion of their earnings on this form of amusement. All this oe-
spite alreaoy existing censorship controls. It was only in :qq, after much legal
wrangling, that a Coloureo was granteo a bioscope license to show lms in
Luoeritz.
22
It was not only apprehension about the bioscopes impact on inoigenes that gave
rise to ocial moral concern. Its allegeo inuences on whites were also contesteo.
Irom about :q:o, movies hao been a regular staple in the larger towns of German
South West Africa, ano they continueo to be even ouring Worlo War I. After South
African troops occupieo South West Africa, the South African police in :q:8 in-
vestigateo complaints about the local movie fare:
There can be no doubt that the usual kind of Bioscope display has a very undesir-
able, and in many cases highly detrimental eect on the minds and morals of chil-
dren and of youths and girls. . . . human nature being what it is, it may readily be
surmised that, following immediately upon a [Bioscope] display, nerve exciting at
:.8 nonrn+ . oonnox
the best, and often directly playing upon sexual instincts, these journeys home through
dark streets and quiet lanes are not as free from danger as one would desire.
23
Ten years later the principal of the Keetmanshoop Seconoary School protesteo
the screening of Dor }oor, oespite not having seen the lm. As a matter of princi-
ple he oio not frequent the cinema:
I should have thought that any man or woman of only moderate education would
have realised the unwisdom, nay more, the moral danger, of permitting boys and girls
to witness a performance with this title, portraying as all must know it does, only the
career and acts of a libertine. . . . the picture was not only suggestive but openly dis-
played immorality. . . . I do not deny that the cinematograph may frequently be of ed-
ucational value . . . [but] it is well known that the main purpose of most moving pic-
tures is nancial gain, and as long as human nature remains what it is, both those who
make and those who show lms will provide many that are sensational or suggestive.
24
In :q.8, the German consul evioently requesteo that one lm, Charlie Chap-
lins Slooloct Atm, be banneo as it woulo irreparably oamage race relations in
the territory. A month later, citing expert opinion proouceo by the League of Na-
tions on the social impact of the cinema, the aoministration moveo to create a
boaro of censors.
25
This boaro hao to vet lms oirectly importeo to the territory,
but most lms hao alreaoy been approveo by the South African Boaro of Cen-
sors. The South African Entertainment ,Censorship, Act of :q: listeo the follow-
ing features that, if oepicteo in an oensive manner, might leao to a lm being
banneo: ,a, impersonation of the king, ,b, scenes holoing up to rioicule or contempt
any members of the kings military or naval forces, ,c, treatment of oeath, ,o, nuoe
human gures, ,e, passionate love scenes, ,f , scenes purporting to illustrate night
life, ,g, scenes containing reference to controversial or international politics, ,h, scenes
representing antagonistic relations between capital ano labor, ,i, scenes tenoing to
oisparage public gures, , j, scenes tenoing to create public alarm, ,k, the orug
habit, white slave ,prostitution, trac, vice, or loose morals, ,l, scenes calculateo
to aect the religious conviction or feelings of any section of the public, ,m, scenes
calculateo to bring in any section of the public into rioicule or contempt, ,n, ju-
venile crime ano, in the case of oloer persons, scenes of the technique of crime
ano criminality, ,o, brutal ghting, ,p, orunkenness ano brawling, ,q, pugilistic en-
counters between Europeans ano non-Europeans, ,r, intermingling between Eu-
ropeans ano non-Europeans, ano ,s, rough hanoling or ill-treatment of women
ano chiloren.
26
So all-encompassing were the South African censors powers that the U.S. De-
partment of Commerce complaineo that exhibitors hesitate to oer lms for re-
view that may be rejecteo by them. Iilms that were banneo incluoeo Vtco Vtllo
,too much brutality, ano Totor oro Ht Motc ,oensive to oecency,.
27
Clearly,
the state was in awe of the magical power of lm, or at least of its supposeo eect
on chiloren ano Africans.
c\r+tnrn ox rirx :.
The important question, as Michael Taussig points out in his oiscussion of the
impact of the gramophone, is not so much the natives vulnerability to cinema
ano recoroeo souno as the white mans fascination with their fascination with
these mimetically capacious machines.
28
This is most clearly illustrateo by Bains
Bushmen, an exhibit of Bushmen put together by Donalo Bain ano brought
to the :q6 Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg. Their meeting with the wonoers
of the white mans civilization for the rst time of their lives provioeo much copy
for the local press. White Mans Magic Alarms Bushmen a typical heaoline as-
serteo:
In the past few weeks the old patriarch Abraham has been through a life time of novel
experiences, and his natural dignity and philosophy have enabled him to treat even
such momentous occasions as his rst ight in an aeroplane as if they were every-
day occurrences in the Kalahari Desert. . . . His poise almost deserted him [when an]
elevator proved altogether to much for his understanding . . . and he shrank back in
terror from an apartment window and . . . he was bewildered at the mysteries of the
bathroom having a hot and a cold water tap.
29
Their allegeo rst view of movies leo to another Cape Town heaoline: Bush-
men Rush Screen to See Where Talkie Comes Irom. They Like Mickey Mouse but
Dancing Zulus Scareo Them. Abraham Sees Himself in Kalahari Iilm.
Abraham, the centenarian Bushman chief, will never be surprised again. Where the
white man is, anything is possible, he now believes. He has seen and heard the great-
est wonder of allMickey Mouse. . . .
Dancing in any form appeals to the Bushmen and it is impossible for them to keep
their feet still in the presence of music [in this case, Zulu dancing]. Aniko, Abrahams
fty-year-old daughter leads the dancing.
[When the Kalahari camp scenes were shown] they made a concerted rush for-
ward. They looked under and behind the screen in an eort to nd just where it all
came from, but to no avail.
Inoeeo, as Taussig suggests, European settlers appear to have been more ob-
sesseo by the white mans magic than the Bushmen were. Whites were taken with
the magic of mechanical reproouction itself, which restores the mimetic faculty
as mystery in the art of mechanical reproouction, reinvigorating the primitivism
implicit in technologys wiloest oreams, therewith creating a surfeit of mimetic
power.
30
Technological gaogets promoteo the illusion that colonizers hao the
means of controlling the colonizeo.
THE SAVAGE HITS BACK
Stories of Bushmen rushing movie screens shoulo be reao as morality plays that
serveo the settlers neeos. Irom the fragmentary evioence, it is clear that Bushmen
were not overaweo by cinematography. On the contrary, they rapioly accepteo
::o nonrn+ . oonnox
movie makers ano trieo to exploit them in their turn, using strategies ranging from
noncollaboration to mimicry.
31
The Denver Expeoition of :q., after lming in Etosha, traveleo through
Ovambolano, where they met an olo German transport-rioer nameo Hartmann,
when one of the territorys little magazines starteo up a few years later, Hartmann,
who hao a literary bent, wrote about their encounter. His essay, Of Wilo ano
Tame Bushmen, recalleo how he welcomeo the expeoition as one of three in On-
oangua in :q.. The Munchausenesque bragging of the Yankees was so bao it
coulo have come from a Karl May Western: they claimeo to have oiscovereo an
unknown tribe of Bushmen who hao never seen a European, to have narrowly
escapeo from a Bushman attack when their car was mistaken for a wilo animal,
ano to have been given a never-before-seen Bushman religious relic. They were
extremely prouo of their footage of wilo war oances ano secret religious rituals.
Hartmann, for his part, with the attituoe of an experienceo colonial hano,
vieweo such claims as nave. The sacreo Bushman religious relic turneo out to be
a common Ovambo ooll.
On one of his trips through the Etosha Game Fark, Hartmann hookeo up with
the Denver Expeoitions interpreter, the Bastaro Jeremias ,Bastaro, ano Baster,
in the parlance of the southern African frontier, meaning of mixeo oescent,.
When Hartmann askeo Jeremias to show him the wilo Bushmen encountereo
by the expeoition, Jeremias gathereo some Bushmen ano stageo a mock attack.
After begging cigarettes from Hartmann, the Bushmen performeo their war
oance. Suooenly, Hartmann realizeo that he knew its melooy: it was Matiche,
a Mexican song that hao been popular with German troops ouring the Herero
war of :qo. Hartmann also recognizeo one of the oancers. On insisting on
seeing their living quarters, Hartmann was rst taken to a primitive encamp-
ment, clearly for tourist consumption, ano only then to their real abooe, which
consisteo of tin shacks ,ponooks, ano an olo German military beo. Best of all,
they owneo an olo phonograph, on which they playeo their only recoro
Matiche!
The Denver African Expeoition was followeo a year later by that of an Austrian
anthropologist nameo Viktor Lebzelter. He too visiteo the Etosha Fan in search of
Bushmen, but he was rather oismissive of what he founo there. The Bushmen usu-
ally wore European rags ano hao European names. As if referring oirectly to the
Denver Expeoition, Lebzelter continueo, They are always prepareo to put on olo
|traoitional| clothes ano to oance for oistinguisheo guests ano allow themselves to
be photographeo. They are in the best sense Solor Bolmcr who are oepenoent upon
foreign trac.
32
Other amateur ethnographers also lmeo the Etosha Bushmen. Jan Gaeroes,
for example, shot some eight hunoreo meters of lm in :q. en route to the Kunene
River. Oliver Crosby, a gentleman explorer who frequenteo the aoventurers clubs
of the East Coast of the Uniteo States, also maoe some lms of Bushmen in Etosha
ano useo them on the Washington, D.C., lecture circuit.
33
The De Schauensee
c\r+tnrn ox rirx ::.
Expeoition unoer the guioance of Donalo Bain lmeo the Etosha Hei//omn in
:qo. Tourists to the Etosha Game Fark in the interwar years were frequently sur-
priseo by wilo Bushmen who woulo then gratefully accept cigarettes ano thus re-
veal their tameness. A visitor to Etosha in :q wrote how one of those crea-
tures of the wilo,
complete with bow and arrow and pot belly, was well worth a photograph. The in-
terpreter was requested to pass on our wishes to Mr Bushman, and, after a lot of
tongue-clicking and unnecessary talking, the answer came, decisive and uncompro-
mising: I want a shilling rst. So much of the backward Bushman; as this touch of
sordid materialism of our civilisation had crept into the picture, we decided that he
was not worth a photograph at all.
Later, this man, complete with zebra-skin cap, sat on the muoguaro ano serveo
as their guioe.
[W]hen we had at last reached the semblance of a track, I drove over a piece of
pointed bone, which immediately went right through the outer casing of a tyre. . . . It
seemed that Mr :/- Bushman had decided to get his own back on us for refusing to
take his photograph, and crossing his palm with silver. The bone was denitely hand-
carved.
34
The practice of lming wilo Bushmen hunting in the Etosha Fan Game Fark
continueo even after Worlo War II. Bushmen resioing in the Game Fark were ex-
pecteo by the park waroen to cultivate ano maintain a wilo image for the benet
of tourists. Ior many Bushmen, engaging in such behavior was a successful forag-
ing strategy.
A similar trajectory is to be founo at the other major site where wilo Bushmen
were successfully imageo, the southern Kalahari. Some of the people measureo
ano photographeo by Foch were later shown to the anthropologist Dorothea Bleek
ano, most important, were eventually taken by Donalo Bain to the :q6 Empire
Exhibition in Johannesburg. They became one of the exhibits most successful at-
tractions.
35
In part, this was because of Bains campaign to save the last Bush-
men by obtaining a reserve for them. In the face of ocial claims to their inau-
thenticity, Bain not only hao their racial purity attesteo to by scientists such as
Raymono Dart, but he also searcheo as far aelo as Lake Ngami to no authentic
artifacts ano items of clothing for them. The use of Afrikaans, the creole lingua
franca of South West Africa as of most of South Africa, was prohibiteo, ano the
Bushmen were maoe to speak Nama or /auni in public.
36
The Union Research
Boaro paio A. M. Duggan-Cronin, a well-known photographer of Africans, to
come ano photograph them.
37
Although Bains eorts to secure a reserve for the
last South African Bushmen faileo, these Khomani ano /auni Bushmen were al-
loweo to live in the newly proclaimeo Kalahari Gemsbok Fark as long as they oio so
traoitionally. That meant oressing up in skins ano posing for tourists cameras. The
Roro Dotl, Motl reporteo that Bains camp attracteo numerous coloureo people, who
::: nonrn+ . oonnox
try to pass themselves o as Bushmen, ano local farmers complaineo that they
were oepriveo of farm hanos.
38
The same complaint was to be hearo at the
Etosha Game Fark right through the :qos.
Not only hao some of these same people been photographeo by Foch, but it is
also possible that some of them might have hao showbusiness experience going
back to :88, when The Great Iarini, a self-proclaimeo showman, oisplayeo a
troupe of six Earthmen ,Bushmen, brought over from the southern Kalahari.
The Earthmens keeper, a Baster nameo Gert Louw, tolo Iarini stories. He,
Iarini, ano Iarinis photographer son Lulu hao searcheo for Kalahari oiamonos.
Despite an initial fear of Lulus camera, the Bushmen of the southern Kalahari
aoapteo to being photographeo.
39
In :q:, Ireo Cornell, a prominent prospector,
also took a movie camera to this area ano maoe a lm of Bushmen that suppos-
eoly incluoeo remarkable footage of oancing, the lm was regrettably spoileo by
the intense heat. Cornells guioe was apparently also none other than Gert
Louw.
40
By the :qos, it is very likely that farm laborers like Bains last Bushmen were
well aware of what cinema was all about, since itinerant European hawkers with
movie vans were a feature of rural South Africa in the interwar years. Saturoay
night at the bioscope was a major feature of the social scene on the Flattelano.
Iarmers woulo think nothing of traveling fty miles to the venue , perhaps a oin-
ing hall or country hotel,, often bringing their black farmworkers along with them,
who woulo watch through the winoows from the outsioe. Totor ano other African
lms were popular fare at these showings, which some local auoiences at least oe-
lighteo in oissecting for improbabilities ano anachronisms.
41
Thus the acculturation to the notion of performance was two-sioeo. Both Bush-
men ano whites participateo in Denings claptrap, the shifting of mimesis from
the habits being representeo to the habit of representation. Tourists came ano
tourists lmeo, ano not only South Africans, but international gures such as Jens
Bjerre ano Marlin Ferkins. The same has been true in Botswana. The renements
of performance continue to the present, with the Australian TV traveloguer Abby
Mangels ooing the Bushmen with himself oresseo in a loincloth.
42
GATE- AND GOATKEEPERS
Bushmens oances or performances were meoiateo by experienceo gatekeep-
ers or cultural entrepreneurs. Foch oio not stagger blinoly into the oesert, he was
guioeo there, probably by Gert Louw. Ior the Denver Expeoition, we have Iourie
swearing by the reliability of his boy August. In the case of Donalo Bain, it is
clear that the major facilitator was /khanako ,Aniko above,, or as she was re-
ferreo to in the Afrikaans press, Ou Iytjie ,Olo Iig,. Strong ano inoepenoent-
minoeo, /khanako assisteo Bain in congregating what later became known as
Bains Bushmen, ano as a oaughter of Olo Abraham ,!gurice,, the putative
patriarch of the collecteo Bushmen, she playeo a leaoing role in their governance.
c\r+tnrn ox rirx ::
This becomes clear in the way in which especially the Afrikaans press was enrap-
tureo by her. Ior example, after watching the annual intervarsity rugby match
between Stellenbosch ano Cape Town University, /khanako claimeo to want to
import rugby into the Kalahari. Obviously, she knew the way to a warm-bloooeo
Afrikaners heart!
43
After Bain went bankrupt while on tour with the Bushmen, they were repatri-
ateo back to the Goroonia oistrict ano /khanako emergeo as their spokesperson.
Reporting on their resettlement, the Upington magistrate noteo: Most of them
conoently expect Mr Bain to visit them again ano hope to be alloweo to camp in
the Game Reserve. The oaughter of the olo Chief askeo me to make represen-
tation to the Minister of Native Aairs so that some of the money which she says
Mr Bain collecteo ouring their tour ano which she alleges he collecteo for them,
may be obtaineo from him ano hanoeo over to them.
44
After the failure of Bains controversial eorts, another person, Coenraao Ireo-
erik Macoonalo, also took some southern Kalahari Bushmen on tour in :qq.
Macoonalo was chargeo unoer the censorship laws for illegally exhibiting Bush-
men. His court case achieveo a certain prominence, ano from the recoro, it ap-
pears that his oefense was that Iytjie ,/khanako, hao approacheo him, as a well-
known person in the Goroonia oistrict, to take the Bushmen on tour, she hao
helpeo collect the troupe, ano he hopeo to buy a farm for them to settle on with
the prots. As he spoke, Iytjie was waiting outsioe the court to be calleo to give
evioence.
45
Two inoigenes achieveo a certain prominence as gatekeepers ano interpreters
in South West Africa. Iirst, there was Native Sergeant Saul who was stationeo
in Gobabis ano was touteo as the expert on the eastern Bushmen. Not only oio he
facilitate Dr. Iouries, ano Bleek ano Drurys, research in Sanofontein, but he hao
also apparently known Foch. As a police tracker, he was closely involveo in oper-
ations following the muroer of the Gobabis magistrate van Rynevelo in :q... The
secono was Ngani, a Hei/-om. Nganis story is almost mosaic. Iouno unoer a bush,
where his mother hao abanooneo him, he grew up in the householo of the secre-
tary for South West Africa, came to speak nine oierent languages, ano was known
to mix a gooo martini. Fractically every travelogue on Namibia from the :qos to
the :qos has a vignette or two about Nganis mimicry, his linguistic capabilities,
ano his ability to anticipate ones wishes before one even became aware of them.
46
He also serveo as interpreter on a number of important anthropological expeoi-
tions, incluoing F. J. Schoemans, oiscusseo below, ano those of the Marshall fam-
ily in :q., :q8, ano :q6:.
Some whites choreographeo their own interactions with Bushmen, as we have
seen. Donalo Bain was crucial, ano he was followeo by F. J. Schoeman, the war-
oen of Etosha Game Reserve ano chair of the Bushman Freservation Commis-
sion. Schoeman successfully brought a troupe of !Kung to the van Riebeeck Ies-
tival commemorating three hunoreo years of white settlement in South Africa.
White South West Africans also hao an impact on this oance. Irancois Stroh grew
:: nonrn+ . oonnox
up on a farm with Bushmen ano claimeo to speak six Bushman oialects. Work-
ing as an agent for one of the political groupings in South West Africa, Stroh took
Bushmen on carefully stageo trips to events like the Germiston Centenary Iesti-
val in South Africa ano serveo as a self-appointeo spokesperson for their inter-
ests.
47
Unooubteoly the most important choreographer ano gatekeeper was the South
African government, supporteo by the press ano its expanoing mioole-class reao-
ership. In the wake of Donalo Bains :q6 eorts to save the Last South African
Bushmen, the Roro Dotl, Motl eoitorializeo: |T|he plea. . . . shoulo certainly be
responoeo to, not alone in the interests of science but also because the picturesque,
the unusual ano the historic are national assets ano matters for nation-wioe con-
cern. Every eort shoulo be maoe to prevent this remarkable little people from ois-
appearing.
48
There were also more pragmatic consioerations. Alreaoy in :q.,
when four parties applieo for permits to stuoy Bushmen in the Kavango River re-
gion, ocials complaineo, It woulo seem that the Bushmen are starting to resent
the interference of so many Europeans.
49
Some of the expeoitions were thought
to be glorieo hunting trips. The South African government, in oefense of its pol-
icy of apartheio ano its illegal occupation of the territory, was sensitive to any neg-
ative publicity that might be generateo. Research visas thus became a major way
of controlling the image of Bushmen, ano until recently, only researchers with im-
peccable conservative creoentials, or who were focusing on limiteo questions that
woulo not embarrass the aoministration, were alloweo to visit Bushmen. South
Africa might then proclaim its support for science. Better to oo research on Bush-
men as pristine people than to investigate the wioer context in which they were
locateo.
Ocials at the lower level also helpeo to choreograph Bushmens interactions.
Writing about the Etosha Game Reserve in a pamphlet proouceo for the :q Wem-
bley Exhibition, the game waroen claimeo: In the precinct of these places a stuoy
can also be maoe of the wilo Bushmen resioent there. They form part ano parcel
of this sanctuary ano aoro an interesting stuoy for those anxious to acquaint them-
selves with their life ano pursuits.
50
But as Bushmen in both the Etosha Game Re-
serve ano the Kalahari Gemsbok Fark oiscovereo to their oismay, refusing to be-
have in the manner that ocials thought proper for traoitional Bushmen leo to
their eviction from these ancestral places.
Tooay, government policy continues to shape the oance. The Worlo Wioe Iuno,
Ioro Iounoation, ano USAID have, moreover, been promoting natural resource
management in the name of sustainable oevelopment. Bushmanlano has been
ioentieo as a place eminently suitable for ecotourism, ano they have trieo, with
some anthropological tinkering, to foist Western-style conservation concepts on the
locals. Bushmens behavior towaro tourists is still moloeo by their version of clap-
trap, their perceptions of government policies. In Namibia, a local ecotourist
company has a contract for Nyae Nyae in the former Bushmanlano. Tourists, car-
rying cameras, are escorteo by locals on traoitional hunting ano foraging ex-
c\r+tnrn ox rirx ::
peoitions. One of their spokespeople-guioes, Benjamin Xishe, justies these per-
formances in these terms: We neeo the young people to see that our way of life is
not always the one that loses. . . . If foreigners come here ano pay to see our way of
life, maybe the young people will keep learning the skills. Maybe the government
will help us keep the Herero out.
51
The camera provioes a site for contemporary
inoigenous political engagement, but the oance continues to mean oierent things
to oierent people.
THE CAMERA AND THE AUTHENTIC
So far I have oiscusseo the collaborative nature of the oance or performance of
Bushmanness itself. Yet the overall strategy of the oance was not of Bushmens oe-
vising, ano the eects of its staging coulo not be oetermineo by them. An important
mechanism in removing this control has been the cameras reinforcement of au-
thenticity. Government policy insisteo that while Native Life was an important
tourist commooity, one coulo look, but not mix, with inoigenes. Many anthropolo-
gists who were supposeo to oo elowork ran afoul of the regime allegeoly for too
much mingling. Inoeeo, participant-observation, if it ever were a realistic research
methoo, was oiscourageo in Afrikaans-language collcloroc ,ethnology, oepartments.
This situation reinforceo the virtues of photography, ano especially movies. The
camera, as Eo Bruner puts it, is the mask the tourist wears: it allows the tourist to
be a voyeur without commitment, while the inoigenes work as poseurs.
52
It is a pro-
phylactic, preventing the inoigene from returning the gaze. The use of lm ano
the vioeo camera oistinguishes the tourist from the ethnographer, tourism is pre-
eminently concerneo with surrenoer in the sense that one is on vacation ano
thus gives oneself up to the power of another, the tour guioe. Ethnography con-
cerns writing ano verbal interaction. Certainly, in Nyae Nyae, ecotourists are so
busy snapping pictures or vioeoing that they have no time to get involveo in the lo-
cal life of the community.
53
The use of photography in ethnography has been wioely oiscusseo ano oebateo.
While Americans have been much taken with the camera as a research tool, Eu-
ropeans, ano especially Germans, have been more skeptical. In his thorough
overview of research methoos, Hugo Bernatzik for example, emphasizes the im-
portance of photography as oocumentary proof, but he is scathing about the use
of cinematic lm, since it is nearly impossible to shoot unposeo sequences.
54
Un-
ooubteoly, the lm that has oone most to promote the imagery of pristine Bush-
men has been Jamie Uyss box-oce hit Tlc Goo Mot Bc Cto, ,:q8o, which was
not only the largest grossing foreign lm in the Uniteo States but broke recoros in
a number of European countries ano Japan ano spawneo not only a sequel but a
minor inoustry of similar lms. Fart of the success of Tlc Goo Mot /c Cto, can
be attributeo to its successful blenoing of comeoy with a pseuoo-oocumentary nar-
rative style. More than any other single factor, the lm is wioely helo to have en-
:: nonrn+ . oonnox
courageo tourists to visit Bushmanlano, where they hope to encounter authen-
tic Bushmen as representeo by Uys.
Fhilosophically, the ioeology of authenticity is inimical to the age of mooer-
nity, yet a preoccupation with the increasing rarity of true, original, ano au-
thentic objects ano experiences is one of mooernitys key characteristics. In the
case of Bushmen, it is anthropologists, oocumentarians, ano, rather perversely,
South African Farks Boaro scientists, who are the authoritative gures in oecioing
on the authenticity of their Bushman waros. To present this reality creoibly, a
number of strategies are employeo. Authenticity, as Dean MacCannell points out,
is not given, but is negotiable.
55
It varies from auoience to auoience. What whites
in Grootfontein, Namibia, regaro as corrupteo or trivial in Bushman oance is ac-
cepteo as authentic in Cape Town.
One oevice for establishing authenticity ano creoibility was obtaineo by look-
ing o the beaten track ano beneath the surface. Authenticity or its lack is re-
vealeo by going o-stage or behino the scenes ano being in with the natives, or
at least with white ocials on extenoeo patrols. This is part of the power of John
Marshalls lmic corpus, in which the viewer feels constantly back stage. But
frequently this insioer, back-stage sensibility was achieveo not after long ano close
relationships but through a staging of a back region. Donalo Bain was accuseo
of such staging by the National Farks Boaro, ano he ,along with a number of other
scientists, argueo that the practice was acceptable so long as technical problems
requireo it. Stageo authenticity, where both auoience ano stagers realize that the
performance is a performance, is also a common feature of the present age of post-
mooernity. Yet oocumentary lms still support solio claims to the authentic. Worse,
often the footage to be seen is valorizeo by the claim that the subjects are on the
point of extinction, an assertion oating back to at least the mioole of the nineteenth
century.
The very frameworks by which oocumentary lms establish their authenticity
transform Bushman culture into a tourist culture that is progressively haroer to
live out in practice. Iilm, especially when shown on television, reaches a far wioer
auoience than either photographs or written presentations. Documentaries, typi-
cally accepteo as eoucational, are usually oone with some authoritative narrator
presenting opinion as fact.
56
Ferhaps the most important element of ascribing au-
thenticity to oances, to performeo representations, is the ubiquitous fairy tale
that outsioe the contaminating presence of the West, there exist ecologically no-
ble folk who live in complete harmony with nature. In many lms, making un-
spoileo scenes meant removing all vestiges of Western clothing ano other signs of
civilization. Thus, while Bushmens oancing may be quite purposeful, ano
while it may engage a multituoe of meanings, its repeateo, commano performance
must ultimately be consioereo onerous. Iairy tales have happy enoings, but not
when Westerners impose them on people ano oemano they conform to them sim-
ply to survive.
c\r+tnrn ox rirx ::,
CONCLUSION
Ferformance is very much part of the ioeological genealogy of the people of Kagga
Kamma, who have a achieveo a certain touristic renown as South Africas Last
Bushmen. Those so labeleo are not only prisoners of their reputation but, in
the view of some, are their own pragmatic agents of self-presentation. Hylton
White, in his sensitive stuoy of the Kagga Kamma Bushmen, quotes their leaoer
Dawio Kruiper as saying, I am an animal of nature. I want the tourists to see me
ano to know who I am. The only way our traoition ano way of life can survive is
to live in the memory of the people who see us.
57
The quotation is rapioly be-
coming canonic, ano inoeeo it is common to no assertions of Bushmens auton-
omy. Ior example, the recently releaseo Namibian oocumentary Dorctrg .ttl tlc Fo-
totc focuses on natural resourcemanagement in the erstwhile Bushmanlano. One
of the Bushmen intervieweo says, quite matter-of-factly, that if the tourists want
them oresseo in loincloths, then so be it. Yet from the lm, it is also clear that they
oress in skins not out of a perceiveo unity with nature but in the hope that their
evioent poverty will persuaoe rich Westerners to help them. In a situation that Bush-
men perceive as oire poverty, collaboration in maintaining the fairy tale is the eas-
ier option.
58
To be sure, those labeleo Bushmen have actively ano successfully exploiteo the
ambiguities of their imposeo ioentities. But one must nonetheless be concerneo
about the voyeuristic quality of knowleoge about them. The national ioentities
of Bushmen have been reouceo ano simplieo into a hanoy bit of shorthano, a
salable image. Whatever their initial state, Bushmen are tooay inevitably oe-
meaneo by tourism into the psychological ano political inferiors of the tourists
who view them.
59
Their maneuvers, survival gambits, ano exercises of auton-
omy exploit a space of conceptual ambiguity within an overall oiscourse that is
imposeo from without. Bushmen play on the moral ambiguities inherent in the
position of oominant outsioers, even while those outsioers can, ano oo, call the
tunes. In the oance of the pristine primitive, Bushmen are still being oispos-
sesseo of their complex ioentities tooay, just as they have long been of their lano.
Ferhaps this is the ultimate meaning of N!ais Dont look at me now, oeath is
oancing me raggeo.
NOTES
:. Rudolf Pch quoted in Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethno-
graphic Spectacle (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, :qq6), 6.
.. Ibid., 6.
. Smitsdrift is a settlement in the Cape for Bushmen who worked for the South African
military in Namibia and Angola.
. Thomas Riccio, N!ngongiao: People Come Out of Here, TheatreForum :o, : (:qq):
q.
::8 nonrn+ . oonnox
. Dean MacCannell, Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (New York: Routledge, :qq.).
6. One perhaps thinks here of Erving Gomans discussion of interaction ritual in Rela-
tions in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books, :q:); see esp. Preface.
. Websters Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (:q8), s.v. dance.
8. Edward T. Hall, Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor
Press / Doubleday, :q8).
q. Greg Dening, The Theatricality of Observing and Being Observed: Eighteenth-
Century Europe Discovers the ? Century Pacic, in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Re-
porting, and Reecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era,
ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (New York: Cambridge University Press, :qq), 8.
:o. Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Macmillan,
:q6:).
::. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, :q8), :o6.
:.. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New
York: Viking, :q8), 6. [W]e have produced in this century a human mutation, a species
that substitutes vicarious experience for the real thing, Nadine Gordimer writes of televi-
sion in Our Century, Transition : (:qq): .:.
:. John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous (New York: Pantheon Books, :qq:); and see Alison
Griths, Knowledge and Visuality in Turn of the Century Anthropology, Visual Anthro-
pology Review :., . (:qq6q).
:. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in Illu-
minations: Essays and Reections, ed. Hannah Arendt (:q68; New York: Schocken Books, :q6q), .8.
:. Gustav Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Sd-Afrikas (Breslau: F. Hirt, :8.), .
:6. Helga-Marie Pacher, Anthropologische Untersuchungen an den Skeletten der Rudolf Pchschen
Buschmannsammlung (Graz: H. Bhlaus, :q6:). These included sixty-six complete skeletons
and over a hundred skulls.
:. See Walter Hirschberg, Vlkerkundliche Ergebnisse der sdafrikanischen Reisen Rudolf Pchs
in den Jahren .o, bis .o (Vienna: Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, :q6). It is quite
probable that Bushmen were rounded up for Pch by Cape authorities who had been in-
structed to render all possible assistance to his research.
:8. The lineage is long and distinguished, and moves from Denver to De Schauensee,
Vernay Lang, Ciprioti, Loeb, Morden, Panhard, Bjerre, and, most important, the Marshall
and van der Post multiple expeditions, followed by Marlin Perkins with his made-for-TV quest.
:q. Dr. Louis Fourie to Donald Bain, Tsumeb, December :o, :q., Fourie Collection,
MuseumAfrika, Johannesburg.
.o. The social impact of lms upon newly literate Africans is likely to be more pro-
nounced than upon Europeans, and it should be noticed that in all countries anxiety is ex-
pressed regarding the tendency of many lms to glorify violent crime and erotic passion.
Lord Hailey, An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara (London:
Oxford University Press, :q8; rev. ed. :q, :q68), :..
.:. Letter from Quarter-Master Watson & Sgt. Major Castle, October ., :q:q, SWAA
Ao/ Films, National Archives of Namibia.
... Magistrate, Swakopmund, March .q, :q, SWAA Ao/ Films, National Archives
of Namibia. The content of the lm was not an issue as the South African Board of Cen-
sors had already developed a classication of lms with the following viewing categories:
(a) European, (b) Natives, (c) Children, (d) Females, (e) Males. National Archives of Namibia.
c\r+tnrn ox rirx ::
.. SWAA Ao/ Films, National Archives of Namibia.
.. File A:8/q Film Censorship: Cinematographic Film Ordinance, National Archives
of Namibia. For contemporary debates on the impact of movies in the United States, see
Herbert Blumer and Philip M. Hauser, Movies, Delinquency, and Crime (New York: Macmillan,
:q); Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct (New York: Macmillan, :q).
.. By virtue of the :q.8 ordinance, inspectors could reject lms for any of the following
reasons: (a) endangering the safety of the state; (b) contrary to good policy; (c) may cause a
disturbance of public order; (d) calculated to oend the religious convictions or feelings of
the public; (e) calculated to bring any section of the public into ridicule or contempt; (f ) oends
against ordinary decency; and (g) contrary to good morals. As keepers of morals, women
were appointed to this board in equal numbers to men. File A:8/q Film Censorship: Cin-
ematographic Film Ordinance, National Archives of Namibia. See also William Marston
Seabury, Motion Picture Problems: The Cinema and the League of Nations (New York: Avondale
Press, :q.q). Seabury was the former general counsel to the Motion Picture Board of Trade.
.6. Thelma Gutsche, The History and Social Signicance of Motion Pictures in South Africa,
.8.o (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, :q.), .qqoo.
.. Ibid., o..
.8. Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Rout-
ledge, :qq), :q8.
.q. This and the next clipping are from the private ephemera collection of John Bain,
Hawaii, and lack precise identications and dates.
o. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, .o8.
:. Taken from Julius Lipss classic work The Savage Hits Back (:q; New Hyde Park, N.Y.:
University Books, :q66), which rst examined how colonized peoples used art as a means
of resistance. The following four paragraphs are derived from Robert J. Gordon, Picturing
Bushmen (Athens: Ohio University Press, :qq).
.. Viktor Lebzelter, Eingeborenenkulturen in Sdwest- und Sdafrika wissenschaftliche Ergeb-
nisse einer Forschungsreise nach Sd- und Sdwestafrika in den Jahren .:.:8 (Leipzig: Karl W. Hi-
ersemann, :q), 8.; my emphasis. As if to drive home the point, he continued: These Bush-
men are really protection ocials who watch over the game, but they are also volunteer
police who catch all Ovambo who try to avoid the Pass controls at Namutoni. Generally,
they are still the most well-armed Bushmen (my translation).
. O. Crosby to L. Fourie, Fourie Collection, MuseumAfrika, Johannesburg.
. F. W. Ahrens, From Bench to Bench: Reections, Reminiscences and Records (Pietermaritzburg:
Shuter & Shooter, :q8), ::..
. Dorothea Bleek, for example, wrote to Maingard, Dr Ballantine showed some pho-
tographs taken at Bains camp. My sister and I both recognized the old voorman as one of
the men I had photographed when with Miss Wilman and Scotty Smith in :q::. He was
then at Lentlands Pan further south than Witdraai. . . . I wonder whether . . . some [of them]
are /auni from further north, Bleek to Maingard, July ., :q6, Maingard Collection,
UNISA, Pretoria. It is also likely that they were also measured and photographed by Pch.
For more on Bleek, see Skotnes, this volume.
6. Bains collection camp some .: miles north of Upington near the hamlet of Kyky
attracted many journalists. The correspondent for Die Burger reported that racially pure
Bushmen were scarce but that the Coloured in the area spoke an old style Dutch. Yet many
of the Bushmen girls, unbeknown to many of the scientists, were singing songs in an
Afrikaans dialect from a previous era. So much for authenticity. Nevertheless, It is worth
:o nonrn+ . oonnox
the trouble to see a lot of Bushmen dance (Die Burger, July :, :q6, Hoe Kalahari Boes-
mans Vriende Maak).
. To quote Duggan-Cronin from the Diamond Fields Advertiser (undated, on le in the
Maingard Collection, UNISA, Pretoria): My great diculty was the changing of photo-
graphic plates. This I had to do in a mud hut while two boys held blankets over me. Un-
derneath the blankets I had a red lamp. The heat was terrible also and there was little
shade. . . . These Bushmen are the easiest people in the world to work with. They have not
yet learned to be mercenary.
8. Rand Daily Mail, July ., :q6.
q. Shane Peacock, The Great Farini: The High-Wire Life of William Hunt (Toronto: Viking,
:qq).
o. Fred C. Cornell, The Glamour of Prospecting: Wanderings of a South African Prospector in Search
of Copper, Gold, Emeralds, and Diamonds (London: T. F. Unwin, :q.o; reprint, Cape Town, :q8q).
:. Gutsche, History and Social Signicance, :6.
.. On Botswana, see, e.g., Nicholas Luard, The Last Wilderness: A Journey across the Great
Kalahari Desert (New York: Simon & Schuster, :q8:), who recalls nding Bushmen who were
tending Tswana farmers elds. Theyd encountered Europeans before, and they knew what
they were expected to do: plait rope from brous leaves, carve beads from ostrich eggshells,
make re from sticks. . . . It was simply a ritual obligation on both sidesthe San to demon-
strate their skills, I the foreigner, to observe, which was what theyd learned foreigners wished
to do (.o).
. Die Burger, May :: and :., :q.
. Magistrate, Upington, to Sec. NAD, August :q, :q, NTS q8 8./oo, Bushman
Reserve, vol. ., National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria.
. NTS q8 8./oo, Bushman Reserve, vol. .., National Archives of South Africa,
Pretoria. After World War II, /khanako and her friends moved to the Botswana side of the
Nossob River: Sec :o8 S. :o8/./., Botswana National Archives, Gaborone. Ciraj Rassool
and Patricia Hayes are currently working on a biography of /khanako.
6. See, e.g., Margarethe von Eckenbrecher, Was Afrika mir Gab und Nahm: Erlebnisse einer
deutschen Frau in Sdwestafrika (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, :qoq; new ed., :q, :qo); Neg-
ley Farson, Behind Gods Back (New York: : Harcourt, Brace, :q:); Sidney Legendre, Okavango,
The Desert River (New York: J. Messner, :qq); and Margareta Oldevig, The Sunny Land (Cape
Town: Howard Timmins, :q).
. Die Beeld, May , :q86.
8. Rand Daily Mail, July .., :q6.
q. South West Africa Administration (SWAA) A:q8/.6, Nat. Arch. of Namibia,
contains many examples of this.
o. File Native Administration Ovamboland NAO /:, October :, :q, Nat. Arch.
of Namibia.
:. Rupert Isaacson, Call of the Wild, Daily Telegraph, November ., :qq6.
.. Edward M. Bruner, The Ethnographer/Tourist in Indonesia, in International
Tourism: Identity and Change, ed. Marie-Franoise Lanfant et al. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage
Publications, :qq). The relationship between tourist and anthropologist is complex, because,
as Bruner points out: Colonialism, ethnography, and tourism occur at dierent historical
periods, but arise from the same social formation, and are variant forms of expansionism
occupying the space opened up by the extensions of power (E. M. Bruner, Of Cannibals,
Tourists and Ethnographers, Cultural Anthropology [:q8q]: q).
c\r+tnrn ox rirx :.
. Isaacson, Call of the Wild. In order to stop their obsessive photo snapping, local
people sometimes make tourists carry rewood!
. Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, Afrika: Handbuch der angewandten Vlkerkunde (Innsbruck: Schls-
selverlag, :q).
. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken
Books, :q6).
6. Janet Dixon Keller, Schemes for Schemata, in New Directions in Psychological Anthro-
pology, ed. Theodore Schwartz et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press,:qq.).
. Hylton White, In the Tradition of Our Forefathers: Bushman Traditionality at Kagga Kamma:
The Politics and History of a Performative Identity (Rondebosch, South Africa: University of Cape
Town Press in association with the Centre for African Studies, :qq), :, :.
8. Keyan Tomaselli, pers. comm. (from an undated draft of a paper, :qq).
q. Stuart Hall, What Is This Black in Black Popular Culture? in Michele Wallace,
Black Popular Culture: A Project, ed. Gina Dent (Seattle: Bay Press, :qq.; reprinted in Represent-
ing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, ed. Valerie Smith [New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, :qq]), ..
:: nonrn+ . oonnox
Chapter q
Decentering the Gaze
at French Colonial Exhibitions
Catherine Hodeir
Curiosit, cest ignorance, the organizers of the ethnographic exhibit on the
Irench colonies proclaimeo at the opening in May :q: of the Exposition coloniale
internationale in Faris, one of the most signicant exhibitions of its kino. It was in-
oeeo an apt expression for the representation of Africa ano Africans that European
national ano universal exhibitions promulgateo in the late nineteenth century. The
African mise-en-scene oisplayeo in them entaileo a complex interaction ano ois-
tancing between the object ano its presentation. Africa was the aphrooisiac of the
unknown: it appealeo greatly to the European urban public, but it was only a frag-
mentary ano partially revealeo object of stuoy. What were the stakes of knowleoge
about Africa in the :qos? Ano why were interactions between oark Africa ano
the Enlightenment gaze of the West frameo by notions of authenticity ano ioentity?
THE FTE COLONIALE AND THE STILL IMAGE
Iour oistinct roles were ascribeo to Africans on oisplay at the :88q Faris Universal
Exhibition. On the Champ-oe-Mars, at the foot of the Eiel Tower, the so-calleo
natives appeareo as entertainers ,singers, oancers, musicians,, as waiters in restau-
rants ano bars, as shopkeepers ano craftsmen, ano nally, as themselves, in which
role they referenceo a lost pastoral existence. In the aftermath of Worlo War I, a
new position emergeo in the colonial spectacle, that of the tttotllcot rgolot. Known
by his highly recognizable uniform, the Irench African colonial soloier, or tttotllcot,
was integrateo with other colonial native roles to form a complete metropolitan
spectacle. The result appeareo in numerous European exhibitions ,see the list on
page .8,.
The presentation of an innocent native African village can be tieo to the ex-
hibition of a Senegalese Village at the Champ-oe-Mars in :88q. It was immeoi-
ately a very popular attraction. Iour years after the Conference of Berlin in :88,
:
the great steeplechase for the African continent hao alreaoy begun.
1
Irance was
alreaoy in a oominant position in Senegal ano Gabon. The presentation of the
new primitives, fenceo insioe an imagineo village ano wearing leoparo-skin loin-
cloths, stimulateo public curiosity ano excitement.
2
Seeing them in their natural
habitat, the photographer, the portraitist, the journalist, ano the simple tourist ex-
perienceo the innocent native as a representative of a former stage of human
oevelopment.
The Senegalese natives were to present themselves in this light before thou-
sanos of oaily visitors. An easy task? Ferhaps not as easy as it seems. The rst rule
of their performance was to repeat recognizable gestures continuously, gestures
that were at once specic, unambivalent, ano yet continually evolving. In the :q:
exhibition, sherman ano oarsman presenteo a show of native techniques
every hour on the Seine ano subsequently on Lake Daumesnil.
3
Women pounoeo
millet with mortar ano pestle ano cookeo a meal on an open re three or four times
a oay. One of the most wioely awaiteo spectacles was the Muslim prayer, which
transpireo in a situation of complete promiscuity among inoel visitors. A form
of impromptu pastoralism was evokeo by aoults interactions with African chiloren.
The chiloren cast a watchful eye over imagineo elos from a watchtower at the :88q
exhibition, but also jumpeo into a pono to retrieve coins thrown by amuseo visi-
tors. The spectacle of the newborn, in some cases born ouring the exhibition it-
self, as in Rouen in :8q6, was an inscription of a oistinctly oierent cultural be-
coming. The infant wrappeo behino the mothers back in a colorful piece of cloth
was a constant source of fascination for passing spectators: it was never too early
to take up the career of native performer at colonial exhibitions.
4
Yet another xture at the colonial exhibitions was the native artisan-
shopkeeper. The African artisan was known for four oistinct crafts: weaving, leather
work, blacksmithing, ano golosmithing. At the :88q exhibition, blacksmiths forgeo
all kinos of African ano Western objects: gun barrels, knives ano oaggers, sworos
ano spurs, watch chains ano key rings, tear-orop earrings, ano scissors. A woooen
fence at the :qoo exhibition shieloeo Senegalese artisan-shopkeepers from intru-
sive crowos ,the scene evoking a zoo,, looking over it, visitors saw another arche-
type, the Senegalese weaver with his assistant, probably his son. At an aojacent
stano, a crowo gathereo arouno a golosmith, entranceo by his oancing mallet fash-
ioning the precious metal.
5
The presence of native craftsmen in the context of oisplays of new instanta-
neous communication technologies reinforceo the role of the universal exhibitions
themselves as harbingers of mooernity. Nineteenth-century exhibitions in Faris reg-
ularly featureo a Galerie oes machines, where Irench workers oemonstrateo their
recently mechanizeo traoes before the public. African artisans were also part of the
overall spectacle. At the :q Universal Exhibition, the native craftsman stooo
alongsioe his metropolitan brethren, integrateo into the broaoer realm of Irench
craftsmanship, in an exhibit calleo Arts et techniques oe la vie mooerne. African
craftsman were intenoeo to reect the economic policy that Irench governments
: c\+nrnixr nonrin
of the :qos wisheo to institute. This policy consisteo in oeveloping hanoicrafts,
ano not inoustries, in their colonies. Irench factories woulo be protecteo from
African competition ano woulo keep their privilegeo markets, ano consequently,
no oangerous native working classes woulo arise in the Irench empire. By polit-
ical oesign, African crafts were representeo as purely traoitional. Thus a young
girl from Sgou, Mali ,formerly Irench Suoan,, wove traoitional motifs in the :q:
exhibition. Iifty years later, however, she revealeo that visitors hao askeo her to copy
motifs for them ano that she hao aooeo them into her repertoire ano brought them
back to Africa.
6
Musicians, singers, ano oancers were the featureo attractions at the exhibitions.
In the :q: exhibition, every Sunoay night, from May to November, a procession
appeareo along the Granoe Avenue oes Colonies. The weekly paraoe presenteo a
sample of the exhibits in the Colonial Exhibition, which, in turn, representeo the
larger tapestry of the Irench empire. The paraoe also publicizeo the theatrical pre-
sentations in the exhibition, such as An African Iairy Tale, Dancing ano Singing
nrcrx+rnixo +nr o\zr \+ rnrxcn coroxi\r rxnini+ioxs :
Iigure q.:. Senegalese weaver ano apprentice, Universal Exhibition, Faris, :qoo. Collec-
tion iconographique Maciet, Bibliotheque oes Arts ocoratifs, Faris. Reproouceo by per-
mission.
from the Colonial Worlo, Colonial Nights, ano Iarewell to the Colonies. The
numerous shows orew larger auoiences than the regular Faris theater at the time.
Although the natives who performeo on stage hao to be very professional, the
shows they acteo in were consioereo to be the quintessence of primitivism. An-
or Maurois, a member of the Acaomie franaise, whose popular book on the
:q: Colonial Exhibition was wioely oistributeo at the time, wrote: Ior the prim-
itive, oance is the highest form of escapism. Like a member of a symphonic or-
chestra, a poet reciting an ooe . . . the African subject, in ight from hostile sur-
rounoings, looks for solace in rhythmic movement. . . . Ahhhhh! How the monotony
of the tom-toms calms the restless spirit.
7
The revereo tom-tom at the exhibition was a reversal of existing colonial rules
in Irench West Africa, which often forbaoe it. Aoministrators have forbiooen cel-
ebrations along with tom-tom orums on the grounos that they no them bother-
some.
8
On the other hano, what kino of music was really playeo? The label on
the Bambaras Bano recoro from the :q: exhibition lists the musical piece,
Coup oe Chaleur, ano unoer it, Iox trot. It is true that a certain black African
elite was alreaoy listening ano oancing to Western music playeo on gramophones
: c\+nrnixr nonrin
Iigure q... Senegalese jewelers workshop, Universal Exhibition, Faris, :qoo. Collection
iconographique Maciet, Bibliotheque oes Arts ocoratifs, Faris. Reproouceo by
permission.
importeo to Africa. The so-calleo African primitive shows of the Colonial Exhi-
bition may well have been a mttogc.
African oancers also participateo in staging the evening fairy tales on the fair-
grounos of the exhibition, while the Thatre oeau, helo on the Daumesnil Lake,
useo elaborate mooern technology. At the beginning of each show, the atmosphere
of magic was summoneo by a oemonstration on water in which a circle of canoes
were oisguiseo as oating huts. . . . Then on-stage, Africans carrying torches woulo
move the ame to the rhythmic syncopation of the music.
9
If by :qoo the inti-
macy of the loto-playing griot hao been establisheo as a proper form of enter-
tainment for metropolitan auoiences, the water ano light show combineo native
subjects with technological mastery in a mass spectacle. It rehearseo the terms
of an emergent political ioeology, the oominance of European technology in evo-
lutionary ano proouctive terms.
The unknown ioentity ano intrametropolitan interactions of the numerous
African waiters ano waitresses at the exhibitions are passeo over in silence in the
ocial literature. Guioe books ano book illustrations only punctuateo this silence
with servant-master oichotomies. The appearance of the tirailleur sngalais, on
the other hano, tenoeo towaro overexposure in its constant repetition. The popu-
larity of what was known as lo fotcc rottc oates to the trench warfare of the Great
War ano to stories of the steaofastness of the African tirailleur.
10
Since the tirailleur
Bakary Diallo hao appeareo on the packaging of the Irench breakfast cocoa Ba-
nania, visitors to the exhibition coulo alreaoy ioentify the costume ano were at ease
with the military bearing of the Senegalese riemen.
11
The tirailleurs were the
ocial escort of government oicials from the opening to the closing ceremonies
of the :q: exhibition, ano as sentries guaroing the Irench West African Favilion,
they woulo lower the ag from the Bronze Tower, which representeo the Irench
Overseas Military Iorces, in the ocial phrasing, uniting the peoples of Empire
unoer one ag to the trumpets call.
12
Images of the exhibition were multiplieo thousanos of times through the me-
oia of the oay. Irench newspapers of all political persuasions maintaineo full oaily
coverage of the Colonial Exhibition through :q:. Conservatives ano raoical so-
cialists alike coulo get their oaily oose from Lc Ftgoto or LEclo oc Pott as well as
LOcoctc or Lc Popolottc. Lc Tcmp ano LIllottottor followeo the exhibition most closely
for their elite group of subscribers, but the more popular oaily Pott Sott, with an
average oaily oistribution of :o,ooo, also publisheo oaily photos ano cover stories
on the events at the exhibition.
13
A representative photo in Pott Sott oepicts the
African native alongsioe zebras ano monkeys from the Vincennes zoo.
14
This as-
sociation between African natives ano African animals relateo not only to their
mooe of oisplay, but to the evolutionary narrative of the civilizing process.
The encounter with the authentic African savage was a favorite subject in
newspapers ano guioebooks. Eugene Monoo, in an illustrateo volume, remarkeo on
the ethos of maternal charity that Farisian women quickly establisheo with Africans
on oisplay at the :88q exhibition. They woulo often bring sweets or canoies, which
nrcrx+rnixo +nr o\zr \+ rnrxcn coroxi\r rxnini+ioxs :,
were most appreciateo by the African subjects. This form of nurturing unoerscoreo
a belief among Farisians that these curious people were simply overgrown chiloren.
An accurate appraisal.
15
Irom time to time, there were accounts of reporters es-
corting Africans arouno Faris. These encounters woulo bring to light the usual
stereotypes, which opposeo the perceptions of the primitive African to the civi-
lizeo complexity of the City of Light ano Enlightenment. On other occasions, an
imagineo cannibalism resurfaceo from a concealeo savagery, as ouring the visit of
some Gabonese Fahoins in :88q.
16
There was a veritable mania for Africa in :q:. Songs, games, ano aovertise-
ments were everywhere. The Ocial March of the Colonial Exhibition was com-
poseo, recoroeo ano solo at the exhibition, it was entitleo Nenufar, or water lily
,rroplot,, ano representeo the exoticizeo colonial male subject. Fart of the song,
in translation, went as follows: Nenufars conception of elegant oress was to put
gloves on his feet, he was barely clotheo ano his hair gleameo like rough steel wool.
Nenufar exemplieo the masculine as fetish, which seouceo Farisian women spec-
tators.
17
A more oegraoing stereotype was the Displayeo African Woman, known
as the Ngresse a Flateau. Ano among the toys inspireo by the Colonial Exhibi-
tion was a basketball hoop for chiloren featureo in the :q: winoow oisplay at the
Galeries Lafayette oepartment store. Its hoop was the orice createo by the ois-
tenoeo lower lip of an African woman. A political cartoon in a fashion magazine
positions this same ubiquitous black female gure on her knees with an ashtray pro-
truoing from her lower lip in the mioole of a Farisian salon, where fancy, chatter-
ing white women oelicately ash their cigarettes.
18
The aovertisements for the exhibition were somewhat less spectacular, ano many
were anchoreo in the reality of African workers serving white settlers. Muscular
black men were shown helping a recent Irench settler unloao a truck of Englebert
tires or carrying boxes of Vilmorin seeo unoer the eye of a colonial foreman. Other
aovertisements featureo the resourceful African who beneteo from mooern
Irench technology such as the gas stove, which replaceo open res, or Lustucru
pasta ,to be prepareo on such a stove,, which provioeo fooo for a large family.
The stereotype of the African subject was a signicant mooe of aooress at the
exhibition, its presentation implieo an emplotment of humanity across a spectrum
of increasing levels of civilization. In the oichotomy between nature ano culture,
the white European was culture personieo, the yellow Asian in an upper mio-
ole range between nature ano culture, the Arab from North Africa in a lower
mioole range, ano the black African was closest to nature.
BEHIND THE SCENES
In spite of major shifts in the oepictions of Africa in Irench anthropology, popular
representations of African subjects oisplayeo signicant continuities in the fty years
from the :88os to the :qos. Mooern anthropology was present at Faris exhibitions
in :q: ano in :q, albeit for a restricteo auoience in scientic conferences. At the
:8 c\+nrnixr nonrin
time, anthropology was reconsioering its way of looking at primitive civilizations,
while public perceptions were still being shapeo by the presentation of racial ano
cultural stereotypes as scientic truths. We are thus leo to further probe the inten-
tions of the organizers at the exhibitions.
In :88q, the man behino the oisplay of the Senegalese Village was Comman-
oant Noirot, a colonial aoministrator ano ethnographer who hao spent an extenoeo
perioo of his life in Senegal. By bringing representatives of several African ethnic
groups to Faris, Noirot attempteo to provioe a setting in which the public at large
ano anthropologists in particular coulo observe ano stuoy actual Gabonese ano
Senegalese subjects. Irom heao to foot, each specimen is catalogueo, wrote Eu-
gene Monoo. The heao is rouno, brahycephalic, oolichocephalic. . . . Such mea-
surements leao us to concluoe that the Wolof ethnic group is intelligent. . . . Let
us eoucate them, oevelop their natural propensities, ano we shall make them into
rst-class auxiliaries of the colonial enterprise.
19
The racial hierarchy establisheo at the eno of the nineteenth century was im-
plementeo by Louis Marin in the Ethnographic Section of the :q: Colonial Ex-
hibition. The Negroio races of Africa ano the Facic Islanos may be eoucateo to
a certain extent, but cannot be assimilateo. A series of oioramas at the Muse
oes Colonies oemonstrateo the point. The rst winoow representeo a barely clotheo
Iigure q.. Le gaz aux colonies. Aovertisement, :q:. LIllottottor ,Faris,, May ., :q:.
Reproouceo by permission.
African stuoent before the African teacher, the secono oisplay featureo the same
stuoent, this time wearing a pogrc ,loincloth, at a Irench primary school, the thiro
oepicteo the stuoent wearing a /oo/oo at a technical training school, ano in the
fourth ano nal oisplay, the African pupil was transformeo, oresseo in pants ano
shirt, at a college-level technical school.
20
Just a stones throw away from the Muse oes Colonies, Marshal Louis Lyautey,
the commissioner of the :q: Colonial Exhibition, openeo the Congres interna-
tional et intercolonial oe la Socit inoigene. In his opening aooress, which was
aimeo at inuencing Irench public opinion, he proclaimeo: We must begin to un-
oerstano that we are oealing with races that are not inferior, but oierent, left back
by a civilizational oecit. Earlier that year, still in the conference hall at the Cit
oes informations,
21
the organizers of the rst international conference on colonial
history hao written a preamble to their sessions: |W|e can no longer upholo the
oistinction between superior ano inferior races. Iinally, at the exhibition in :q,
Faul Rivet, the founoer of the rebuilt Muse oe lHomme, armeo that those peo-
ples who have been labeleo savage ano more recently calleo primitive coulo be
aovanceo ano might soon have a history. Do these peoples hailing from prein-
oustrial societies retain a sense of authenticity? Are they less oepriveo than we have
previously thought, less easily unoerstooo than imagineo, ano less receptive to out-
sioe intervention?
22
By making this proclamation, Rivet oistanceo himself from
classical racial typology. One of the pioneers of an emergent Irench Anthro-
pology, Rivet in :q convokeo a Congres international oe lvolution culturelle oes
peuples coloniaux ,International Conference on Colonial Feoples Cultural Evolu-
tion,. The name of this conference in :q can be compareo with the title of a sim-
ilar event six years earlier, the Congres international et intercololonial oe la socit
inoigene, mentioneo above. The titles of the two conferences emphasize the oe-
bate about the status of the native ,trotgrc, oevelopeo over the course of the :qos
ano revealeo at the exhibitions. At the Congres oe la socit inoigene, in :q:, Louis
Massignon was alreaoy orawing attention to the fact that trotgrc coulo be interpreteo
as pejorative. The oay following his statement, the Faris newspapers publisheo a
proclamation to Irench troops in Tunisia oroering ocers to refrain from using the
term trotgrc ano to say Tunisian insteao.
23
Nonetheless, trotgrc continueo to be
useo south of the Sahara until well after Worlo War II.
Behino the scenes, the representation of the native was at once a complex per-
formance ano an ioeologically loaoeo renoering. More ano oiverse kinos of roles
were in the works. The reception of native peoples on oisplay was perceiveo
through their contextualization in a performative setting ano an evolutionary nar-
rative. Irom the beginning, organizers were caught in multiple contraoictions: au-
thenticity ano glamour, attraction ano comfort, peoagogy ano limiteo space.
In :88q, the organizers of the rst ctllogc rgtc ,the nickname of the Senegalese
village, sought to inventory the various housing structures from oierent regions
of Senegal, all assembleo as part of a single, mooel African village. This con-
oensation of Senegalese structures consisteo of a Coampan habitation from
:o c\+nrnixr nonrin
Saint-Louis, a Toucouleur cabin, a Wolof hut, a cabin from Iouta Djalon,
a Bambara house, ano so on. Such an architectural amalgam coulo never ano
woulo never exist, except in an exhibition. Nonetheless, the Faris public hao the
impression of being privy to an authentic African experience. The visitors at-
tention to the African architecture on oisplay was focuseo on its stylistic vagaries
ano novelty, its exotic otherness.
An even more elaborate exhibition was assembleo in Lyon in :8q. Two African
villages were joineo by a woooen brioge. The ocial catalogue of the Lyon exhi-
bition, the Ltctc oot, noteo this scenic aooition after oescribing the materials useo
to construct the two villages. The rst village consisteo of clay ano muo, ano the
secono village of lighter huts was built of branches ano leaves. The signicance of
the construction materials corresponoeo to the natural resources of Irench West
Africa, especially of the coast ano in the Irench Suoan.
Representations of colonial urban spaces complementeo the rural authentic
African settings. At the :8q Exposition universelle oe Lyon, an African street cor-
ner harkeneo back to the rue ou Caire at the :88q Universal Exhibition, which
also pregureo the rue oe Djenn of the :q: Colonial Exhibition. In the rue oe
Bakel at the Lyon exhibition, one woulo enter a narrow winoing street ano be leo
towaro small fenceo enclosures maoe of rush plants, which formeo small court-
yaros. Here ano there, scattereo aloe plants hao taken root in the wall, yucca plants
sprouteo out of a chink in a house ano the tenorils of watermelon plants woulo
cling to the surface of a rough-textureo wall.
24
The presence of what might be
perceiveo as African plantsalthough all them coulo also be founo on other con-
tinents, ano were able to survive a season in Farisoset the abunoant European
vegetation arouno Lake Daumesnil, authenticating the setting. Authenticity was
not verisimilituoe, however, ano no muo, trash, oirt, oangerous animals, or poi-
sonous insects were alloweo. The mooel of a sanitizeo African village actualizeo
ioeas in colonial hygiene ano oereo an imagineo African lanoscape for European
visitors who might be oiscomteo by a real trip to Africa.
At an exhibition setting as large as the :q: Colonial Exhibition, the pavilion
was the preferreo architectural choice. Sub-Saharan Africa was no exception. The
Irench possessions were fragmenteo into several pavilions accoroing to the colo-
nial partition of the African territories: Irench West Africa ,AOI,, Irench Equa-
torial Africa ,AEI,, the Somali Coast ano Maoagascar, ano Cameroon ano Togo.
The Belgian Congo pavilion representeo various foreign colonial metropoles. The
Uniteo Kingoom oeclineo Lyauteys invitation to showcase British colonial pos-
sessions, but Fortugal oio not, using a fteenth-century fortress to exhibit Fortuguese
activities in Mozambique ano Angola.
25
The organizers of the :q: Colonial Exhibition as well as the architects of the
pavilions kept four rules in mino: visibility, peoagogy, entertainment, ano security.
Aohering to these rules was challenging, ano they were often uphelo at the cost of
authenticity. Most of the African pavilions were in one oistinct regional architec-
tural style, but a hybrio approach was aoopteo in the joint Cameroonian-Togolese
nrcrx+rnixo +nr o\zr \+ rnrxcn coroxi\r rxnini+ioxs :.
pavilion, in an interesting peoagogical-architectural synthesis. The pavilion itself was
a rectangular-shapeo builoing inspireo by the clay huts, typical of the southern for-
est region, while the cone-shapeo roof, maoe of straw, evokeo the rounoness of
northern structures built on the savannah. Another oevice typically oeployeo to pro-
ject an imaginary vision of sub-Saharan Africa was to enlarge various civilizational
artifacts. Ior example, the pathway leaoing to the Belgian pavilion was lineo with
oversizeo shielos ano spears, evoking a larger-than-life heroic mythology. Welcom-
ing the visitor at the entrance to the Malagasy pavilion, a gigantic tower was crowneo
with a series of four stylizeo Zebu cattle heaos, vaguely resembling an American
Inoian totem pole. The tower was supposeo to be an example of Malagasy funer-
ary monuments, which, in Maoagascar, are constructeo on a human rather than a
monumental scale, an actual Zebu skull is placeo atop a pile of stones ano branches.
Oversizing was also the technique useo to oisplay one of the best-known African
architectural forms: the reo, bricklike toto. The tata is a fortieo palace from the
Niger valley ano in fact ooes exist on a monumental scale, ano for this reason was
useo as the archetypal West African built form for colonial exhibitions in Marseille
,:q..,, Wembley ,:q.,, ano Faris ,:q:,. Tatas founo in the Niger were never more
than .o meters high, but the West African pavilion at the :q.. Marseille exhibi-
tion was a towering meters ,nearly :8o feet,. At the :q: Colonial Exhibition, the
tata was meters ,almost :o feet, high ano was oesigneo with an elevator that
carrieo visitors to the top in oroer to aomire the panorama of the reconstructeo
colonial cityall while still on the outskirts of Faris.
This view contributeo to the cinematographic eect built into the oesign of the
exhibition itself. Upon arriving on the main thoroughfare of the exhibition, known
as the Avenue oes Colonies, visitors enacteo a oolly shot, traveling from the moo-
est Somali pavilion to the huge gray mass of the centerpiece of the exhibition,
Angkor Wat. A little further along, built on the same scale, was the reo brick tata
of Irench West Africa, the nal monument before the shot enoeo at the Bronze
Tower. The ephemeral architecture of the exhibition was analogous to a lm set,
requiring limiteo construction time ano even less time to oismantle. Ior the sake
of ourability, steel, wooo, ano ceramic lattice-work were useo for construction.
A rough mortar of cement ano lime was useo to reproouce an aoobe-style tex-
ture, ano the reo brick color of the karite butter exterior was imitateo with spray
paint.
26
The nal eect was nonetheless striking. The West African Favilion, oesigneo
by the architects Olivier ano Lambert, was much talkeo about at the :q: Colo-
nial Exhibition, although it was juogeo secono-best in comparison with Angkor
Wat by the meoia. In press reports, the two were useo as metonymic oevices oemon-
strating the respective oegree of civilization of the Inoochinese ano African peo-
ples. Angkor Wat was oescribeo by one journalist as tlc peerless Khmer monument,
cut like a jewel, |ano| covereo with magnicent chiseleo oesigns. The attenoant
press corps rateo it as far more sophisticateo than the simple reo tata, which was
:: c\+nrnixr nonrin
oescribeo as roughly maoe ano toppeo with enormous muo cltgror bristling with
stakes.
27
Curiously enough, most journalists ano guioebooks mistakenly oescribeo the West
African pavilion as the mosque of Djenn, although every bar of the ornate grill-
work ooors was a fetish, which woulo be entirely unacceptable in a Muslim house of
Goo. The :q: Colonial Exhibition was the eno of an era of architectural referenc-
ing that hao begun with the Faris Universal Exhibition of :qoo, which featureo re-
constructeo mosques from Djenn ano Timbuktu. By the :q: exhibition, the ghost
of the Djenn mosque as it appears in the press ano the oetails of the tata evokeo a
collective memory of past exhibitions. The Irench West African Favilion was cer-
tainly not the Djenn mosque, but rather an elaborate combination of Suoanese ano
neo-Suoanese architecture. Moreover, the original mosque at Djenn oio not exist
anymore, having been restoreo by Irench architects at the beginning of the century
in a way not appreciateo by the inhabitants of the region. So, was the pavilion a
copy of a copy? Do we have a few remaining oetails from a reworkeo copy, trans-
ferreo onto the tata at the :q: Colonial Exhibition? Or oo we simply have a neo-
Suoanese piece of architecture createo by the architects Olivier ano Lambert?
28
The African settings at the exhibitions were baseo on an architectural t-ctttotc
that responoeo to the exigencies of a metropolitan public spectacle ano its site-
specic logistics. The constructions were oesigneo to be taller than the treetops
Iigure q.. Irench Western African Favilion, seen from the upper terrace of restaurant,
International Colonial Exposition, Faris, :q:. Bibliotheque oes Arts ocoratifs, Faris.
Reproouceo by permission.
for panoramic visibility. Next, the security ano free circulation of thousanos of vis-
itors hao to be ensureo. Above all, however, the exhibitions organizers sought to
create symbols of an imagineo Africa ano to facilitate a popular colonial con-
sciousness. Irench public opinion was not yet convinceo of the neeo for a colonial
empire before Worlo War II, ano it was precisely the function of the exhibitions
to instill a popular will into ano sense of collective responsibility for the colonial
enterprise.
29
Behino the scenes of the exhibition, another vision emerges. In the evening,
the African performers left their native villages ano went to their oormitories ,if
unmarrieo, or rooms ,if they were couples,, which were equippeo with mooern
conveniences. After taking a shower, they put on European clothing provioeo by
the organizers. ,Even in front of the public, in :qoo Farisian African natives hao
to wear grey annel when the temperature suooenly oroppeo., A soup kitchen pre-
pareo the performers preferreo cuisine. They were either paio a salary or they re-
ceiveo a percentage on the souvenirs ano hanoicrafts they maoe ano solo at the ex-
hibition. Ior the most part, the African participants were hireo on a contract of
limiteo ouration that stipulateo a six-oay work week. One of them acteo as their
spokesman in meoiating the inevitable oisputes with the exhibitions organizers over
its six-month ouration. In short, they were wage laborers.
30
Many of the Senegalese who appeareo as part of the Village negre in :88q were
rehireo for subsequent exhibitions in Europe. They thus became specializeo per-
formers. Their chiloren ano granochiloren were initiateo into their theatrical tra-
oition ano appeareo as part of reconstructeo native villages in the :q.os ano
:qos. Even though they belongeo to oierent ethnic groups, African village per-
formers oevelopeo into family businesses with contacts ano traoe secrets, like cir-
cus families. At the :q: exhibition, the African performers were Irench-eoucateo.
A group of young Malagasy performers requesteo ocial authorization to con-
tinue their eoucation in Irance, after having passeo the /occolootot school-leaving
examination in Faris. The exhibitions organizers also scheouleo leisure activities
for the African actors: trips to the Eiel Tower ano to Versailles were intersperseo
with shopping trips to Irench textile mills.
31
The alreaoy-mentioneo weaver woman
from Sgou, as a young girl at the :q: exhibition, hao been oelighteo by a boat
rioe on the Seine in a /otcoo-mooclc.
32
A small number of works of ction refer to the African workers in the exhibi-
tions. In Ousmane Socs :q novel Mttogc oc Pott the main character is a man
nameo Iara.
33
Shortly after he arrives in Faris from Irench West Africa in :q:,
Iara takes the metro to visit the Colonial Exhibition, where he happens to meet a
gooo frieno. Ambrousse was selling Moroccan rugs that were maoe, for commer-
cial reasons, in the country of the rgtcc o plotcoo. He askeo Iara to return the
next oay to work with him. He woulo take him on as an associate ano share the
prots.
34
This arrangement between Iara ano Ambrousse is plausible enough.
Whether or not the A.-O. I. ,Afrique-Occioentale franaise, commissioner gave his
authorization, who woulo pay attention to one more African rug seller?
: c\+nrnixr nonrin
In May :q:, a popular chilorens magazine, Cocot Votllort, oereo a short comic
strip to its young reaoers: Coco, Banania, ano the Ilying Iishes.
35
Two little
African chiloren, both nameo for chocolate consumer prooucts, long for their par-
ents, who have gone o to work as natives at the Faris Colonial Exhibition. The
little girl weeps so much that her tears soon make an ocean ,Jai fait pousser la
mer, she says,. All of a suooen, two ying shes come out of the water ano oer
to take Coco ano Banania on their backs ano y to the Eiel Tower. In the happy
enoing of this Colonial Exhibition tale, the chiloren join their bewiloereo par-
ents at Vincennes.
DECENTERING THE GAZE: OTHERNESS,
SELF-REFLECTION, AND THE EUROPEAN SUBJECT
A less perceptible gaze can nally be aooresseo, if not fully elucioateo: that of
African participants in Irench colonial exhibitions. Their perspectives on the Eu-
ropean visitors ano aoministrators as well as on the status of their own presence in
the exhibitions can only be partially recovereo through absences in the historical
oocumentation. As gures outsioe of the ocial oiscourse, their participation as
imperial subjects representeo a structureo silence. They either belongeo to the very
small African elite that was consioereo to be assimilateo ,ano who playeo the
Iigure q.. Coco Banania et les poissons-volants, :q:. Cocot Votllort ,Faris,, May :,
:q:. Reproouceo with the kino permission of the Bibliotheque oe Documentation inter-
nationale contemporaine ,BDIC,, Nanterre, Irance, ano the Association pour la Connais-
sance oe lHistoire oe lAfrique contemporaine ,ACHAC,, Faris, Irance.
Irench game very well, or they were people who hesitateo to use the written woro
to protest against colonial oomination. Only in :q oio Faul Rivet invite the young
Lopolo Soar Senghorwho woulo later become presioent of Senegalto speak
on the Senegalese bourgeoisie ano the Irench Colonial school system at the
Congres oes peuples coloniaux ,ano Senghor hao not yet fully oevelopeo his the-
ory of rgtttooc,. Ior the most part, therefore, we are forceo to reinterpret the
signicance ano orientation of the ocial commentary on the African participants
from the margins.
In a commentary on the :qoo exhibition, one journalist noteo that represen-
tatives of the Wolof ethnic group are the most civilizeo of the Senegalese. They
exhibit such prioe in being consioereo Irench that they attempt to assume this
ioentity as often as possible.
36
As curator of the colonial section at the :qoo Uni-
versal Exhibition, Jules Charles-Roux wrote, these blacks quite unoerstano our
civilization ano voluntarily seek a form of assimilation.
37
In the Ltctc oot of the
Lyon :8q exhibition, it was claimeo that the Senegalese inhabitants of the two
reconstructeo African villages retaineo a profouno respect ano aomiration for
the Irench|,| which might further Irench inuence in West Africa. These com-
ments may point to a form of ioeological masking, or a hegemonic conscious-
ness in which oomination works by tacit consent, but they might also be reao as
wishful thinking on the part of the Lyon exhibition commentators, or even, per-
haps, as veileo expressions of contempt for the eorts of natives to become
Irench.
At all of these exhibitions, the organizers consciously sought to project a hu-
manist vision of the Irench colonial enterprise ano to convey a sense of trust ano
respect towaro the Africans within italbeit only on its own terms. Ano so it is
not surprising that African people were among the visitors to the exhibition.
Among the African oelegations, forty village heaomen from Irench Equatorial
Africa were inviteo to the :q: Colonial Exhibition. After spenoing a oay at the
exhibition, they were taken on a tour of the Irench countrysioe ano instructeo
on agricultural methoos suitable for Africa. A oelegation from Maoagascar, com-
poseo of a meoical ooctor, an archivist, ano a miowife from the Reo Cross, was
greeteo with elaborate ceremony. Some of these Africans were oecorateo with the
Legion of Honor. What role oio they play, other than as ambassaoors of Irance
to Africa? How oio they contribute to a theatrics of a colonial enterprise that can
neither be oismisseo as inconsequential nor conoemneo as simply a form of im-
perial servituoe?
38
Ferhaps we might renoer a partial vision of European visitors to the exhibi-
tions by analyzing African sculptural forms. In :88q, a Loango sculptor |from
Gabon| carveo ivory statues of the rouno- or top-hatteo Europeans, oresseo in jack-
ets ano long frock coats, walking with perfunctory canes. This caricature of the
bourgeois European male subjects was of course complementeo by a vision of their
wives, wearing atteneo or turneo up hats, which were either too big or too small
for their heaos. The Gabonese artist oio not forget the increoible protrusion, |the
: c\+nrnixr nonrin
bustle, that| European women, enslaveo by fashion, so prouoly sporteo.
39
A stat-
uette of a color ,colonist, shown in the Catholic Mission pavilion at the :q: exhi-
bition was probably as misreao then as it woulo be tooay: it appears to be a nave
representation of a European missionary. This genre of sculpture, in the terms of
lott rgtc, tenos to highlight powerful symbols such as the cross, the pith helmet,
ano the clergymans cassock. In fact, the statuette is a votive object, investeo with
power: it is a hybrioizing appropriation of the missionary worker ano, by exten-
sion, of Catholicism.
40
What oio the African artisan think of the rules imposeo on him by the exhi-
bition organizers, rules that forbaoe him to leave the fairgrounos without special
permission ouring the oay ano never at night? Was he so well informeo that he
woulo take these paternalistic restrictions as a way of protecting him, the nave
African subject, from communism? Woulo he notice that they isolateo him from
the surrealist agitators who oistributeo tracts criticizing the legacy of colonial ex-
ploitation at the entrance of the :q: exhibition? In one broaosioe, the surreal-
ists calleo the exhibition a carnival of skeletons, referring to the slaughter of
African troops on the front lines in the Great War. The communist oaily LHo-
mortt was unlikely to be reao by African participants in the exhibition, but they
woulo have oiscovereo a series of stories on scanoalous labor practice in the oaily
column Dcttttc lc ocot. Behino the scenes, the story of forceo labor evokeo the
phrase coineo by Albert Lonores, one Negro per crosspiece, which referreo to
the construction of the Congo Ocan railroao line, in which so many African
workers lost their lives. This serveo as a central theme in Anor Gioes Vo,ogc oo
Corgo ano Rctoot oo Tcloo.
41
In fact, the various oissonant voices at the :q: Colonial Exhibition orowneo
out the voices of African protests to colonization. Who took notice of the Irench
Suoanese militant Tiemoko Garan Kouyat, the leaoer of the Ligue oe Dfense
oe la Race negre, when he calleo on his African brethren to boycott the :q: ex-
hibition? Blaise Diagne, the assimilateo Senegalese unoersecretary of state for the
colonies, was one of the organizers of the :q: exhibition, Diagne supporteo cer-
tain forceo labor provisions at the International Work Bureau ,unoer the auspices
of the League of Nations,. Kouyat calleo Diagne the African Juoas ano con-
oemneo the exhibition as a whole as a commercial ano epicurean zoo of cageo
African lackeys.
42
That sentiment oio not receive wioespreao acclaim ouring the course of the
:q: exhibition. The International League against Imperialism ano Colonial
Oppression, baseo in Berlin, encourageo the Irench Communist party to or-
ganize a counterexhibition, which came to be known as the Truth about the
Colonies. This eort was only reluctantly realizeo ano receiveo little popular
support. While ,ooo,ooo tickets were solo to the Colonial Exhibition, only ,.6
visitors saw the counterexhibition, which was helo at the Soviet Favilion of the
olo :q. Art Deco Exhibition. Iew Farisians in :q: were seouceo by an anti-
colonialism that celebrateo the Soviet Union ano an art negre that recapitulateo
nrcrx+rnixo +nr o\zr \+ rnrxcn coroxi\r rxnini+ioxs :,
the attest ethnological categories. Recalling the event several years later, the
organizer of the art negre exhibit, the poet Louis Aragon, insisteo that his net-
work of collectors hao lent some unique works. The rough oescription maoe of
the exhibition by the communist organizers gives a oierent impression: African
objects were oisplayeo with those from Oceania ano the Americas, presenting an
ethnographic rather than an artistic vision. Ior an aooeo touch of panache, a
number of ugly kitschy Virgin Mary statuettes were shown alongsioe the other
artwork in oroer to oemonstrate how Irench missionaries were leaoing the
African artistic spirit astray.
Il pleut, il pleut a verse sur lExposition coloniale ,Its raining, its pouring
on the Colonial Exhibition,, Aragon wrote.
43
On November :, the :q: Colo-
nial Exhibition closeo its gates, ano the era of the colonial exhibitions was over. To-
oay, when you walk through the Bois oe Vincennes looking for the Faris Buoohist
Temple, you will in fact come upon the ruins of an imagineo Africa of :q:, since
the Temple is none other than the maoe-over former Cameroon-Togo pavilion.
Rather than simply reaoing this transformation as the repackaging of an exotic
trope, we might look upon it as a mythical journey. A proouctive form of spiritu-
ality ano soul-searching still haunts the former fairgrouno, in spite of its overoe-
termineo historical conoitions.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF COLONIAL EXHIBITIONS
(NOT EXHAUSTIVE)
:88 International Colonial Exhibition Amsteroam
:88 Universal Exhibition Antwerp
:886 Colonial Exhibition Lonoon
:88q Universal Exhibition Faris
:8q Colonial Exhibition Lyon
:8q6 National Exhibition Rouen
:qoo Universal Exhibition Faris
:qo6 Colonial Exhibition Marseille
:q.. Colonial Exhibition Marseille
:q. Colonial Exhibition Strasbourg
:q.. International Colonial Exhibition Wembley
:qo International Colonial Exhibition Antwerp
:q: International Colonial Exhibition Faris
:q Universal Exhibition Brussels
:q6 Empire Exhibition Johannesburg
:q Universal Exhibition Faris
:q8 Colonial Exhibition Glasgow
:q8 Universal Exhibition Brussels
:8 c\+nrnixr nonrin
NOTES
I would like to express my gratitude to Peter Bloom and Hariett Rochefort, who translated
this paper, and to Paul Landau, who edited it.
:. The phrase great steeplechase (course au clocher) was used by the nineteenth-century
French prime minister Jules Ferry, a premier imperialist, to signify European nations com-
petition over African territory.
.. Whereas Native Americans were introduced into elite circles in Europe in the six-
teenth through the eighteenth centuries, this discovery of African indigenes occurred as
part of a mass media event.
. The universal exhibitions took place along the Seine, in the wealthy western part of
Paris. The :q: Paris Colonial Exhibition took place in the Bois de Vincennes, on the east-
ern outskirts of Paris, a lower-income district. The colonial fairgrounds were around Lake
Daumesnil.
. Sylviane Leprun, Le thtre des colonies (Paris: LHarmattan, :q86), :8; Casimir Bathia,
LAfrique noire Rouen : LExposition nationale et coloniale de :8q6, in Pleins Sud (Paris:
Association Connaissance de lhistoire de lAfrique contemporaine, :qq). Leprun points out
that the same attraction was at the Lyon exhibition in :8q.
. Sylviane Leprun, Thtre des colonies, :8. Photographs taken at the Paris exhibition,
:qoo, collection of the Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, Paris.
6. Interview of Thrse Traor, from Sgou, by Sylviane Leprun, in :q8, while con-
ducting research in Mali for the Laboratoire dArchitecture et dAnthropologie, Paris.
. Andr Maurois, Sur le vif: LExposition coloniale (Paris: E. Dentu, :q:).
Iigure q.6. Buoohist Temple of Faris, formerly the Cameroon-Togo pavilion at the Inter-
national Colonial Exposition, Faris, :q:.
8. Commissariat gnral de lExposition coloniale de Paris, Congrs international et inter-
colonial de la socit indigne, vol. : (Paris: LExposition coloniale, :q:), :o: Remarks by Mr.
Hazoume, schoolteacher.
q. Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, LExposition coloniale, Paris ..: La mmoire du si-
cle (Brussels: ditions Complexe, :qq:), q8o.
:o. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Manginlater a noted army commander during World
War I, in which native troops suered massive casualtiesintroduced the term as the ti-
tle of his book La force noire (Paris: Hachette, :q:o), which sought to convince French opin-
ion, and the French government, of the usefulness of trained colonial soldiers.
::. In :q:., at Courbevoie, a suburb of Paris, a pharmacist created Banania, an in-
stant chocolate-drink breakfast. A few years later, while watching one of his employees who
had served in the war as a tirailleur sngalais, he had the idea manifested in the ubiqui-
tous image and the slogan, Ya bon, Banania. This ad went on until the early :qos. Ba-
nania still exists, although the African tirailleur icon has disappeared. (See g. .:.)
:.. Hodeir and Pierre, LExposition coloniale, . For more about the tirailleur sngalais,
see Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleur Sngalais in French West Africa
(Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, :qq:).
:. Le Temps was the predecessor of Le Monde; its sensibility was clearly conservative.
:. The Vincennes zoo was opened in :q: to complete the Colonial Exhibition, the
intention being to present animals in their natural environment, just as the natives were
displayed at the exhibition. When the exhibition closed, the zoo was moved to another part
of the Bois de Vincennes, where it is still welcoming visitors. Part of it, including the mon-
keys rock, has recently been restored as a piece of national patrimony.
:. Eugne Monod, LExposition universelle de .88: Grand ouvrage illustr historique, ency-
clopdique, descriptif (Paris: E. Dentu, :8qo), .: :q.
:6. Africans were in competition as supposed cannibals with the indigenes of New
Caledonia, for in :q: cannibal Kanaks were shown for prot in a cage at the Jardin dAc-
climatation in the Bois de Boulogne on the western outskirts of Paris. The so-called African
cannibals all belonged to the petite bourgeoisie and the exhibit was strongly condemned
by the organizers of the colonial exhibition.
:. Nenufar, by M. Roger, R. Feval, and J. Monteux (Path Frres, February :,
:q:).
:8. Catherine Hodeir, Sylviane Leprun, and Michel Pierre, Les Expositions colo-
niales: Discours et images, in Images et colonies: Iconographie et propagande coloniale sur lAfrique
franaise de .88o .:, ed. Nicolas Bancel et al. (Nanterre: Bibliothque de documenta-
tion internationale contemporaine; Paris: Association Connaissance de lhistoire de
lAfrique contemporaine, :qq), :8q. In The Politics of Bushman Representations,
this volume, Pippa Skotnes documents a congruent case of parts of bodies literally be-
ing made into receptacles.
:q. Sylviane Leprun, Paysages de la France extrieure: La mise en scne des colonies
lExposition du centenaire, in Mise en scne et vulgarisation: LExposition universelle de .88,
special issue of Le Mouvement Social, ed. Madeleine Rbrioux, OctoberDecember :q8q,
:q; and Monod, LExposition universelle, .: .:. Craniometry was the leading numerical sci-
ence of biological determinism during the nineteenth century, Stephen Jay Gould ob-
serves in The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, :q8:), ..
.o. Catherine Hodeir, Une journe lExposition coloniale, In Le temps des colonies,
special issue of LHistoire, 6q ( July :q8).
:o c\+nrnixr nonrin
.:. The Cit des Informations was a pavilion inside the Colonial Exhibition fairgrounds,
centered on communication facilities.
... Paul Rivet, Congrs international de lvolution des peuples coloniaux (Paris: Protat frres,
:q), :
.. Commissariat gnral de lExposition coloniale de Paris, Congrs international et inter-
colonial de la socit indigne (Paris: LExposition coloniale, :q:), .: q.
.. Ulysse Pila, lExposition universelle de Lyon: Livre dor (Lyon: A. H. Storck, :8q). The
rue du Caire, rue de Djenn, and rue de Bakel are discussed by Leprun et al. in Thtre des
colonies and Expositions coloniales.
.. Great Britain eventually had a simple stand at the Cit des informations. [On Por-
tuguese exhibitions at the same exhibition, see Eric Allina, Fallacious Mirrors: Colonial
Anxiety and Images of African Labor in Mozambique, ca. :q.q, History in Africa . (:qq):
q..Eds.]
.6. The Indochina pavilion was a faithful reproduction of the central body of the Khmer
temple Angkor Wat, in the original dimensions. See Rapport gnral de lExposition coloniale et
internationale de Paris .. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, :q), : 6o.
.. Hodeir and Pierre, Exposition coloniale, .
.8. Work remains to be done comparing the Olivier and Lamberts project to the orig-
inal Djenn mosque, and to its restoration according to subsequent neo-Sudanese architec-
tural rules later on.
.q. Raoul Girardet argues persuasively in LIde coloniale en France, .8,..: (Paris: La
Table Ronde, :q.) that colonial exhibitions failed to anchor an imperial consciousness in
French public opinion. It was left for World War II to raise imperial consciousness among
the French, where the French colonial lobby and government had failed in the :qos. After
the shock of defeat in :qo, both the Vichy regime and de Gaulles France Libre saw the em-
pire as all that was left of Frances grandeur. Imperial sentiment reached its apogee after
the Liberation in :q.
o. Rapport gnral, vol. , Les sections franaises.
:. Ibid.
.. Thrse Traor, from Sgou, interviewed by Sylviane Leprun in :q8.
. Christopher Miller, in Hallucinations of France and Africa, a chapter in a forth-
coming book, oers an informed study of Ousmane Socs Mirages de Paris (Paris: Nouvelles
ditions latines, :q).
. Soc, Mirages de Paris, 6. Selling items from one part of the French Empire as au-
thentic objects from another region was common practice at the exhibition.
. Coco, Banania et les poissons volants: Conte de lexposition coloniale, Coeurs Vail-
lants (Paris), May :, :q:.
6. Louis Rousselet, LExposition universelle, .oo (Paris: Hachette, :qo:). Note that saying
that an African ethnicity was French had no legal standing in the French Republic.
. Jules Charles-Roux, who came from a very powerful Marseillaise bourgeois family,
became general commissioner of the Marseille Colonial Exhibition in :qo6 and lobbied for
the Marseille Colonial Exhibition in :q... No systematic research has been done to inter-
view former native performers and visitors to the colonial exhibitions.
8. Catherine Hodeir, Le non dit lExposition coloniale (Mmoire de matrise, Paris
I, Sorbonne, :q), a systematic study of French newspapers in :q:, showed that no Africans
were interviewed by the mainstream press.
q. Monod, Exposition universelle, .: o.
nrcrx+rnixo +nr o\zr \+ rnrxcn coroxi\r rxnini+ioxs :.
o. See Eliane Girard and Brigitte Kernel, La statuette colon, in Images et colonies, ed.
Nicolas Bancel et al., .86q:, and Eliane Girard, Brigitte Kernel, and Eric Mgret, Colons:
Statuettes habilles dAfrique de lOuest (Paris: Syros alternatives, :qq).
:. Albert Londres in Le Petit Parisien, June , :q.8. Andr Gide, Voyage au Congo (Paris:
Gallimard, :q.), and Retour du Tchad (Paris: Gallimard, :q.8).
.. Kouyat was the most important francophone African militant in the :qos. He had
a close but conictual relationship with the French Communist party. See Jean-Pierre Biondi,
Les Anticolonialistes (.88..:) (Paris: Robert Lafont, :qq.).
. Louis Aragon, Perscut, perscuteur (:q:), in Loeuvre potique, vol. : .o
(Paris: Livre Club Diderot, :q).
:: c\+nrnixr nonrin
Chapter :o
The Politics of Bushman
Representations
Pippa Skotnes
This essay examines three episooes in the history of the visual representation of
South African Bushmen. The rst is the creation of an archive of /Xam traoi-
tions in the :8os ano :88os, the secono is the making of a oiorama at the South
African Museum in Cape Town, using casts maoe in the :q:os, ano the thiro is my
own installation of an art exhibit at the South African National Gallery in :qq6,
oevoteo to the subject of Bushman representations in South Africa. The archive
was a collaborative project, in which the /Xam were oereo a means to express
themselves, the oiorama was a European construction of the primitive hunter-
gatherer, my exhibition at the National Gallery was a response to both the archive
ano the oiorama, ano an interpretation of the varieo processes that createo them.
THE DIORAMA
In the late :q8os, I spent some weeks stuoying fragments of Bushman rock paint-
ings that hao been cut out of their original settings in the mountains of the East-
ern Cape ano put on exhibit in the South African Museum in Cape Town. I was
interesteo in trying to unoerstano the iconography ano the formal arrangement of
these paintings, but I was also curious to know how they hao enoeo up in a mu-
seum largely given over to the oisplay of wilo animals. The fragments are still part
of the museums archaeological exhibit, containeo in a smallish room that oisplays
objects ano miniature oioramas representing the Early, Mioole, ano Later Stone
Age, ano a collection of rock art, which incluoes the well-known Linton painting.
1
Aojacent to this room is the ethnographic hall, comprising a series of oiscrete oio-
ramas, each concerneo with an ethnic group. By far the most popular of these
is the one set in the Karoo, oepicting a Bushman camp at the turn of the nine-
teenth century.
:
This oiorama consists of thirteen male ano female gures cast from life in plaster
ano painteo in realistic oetail. Each gure is engageo in some kino of oomestic ac-
tivity: one gazing out at the lanoscape, bow ano arrow in hano, one crouching, bow-
string orawn, reaoy to shoot at some invisible animal, a couple of gures are return-
ing to camp, oigging sticks in hano, yet another is squatting, preparing plant fooo,
while another lies in the shaoe of a lean-to. Each gure is oresseo in traoitional
skins, which cover the genital areas, ano some have karosses slung over their shoul-
oers. The scene is frameo by a beautifully painteo stretch of the Nieuwevelo moun-
tains ano lit with a clear, neutral light, typical of the Karoo on a winters oay.
2
During the weeks I spent in the museum, many thousanos of visitors passeo
through these rooms: schoolchiloren ano teachers, tourists ano guioes, families from
Cape Town, university stuoents. The paintings I was stuoying attracteo some at-
tention, as oio the archaeological oisplays, but nothing compareo with the interest
ano fascination that the Bushman oiorama generateo. It was a site where teachers
ano tour guioes stoppeo to lecture to their auoiences, enthusiastically recreating
the life ano manners of the Bushmen. Almost every talk began with a oescrip-
tion of the Bushman booy. The speaker woulo owell on skin colour ,yellow,, height
,four feet,, hair ,frequently oescribeo as wool,, booy shape ,large buttocks, explaineo
by one guioe as a storage place for fat ano water in haro times,, ano, presenteo
as the most signicant feature of Bushman anatomy, the genitals. The male penis,
belloweo one German guioe speaking in English to his tourist group, is peculiar in
: rirr\ sko+xrs
Iigure :o.:. Fart of oiorama oepicting hunter-gatherer camp, ca. :8oo, in the South
African Museum, Cape Town. Courtesy South African Museum. Reproouceo by
permission.
that it stanos erect at all times when at rest. The womens labia can hang to the
knees.
Hunting was also treateo at length. Guioes characterizeo Bushmen in the same
way as one might preoators such as lions or leoparos, or omnivores such as baboons.
Many suggesteo that the life of the Bushman was nothing more than an enoless
pursuit of fooo ano water. One teacher tolo her pupils that the Bushmen can run
for three oays nonstop in pursuit of game, ano another guioe suggesteo that the
Bushmen were nocturnal, ano slept in hollows in the grouno ouring the oay, com-
ing out at night to hunt. There were shaoes of the best-selling author Laurens van
oer Fost in their oescriptions of the little people whom even man-eating lions ois-
oaineo, who haroly ever walkeo but . . . travelleo at an easy trot.
As I listeneo to these comments, I became increasingly interesteo in what it was
about the oiorama ano the images it presenteo that so reo the imaginations of the
viewers who spoke about it. Many of the ioeas expresseo by the guioes ano teach-
ers were oecaoes-olo, colonial stereotypes from the nineteenth century, available
only in texts long out of print. When Bushmen communities hao rst been observeo
by Europeans, they were oescribeo as Earth Feople ano African Fygmies who
resembleo monkeys, cruelly oecient of all the attributes which belong to hu-
man beauty, clucking, owarshly savage, with minos stuck in torpio oark-
ness.
3
They were the pygmies in Homer who wageo war on the Cranes. In short,
they were the strangest people on earth.
4
The concern of the tour guioes with Bushman genitals also oeriveo from ear-
lier European obsessions. When the Bushman woman Saartjie Baartman was ex-
hibiteo in Europe from :8:o to :8:, it was not only the prooigious size of her but-
tocks ,in the woros of Auguste oe Saint-Hilaire of the Natural History Museum
in Faris,
5
that fascinateo, but the imagineo shape of her genitals. In the eighteenth
century, Iranois Le Vaillant ano other travelers oepicteo women ashing long pen-
oulous labia. Captain Cook wrote that Hottentot women hao labia that re-
sembleo the teats of a cow,
6
ano other reports claimeo that they hung to the knees
like an apron.
By the eno of the nineteenth century, Bushman booies hao been the subject of
oozens of photographic essays, most of them scientic projects examining racial
oierence. Many of these photographs survive in museum collections ano archives.
Typically, they oepict men ano women, stanoing nakeo against a measuring stick,
in front ano sioe views. Mens genitals were set in prole, while women were per-
suaoeo to grasp their labia. James Drury, the man who maoe the life casts for the
South African Museums oiorama, spent much time in search of information about
Bushman genitals, ano in :q. publisheo an article with his colleague Matthew
Drennan in which he oescribeo some of his successes: On asking a woman of these
tribes to remove her loin cloth or apron, one coulo not at rst oetect any oierence
between her ano an oroinary woman. . . . On separating the lips of the vulva it was
easy to grasp the labia minora with a pair of forceps ano pull them out for exami-
nation. This increaseo exposure gave rise to a oistinct accession of shyness.
7
The
+nr rori+ics or ntsnx\x nrrnrsrx+\+ioxs :
oiorama was built to preserve for posterity what was believeo to be a oiscrete, ois-
appearing racial type.
8
In :qo, A. C. Haooon issueo a reneweo call for an investi-
gation of Bushmen ano Khoikhoi ,Hottentots,, who were very primitive vari-
eties of mankino ano were rapioly oiminishing.
9
The British ano South African
Associations for the Aovancement of Science agreeo that making life casts of these
oisappearing races shoulo be a priority.
In :q:o, Drury ano others traveleo to Bushmanlano in search of specimens of
unoiluteo blooo
10
suitable for casting. The oirector of the museum was particu-
larly clear that the specimens shoulo incluoe the features that were unoerstooo
at the time to be most characteristic of Bushmen, the males semi-erect penis ano
the womans elongateo genitals.
11
Their cultural practices or social conoitions were
unimportant. Their physical copies woulo then be unoerstooo as images of hunter-
gatherers connecteo to Europeans own oistant past, oisplaceo from current cul-
ture ano politics.
This was ironic, for at the time the Bushmen selecteo to be cast were survivors
of one of the bloooiest wars in South African history. They were living in poverty,
on lano that hao been strippeo of its natural bounty, oispossesseo of their inoe-
penoence, many no longer speaking their original language, most having lost all
memory of the oral traoitions of their parents. One of the people accompanying
Drury was the anthropologist Dorothea Bleek. She lamenteo that while fty years
ago every aoult Bushman knew all his peoples lore, at least in the northern parts
of the Cape Colony, by :q:o not one of them knew a single story . . . the folklore
was oeao.
12
Yet her interest too was also in these people as specimens, ano with
some oiculty she manageo to photograph some of her subjects nakeo, their tat-
tereo clothes lying in piles besioe them.
The museum itself has acknowleogeo the oeceit ano the stereotypes that the
Bushman oiorama perpetuates. In the late :q8os, responoing to a aweo anthro-
pological notion of racial typology, two smaller oisplays were mounteo alongsioe
the oiorama.
13
One visually explaineo the technical methoos useo to make the life
casts, the other provioeo a historical context for the casting project ano oereo pho-
tographic evioence of the actual circumstances of the inoiviouals who were selecteo
to portray the timeless Bushman, circumstances that hao been oeliberately excluoeo
from the original project.
Nevertheless, oespite these new exhibits, far oloer ioeas still thrive tooay. These
ioeas are to be founo neither in books nor in oocumentaries, nor in information
presenteo by the museum itself, but rather, in the folklore supporteo by the oio-
rama ano passeo oown by tour guioes ano inooctrinateo visitors to frienos ano chil-
oren. Much of the power of this oral traoition resioes in the compelling visual
orama of the oiorama itself, encouraging a voyeurism that boroers on the erotic.
Sioney Kasr, in her review of my own exhibition, for instance, alloweo that the
oiorama is utterly ahistorical ano ctionalizeo but also wrote that it is the kino
of image everyone ,incluoing their present-oay oescenoants, the museum-going
public, the government, ano this author, frankly loves.
14
: rirr\ sko+xrs
THE BLEEK/LLOYD ARCHIVE
In :q::, at the very time Drurys team was selecting inoiviouals to cast for the oio-
rama, a book by two remarkable scholars, Lucy Lloyo ano Wilhelm Bleek ,Doro-
theas father,, was publisheo. Behino Spcctmcr of Bolmor Folllotc lay a project that
hao begun in the mioole of the nineteenth century ano hao proouceo, in aooition
to numerous orawings ano objects, a written archive of some :,ooo pages, recoro-
ing the oral traoitions ano folklore of Cape Bushmen. Like the oiorama, the archive
was an objectication of a people, but the archive was in part createo by the people
themselves ,as in the image shown in g. :o.,, ano focuseo on their intellectual ano
cultural legacy, rather than on their supposeoly aberrant booies.
The project began in the late :86os, when Bleek ano Lloyo, both linguists, be-
gan to interview /Xam prisoners who hao been jaileo in the Breakwater Convict
Station in Cape Town. The /Xam occupieo much of the area that became the
Cape Colony, living in oistinct communities ano speaking oierent oialects. When
+nr rori+ics or ntsnx\x nrrnrsrx+\+ioxs :,
Iigure :o... /Xam from the Frieska oistrict, :q:o, useo as mooels for the casting project
at the South African Museum. They comprise, from the rear, the |four| sons of olo
Klaas, the bare heaoeo man at the back. Having been brought up on farms, the laos are
much taller than their parents. Their mother is seateo front centre, half in front of
Guiman, who sits with Rachel ano two granochiloren. Janiki, the other olo woman, is to
the right front, some younger women ano chiloren make up the group. Dorothea Bleek,
Notes on the Bushman Fhotographs, Borto Stootc :o ,:q6,: .oo. Courtesy South
African Museum.
:8 rirr\ sko+xrs
Iigure :o.. A page of paintings of animals ano plants, from a notebook maoe by
a Bushman informant for Lucy Lloyo. Courtesy South African Museum.
Bleek ano Lloyo began their work, Europeans knew little about Khoisan languages
ano peoples ano virtually nothing about the /Xam. Ano, not long after their proj-
ect enoeo, the language ano cultural practices of the /Xam oio in fact oisappear
forever.
Wilhelm Bleek was born into a family of scholars in :8. in Germany. He
earneo his ooctorate in linguistics at the University of Bonn, ano after a visit to
East Africa, he came to South Africa to work on a Zulu grammar. In :86:, he
met Jemima Lloyo in Cape Town, whom he later marrieo. The following year,
Bleek took a post at the Sir George Grey Collection at the South African Library.
Ior some time he hao been fascinateo with the possibility of stuoying Bushman
languages, ano in his woros, in :8o, the presence of twenty-eight Bushmen at
the Breakwater aoroeo an unpreceoenteoly rare opportunity of obtaining gooo
instructors.
15
Two of the prisoners, /A!kunta ano //Kabbo, were placeo in his
custooy.
Jemimas sister, Lucy, joineo Bleek in his stuoies from their inception ano workeo
with Bleek until his oeath in :8.
16
Lucy Lloyo was born in :8 in Englano. The
oaughter of a prominent Anglican clergyman, she was eoucateo privately, rst in
Englano ano later in South Africa, where she workeo as a schoolteacher. After
Bleeks marriage to Jemima, Bleek inviteo Lucy to live with them in Mowbray, a
suburb of Cape Town. Neither Bleek nor Lloyo hao been traineo as an ethnogra-
pher or anthropologist.
The larger context in which Bleek ano Lloyo oio their work was oire for the
Cape Bushmen. Drought hao always been a possibility in the ory Karoo, but in
the time before the coming of the Dutch-speaking farmers, natural resources were
oiverse. The oral literature of the /Xam oescribes a lanoscape rich in tortoises,
rabbits, ostriches, biros, wilo cats, hyena, lion, springbok, ano other big antelope.
Springbok in particular are at the center of many tales ano oescriptions of hunt-
ing lore, ano until the late :8os there were large heros of them. Then the Boers
shot them out, The springbok resemble the water of the sea. . . . |they| come in
numbers to the place which is here, the springbok cover the whole place. There-
fore the Boers gunpowoer becomes exhausteo, that ano the balls.
17
Boers not
only oestroyeo the /Xams game, but hunteo oown people as well. The Kenharot
ano Frieska oistricts, from which most of Bleek ano Lloyos informants came, was
eectively a war zone even before the :8os. Thousanos of Bushmen oieo at the
hanos of Boer commanoos. Iamilies of /Xam were hunteo oown ano killeo, or
captureo ano oistributeo among the farmers of the oistrict as laborers or ser-
vants. Tobacco pouches were maoe from womens breasts, chiloren were oraggeo
from their mothers arms, their heaos smasheo on stones, in one recoroeo case,
a shephero was tieo to a wagon-wheel ano beaten to oeath.
18
Not only Boers, but
other African peoples such as Xhosa, Korana, ano Bastaaros hunteo oown the
/Xam, whom missionaries often ignoreo as living beyono salvation. In :86, the
sympathetic magistrate of Namaqualano, Louis Anthing, reporteo to the Cape
Farliament that there were few Bushmen left arouno the Orange River, ano that
those who hao escapeo the Boers were starving to oeath. The government oio
nothing.
19
The /Xam bitterly resisteo this invasion of their lano ano the slaughter of their
people. As Nigel Fenn has shown, they learneo about their enemy ano exploiteo
Boers weaknesses as best they coulo.
20
One of the /Xam who workeo with Lloyo,
Dia!kwain, hao been convicteo on a charge of killing a farmer who hao threateneo
to muroer his family. Others belongeo to gangs that attackeo farmers property.
Some of them tolo stories of how they useo shamanism to transform men into li-
ons ano kill farmers stock. Still, the /Xam communities oisappeareo. As their re-
sistance faileo, they abanooneo everything that maoe them uniquely who they were.
This, Anthony Traill argues, is the only way to explain the rapio ano complete oe-
mise of the /Xam language by :q:o.
21
Ano this is, in part, what makes the Bleek ano Lloyo archive so extraoroinary.
In the bloooy history of interactions between Europeans ano Bushmen, it stanos
alone as a proouct of cooperation, allowing the recoroing of what maoe /Xam
people uniquely /Xam: their intellectual worlo ano their traoitions. The archive
thus engages with a oebate argueo by Bleek ano Lloyo themselves, one that is still
very much alive tooay: whether the category Bushman is largely an artifact of
colonial processes, or whether it signies a prior, meaningful ethnic category. Reao-
ing the archive itself, it seems inescapable that at least the /Xam of the :8os saw
themselves as ioeologically ano historically separate from their neighbors. Not only
oio they oraw powerful oistinctions between themselves ano stockkeepersthe
bloooy-hanoeo, the ticks on the backs of sheep but between themselves ano
other groups living further north along the Orange River.
22
|S|ome |of us| oress
in cheetah ano leoparo skins, ano oier from those who live in the mountains who
wear catskins, ano near the river who wear oassie |rock-rabbit| ano jackal skins.
Still others, wear reo ano white skins ano resemble the beaos which they wove,
/Hankasso tolo Lucy Lloyo.
23
In the /Xam system of representation, shamanism was unoerstooo to be their
most eective weapon of resistance. Their unoerstanoing of the worlo, Fenn sug-
gests, may well have inhibiteo a more useful unoerstanoing of the consequences
of colonial invasion.
24
Their narratives combine events from an early mythical pe-
rioo, from personal narratives, ano from trance visions ano emanations, in a seam-
less time frame. They seem to have hao a multilinear relationship to the past ano
the present. Ano at a time when their communities were most violently besiegeo,
they chose to oevote what were for many of them their nal years to recoroing their
narratives ano oral traoitions.
25
When the recoro of /Xam testimonies are set be-
sioe the South African Museum oioramas static representation of Bushmen, the
Bleek ano Lloyo archive can be reao as the /Xams most successful act of oeance.
Bleek saw the project as one of retrieving ano preserving not merely a few sticks
ano stones, skulls ano bone as relics of the aboriginal races of this country, but
also something of that which is most characteristic of their humanity, ano there-
fore most valuabletheir mino, their thoughts ano ioeas.
26
While Bleeks peer sci-
entists assembleo Bushmens skulls ano bones for the animal collections of muse-
ums, the /Xam who workeo with Bleek ano Lloyo were aware of the signicance
of their participation. Often full of nostalgia for their ancestral homes ano anxious
to return to their families, each stayeo on beyono the eno of his jail sentence, some
returning at great cost to continue the work.
27
Lloyo recoroeo that //Kabbo, the
oloest of the narrators, particularly valueo the ioea that his stories woulo become
known by means of books, ano Lloyos eorts to see this achieveo were maoe in
the face of nancial haroship.
28
The Bleek/Lloyo archive can thus be seen as a collaborative oocument through
which the /Xam were able to represent themselves. In it they acknowleogeo the
forces that were oestroying their communities, while foregrounoing their rich oral
traoitions. In the Bleek/Lloyo archive, the physical shape of the /Xam was irrele-
vant. As Stephen Watson has commenteo in the introouction to his collection of po-
etic interpretations of /Xam oral literature, In a worlo in which nature was haroly
benign, human nature never simply given, oeath an ever-present shaoow, there
is little ooubt that the /Xams various myths gave them some universal, living
:o rirr\ sko+xrs
cosmological oroer, that the structures of psyche ano cosmos were bouno tight in a
web in which nothing was meaningless, no oeath nal.
29
The invisibility of the archive is in a sense proportional to the visually realizeo
presence of the oiorama. The Bleek ano Lloyo recoros receiveo no attention by
anyone outsioe of the Bleek family for almost :oo years. In the :qos, they became
the subject of a thesis by Roger Hewitt, ano they were also useo by Davio Lewis-
Williams for his grounobreaking thesis on rock art in the :q8os. Others, incluoing
myself, gaineo access to them, ano in :qq:, they were the subject of an interna-
tional conference in Cape Town, resulting in the publication Votcc ftom tlc Pot.
30
The voluminous recoros themselves, however, are largely unpublisheo ano are still
relatively unknown.
MISCAST: THE POLITICS OF AN ART EXHIBIT
Mtcot openeo at the South African National Gallery in April :qq6.
31
The per-
ceptual contrast, not to say abyss, between the oioramas at the South African Mu-
seum, which objectieo Bushman people, ano the archive, in which some Bush-
men expresseo themselves, became one of the motivating factors in my curating
the installation ano eoiting its accompanying volume. But there were other fac-
tors at work, too. At the time, exhibitions of Bushman artifacts ano lifeways were
all remarkably oecient.
32
I hao oiscovereo that the storerooms of museums
arouno the country, their libraries ano archives, as well as state ano university
archives, were crammeo full of objects, historical ano visual material, which some-
how hao never become part of permanent oisplays. Nowhere in any of the ex-
hibits I saw was there any evioence of the history ano lore, the photographs, ooc-
uments, narratives, ano orawings that were richly present in the museum
storerooms, nor was there any acknowleogment of the horrors of the encounter
between settlers ano Bushmen. Objects were never presenteo for their creative
worth, nor were insights oereo into the fragments of rock paintings that hao been
hackeo out of shelters or the engraveo stones that hao been collecteo from the
lanoscape. Not a trace was to be founo of the oral literature recoroeo by Bleek
ano Lloyo. On the contrary, each exhibit focuseo on the physical characteristics
of the Bushmen as a oistinct racial type that, at least within the boroers of South
Africa, hao become extinct. The irony is that the biological material of Bush-
men survives tooay in South Africas oiverse peoples, but it is /Xam culture that
has oisappeareo.
By the time I came to planning my exhibit, I intenoeo to oo two things: to con-
front the oioramas visually ano to put both the archive ano the storeroom on
oisplay. I chose the South African National Gallery for the venue. Traoitionally a
bastion of white high art, the gallery hao recently begun to show more African
material. I wanteo to get as far away as possible from an ethnographic or natu-
ral history context. I also realizeo that I hao an enormous amount of informa-
tion that was not in itself particularly visually exciting. I neeoeo as much freeoom
+nr rori+ics or ntsnx\x nrrnrsrx+\+ioxs :.
as possible to oesign a contextual space for not only objects ano photographs but
historical oocuments, reports, ano court recoros.
In some early meetings with interesteo parties, it became clear that certain mate-
rial associateo with Bushman history woulo be contentious. Although no scholar or
museum professional coulo argue unequivocally why some things shoulo be oisplayeo
ano not others, most of them felt strongly about the issue. Some people founo the
possibility of oisplaying the nuoity of the early casts to be problematic or even oen-
sive, even if shown in an art gallery. Those who hao casts or photographs of genitals
wanteo to keep them in their collections ano prevent anyone but scholars ano scien-
tists from having access to them. I oio not hear any convincing arguments as to why
this shoulo be. Doubtless, part of the reluctance to allow the material to be exhib-
iteo was the fear that it woulo be inaoequately contextualizeo: the oignity of the in-
oivioual photograph or cast woulo be insulteo, the original humiliation repeateo. Fart
lay in the fear of public censure: museum professionals were quite aware that some
aboriginal people in America ano Australia hao been oemanoing that similar arti-
facts be returneo to them or oestroyeo.
The oisplay of human remains was a highly contentious issue. The British Mu-
seum ,the Natural History section, alloweo me to examine a collection of trophy
heaos, heaos of Bushmen that hao been collecteo in the nineteenth century ano
stueo by a taxioermist, but refuseo to let me to oraw or photograph them. The
museums position was that the heaos might cause oense.
33
Before it woulo even
consioer giving me photographs of them for oisplay, I woulo have to obtain the
permission of the Khoisan of South Africa. At the same time, the curators saw
no oiculty in permitting the heaos to be useo for scientic experiments, for ex-
ample for DNA samples. The conoition they imposeo on me was extremely oicult
to comply with. There are no known oescenoants of the inoiviouals whose heaos
now lie in caroboaro boxes in the Natural History Museum in Lonoon. We oo not
know which Khoisan group they came from, which language they spoke, or even
exactly where they might have liveo. Until recently, few people in South Africa
claimeo Khoisan ancestry.
Nevertheless, I wrote to the legal representative of the few Khomani-speakers
in the northern Cape, to the newly establisheo Khoisan Representative Council
,KRF,, ano the Griqua National Conference, both in the Cape, to the Kuru De-
velopment Trust in Botswana, ano to the Working Group of Inoigenous Minori-
ties in Southern Africa ,WIMSA,, ano I canvasseo their opinion on the exhibition
of human remains. The people I consulteo in Botswana oio not wish to see the
heaos themselves but believeo they shoulo be shown so that the worlo woulo know
what happeneo. Similarly, the Khomani ano the Khoisan Representative Coun-
cil wanteo the heaos, or photographs of them, exhibiteo. In an interview with the
Lonoon O/ctcct, Martin Engelbrecht of the KRF saio, I see no reason why the
British are preventing us from exposing what happeneo to our people. We want to
know how these remains came to be in the museum.
34
:: rirr\ sko+xrs
The boaro of the South African National Gallery oecioeo they coulo not ex-
hibit human remains. This was a strange ruling given recent art exhibits by Alvim
of Angola, Orlan, ano a number of South African artists who have all useo human
material. Marilyn Martin, the oirector of the museum, oio however make a formal
request to the British Museum for photographs of the heaos. The British Museum
never responoeo.
Iinally, the National Gallery rejecteo my own title for the exhibit, which was
Mtcot: ^cgottottrg tlc Ptccrcc of tlc Bolmcr. The gallery refuseo to allow the woro
Bushmen to be useo. Bocmor, the Afrikaans equivalent of Bushman, has al-
ways been a pejorative term, in keeping with Afrikaner attituoes towaro the peo-
ple to whom it referreo. In the Western Cape, most people classieo as Coloureo
unoer apartheio, many of whom are of Khoisan extraction, are native Afrikaans
speakers ano unoerstano Bocmor as an insulting label. Because my purposes in
the exhibit concerneo the colonial apprehension of oierent groups of people, I
wanteo to keep the English version of the term ano use Bushmen, but the gallery
refuseo.
35
I began to anticipate that the installation woulo become a tool in the politics of
ioentity in the Western Cape. I hao wanteo to confront the stereotype Bushman,
but now the installation woulo have to engage the loose, politically volatile term
Khoisan. Interestingly, I receiveo an anonymous telephone call after Mtcot
openeo. The caller, speaking in English ano Afrikaans, saio, It is bao that you have
put the Khoi ano the San together. We Coloureos in the Western Cape are oe-
scenoeo from the Hottentots |Khoi|, not from the Bushman |San| . . . my people
were never cattle thieves.
REPRESENTATIONAL DECISIONS AND THE
ARTICULATION OF GALLERY SPACE
The space in Mtcot was oivioeo into oiscrete areas, each of which characterizeo
an important function of the museum: to create oisplays, to curate collections ,ano
store parts of them,, ano to eoucate. On the other hano, the spatial arrangement
of the objects ano cases was intenoeo to suggest science ano church, power-
ful symbols ano mooes in European thought. This was in line with the contention
of the exhibit that, asioe from the Bleek/Lloyo archive, the history of the
Khoisan as we know it from museum collections ano historical recoros, ano even
from rock art, is the history of contact with Europeans, seen from the perspective
of Europeans. In a review of the exhibit, Tony Morphet wrote: The sao truth
which sits in the shaoows of the main exhibition is that there is no inoepenoent
Bushman archiveano there is no access to an untoucheo historical current of
brown or black experience . . . no privilegeo inheritance through blooo or cul-
ture. . . . The Bushman archive was the lano itselffragments of it still exist in the
rock artbut as a coherent source of recoro it is no more.
36
In a secono principle of spatial organization, the main room was oivioeo into
two sections. In the front section, oesignating the oisplay area, two sets of thir-
teen opposing items faceo one another. On the wall hung thirteen cases, each con-
taining objects of Khoisan manufacture. The twelve smaller ones were oeoicateo
to various known inoiviouals, many of them contributors to or characters in the
Bleek ano Lloyo archive, ano the larger central case ,also oistinguisheo by its bril-
liant reo colour, was oeoicateo to Lucy Lloyo. The collection of cases symbolizeo
a Last Supper in which inoiviouals are sacriceo in the interests of the pervasive
oisplay of a collective racial type. Iraming this part of the exhibit on the wall above,
was a quotation from Greg Dening, oescribing the encounter between what he
terms the native ano the stranger: No one can hope to be meoiator . . . nor
can anyone speak just for the one, just for the other. There is no escape from the
politics of our knowleoge, but that politics is not in the past, that politics is in the
present.
37
Iacing this wall was a semi-circle of thirteen booy casts. Each was a resin cast
of a booy section ,legs, torsos, etc.,. Each was heaoless. They hao been proouceo
in the :q8os from Drurys original elo molos, which hao not been previously cast.
These representeo the countless, nameless inoiviouals reouceo to racial typesa
symbolic last supper in which the Bushman booy was the sacrice. Continuing
the theme, there was, at the center of the room, a gray brick structure, baseo on
the grouno plan of a centrally planneo church of the Renaissance ,the beginning
of the perioo of the voyages of oiscovery,, but that, iconically, referreo also to a
fort, a jail, ano a tomb. Twelve ries, with a taller metal ag in their miost, again
thirteen objects, were in a central circle, a visual suggestion of the Eucharist. Iive
books, spelling TRUTH, lay on one sioe of the structure, referring to the truth claims
of both the church ano science. Also half burieo in a gray gravelly soil on other
sioes were garoens of cacti ano a box containing a collection of ,cast, human re-
mains. The box of human remains referreo both to issues of reburial ano Catholic
practices of enshrining ano traoing relics. The cacti referreo to a crown of thorns
ano to the subject of aboriginality, cactus is popularly thought to be inoigenous to
South Africa, but is exogenous. All these objects were chosen for the range of as-
sociations they might provoke. While some people criticizeo the installation in the
visitors book for not revealing my own agency clearly enough, in fact the Catholic
icons ano structures in the exhibit orew strongly on my own backgrouno ano con-
vent schooling. They carry great power for me as symbols of sacrice, betrayal, ano
transubstantiation.
In the back section of the main room were two piles of casts, six metal shelves
with caroboaro boxes, ano two cabinets of objects ano scientic instruments asso-
ciateo with nineteenth- ano early-twentieth-century physical anthropology. The
caroboaro boxes were oesigneo to resemble those founo in many museums for the
storage of human remains, ano some of the labels orew attention to the problem
of oisplaying sensitive material. Each one was oateo for a particular event, so
that together they representeo multiple voices extracteo from acaoemic histories,
: rirr\ sko+xrs
Iigure :o.. Another view of the Mtcot installation, main room. Fhoto by Fippa
Skotnes.
Iigure :o.. Fippa Skotness Mtcot installation, main room. Fhoto by Fippa Skotnes.
from archives, ano from comments ano stories by //Kabbo, Dia!kwain, ano oth-
ers involveo in the Bleek/Lloyo project. On each one there was also the oate of the
publication of the fragment of text, locating the writers as characters in their own
narratives. Together, they maoe a nonlinear time line, suggesting the contingency
of the oroering of information into narratives ano the fragmentary, mutable na-
ture of the result. Their lack of chronology was also intenoeo to evoke the sense
of time present in /Xam testimonies in the Bleek/Lloyo archive.
A secono room leaoing o the main room was hung with a series of photographs
by Faul Weinberg, taken between :q8 ano :qq with the cooperation of Bush-
men subjects in Botswana, Namibia, ano Smitsorift. The oor in this room was
covereo with vinyl tiles printeo with oocuments ano with photographs, mainly of
Bushmen. The intention, as with other parts of the exhibit, was to make the ex-
perience of viewing active, rather than passive. The thiro room of the installation
was set up as a library, reecting the eoucational function of museums. A selection
of the hunoreos of oocuments ano newspaper articles that were part of the re-
search for this exhibition were laio out on a table for scrutiny. On the walls were
mainly copies of rock paintings oone variously over the years by Walter Battiss,
George Stow, J. M. Orpen, Fatricia Vinnecombe, ano the Spatial Archaeology Re-
search Unit at the University of Cape Town.
: rirr\ sko+xrs
Iigure :o.6. Section of the semi-circle of resin casts, Mtcot installation. Behino them:
the shelves of caroboaro boxes ano the time-line, the laooers intenoeo to aio visitors in
reaoing the higher labels. Fhoto by Fippa Skotnes.
OVERALL PUBLIC REACTION
The Mtcot exhibition stimulateo a great oeal of commentary, much of it very pos-
itive. Many people in the visitors book, for instance, commenteo on the power of
the visual to communicate oierently than text ano saio they hao known nothing of
the history of Bushmen in South Africa. A resioent oiplomat from the Netherlanos
Embassy, for example, remarkeo that few of his countrymen knew anything about
Iigure :o.. Fart of the Mtcot installation. The vinyl ooring of
this room reproouceo newspaper articles, archival photos, ano re-
ports of commanoo raios, ano other ocial oocuments. Three
cameras are in cases on the oor. Fhoto by Fippa Skotnes.
early Dutch encounters with the Khoi ano San people. Theyweshoulo. An-
other visitor thankeo me for oering the opportunity to confront our images/con-
ceptions of a people who rarely have a chance to represent themselves to a West-
ern view. It challenges our knowleogeano the way that knowleoge has been
acquireo about African peoples. Ano referring to the Truth ano Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa, which began its work in the rst part of :qq6, an-
other person wrote, This exhibit shoulo be permanentit is important that all
South Africans see the genocioe that was perpetuateo. No truth ano reconcilia-
tion commission is possible for the Bushmen. Overall, I believe, the Mtcot in-
stallation succeeoeo in its aim of challenging the ahistoricity of the oiorama ano
putting the archive on oisplay. The majority of viewers ano commentators, in-
cluoing those ioentifying themselves as Khoisan, left with a sense that they hao con-
fronteo an untolo or suppresseo history. In her review, Carmel Schrire wrote that
Mtcot oereo a series of images that catapult right into the oarkest heart of the
anthropological venture, to conate science ano sorrow, archives ano agony.
38
It is also true that the exhibit openeo a host of new oilemmas ano problems, ano
that some reactions were hostile. Very few people unoerstooo the exhibit as instal-
lation art. My intentional references in the spatial arrangement ano color rela-
tionships to installation artists such as Greenaway, Kosuth, ano Haake, were en-
tirely sioelineo, ano haroly anyone invokeo any art-historical preceoents in
analyzing the exhibit. Many people oio not unoerstano the nonlinear presenta-
tion of historical information on the caroboaro boxes ano some were irritateo by
what they saw as an attempt to confuse. In one review, the writers ignoreo much
of the material in the exhibits to better make a tenoentious argument.
39
Some re-
viewers, having reao some pre-opening publicity, were oetermineo not to be ois-
appointeo in their expectation of noing stueo heaos ano bottleo genitals ano
claimeo to have actually seen some of them in the cabinets.
40
The installation became a rallying point ano a focus of both Khoisan unity ano
oisunity. At the opening, a group of Khomani came in traoitional oress. They at-
tracteo a great oeal of attention in the press ano were berateo by the !Hurikamma
Cultural Group, who saio they were sick ano tireo of nakeo brown people being
exposeo to the curious glances of rich whites in search of oinner-table conversa-
tion.
41
A Griqua group expresseo the concern that there were too many Bush-
men. One of the Bushman representatives suggesteo that Afrikaans speakers coulo
not claim to be Khoisan at all, ano a number of white Afrikaners claimeo that they
were of Khoisan oescentangering some other Afrikaans speakers, who hao been
oamagingly classieo as Coloureo unoer apartheio. Some groups, such as the
Kleurling Weerstanosbeweging ,the Coloureo Resistance Movement, or KWB,,
were angereo that a white person, ano worse, a white acaoemic, hao repre-
senteo them. At the forum helo after the opening, one KWB member calleo out,
Give us the money so that we can make our own exhibit in our own way.
42
In
contrast, the Khoisan Representative Council valueo the installation as a wake-
:8 rirr\ sko+xrs
up call for Khoisan communities. Some inoiviouals simply expresseo oismay at
the oeveloping equation of Coloureo with Khoisan, a tribal category they
hao been at pains to escape. I hao wanteo to implicate viewers in a politics of
knowleoge ,to this eno I hao installeo mirrors, laio images, ano mounteo cam-
eras on the oor,. That unoerstanoing of politics was, to some extent, hijackeo by
the politics of the reneweo South African search for racial authenticity.
The use of the resin casts in the Mtcot exhibit accounteo for a great oeal of
the controversy about the installation. Inevitably, some people were oenoeo by
the nuoity. Some Nharo asserteo that there shoulo have been separate viewings
for men ano women, since men ano woman shoulo not see nuoity together. Oth-
ers were critical of the opportunity for voyeurism that they felt the casts provokeo.
One reviewer raiseo issues of who is entitleo to represent whom, claiming the ex-
hibit showeo white oisrespect for brown people.
43
One visitor from Smits-
orift expresseo shock ano horror at the forum after the opening,
44
saying, I oo
not believe that these things are true. All this plastic, they coulo have maoe it
just to shock us. Showing these nakeo booies is a very, very bao thing . . . to show
these things here is just as bao as the people who oio those things long ago. It is
continuing the bao thing. The speaker however nisheo in a somewhat oier-
ent vein. We are not angry with the people who are showing us these things,
he saio, but with the people who have oone it to us. Sixpense Hunter, a viewer
from Kuru in Botswana, saio: We are shockeo . . . these things are true. . . . Al-
though we are shockeo ano it is painful, we think it is gooo that people shoulo
see it. It strengthens our young people to stano up . . . the whole worlo shoulo
get a message from this exhibition. This shoulo not happen to people ever
again.
45
Many people founo the casts both beautiful ano tragic. Tony Morphet charac-
terizeo this view: | N|one of the moulos is a whole person, the truncations, which
were a necessary technical part of their making, represent symbolically an awful
mutilation. Yet stageo as they are, glowing from within on the unoerlit boxes, they
stano as well for the inextinguishable beauty of the nakeo booy in its parts, ano its
wholeness.
46
The oor of the secono room was another area of concern for visitors. While
many founo it engaging, some were oenoeo at having to walk over photographs
of Bushmen, of being orawn into the process of trampling history unoerfoot. One
archaeologist wrote that this oor was the most oisturbing part of the installa-
tion, as he was forceo to reconsioer his own practice: Just as the texts ano images
on the oor represent the oebris of a particular history, so too oo the artefacts strewn
across the surface of a site. Yet archaeologists, in trying to oene sites ano their
history, feel they can treao on the oebris of their own or others ancestors with equa-
nimity, colonizing the space for themselves.
47
Another person writing in the visitors book saw it oierently: Interesting to
walk on a museum exhibitwe came in to see a baby crawling on the tiles
trying to grasp the picturessomehow that shows clearly the continuity of life. . . .
We cannot escape our pastbut maybe we can have the freeoom to come to terms
with it.
One anthropologist also evokeo chiloren, but in oefense of the oiorama:
When they were small my children delighted in these casts and saw real magic in
them. When walking in the bush later they remembered these people whose casts
made [them] visually real for them, and thus participated in something of the posi-
tive, seriously experienced heritage of the Bushmen. . . . I enjoyed seeing so much
space [in the exhibit] devoted to the Bushmen [but I regret] that the issues of vio-
lence and loss are so much in the foreground.
48
The booy casts in the Mtcot installation were, however, intenoeo to argue that
the very image of a beautiful people aovanceo by the oiorama, ano repeateo
throughout popular culture, has helpeo the suering of Bushmen populations go
largely unnoticeo ano unpoliticizeo. It is true that the Mtcot installation oio have
one important feature in common with the oiorama. Both take real evioence, the
booy casts, ano ,in the case of Mtcot, oocuments ano photographs, ano place them
in inventeo contexts. The relationship between the genuine ano the imaginary cre-
ates a powerful space where meaning ano signicance can be createo by the viewer.
The oierence, however, is that the installation was oesigneo expressly to oeect
the kinos of easy projections that the oiorama allows. Some evaluations of Mtcot
appear to regret this complication.
49
CONCLUSION
The oisplay of Bushman rock art in the thiro room of the installation was the most
oicult part of the exhibit for me to resolve. Bushman rock art is the only voice
of Khoisan people that in a sense reaches us in unmeoiateo form, straight from the
oistant past. However, no unbroken painting traoition has surviveo, ano no inter-
views with painters of Bushman rock art were recoroeo. All interpretations of rock
art are the impressions of others. At best, the images can be reao in conjunction
with the Bleek/Lloyo archive ano later ethnographies, but more often, as oisplayeo
in many museums, they stano perfectly silent, bearing witness only to the act of
tearing them out of the lanoscape.
Even if it were possible to recover the original meaning of rock paintings,
however, we woulo still have to aomit that they were createo in a lanoscape that
shapeo the lives of countless generations of people ano painteo in caves that saw
hunoreos, sometimes thousanos of years of occupation by oierent communities.
The voice of rock paintings therefore belongs to the lanoscape where the paint-
ings were maoe. Faintings were reneweo, repainteo, aooeo to. They were surely
capable of sustaining a range of meanings that were constructeo at oierent times
ano by oierent communities. The search for original meaning after all only
makes sense if the intention of the artist is privilegeo over all others.
:,o rirr\ sko+xrs
A comparison to my own installation here seems possible. How can a visual ois-
play be oereo as a process, rather than an alreaoy establisheo booy of the known?
Mtcot createo, by South African stanoaros, a prooigious ano unanticipateo range
of oiscussion ano oebate. Thousanos of people supplieo their own interpretations
of Mtcots material, ano attenoance at the National Gallery rose to an unprece-
oenteo level. Numerous articles ano critical papers were written on the exhibits
content ano reception, ano I was subjecteo to an exhausting, ve-month-long bar-
rage of telephone calls, requests for interviews, praise, ano criticism. My intentions
were accepteo by some but rejecteo by others, ano my authorship as artist ano cu-
rator oetermineo only one part of what the exhibit came to mean.
NOTES
My research has been funded by the Research Committee of the University of Cape Town,
the Centre for Science Development, the Anglo American Chairmans Fund, the Royal
Netherlands Embassy and the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as a
number of South African corporations. To all of them I am extremely grateful. Many friends
and colleagues have shared with me their understanding of the Miscast installation, shed-
ding light on the many ways in which it has been received. In particular, I must thank
Stephen Watson, whose own poetic interpretations of /Xam literature have retrieved this
tradition from literary obscurity, for his insights and comments; my fellow artists David
Brown, Terry Kurgan, and Malcolm Payne; and Jos Thorne, my assistant curator, David
Chidester, Martin Hall, Paul Landau, Tony Morphet, Sandra Prosalendis, and Carmel
Schrire. Paul Landau and Deborah Kaspin made many useful comments on this essay.
Archives consulted were the Lucy Lloyd MSS BC:: and Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd
MSS in the Jagger Library, University of Cape Town.
:. The Linton painting, extracted from a rock shelter in the Maclear district of the East-
ern Cape, is a particularly ne example of what has been understood to be shamanistic art.
It was recently exhibited as part of the Africa: Art of a Continent exhibition, which toured
in Europe and the United States in :qq.
.. A. Schweizer and C. Thorn, Bushman Diorama, South African Museum Association
Bulletin , :o (:q6:): ..
. See, e.g., History of the Bosjesmans, or Bush People; The Aborigines of Southern Africa (Lon-
don: Chapman Elcoate, :8).
. See, e.g., Opinions of the London Press, in History of the Bosjesmans.
. P. R. Kirby, The Hottentot Venus, Afrikaner Notes and News, 6, (:qq): 6.. [See
also Saul Dubow, Scientic Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, :qq), and Sander Gilman, Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of
Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature, in Race, Writ-
ing, and Dierence, ed. Henry Louis Gates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q8).
Eds.]
6. See, e.g., Robert Gordon, The Venal Hottentot Venus and the Great Chain of Be-
ing, African Studies :, . (:qq.): :8.
. J. Drury and Matthew R. Drennan, The Pudendal Parts of the South African Bush
Race, Medical Journal of South Africa .. (:q.6): ::.
+nr rori+ics or ntsnx\x nrrnrsrx+\+ioxs :,.
8. Patricia Davison, Human Subjects as Museum Objects: A Project to Make Life-
Casts of Bushmen and Hottentots, :qo:q., Annals of the South African Museum :o.,
(:qq): :68.
q. Ibid., :68.
:o. Walter Rose, Bushman, Whale and Dinosaur: James Drurys Forty Years at the South African
Museum (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, :q6:), 6.
::. Davison, Human Subjects as Museum Objects, :6q.
:.. Dorothea Bleek, Bushman Folklore, Africa . (:q.q): :::..
:. Davison, Human Subjects as Museum Objects, ::, :.
:. Sydney Kasr, Cast, Miscast: The Curators Dilemma, African Arts, Winter :qq, 8.
:. W. H. I. Bleek, A Brief Account of Bushman Folklore and Other Texts: Second Report Concerning
Bushman Researches, Presented to Both Houses of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, by Com-
mand of His Excellency the Governor (Cape Town: Juta, :8), ..
:6. Ibid., ..
:. /Hankasso, Informant VIII in the unpublished manuscripts of Lucy Lloyd, book
:, :88, ..6r. Jagger Library, University of Cape Town.
:8. Di!kwain, a /Xam man, tells the story of Ruyter, who had been brought up by
white men [and who had] died while he was with white men. He died at the hand of his
employer, a farmer who had accused him of not herding sheep well and beat him while
tied to a wagon wheel. Di!kwain, in the unpublished manuscripts of Lucy Lloyd, book .
(University of Cape Town, :86), 8.8o.
:q. For breathtaking accounts of the Northern Frontier and the destruction of Khoisan
groups, see Nigel Penn, The Northern Cape Frontier Zone, :ooc.:8: (Ph.D. diss., Uni-
versity of Cape Town, :qq). Facsimiles of two of Louis Anthings letters are reproduced in
the parallel text in Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, ed. Pippa Skotnes (Cape Town:
University of Cape Town Press, :qq6), :6.8.
.o. Nigel Penn, Fated to Perish: The Destruction of the Cape San, in Miscast, ed.
Skotnes.
.:. Anthony Traill, !Khwa-Ka Hhouiten Hhouiten, The Rush of the Storm: The Lin-
guistic Death of /Xam, in Miscast, ed. Skotnes, :8.
... //Kabbo, Informant II, in the unpublished manuscripts of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy
Lloyd, book ., :8, .q.6: The Mantis takes away the sheeps ticks. Jagger Library, Uni-
versity of Cape Town, :8.
.. /Hankasso, Informant VIII, in the unpublished manuscripts of Lucy Lloyd, book
.. (:88), qo. Jagger Library, University of Cape Town.
.. Penn, Fated to Perish.
.. Di!kwain was murdered by farmers on his return home, and //Kabbo died shortly
after he had joined his wife in Bushmanland.
.6. Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folklore, ..
.. Still studying with might and main . . . in fear of losing our Bushmen . . . they are
very homesick, Bleek wrote to Sir George Grey in November :8.. /Hankasso, for ex-
ample, lost his small child, who died in Beaufort West, as well as his wife who was assaulted
by a policeman en route to Cape Town. He worked with Lloyd for nearly two years, despite
his anxiety to return to his remaining son, who had been left with friends. See Bleek and
Bleek, Notes on the Bushmen, in Bushman Paintings, ed. M. H. Tongue (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, :qoq), 6.
:,: rirr\ sko+xrs
.8. After Bleeks death, Lucy Lloyd was oered his post at the South African Library at
half his salary, but she was red ve years later when the library appointed Theophilus Hahn
to her position. She appealed to the trustees, who supported her on the basis of her excel-
lent work, and took the case to the Supreme Court, where the matter was not decided. Hahn
resigned in :88, and his post was left vacant. Lloyd had eventually to abandon her work
and return to Europe. After struggling for years to nd a publisher, she nally managed to
publish Specimens of Bushman Folklore in :q::. Two years later, she became the rst woman to
be awarded an honorary doctorate in South Africa. She died in :q: in Cape Town. See
W. D. Maxwell-Mahon, Lucy Catherine Lloyd, Dictionary of South African Biography, vol.
(Pretoria: Nationale Boekhandel, :q8:), ::6, and South African Library, manuscript col-
lection MSB .. (:o.).
.q. Stephen F. T. Watson, Song of the Broken String: After the /Xam Bushmen: Poems from a
Lost Oral Tradition (Riverdale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, [:qq:], :qq6), :q.
o. Roger Hewitt, Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San, Quellen
zur Khoisan-Forschung, . (Hamburg: H. Buske, :q86); J. David Lewis-Williams, Believing and
Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings (New York: Academic Press, :q8:); Voices
from the Past: /Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection, ed. Janette Deacon and Thomas
Dowson ( Johannesburg: University of Witswatersrand Press, :qq6).
:. The Miscast installation was designed and curated by myself, assisted by Jos Thorne,
an architect. It was ocially opened by /Angn!Ao/Un from the Farmers Cooperative in
Nyae Nyae, Namibia, and ran for ve months.
.. Most other southern African museums have repeated the display format of that of
the South African Museum. Bushmen displays are unvaryingly focused on food gathering
and hunting, and the majority employ the use of body casts or models. Some displays link
the casts with rock painting activities, but the more powerful association is always with the
natural environment, and the nakedness of the casts focuses attention on the body.
. Robin Cox, personal communication, November ., :qq.
. Philip van Niekerk, Skeletons in White Mans Cupboard, Observer [London], Feb-
ruary :8, :qq6.
. Some Namibian Bushmen were currently rehabilitating the term Bushmen in
any case. See Miscast, ed. Skotnes, 8.
6. Anthony Morphet, Miscast, Pretexts: Studies in Writing and Culture 6, : (:qq): qq.
. Greg Dening, Mr Blighs Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (New
York: Cambridge University Press, :qq.).
8. Carmel Schrire, Miscast, South African Review of Books (:qq6): ::.
q. In their reading of the cardboard boxes, Douglas and Law ignored the many labels
that emanated from a Khoisan perspective. They also argued that the apartheid era did not
feature in the installation by ignoring the vast amount of information on the boxes, the oor,
and in the library section that came from that period. Stuart Douglas and Jennifer Law,
Beating Around the Bush(man!): Reections on Miscast: Negotiating Khoisan History and
Material Culture, Visual Anthropology :o (:qq): 8:o8.
o. I corrected a number of these misapprehensions in drafts of articles that were sent
to me to comment on.
:. R. Roussouw, Setting History Straightor Another Chance to Gape, Mail and
Guardian, April :q, :qq6. The same group expressed distaste for a white woman handling
naked casts.
.. The forum was planned for the day after the opening of the exhibition (April :,
:qq6) to hear and discuss concerns common to many Khoisan groups. It was attended by
over seven hundred people. Delegates from the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities
in Southern Africa (WIMSA) included people from the Kuru Development Trust in Ghanzi,
and from Nyae Nyae, Bagani, and the Aminuis Corridor : in Namibia; the South African
San Institute (SASI), the Griqua National Conference and South African Griqua Research
and Development (SAGRAD), the Khoisan Representative Council, which has Khwe, !Xu,
and Griqua representatives; the Khomeni of the southern Kalahari; people from the
Richtersveld; the !Hurikamma Cultural Movement, and the rightist Kleurling Weerstands-
bewegung (KWB), the Coloured Resistance Movement of the Western Cape.
. See Yvette Abrahams, Miscast, South African Review of Books (:qq6): ::6, Rus-
tum Kozain, Miscast, ibid., ::, and miscellaneous letters in vol. of the same, in-
cluding my responses.
. Smitsdrift is a camp of !Xu and Khwe communities in the Cape created for ex-
mercenaries who worked for the South African army in Namibia and Angola. The repre-
sentative for the Smitsdrift community at the forum was a Dutch Reformed minister, Mario
Mahongo. His (and others) objections to nude casts were grounded in contemporary Chris-
tian objections to exposing the naked body.
. Sixpense Hunter at the forum held after the opening of the Miscast exhibit.
6. Morphet, Miscast, q6.
. Paul Lane, Breaking the Mould? Exhibiting Khoisan in Southern African Muse-
ums, Anthropology Today :., (:qq6): .
8. The writer continues: It is very dicult to retain the memory of the beauty of a
skin bag or the sublimity of face, in the context of the medical instrument on display and
the detailed instructions for cutting o and preserving a Bushmens penis or ear for posting
to the scientist.
q. See, e.g., Steven Robins in the Sunday Independent, May .6, :qq6, ..
:, rirr\ sko+xrs
Chapter ::
Omada Art at the Crossroads
of Colonialisms
Paula Ben-Amos Girshick
This essay focuses on the court art of the Eoo Kingoom of Benin in present-oay
Nigeria ouring the last half of the nineteenth century, a perioo of historical tran-
sition when that kingoom, an imperial power in its own right, fell to British colo-
nial oomination. It aooresses the questions: what are the artistic implications of
such a transition from colonizer to colonizeo? Ano, howano in what artistic con-
textsare issues of colonial power ano ioentity exploreo?
The answers to these questions will emerge from the analysis of the social po-
sition ano artistic proouction of one group of palace artists, the Omaoa, an or-
ganization of young men who were personal ano oomestic servants of the king.
Their ocial outy was to carry the state sworo, or ooo, when accompanying the
king in his public appearances. In this position, as the late Ovia Ioah explaineo,
The Omaoa were to the Oba |king| like the angels to Jesus.
1
It was forbiooen for
them to leave the palace grounos without the Oba. When not escorting the king,
they performeo general maintenance jobs, such as sweeping the place, ano in their
spare time, they playeo at wrestling or learneo how to carve. The Omaoa rather
than the better-known guilo carvers ,Igbesanmwan, or casters ,Igun Eronmwon,
are the focus of my analysis because they occupieo a unique interstitial position
within palace art proouction ano this marginality provioeo themano no other
Benin court artistswith the space to explore the issues of power, oomination, ano
ioentity that are central to the colonial experience, whether of the colonizers or the
colonizeo. As Homi Bhabha has argueo, it is those in-between spaces that pro-
vioe the terrain for elaborating strategies of self-hooosingular or communal
that initiate new signs of ioentity, ano innovative sites of collaboration, ano con-
testation, in the act of oening the ioea of society itself.
2
Although Homi Bhabhas intent is to investigate the interstices /ct.ccr cultures
,ano subcultures,, it is equally valuable, I woulo argue, to examine trtctrol oier-
:,
ences, that is, to look within one culture at the in-between spaces where ioentities,
interests, ano values are negotiateo ano strategies of representation are formulateo.
The last half of the nineteenth century, a perioo that encompasseo the reigns
of Obas Aoolo ,ca. :8o, ano Ovorranmwen ,ca. :88q,, was a time of crisis for the
Benin kingoom. The net of control it hao cast over its tributaries began to un-
ravel. At the same time, the British imperial presence was threatening the long-
stanoing traoe patterns ano, inoeeo, the very sovereignty, of Benin ano its neigh-
bors. In this time of transition, as we shall see, it was the Omaoa artistsano not
those in the guiloswho expresseo the complexities ano ambiguities of Benins
precarious position.
FROM COLONIZER TO COLONIZED: BENIN IN
THE LAST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Any oiscussion of colonialism in relation to Benin cannot be limiteo to the moment
of British conquestIebruary :8, :8qano its immeoiate aftermath. Insteao, it
must take into account that imperial oomination was not a new experience for
Benin or its neighbors in that region of the Guinea Coast. Ano it must recognize
that the British capture of Benin was the outcome of a colonizing process that ac-
tually hao its beginnings forty years earlier.
Irom at least the fteenth century on, the Benin state was organizeo arouno
warfare ano tribute extraction baseo on its superior military organization, politi-
cal power, ano economic wealth. The exact nature ano extent of Benins rule var-
ieo over time ano through space.
3
In early nineteenth-century Lagos, for example,
Benin suzerainty involveo the collection of annual tribute ano control over the in-
vestiture of rulers ano chiefs but little interference beyono that.
4
Conquest was an
accepteo, ongoing aspect of the political system. Accoroing to the local Benin his-
torian Jacob Egharevba, it was the custom for kings to oeclare war in the thiro year
after their succession to the throne.
5
Ruling princes of the empire who refuseo to
pleoge their allegiance at that time were consioereo rebels, ano war was oeclareo
against them ano their towns. In Benin oral traoitions, the commencement of their
empire-builoing was associateo with the fourteenth- or fteenth-century Oba
Ewuare, who was creoiteo with establishing the political structure of the kingoom
ano giving it its basic nature ano oivine unoerpinning. Thus, warfare ano conquest
were built into the state structure ano were a key element of the kingooms self-
oenition.
6
By the nineteenth century, however, the political focus of the empire hao
shifteo to maintenance ano consolioation rather than conquest.
7
The kings who
ruleo thenOba Osemweoe ,ca. :8:6:,, Oba Aoolo ,ca. :8o88,, ano Oba
Ovorranmwen ,ca. :88qq,were faceo with a serious erosion of their politi-
cal power by other local polities as well as by the British. At the beginning of the
century, Benin traoe with the interior was oisrupteo by civil wars in the Yoruba
kingooms to the west ano north ano by Itsekeri assumption of control over the
:, r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
river approaches to Benin territory to the south ano east. In the secono half of the
nineteenth century, the Muslim emirate of Bioa raioeo the northern territories of
Benin for slaves ano forceo them to stop paying tribute to Benin. By the :88os,
Benin armies were preoccupieo with villages on the northwestern ano southeast-
ern boroers of the kingoom that were in a state of rebellion. On all sioes, then,
the political ano economic control of the Oba was increasingly weakeneo.
The greatest threat to Benin was the British, whose ever-escalating encroach-
ment from the :8os on menaceo the livelihooo ano well-being of the kingoom.
Initially, British interest in the area centereo on the slave traoe ano, after its aboli-
tion, on palm oil. As the traoe expanoeo ouring the :8os, the Benin River became
an important center ano traoers living on the coast lobbieo the British government
to establish a permanent representative, resulting in the appointment of a consular
ocial in :8q. Two years later, the British establisheo a protectorate in Lagos ano
thus enoeo Benins authority over that polity. As an outcome of the Berlin confer-
ence of :88, the British were granteo a sphere of inuence that covereo the
coast between Cameroon ano Lagos Colony as well as the mioole ano lower Niger
,unoer charter to the Royal Niger Company,, eectively surrounoing the south-
western ano southeastern anks of the kingoom. The establishment of the Oil
Rivers Frotectorate in :8q:, followeo by its ominous renaming as the Niger Coast
Frotectorate in :8q, brought more aoministrators ano a sizable constabulary.
The orive was clearly on to control more territory inlano. A station was set up
at Sapele, right on Benins ooorstep, ano its resioent ocer went to Benin City in
:8q. ano successfully negotiateo a treaty placing the Oba unoer the protection of
the British Government. As Alan I. C. Ryoer points out, the treaty clearly estab-
lisheo a new acquisitive interest in Benin by the Frotectorate.
8
At the same time
that they were placing themselves unoer British protection, the Oba ano chiefs
coulo observe the British taking forceful action against inoepenoent polities in the
area, from their subjugation of the inoepenoent Yoruba state of Ijebu-Ooe to the
overthrow of powerful local leaoers such as Chief Jaja of Opobo ano Chief Nana
of Brohimi. In the :8qos, the British Ioreign Oce was clearly stating its interest
in annexing Benin.
9
All this nally culminateo in Iebruary :8q, when a British ex-
peoitionary force captureo the capital ano sent Oba Ovorranmwen into exile.
10
The processes that leo to Benins colonization were thus set in motion at least
forty years before the actual imposition of British rule. The issues that colonialism
raises were consequently also present before :8q: questions of oomination ano
suboroination, power ano powerlessness, culture ano control. Even though these
issues hao been part of Benins version of colonial oomination, they took on a new
light as Benin faceo its own probable conquest. The hanowriting was on the wall,
but who was going to see it? The answer to this question lies in Homi Bhabhas
suggestion, put forwaro at the beginning of this essay, that in moments of his-
torical transformation, one shoulo look to the margins.
11
In the main part of this
essay, I explore the centers ano margins of nineteenth-century Benin court art
in oroer to oemonstrate that it was at the margins of royal artistic proouction that
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :,,
the hanowriting was reao ano inscribeo, that questions of cultural oierence were
raiseo, ano that establisheo bounoaries were challengeo ano realigneo.
CENTERS AND MARGINS IN NINETEENTH-
CENTURY BENIN COURT ART
At the center of nineteenth-century artistic proouction were the hereoitary craft
guilos: the wooo ano ivory carvers, Igbesanwman, the brass casters, Igun Eronm-
won, the iron smiths, Igun Ematon, the weavers, Owina nIoo, the carpenters, Ow-
ina, ano the leather workers, Isekpokin.
12
These guilos traceo their origins back in
oynastic time, some to the fteenth- ano sixteenth-century warrior kings, others to
those who laio the founoations of the kingoom itself. In the case of the carvers
guilo, some traoitions ascribe its founoing to Ogiso Ere, the secono ruler in a pre-
vious oynasty. Members of the craft guilos liveo in waros aojacent to one another
not far from the palace. They shareo a common artisan status in Benin society,
higher than that of farmers because of their special skills ano knowleoge, their
service to the Oba ,ano his economic support of them,, ano their urban resioence.
However, the prestige of artisans was never equal to that of chiefs, priests, or war
leaoers, because they hao to work with their hanos.
Guilo members saw themselves as oevoteo servants of the monarch, rooteo in
the life of the court. Their monopoly of artistic proouction for the king, ano
through him the aristocracy of chiefs ano priests, was maintaineo in principle by
the threat of oeath. In reality, this threat was rarely carrieo out, insteao, the mo-
nopoly was maintaineo by the practice of aoopting into the guilo anyone founo in
violation.
Internally, guilos were oivioeo into age graoes. In the carvers guilothe focus
of this oiscussionthere were three graoes: the youngest, the Iroghae, consisting
of young men just learning their craft, who performeo menial tasks but were not
alloweo to go with their eloers to the palace to perform ritual outies for the king,
the mioole graoe, Urhonigbe, consisting of the young men who oio the actual carv-
ing ano as a result of entering this graoe were introouceo to ttocm.tr, secret palace
activities, ano, lastly, the senior graoe, Ekhaemwe-Oba, consisting of the title holo-
ers, the senior men who helo one of the three titles possesseo by the guilo. These
titles were baseo on appointment by the Oba. The inoivioual who possesseo the
highest ranking of these was the leaoer of the guilo ano his home was the reli-
gious center for the members. The shrine locateo in his home was oevoteo to the
patron oeity, Ugbe nOwewe, the ancestral protector of the guilo. The graoes of
Igbesanmwan were not age graoes in the strictest sense but were a religious-political
hierarchy through which inoiviouals aovanceo in relation to their ritual prepareo-
ness ano the willingness of the Oba to promote them.
Although they owneo ano manageo farms in the villages arouno Benin City, the
members of Igbesanmwan vieweo carving as their full-time occupation. Carving
was consioereo to be in the blooo of all males born into the guilo ano every young
:,8 r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
man was expecteo to carve. A newly born male chilo was taken before the group
ancestral shrine by his parents, who prayeo to the patron oeity, Whatever act of
carving is taught in Igbesanmwan, this chilo must know it. Ior the members of
the guilo, carving was a ritual activity inspireo by their patron oeity, Ugbe nOwewe,
who came to them in oreams ano taught them oesigns. Each act of carving was a
sacreo act for which the inoivioual hao to be prepareo through ritual cleansing.
The members of Igbesanmwan saw themselves as possessing a set of patterns
that hao been hanoeo oown from generation to generation by Ugbe nOwewe.
These patterns were what set them apart from other craft groups in society, par-
ticularly the Omaoa, ano they were oepenoent on their protective spirit to provioe
ano maintain their inspiration. They were similarly oepenoent on the Oba ano felt
that they existeo solely to serve him. They relieo on him not only for economic rec-
ompense for their carving but for their social stanoing, since any respect that they
hao within the social system came from their being servants of the king.
The carvings, castings, ano other art forms createo by the guilo were useo var-
iously to establish communication with the spirit worlo, commemorate important
personages ano events, ano oecorate shrines, houses, ano ceremonial attire. Their
use was strictly regulateo by sumptuary laws, which provioeo the support for a com-
plex hierarchical aristocratic system. As I have explaineo elsewhere:
Looked at synchronically, possession of art forms by an individual was a visual ob-
jectication of his position in the ranking system. Looked at diachronically, over the
life time of this same individual, such possession was an expression of his progress to-
wards self-completion. [Grant] McCracken has suggested (:q88: 88) that we look at
consumption as a cultural project, the purpose of which is to complete the self
or, to put it in terms more congenial to Edo culture, to fulll ones social destiny. It
was through the possession and display of art objects that individuals attained the
goals of social achievement they had set for themselves.
13
Thus, the objects createo by the guilo artists were central to the social system
ano to the inoiviouals sense of where he was in that system.
At the margins were the Omaoa, a term that is usually translateo as pages.
These were young men who serveo as personal ano oomestic servants of the king.
In contrast to the case of the guilos, oral historical information about the Omaoa
is haro to come by in Benin. During my research in :q66, I was unable to no tra-
oitions about when the Omaoa organization was createo ano, especially, when its
members began to carve. Informants claim only that the Omaoa starteo carving a
very long time ago.
14
However, it was possible to utilize the family traoitions of
ex-Omaoa ano chiefs to establish that Omaoa carving existeo ouring the perioo that
is the focus of this essaythe reigns of Oba Aoolo ,ca. :8o, ano Ovorranwmen
,ca. :88qq,. This lack of any traoitions of origin is signicant. In Benin society,
nearly every important organization, ano every culturally meaningful object has
its own story of origin, incluoingin fact, especiallyguilo art forms.
15
The ab-
sence of Omaoa history is a clear inoication of their marginal artistic position.
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :,
This marginality or interstitial position can be seen in reference to three central com-
ponents of the palace art system: the Oba, the chiefs, ano the carvers guilo.
The Omada and the Oba
Recruitment to the Omaoa in the nineteenth century was open to all Eoo youth.
Boys were usually entereo by their parents between the ages of six ano ten, when
they woulo otherwise have been traineo by their fathers to farm or follow a craft.
Boys were sent for a variety of reasons: to foster gooo relationships with the king,
to promote aovancement for a chilo from a oisaovantageo family, or to provioe
a solution to family conicts such as custooy oisputes or cases of chilo neglect.
Boys whose behavior was oeviant ano uncontrollable were given to the Omaoa
for oisciplinary action, much as such boys in American society may be sent to mil-
itary acaoemies. There is some evioence as well, however, that rulers of subject
states sent their sons to be nisheo at the Benin court.
16
In short, the composi-
tion of the Omaoa at any given time might be heterogeneous in terms of its mem-
bers socioeconomic backgrounos, urban or rural origins, ano possibly even eth-
nic ancestry.
Being inoucteo into a perioo of servituoe placeo Omaoa in a marginal position,
not as absolute slaves, but as persons no longer rooteo in their own kin ano neigh-
borhooo. Their social oenition at that point totally oepenoeo upon the king. Their
marginality was further emphasizeo by the fact that they were expecteo to go about
nakeo ouring their time in the palace. Upon entrance to the Omaoa, youths
pleogeo a sacreo oath of loyalty to the king, swearing on the altars of Ogun, the
goo of iron ano the enforcer of strict oaths, ano on that of the Obas ancestors,
never to harm anyone in the palace ano to keep all that they learneo a secret on
threat of oeath. Once this oath was taken, Omaoa were expecteo to be totally loyal
to the king, in fact, ouring their stay in the palace, they were expecteo not to serve
any juju ,in other woros, venerate any oeity,, as this woulo interfere with their to-
tal commitment. Some Omaoa, however, secretly maoe sacrices to Ogun when-
ever they carveo, in oroer to keep their tools cool.
When youths hao time o from their royal outies, they were expecteo to keep
busy ano some were instructeo in carving by more senior members. The learning
situation was similar to the mooern classroom. There were no ritual preparations
or prayers before commencing carving, nor oio they work in isolation, like the guilo.
In fact, sons of chiefs who hao accompanieo their fathers to the palace sometimes
joineo in the training sessions. After a group of novices hao been in the palace for
a few years, the king coulo request that the senior members give them a carving
prociency test. Those who showeo sucient skill were freeo from further learn-
ing ano became establisheo experts, which meant they were qualieo to teach oth-
ers ano coulo also accept commissions from the Oba ano chiefs. The economic
benets that accrueo to these carvers in the form of payment by the king ano chiefs
in gooos, cowries, ano fooo was seen as an important way to accumulate capital for
:8o r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
later use in purchasing a title or otherwise aovancing ones status. Thus, as the late
Oba Akenzua II explaineo, Things were solo out by the Omaoa long before the
arrival of the Europeans.
17
The competition implicit in the system of examination was an important mech-
anism for maintaining the quality of carvings. In the guilo, members felt respon-
sible for upholoing the gooo name of their organization, ano the quality of their
work was controlleo by the assignment of the objects to experts ano by the criti-
cism of the eloers. The Omaoa hao no neeo to keep up a reputation as gooo
carvers, their concern was to be gooo servants of the king. The motivation for ac-
quiring prociency in carving, then, was the hope of monetary rewaro ano the
chance to attract the attention of the king, ano these coulo only be achieveo through
success in competition. In contrast, Igbesanmwan was a family organization whose
relationships were baseo on kinship. Ior them, service to the Oba was a ritual outy,
not a means to aovancement. The belief that all coulo carve by oivine inspiration
militateo against the oevelopment of a competitive spirit, as oio the religious na-
ture of the carving activity itself.
In their capacity as palace servants, the Omaoa were well situateo to improve
their status. Occasionally, a superior carver woulo come unoer the personal aus-
pices of the Oba ano woulo receive particularly valuable assignments, ano upon
leaving the Omaoa woulo receive a minor title, Obas craftsman ,o.tro/o,. But
whether or not they receiveo this special attention, all Omaoa beneteo from the
kings obligation to set them up well upon their release from service. Graouation
from the Omaoa, a ceremony calleo clothing the Omaoa, also initiateo them
into the Ibierugha, the initial graoe within the Iweguae palace association, which
was the preliminary step for moving up in the palace hierarchy. Once out of the
Omaoa, men rarely carveo again. Instrumentality was at the heart of Omaoa art
proouction ano thus ensureo its marginality. With the explicit requirement that
Omaoa not serve any juju, their creations were removeo from the sphere of cre-
ativity that oeriveo from ano serveo supernatural powers. Irom the stanopoint of
the Oba ano palace, carving was a way to keep iole hanos busy ano at the same
time acquire attractive oecorative objects, from that of the Omaoa, carving was a
means to the eno of social aovancement.
The Omada and the Chiefs
The Omaoa were able to take aovantage of their position to maneuver in the tan-
gle of political alliances ano enmities, both among chiefs ano between chiefs ano the
king. As pages, they functioneo as gatekeepers, controlling access to the king. More-
over, the Omaoa were alloweo to move arouno throughout the entire palace, whereas
chiefs were restricteo to the quarters belonging to their particular palace association.
They therefore hao access to a wioe range of people ano activities, ano gaineo pos-
session of valuable knowleoge. By oering gifts of their carvings ano their services,
they were able to oevelop relationships that woulo aio them after they left the palace.
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :8.
Thus, politically astute carvers coulo use both their art ano their access to negotiate
themselves into positions that the status hierarchy oio not normally allow.
Omada and Igbesanmwan
It is generally believeo by members of both the Omaoa ano Igbesanmwan that the
Omaoa initially learneo carving from guilo artists. Because of their freeoom of
movement, they were able to observe the guilo members carving in their special
workroom in the palace. Although observation is an acceptable mooe of learning
in Benin, it is not always favoreo by those being watcheo, ano as a consequence the
relationship between pages ano guilo members was fraught with tension. Guilo
members complaineo to me in conversation that the Omaoa hao stolen their oe-
signs, while ex-Omaoa argueo that by virtue of their royal service, they were enti-
tleo to utilize whatever they hao learneo in the palace.
COURT ART AND ICONOGRAPHY, CA. 18501897
Gotlo Cotctrg. In the mio nineteenth century, guilo carvers createo oecorateo royal
altar tusks, ivory horns, gongs, gurines, bracelets, ano other ornaments ano
woooen commemorative heaos, altars of the hano, boxes, rattle stas, commem-
orative heaos, ano other shrine objects. On oecorateo objects, the majority of
gures are usually in frontal, static poses in a symmetrical, often hieratic composi-
tion. The central gure is the king or a particularly high-ranking chief, queen
mother, or priest, ankeo by lesser chiefs ano retainers ano surrounoeo by sym-
bols of power ,ceremonial sworos, leoparos, crocooiles, etc.,. The monarch is al-
ways representeo in full coral beao regalia. When Europeans appear, often in
prole, they are oepicteo in sixteenth-century Fortuguese attire ano shown in po-
sitions of support for the monarchy, recalling the time when Benin so beneteo
from the traoe ano military assistance of the Fortuguese.
Royal altar tusksthe epitome of nineteenth-century guilo artabouno with
images of power. Some refer to the occult powers ano oivine ancestry of kings, es-
pecially Obas Ozolua ano Esigie, the great warriors of the fteenth ano sixteenth
centuries, to palace ritual specialists like Osa ano Osuan, who controlleo oevastat-
ing supernatural forces to harm enemies of the state, ano powerful symbolic ani-
mals such as the leoparo ano the elephant.
18
Guilo art was aimeo at the promulga-
tion ano reinforcement of royal hegemonic ioeology. Benin kings useo these art
forms to shape history, that is, to ensure that signicant events in their own reigns
ano those of their ancestors woulo be remembereo as they wisheo. Since Igbesan-
mwan carvings were createo oirectly in response to royal commissions, ano coulo
be rejecteo by the king if he were not satiseo, they quite naturally reecteo the con-
cerns ano political agenoas of royalty, as the oetail of the carving below shows. Guilo
art oio not therefore leno itself very well to confronting the changing fortunes of the
king, or the weakness of kings vis-a-vis their chiey rivals or foreign threats.
:8: r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
Iigure ::.:. Carveo royal altar tusk, late nineteenth century. inches.
Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. ano Mrs. Klaus
Ferls, :qq: ,:qq:.:.:o,.
Omooo cotctrg. During this same perioo, Omaoa carvers were making prestige ob-
jects, which incluoeo rectangular wooo kola nut boxes, stools ano chairs, beams,
ooors, panels, ano inciseo coconuts ano coral beaos, all oecorateo with bas-relief oe-
signs.
19
As I have pointeo out elsewhere, the relative positioning of the gures with
the total carvings tenos to be informal ano unoroereo, without the strict emphasis
on symmetry, balance ano hieratic composition so characteristics of objects maoe
by Igbesanmwan. Moreover, the gures themselves are frequently portrayeo in
prole ano can be seen in poses of movement or even relaxation, while those rep-
resenteo on |guilo-proouceo objects| are mainly in frontal ano static positions.
20
Most important, the oistinctive social proportion of king to attenoants is often
violateo, with the Oba appearing below ano sometimes smaller in size than the
chiefs ano attenoants arouno him, for example, on the top of a stool now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art a supporting chief looms over the Oba.
21
While these
violations of stylistic canons might oerive in part from the type of training ano vari-
able skill of the Omaoa carvers, they also reect a more oistant ano perhaps even
ironic view of royal power.
To a large extent, the Omaoa employeo the same artistic vocabulary as Igbe-
sanmwan: Obas in full coral regalia, sometimes with muosh legs, supportive palace
:8 r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
Iigure ::... Detail of carveo royal altar tusk shown in gure ::.:, showing Ozolua the
Conqueror. Drawn by Joanne Wooo. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
chiefs ano a variety of attenoants, incluoing Omaoa themselves, symbolic animals
ano reptiles, ano power objects. Yet their interstitial positiontheir marginal sta-
tus, heterogeneous origins, ano instrumental attituoe towaro art proouction
openeo up a space for the Omaoa to create very oierent types of imagery from
that of the guilo. Kate Ezra oiscusses the strange hybrios of form ano imagery
in Omaoa carving:
The palace pages create[d] ancient, ritually sanctioned types of objects, such as the
agba [ceremonial stool], as well as newly introduced foreign ones, such as the chair.
In decorating them they [drew] on the time-honored motifs devised long ago by Igbe-
sanmwan to express deep, philosophical concepts, but they also depict[ed] people and
things that had only recently appeared in Benin, and had no spiritual connection to
the concept of kingship. They often juxtapose[d] those images in odd but amusing
ways, crowding them in o-beat, asymmetrical compositions. Omada works are a
witty and lighthearted contrast to the solemn, tradition-bound nature of much of
Benin art.
22
Inoeeo, their art is striking in its violation of the norms of guilo art, whether
casting or carving. On the Omaoa-maoe stools, boxes, ano coconuts are a range
of images that never appear in guilo art, either because they are totally secular or
because they are tabooeo. Thus we no scenes from oaily life: a European shop-
keeper seateo on a chair before a table proppeo up on a casket, with rows of bot-
tles ano wine glasses laio out in front of him ano bolts of fabric hung above, an iron
worker at a forge, a palm wine tapper, a young girl carrying a tray with fooo on
her heao.
23
This latter image is particularly interesting because on her left is a kino
of metacommentarya representation of carveo rattle stas ano a commemora-
tive heao on an ancestral altar ,perhaps a playful reference to the hanoiwork of
their rivals, the Igbesanmwan guilo,. Even more unusual are the oepictions of
nakeo couples, in one case in the act of sexual embrace, a subject matter that never
appeareo in guilo art.
24
With such images, Omaoa art pusheo at the bounoaries
of the artistically permissible ano thinkable.
At the same time, Omaoa work began to oeal with the changing fortunes of
the kingoom. The iconography of Omaoa carving, far more than that of the guilo,
expresses the unraveling of Benin hegemony, its political instability, ano its vul-
nerability to British expansion. This is most evioent in the oepiction of Europeans,
whose threatening presence loomeo on the Benin horizon.
25
Omaoa art commu-
nicates a oeep ambivalence towaro Europeans, a mixture of enchantment with
their material culture combineo with oistaste ano even rioicule.
The Eoo have a long history of contact with Europeans ano their material cul-
ture, inoeeo, many terms for material culture in the Eoo language are Fortuguese
loan woros.
26
Iive centuries of traoe with the Fortuguese was followeo by traoe with
the Dutch, Irench, ano English, a commerce that involveo heaogear, horsetails, shirts
ano cloaks, coral ano glass beaos, luxury fabrics, ano brass pans ano bowls. Hats
ano other items of regalia were incorporateo into Benin guilo art ano were
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :8
Iigure ::.. Omaoa wooo carving of a European shopkeeper, part
of a box, .8 inches long. Courtesy the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Gift of Arturo ano Faul Feralta-Ramos ,6.6.6 A-B,.
Eooizeo, as several scholars have oemonstrateo by tracing of European proto-
types for Benin regalia.
27
Sixteenth-century Fortuguese costumes ano weapons are
the primary unmeoiateo representations of European material culture in guilo art.
28
What is unique about nineteenth-century Omaoa iconography is that, for the rst
time, the preoominant material signs of prosperity ano power are importeo ob-
jects: boats, barrels, parasols, bottles, jugs, coers, tables, cannons, guns ano other
weapons, ano other everyoay European objects.
29
Ior example, Ielix von Luschan
illustrates a woooen box belonging to a Irau Eromann ,quite probably the wife of
the German merchant whose pre-:8q photographs of the palace Benin appear in
von Luschans book, on which are oepicteo two Europeans stretcheo out in lounge
chairs, while another kneels in front of a long row of casks ano boxes. Representa-
tions of writing also appear on the boxes.
30
The fact that these material objects now
so clearly announce their origins suggests an awareness ofano even an aboica-
tion tomore powerful forces unoerstooo to come from outsioe the kingoom.
In Omaoa art, Europeans are conventionally oepicteo as single male gures, al-
though in a few cases, a European stanos in the hieratic pose reserveo for Obas ano
high-ranking chiefs, between two smaller European supporters holoing parasols.
31
White men are typically oepicteo holoing an umbrella with a crookeo hanole in
the left hano ano a curveo sworo in the right. Their faces, frequently bearoeo, of-
ten have puy cheeks ano upwaro slanting eyes. They are always oresseo in what
looks like stripeo pajamas, with a gun or other weapon at the waist. The only bit
of variation in their costume is in their brimmeo hats, which have either a rounoeo
or a at crown. When not lounging or sitting, they stano, perhaps atop a horse or
on a crescent-shapeo boat.
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :8,
Iigure ::.. Omaoa carving of young girl with tray, orawn by Debra Wilkerson.
Iigure ::.. Omaoa wooo carving of a European in a boat, :-:/. inches.
Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. ano Mrs. Klaus Ferls,
:qq: ,:qq:.:.6ab,.
These oepictions of Europeans are rife with humor ano sometimes even rioicule.
While parasols, sworos, boats, ano horses are all status objects, there is often a clear
element of mockery involveo. Ior instance, the European is shown forceo to holo
his own parasol, which implies a loss of status, or he is placeo in a peculiar posi-
tion, for instance, stanoing on, rather than rioing, his horse. On a carveo stool in
the Iielo Museum, what may at rst glance appear to be a straightforwaro oepic-
tion of the custom of pipe smoking is in fact a criticism of European manners. The
Eoo consioer it highly improper to appear in public with something in ones mouth.
The same sort of rioicule is even more explicit in a carveo chair in the Metropol-
itan Museum of Art. It shows a representation of a European lying sprawleo on
the grouno, a nearby wine goblet suggesting that he is orunk.
The frequent representation of Europeans in prole is yet another example of
mockery. The frontal pose is the most exemplary in Benin art, the king rccct ap-
pears in prole. Those shown that way are lacking in social graces or aesthetic ap-
peal. In fact, prole highlights the very features of Europeans that Eoo consioer
the most unattractive: their pointy noses, thin lips, ano at behinos.
When Eoo ano Europeans gures are oepicteo in the same space, the oepth of
the ambivalence in the treatment of Europeans ano European material culture is best
revealeo. On a stool top in Hamburg, a king stanos on a coer.
32
To his immeoiate
left ano right are neither Omaoa, nor chiefs, but rather two proleo Europeans, who
are casually seateo ano facing him. One has his knees crosseo, which is an improper
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :8
Iigure ::.6. Omaoa wooo carving criticizing European manners. Courtesy the Iielo Mu-
seum, Chicago, Illinois ,neg. no. Aqq:6,.
public position, ano his chin rests nonchalantly on his hano. The other holos a pistol
pointeo jauntily upwaro. Compareo with the rigio formality of Eoo royal accompa-
niment ,see g. ::.:,, this oepiction crosses bounoaries to the point of oisrespect.
Yet in other oepictions of Europeans together with the king, the foreigners are
sometimes of equal height with the monarch, a striking violation of Eoo status
:o r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
Iigure ::.. Omaoa carveo chair oepicting a orunk European. Courtesy the Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. ano Mrs. Klaus Ferls, :qq: ,:qq:.:.6.,.
perspective. Even more, in gure ::.6, the stool in the Iielo Museum, the Euro-
pean gure is in the central hieratic position. He is ankeo by Eoo kings, who are
possibly two versions of Oba Ozolua.
33
Is this striking ano ambiguous image to
be reao as Europeans being containeo by the ancestral power of warrior kings,
or are the Eoo themselves being overpowereo?
So it was at Benins own n oe siecle that Omaoa art openeo up the possibili-
ties of imagining the kingoom in new ano highly oisturbing ways. In both its style
ano its imagery, Omaoa art speaks of oisorientation, of a worlo oooeo with pow-
erful foreign objects, a worlo in which the central focusthe oivine kingcan be
overshaooweo ano oisplaceo. In :8q:, a Yoruba traoer, signicantly nameo Thomp-
son Oyiboouou, which means, literally, black white-man, was captureo violat-
ing Benin traoe restrictions. Oyiboouou was then brought to Benin to be sacriceo.
As the executioners went to cut o his heao, Oyiboouou reporteoly calleo out: The
white men that are greater than you or I are coming to ght ano conquer you.
Six years later a British military expeoition captureo Benin City ano sent the king,
Oba Ovorranmwen, into exile.
34
NOTES
The research on which this essay is based was supported by a grant from the Foreign Area
Fellowship Program, for which I am very grateful. I thank the late Oba Akenzua II, the late
Ovia Idah, and the numerous other carvers, from Igbesanwman and the Omada, who gen-
erously shared their knowledge. Lastly, my thanks go to my daughter, Ilana Gershon, whose
comments helped in the formulation of this essay.
:. Ovia Idah, personal communication, :q66.
.. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, :qq), :..
. Very little attention has been paid to Benins relations with its colonized neighbors.
See Biodun Adediran, Pleasant Imperialism: Conjectures on Benin Hegemony in Eastern
Yorubaland, African Notes :, :. (:qq:): 8q, for a discussion of Benin imperialism in the
eastern Yoruba corridor, and Isidore Okpewho, Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Iden-
tity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, :qq8), on images of Benins colonial power
among its former tributaries.
. Alan F. C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, .8.8, (London: Longmans, :q6q), .:.
. Jacob Egharevba, Benin Law and Custom (Lagos: C.M.S. Niger Press, :qq), .
6. Sandra Barnes and Paula Ben-Amos, Ogun, the Empire Builder, in Ogun, Old World
and New, ed. Sandra T. Barnes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press :q8q,, .
. The following historical discussion is drawn mainly from R. E. Bradbury, Benin Stud-
ies, ed. Peter Morton-Williams (New York: Oxford University Press for the International
African Institute, :q), and Ryder, Benin and the Europeans.
8. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, .:.
q. Ibid., .66.
:o. Ibid., ....
::. Bhabha, Location of Culture, ..
:.. The following discussion of Igbesanmwan and Omada is drawn from my work in
the early :qos, esp. Paula Ben-Amos, Social Change in the Organization of Woodcarving
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :.
in Benin City, Nigeria (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, :q:), and Professionals and Ama-
teurs in Benin Court Carving, in African Images: Essays in African Iconology, ed. Daniel McCall
and Edna Bay (New York: Africana Pub. Co., for the African Studies Center, Boston Uni-
versity, :q), :o8q.
:. Paula Ben-Amos Girshick, Art, Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, .ooo).
:. Henry Ling Roth, Great Benin: Its Customs, Art and Horrors (:qo; London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, :q68), :q6, citing the British trader Cyril Punch, who visited Benin in the late
:88os and :8qos and reported seeing a court ocial carving an ivory tusk, who may have
been an Omada. Brass plaques from the sixteenth century depict naked young men stand-
ing alongside kings and holding swords. Whether these are the forerunners of todays Omada
is impossible to determine.
:. For stories of the origin of Igbesanmwan-created objects, see Ben-Amos, Profes-
sionals and Amateurs in Benin Court Carving, :6.
:6. Rowland Abiodun cites the Owo tradition that the sixteenth Olowo, Osogboye, was
sent to Benin as a crown prince by his father to learn the court arts and customs and bring
them back to Owo. Abiodun, The Kingdom of Owo, in Yoruba: Nine Hundred Years of Art
and Thought, ed. Henry Drewal and John Pemberton (New York: Center for African Art,
:q8q), q6.
:. Oba Akenzua II, personal communication, :q66.
:8. For the dating of tusks and the analysis of their iconography, see Barbara Blackmun,
From Trader to Priest in Two Hundred Years: The Transformation of a Foreign Figure
on Benin Ivories, Art Journal , . (:q88): :.88, and Obas Portraits in Benin, African
Arts ., (:qqo): 6:6q, :o..
:q. Scholars have not yet established a chronology for Benin objects made of wood,
as they have for the brasses and ivories, and therefore the dating of Omada carving is un-
certain. Philip J. C. Dark, The Art of Benin: A Catalogue of an Exhibition of the A. W. F. Puller
and Chicago Natural History Museum (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, :q6.);
William B. Fagg, Nigerian Images (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., :q6o). Stylistic
and iconographic correspondences with nineteenth-century guild ivory carvings suggest
that a mid nineteenth-century date for many of the Omada works considered here is plau-
sible. For the purposes of this essaybut with the clear understanding that future research
may prove me wrongI consider Omada carvings that are found in European collections
formed from objects removed in :8q to date from the nineteenth century. See C. H. Read
and O. M. Dalton, Antiquities of the City of Benin and from Other Parts of West Africa in the British
Museum (London: William Clowes & Sons, :8qq); and Felix von Luschan, Die Altertmer von
Benin (Berlin: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger, :q:q; reprint, New York: Hacker
Art Books, :q68). For further discussions of Omada art, see Ben-Amos, Professionals and
Amateurs in Benin Court Carving; id., Art, Innovation, and Politics; Justine M. Cordwell,
Some Aesthetic Aspects of Yoruba and Benin Cultures (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern Uni-
versity, :q.); Kate Ezra, Royal Art of Benin: The Perls Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, :qq.); and Catherine Hess, Unconven-
tional Carving: Stools and Coconut Shells, in The Art of Power / The Power of Art: Studies
in Benin Iconography, ed. Paula Ben-Amos and Arnold Rubin (Los Angeles: Museum of Cul-
tural History, :q8), :q.
.o. Girshick, Professionals and Amateurs in Benin Court Carving, ::.
:: r\tr\ nrx-\xos oinsnick
.:. Ezra, Royal Art of Benin, .6, pl. :.8. For other examples, see Luschan Altertmer, gs.
86, 8q.
... Ezra, Royal Art of Benin, .666.
.. Luschan, Altertmer, g. 8., p. 8q. The palm wine tapper: Ezra, Royal Art of Benin,
g. :..
.. Luschan, Altertmer, pl. :., lower left. Nude images and representations of sexual re-
lations do appear in Yoruba wood carving from this period (Roy Sieber, personal commu-
nication, :qq), and the Omada inclusion of similar motifs may reect Yoruba inuence.
.. For a discussion of European portrayals in guild art, see Kathy Curnow, Alien or
Accepted: African Perspectives on the Western Other in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century
Art, Studies in Visual Anthropology:, : (:qqo): 8.
.6. See Hans Melzian, A Concise Dictionary of the Bini Language of Southern Nigeria (Lon-
don: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., :q).
.. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans .
.8. Luschan, Altertmer, and Donna Kathleen Abbass, European Hats Appearing in
Benin Art (M.A. thesis, Southern Illinois University, :q.).
.q. See Maria Helena Mendes-Pinto, Introduction, Os descobrimentos portugueses e a Eu-
ropa do Renascimento (Catalogue of the XVII Exposio Europeia de Arte, Ciencia e Cultura
in Lisbon. Lisbon: Conselho de Ministros, :q8).
o. Luschan, Altertmer, gs. 8., 86, 88q, pl. :..
:. For instance, ART/artifact, ed. Susan Vogel (New York: Center for African Art, :q88),
, and Museum fr Vlkerkunde Dresden, Benin: Europerdarstellungen der Hofkunst eines
afrikanischen Reiches, aus dem Staatlichen Museum fr Vlkerkunde Dresden, ed. Siegfried Wolf
(Leipzig: Prisma-Verlag, :q.), pl. ..
.. Luschan, Altertmer, pl. Y.
. Barbara Blackmun has pointed out the distinguishing characteristics of Oba Ozolua
in Benin art. For another example of the same pose, see Luschan, Altertmer, pl. :..
. Thompson Oyibodudu quoted in Robert Home, City of Blood Revisited: A New Look at
the Benin Expedition of .8, (London: R. Collings, :q8.), :.
ox\n\ \n+ \+ +nr cnossno\ns or coroxi\risxs :
Chapter :.
Bad Copies: The Colonial Aesthetic
and the Manjaco-Portuguese
Encounter
Eric Gable
In this essay, I look at the ways in which Africans ano Fortuguese in late colonial-
era Guinea-Bissau copieo each others booies to visualize themselves. I focus on
two sets of images proouceo at roughly the same time by people on opposeo sioes
of the colonial encounter. One consists of carveo woooen gures that look like car-
icatures of Fortuguese colonial ocers, but that chiefs ano rulers in the Manjaco
ethnic group useo to commemorate their ancestors. The other is an obsessively
thorough series of photographs of Manjaco womens scarieo torsos that one such
colonial ocer, Artur Martins oe Meireles, collecteo in oroer to illustrate an an-
thropological monograph on Manjaco customs of booily mutilation he publisheo
in :q6o.
In the mio twentieth century, the Manjaco gurative innovation became the
fashion of choice among members of an emerging Manjaco aristocracythe fam-
ilies of rulers ano chiefs who helo traoitional positions of authority while acting as
intermeoiaries between the Manjaco ano the colonial aoministration. Manjaco
chiefs installeo these seemingly parooic gures in householo ancestor shrines
shrines that up to this point hao been populateo by wholly abstract carveo shapes.
At the same time that Manjaco elites were copying images of Salazarist aominis-
trators for an inoigenous ancestor cult, colonial ocers were compelleo to repli-
cate the scholarly stuoy of ,what Fortuguese characterizeo as, a fast-oisappearing
traoitional culture, ano anthropological stuoy became one element in an aominis-
trators ocial training. Meireles, who hao serveo as an aoministrator in the Man-
jaco region for fteen years, useo the authority of his oce to unoertake a stuoy
in which he ano his assistants recoroeo the presence or absence of scarication pat-
terns on the torsos of over .o,ooo Manjaco womenthe vast majority of the post-
pubescent female populationano to photograph ,oorsal ano ventral, hunoreos
of them to illustrate his thesis that Manjaco traoitional culture, as epitomizeo by
scarication, was in oecline.
:
What are we to make of Manjaco copies of Fortuguese faces as commemora-
tive portraits of ancestral Manjaco? What are we to make of Meireless con-
temporaneous meticulous oocumentation of Manjaco mutilation? A convenient
way to explore such questions is to begin with the historical context from which
these images emergeo. Both sets of images are clearly prooucts of a particular colo-
nial encounter. Contextualizeo in that encounter, they also illustrate a more per-
vasive colonial aesthetic.
The particular historical moment might be calleo the climax of colonialism in
Guinea-Bissau, then known as Fortuguese Guinea. The Salazarist regime, also
calleo the New State government ,:q.6q,, with its peculiar combination of nos-
talgic paternalism ano futuristic mooernism, nally began to make gooo on its
claim to be civilizing its poor little patch of West Africa. In other woros, at least
the possibility openeo for schools, hospitals, roaos, brioges, ano wells to prolifer-
ate as they hao in neighboring Irench colonies. Because the New State was inau-
gurateo just as much of the worlo was plungeo into the Depression, at rst For-
tugal hao left its colonial governments to feno for themselves. What is more,
Guinea, in contrast to Mozambique ano Angola, hao only a miniscule expatriate
European population, which was almost exclusively employeo in government. But
with the eno of Worlo War II, an increaseo prosperity came even to such impov-
erisheo colonies.
The :qos were also the rst oecaoe that the Salazarist aoministrators coulo
creoibly claim that their oloest African colony hao been fully secureo. Since the
sixteenth century, Fortuguese government hao maintaineo a presence in ptoo,
or coastal entrepts, ano therefore hao long interacteo with the Manjaco ano other
coastal peoples. Nonetheless, even regions just beyono the praas walls succumbeo
to Fortuguese military control only in the twentieth century. While Manjaco ano
most other ethnic groups were conquereo by force of arms between :q: ano :q:,
sporaoic resistance persisteo in some regions into the :qos. Fortuguese political se-
curity woulo moreover be very short-liveo. In July :qq, arouno the time Meireless
monograph was going to press, African oockworkers in Bissau went on strike, in vi-
olation of New State laws. In the ensuing repression, fty African workers were
killeo, incluoing many Manjaco. Within three years, the Guinean nationalist party
,known by its acronym as the FAIGC,, unoer the leaoership of Amilcar Cabral, be-
gan an armeo struggle for inoepenoence. In :q , the FAIGC oecisively oefeateo
Fortuguese troops. This, along with the wars in Angola ano Mozambique, catalyzeo
the overthrow of the oictatorship in Fortugal ano the eno of Fortuguese colonial-
ism abroao.
1
During the brief climax of Fortuguese colonialism in Africa, the New State
maoe anthropology a central component of colonialism aoministrative training.
A oiscipline that hao never hao a place in the Fortuguese acaoemy became, ar-
guably, more important to New State colonial ocials than to their counterparts
in the Irench ano English colonial systems they often trieo to emulate.
2
During
this brief era of New State economic prosperity ano relative political stability,
n\n corirs :
the Manjaco were perhaps both the most stuoieo ano the least suboroinateo of
Guineas subjects.
3
They were consioereo to be the most politically stratieo ano
centralizeo of coastal wet-rice farming animists ,as opposeo to the Muslim Iula
ano Manoinga in the interior,. While the Fortuguese maoe mutually proouctive
military alliances with interior peoples, they founo that the peoples of the coast
the Balanta, Fapel, Bram, ano Manjaco, for instancewere much less tractable.
4
The Fortuguese, especially in the New State era, blameo this on the essential egal-
itarianism of the animists, who were generally seen as acephalous. Because the
Manjaco hao an elaborate feoeration of rulerships or lanos, however, they ap-
peareo to be an exception to the rule, or at least to the ethnographic rules that
Fortuguese in the colonial era were given to writing.
5
To the Fortuguese, the typical Manjaco was a worker who hao escapeo, for the
most part, the atavistic inoolence inherent in the great mass of the negro popula-
tion.
6
The Manjaco region was rich in resources to be exploiteo for the benet of
the colony ano its civilizing mission. Its forests were virtual oil-palm plantations. Its
cultivateo uplano elos alreaoy proouceo more of the colonys leaoing export crop
peanutsthan any other region. But Manjaco hao the oisturbing propensity to vote
with their feet against local chiefs ano the colony ano for greater freeoom ano bet-
ter economic prospects in Irench Senegal or British Gambia. By the mio :qos, when
Meireles became a colonial ocer in the region, roughly a fth of them in any given
year were haro at work in neighboring Senegal, their labor aooing nicely to the
Irench balance sheet. The more cosmopolitan Manjaco became, Fortuguese New
State aoministrators constantly repeateo, the less likely they were to remain colonial
subjects. Meanwhile, Manjaco rulers tenoeo to be a oisruptive rather than a con-
structive inuencebecoming tyrants ano getting oeposeo with alarming regular-
ity. By Meireless time, as many as a thiro of Manjaco chiefships were either vacant
or the current oceholoers were embroileo in litigation. Because political pertur-
bations causeo great unrest, Manjaco hao little attachment for their lano.
7
Manjaco were a particular embarrassment in a colony thatbecause it hao been
so haro to rule, so haro to x as specically Fortuguesewas routinely charac-
terizeo by New State authorities as an insult to Fortuguese ioentity.
8
The oiculties Manjaco poseo exacerbateo a certain ambivalence among New
State aoministrators. At times they evinceo a nostalgia for oream natives governeo
by traoition, ano at times they wanteo mooern Manjaco unfettereo by custom, all
the while, they were becoming more entangleo as gatekeepers in local politics. As
a result, for Manjaco, the ability to manipulate the forms ano technologies of bu-
reaucracy became more ano more a necessity of political life, a manifestation ano
instantiation of power. A carveo portrait of a Manjaco chief in the guise of a
colonial ocer makes perfect sense in such a context. So, too, ooes a photograph
of a nakeo Manjaco girl, whose scarieo skin is a sign of an essential ano exciting
oierence, the oisappearance of which was paraooxically at once a goal of
Salazarist colonialism ano a threat to its reason for being. The mutilateo girl is both
a beauty ano a savage.
: rnic o\nrr
The two sets of images, carveo ano photographeo, complement each other in
what amounts to a generic colonial aesthetic. On the one hano, the carveo gure
ano the mooern Manjaco who commissioneo such gures represent the bao copy
that V. Y. Muoimbe notes is the objectication of colonialist oisgust. On the other
hano, the scarieo torsos of Manjaco women, unoerstooo as prurient images, are
a typical objectication of colonialist oesire. In the generic colonialist aesthetic, the
gooo native is invariably a woman, ano the bao copy is inevitably a man. She is
n\n corirs :,
Iigure :..:. Fhotograph of a scarieo Manjaco woman by Artur
Martins oe Meireles, from his Mottloc trtco oo Moroco,
Fublicaoes oo Centro oe Estuoos oa Guin Fortuguesa: Memorias,
.. ,Bissau, :q6o,, p. .:.
Iigure :.... Two Manjaco ancestor posts, one of them by Jon Biku Finambe.
Fhoto by Eric Gable.
the woman fettereo by traoition, neeoing to be releaseo or protecteo from its sav-
agery ano yet promising that she will not be, ano that she will insteao invite you
into it. He is the visible proouct of your civilizing mission. He is the native who
wears your suits, but the style is a little too amboyant, ano you laugh at his im-
perfect attempts at imitation. Yet you are often anxious because you are never quite
sure whether he mimics you to make fun of you.
9
It has long been argueo that nothing bothereo the settler more than such bao
copies, savvy boys, trousereo Africans, because they upset the implicit pater-
nalism of the colonial enterprise.
10
But the bao copy has also upset the enemies of
colonialism, for the black man who wants to be white is proof positive of colo-
nialisms pathological eect.
11
Ior both camps, the bao copy is often an aesthetic
abominationan embooiment of a troubling inauthenticity.
The bao copy is a problem in the colonial aesthetic. It continues to echo in the
way color art ,most often statuettes of European colonials, is assimilateo into a West-
ern aesthetic premiseo on a misplaceo authenticityano, by extension, in how
Westerners come to imagine people like Manjaco in the Western cultural universe.
I shall return to the problem of the bao copy at the eno of this essay in oroer to
suggest how the particulars of the Manjaco version of mimicry might allow us to
break this particularly encumbering frame. Along the way I also use the images that
the Fortuguese generateo to supply a particular context for my appraisal of a
generic colonialist aesthetic.
THE COLONIALISTS DRESS CODE
In the archive in Bissau are a couple thousano ethnographic photographs taken
from the mio :qos to :q.
12
Hunoreos of them appeareo in the Bolcttm Coltotol
oo Gotr Pottogoco, a journal launcheo on what the New State claimeo was the ooth
anniversary of colonization. The Bolcttm publisheo on a wioe variety of subjects,
incluoing history ano even imaginative ction. Its main purpose, however, was to
oisplay the supposeo Salazarist commitment to mooernizing science, ano it fea-
tureo numerous ethnographic reports ano speculative essays written by ocials like
Meireles.
13
The collection of ethnographic photographs supplieo their illustrations.
What struck me immeoiately in looking through this accioental ensemble of pic-
tures was the sheer number of images of bare-breasteo nubile girls. It was as if I
hao founo the Fortuguese version of what Malek Alloula calls the colonial harem.
Although this harem hao been gathereo for scientic reasons, ano the photos hao
all been taken as an ethnographic recoro of a colonys people, they were clearly a
skeweo recoro, xeo by a particular frame, an all-too-familiar, even preoictable
gaze.
14
In aooition to the photographs that appear in Meireless stuoies, there were
oozens of others that remaineo unpublisheo. The camera angle in these shots is
level with the womens navels ano tilts upwaro towaro their exposeo breasts. Some
of the more alluring images of nubile torsos later appeareo as an oooly out-of-place
feature of the generally scholarly Bolcttm calleo Scenes ano Types of Guinea. It
n\n corirs :
juxtaposeo photographs of roaos ano brioges with picturesque images of the na-
tives, mostly girls, ano was at once an aovertisement for the colonys mooernity
ano for its bucolic charms. Thus some of Meireless photographs enoeo up shorn
of their scientic pretenses ano useo merely as illustrations of the colonial ioyll.
The Fortuguese were notorious among colonizers for copulating ano cohabitat-
ing with their subjects. The British travel writer Archibalo Lyall, who visiteo Guinea
between the wars, repeats what amounts to the common wisoom about the For-
tuguese ano colonialist oesire: I met oozens of Fortuguese ocials all through
Guin ano better hosts one coulo not wish to no. They are gay ano frienoly ano hos-
pitable. They are very gooo juoges of whiskey ano they make no pretense of inoier-
ence to the luscious ano well-oisplayeo charms of their younger female subjects.
15
Fortuguese themselves often reveleo in this reputation, for it proveo that they
oio not oiscriminate, that they were not racist.
16
This image of the Fortuguese
this way of xing them as oistinct from their colonizing peersis also a kino of
stereotype. But it illuminates, as it were, the peculiar focus of the ethnographic en-
semble. It explains, perhaps, why so many images of nubile girls enoeo up in
Scenes of Guinea as aovertisements for the colony.
Something else struck me about the accioental gallery of images in Bissau. It bore
very little resemblance to what was containeo in the bulk of the oocuments that maoe
up the archive. These oocuments were the stu of aoministrative anthropology,
the euvia of a colonial bureaucracy. When ethnography appeareo at all, it was prag-
matic ano allusive. The gap between such woros ano the stock of pictures oistributeo
among them raises a crucial issue for any stuoy of empire. Woros ano pictures work
in oierent ways. Fictures, while nominally xeo in their specicity, can also mi-
grate in oroer to oovetail or contraoict what woros say. Thus while the images of ex-
poseo torsos Meireles useo for his monograph are not necessarily erotic, they arguably
become erotic as they are appropriateo in oierent contexts.
This is perhaps most obvious if one compares Meireless images to images of
similarly scarieo Manjaco maioens taken by the Austrian Hugo Bernatzik.
17
Bernatziks maioens are at once more erotic ano more appealing, ano in giving
them a romantic aura, he also humanizeo them. On the other hano, Meireless
photographs are less brutal than a set of images his aoministrative superior, An-
tonio Carreira, took to illustrate his own brief ethnographic essay on Manjaco
scarication. Carreiras images are clinically croppeo at the neck ano puoenoa, pre-
serving the anonymity of his subjects but turning them into scientic specimens.
Carreira was Guineas most prolic ano scrupulous scholar, ano as much of a moo-
ernizer as the Fortuguese colonial service proouceo. Accoroing to the stories Man-
jaco tell tooay, Carreira hao the eccentric reputation for touring the oistrict capi-
tal market ano oroering bare-breasteo women to cover themselves with a blouse
or brassiere. Yet almost all Carreiras ethnographic works are illustrateo at the front
ano back of each chapter with art oeco lithographs of village scenes: thatch-
roofeo huts ano palm trees, a stylizeo silhouette of a near-nakeo maioen pouno-
ing millet, a young woman bare to the waist, benoing over a shing net.
oo rnic o\nrr
The images that lleo the margins of so many of the texts proouceo unoer New
State auspices hao a life of their own. To tie the meaning they convey to the au-
thorial intent of the ocials who useo them is to bypass a perhaps crucial ques-
tion about what they reveal, ano about whom. Are we to reao such imagesthat
is, supply them with oiscursive meaning? ,Ano isnt this what we invariably oo?, Or
are we to interpret them as a kino of exposure of what cannot quite be put into
woroswhat goes without saying?
A NUCLEUS APART
The anthropology in the aoministrative oocuments serveo tangible enos in the pa-
ternalistic culture of New State, Salazarist policy. Colonial ocers neeoeo to make
Manjaco political practice make sense ano to institute some version of inoirect rule.
Ocially, at least, New State aoministrators were uncomfortable with inoirect rule:
it was a stopgap measure, a temporary pause in the long march towaro manageo
mooernity. But in Fortuguese Guinea, they quickly recognizeo, ano thenceforth oe-
fenoeo on pragmatic grounos, the neeo for some form of native rule. They were
forever alluoing to Manjaco habits ano customsrarely given in any oetailin
oroer to make pronouncements about why this or that chief was or was not a ouly
constituteo authority, why one pretenoer to oce hao to be reinstateo, another
oeposeo. In oiscovering stable ouly constituteo authority, they were, they con-
stantly complaineo, monumentally unsuccessful.
The upshot was that aoministrators such as Meireles, in collusion with Manjaco
chiefs ano their familiesparticularly those who hao some eoucation, who hao
connections in the colonial bureaucracy, who hao emigrateo to urban areas, or who
hao ,in the then-current Manjaco ioiom, seen Iranceinventeo a Manjaco tra-
oition that might be termeo the pecuniary polity. The Fortuguese envisageo the
oozens of Manjaco lanos as a single congeries of rulerships, each ruler receiv-
ing his title from the ruler of rulers in Bassarel, ano each ruler, in turn, having
n\n corirs o.
Iigure :... Art oeco lithograph of village scenes from Antonio Carreiras
ethnographies in Bolcttm Coltotol oo Gotr Pottogoco.
the right to install in oce sometimes oozens of chiefs in any given lano. In this
inventeo traoition, rulers coulo install anyone they chose to, ano inoeeo the For-
tuguese emphasizeo that Manjaco competeo for political titles by bribing the rulers,
for with each particular oce went the lifetime usufruct rights to valuable wet-rice
elos ano palm groves.
In enshrining the pecuniary polity as a Manjaco traoition the colonial ocials
legitimizeo corruption as normal political practice. But they were also not above
breaking the rules of the system they arguably playeo a large part in inventing. A
particular nuisance for them were the tangleo roots of superstition that sur-
rounoeo the selection of the paramount ruler in Bassarel. As a result, the ruler of
rulers was not really an eective leaoer from the Fortuguese perspective, ano var-
ious colonial ocers often founo themselves supporting chiey canoioates who were
not the Bassarel kings choice. Conversely, Fortuguese ocials seemingly accepteo
as temporary oceholoers men they themselves calleo usurpers, but then wrote
enoless memoranoa to their superiors about their attempts to replace them with
legitimate canoioates. In eect, they normalizeo a quiet subversion of the rules, of
saying one thing in oocuments intenoeo for superiors ano ooing something else on
the grouno, all in pursuit of their primary goal: to get Manjaco to stay put ano
farm in Guin for the prot of the colony.
In the woros of their oocuments, Fortuguese aoministrators come across as oili-
gent ano oisinteresteo managers of traoitional authority, perplexeo ano enervateo
by conniving natives. The colonial ocer is always on the sioe of ouly consti-
tuteo authority ano against usurpation, even when so-calleo usurpers re-
maineo in oce for years. Manjaco whom I intervieweo in the :q8os were certain
that the Fortuguese sioeo with the usurpers, who hao bought them o. Inoeeo,
the Fortuguese aomitteo the existence of corruption. Meireles, summing up the
mess in one of the rulerships, noteo that the usurper in question woulo not have
been so persistent hao he not been encourageo by someone of inuence who was
on the take: I am certain that it woulo not be far from the truth to say that with
the promise of the transfer of the aoministrator ano allusions to personal inuence,
the petitioner must have suckeo from |the usurper| at least a oozen thousanos of
escuoos. |A|no this is what woulo be easy to verify.
18
The petitioner here is a
Manjaco, albeit a government ocial. In the oocuments, it is always a native who
suers the accusation ano a Fortuguese ocial who makes the eort to oistance
himself from corruptions polluting taint.
If we can concluoe anything, it is that these natives are the ones whose voices were
clearly hearo in the villages, for it was they who relayeo ano reao the letters that
containeo the aoministrations proclamations. Yet it is these voicesano their power
to inuence, cajole, even, perhaps controlthat is totally eraseo in the manageo ac-
counts of the oocuments. These people became the Fortuguese sorcerers appren-
tices, sometimes ooing their superiors biooing, sometimes making a messy situation
worse. In most ocial memoranoa, they appear euphemistically, if at all, but occa-
sionally one gets a glimpse of what was probably the common view. Ior example, in
o: rnic o\nrr
:q6, Antonio oe Carvalho Viegas, the Fortuguese governor of the colony, warneo
future colonial ocers about the Manjaco. They were a particular nuisance because
they constantly crosseo the boroer into Senegal ano as a result were no longer pure:
In general, the colonizer judges the Manjaco from individuals of the race who live
together with the white. Nothing is more misleading. The smart Manjacoputting
on the air of civilization that is belied by his ridiculous taste in fashionconstantly
questioning, shrewd in small matters, is only the Manjaco who has lived in the urban
centers. . . . The other, the one that represents the majority, the one of economic value,
the one that works and gathers the palm nut is as savage [as any primitive].
19
Viegas wanteo to oismiss cosmopolitan Manjaco as anomalous, ano he oio so
in two typical, yet oiscursively opposeo ways. On the one hano, those Manjaco who
might appear civilizeo were not so, as evioent from their rioiculous taste in fash-
ion. They were bao copies. On the other hano, those who hao been to Dakar or
Bissauthose who hao learneo to reao ano write ano petitionwere not the
majority. To Viegas such constantly questioning, shrewo Manjaco were a oan-
gerous aberration, a kino of cancer in the booy politic. They were like a nucleus
apart, which ooes not represent, in the sector of native politics ano economics, a
valuable element.
20
MANJACO MUTILATIONS
As Meireles trieo to resolve the vexing problems of the usurpations in the Man-
jaco territory, he was constantly noing himself entangleo with members of this
nucleus apart. Viegass wish to oeny cosmopolitan Manjaco an explicit place in
contemporary village life also characterizes Meireless monograph. Meireles wrote
his monograph ano took the photos that illustrate it at the eno of a long, frustrat-
ing association with the Manjaco. Like so many colonial-era ethnographies writ-
ten by New State aoministrators, it has a besioe-the-point quality to it.
21
Not only
was its research conoucteo just before the revolution was about to begin, but it scans
as inaovertent parooyas a kino of bao copy. A pretension to science overwhelms
the subject: the science is big, its proouct small.
To conouct his inquiry of mutilations as completely ano comprehensively as
possible, Meireles useo the opportunity another stuoy provioeo. He hao been or-
oereo to concentrate the local population so that a meoical team coulo assess the
extent of sleeping sickness among the Manjaco. Once the ooctor, sitting at one
table, was through examining each patient, each subject moveo to another table,
where Meireless assistant askeo each Manjaco to face him ano then turn arouno
so that the assistant coulo recoro on a sheet whether scarication was present or
absent ano where on the torso the scarication occurreo. In a short time, Meire-
les was able to collect oata on .,.. Manjaco, :8,. of which were males ano
.,. females, or roughly 6 percent of the total population. The tables he com-
pileo were a map, as it were, covering the territory they cooieo.
n\n corirs o
Meireles felt compelleo to argue that such an exhaustively illustrateo sample was
as complete as practically possible. The tone he takes is one of oefensive apology,
as if he were anticipating an auoience that might ooubt his science. In oefenoing
his sample he emphasizeo:
It could possibly be objected that the numbers presented do not possess the value [of
completeness] attributed to [them], by virtue of the fact that there are, outside of
the borders of the Province, some two dozen thousand Manjaco. It must be said
that . . . those who remain denitely residing abroad, whose number must run around
:.,ooo, have begun to detribalize and lose, therefore, interest for an ethnographic
study.
22
The mooern Manjaco thus remaineo for Meireles in :q6o, as for Viegas in
:q6, a nucleus apartpeople who were recognizeo but only in oroer to be ex-
plaineo away.
Meireless thesis about tattooing or scarication was simple. As with many other
unevolveo peoples, Manjaco hao a kino of skin that was perfect for tattooing.
Tattooing was an aoolescent preoccupation baseo on coquetry ano fashion. The
lines ano marks hao no ioeographical signicance, they were merely oecorative,
a kino of geometry.
23
Yet scarication was also the quintessential sign of their
primitive cultural ioentity. As Manjaco mooernizeo, as they came into contact
with evolveo populations, then this primitive fashion went out of style. By tab-
ulating the incioence of tattooing among women by age, Meireles was able to prove
o rnic o\nrr
Iigure :... Two photographs from Artur Martins oe Meireles, Mottloc trtco oo Mor-
oco, Fublicaoes oo Centro oe Estuoos oa Guin Fortuguesa: Memorias, .. ,Bissau,
:q6o,, gs. 6 ano , p. .6, both captioneo Rapariga oe Fecixe tatuaoa.
beyono a shaoow of a ooubt that this fashion was inoeeo in steep oecline.
24
Meire-
les concluoes his observations with a clicho profunoity aimeo at those who might
no such savageries unusual or ooo:
[I]n the supercivilized cities of Europe and America, there are numerous beauty sa-
lons, that, to remove the hairs o the legs of women use a sticky paste. . . . Now the
pain provoked by such a depilatory must be a close cousin to the pain produced by
the incisions of tattooing. . . . What can we conclude? That whatever the latitude,
women subject themselves to suering in order to embellish their bodies.
25
As Homi Bhabha remarks, following Eowaro Saio, xing the colonial subject is
a twofolo process.
26
Thus Meireles xes tattooing. There must be a certain freez-
ing in timethe creation of timelessness. Here all female booies are alike, they
are the universal oegree zero. Iemale booies are always torturing themselves, turn-
ing authentic charms into unnatural attractions.
27
Then, there must be an al-
lowance for a lapse of time, usually involving a loss. Here a fashion receoes into the
past at the moment Manjaco become more evolveo ano mooern, ano turn into bao
copies.
THE MANJACO DRESS CODE
Irom the perspective of local Manjaco political practice, in oroer for inoiviouals
to claim that they were a ouly constituteo authority in the competitive scramble
for local political titles, they hao to point to an ancestor who hao helo the oce
before them. Contrary to the Fortuguese view, political titles were not open to the
highest biooer, but were restricteo to a circle of families who shareo the title in a
roughly equitable, albeit constantly contesteo, succession. Every Manjaco court,
like every Manjaco house ,loto)the inoigenous lanoholoing grouphao a clus-
ter of ancestor posts ,pttclop), enshrining previous caretaker-shareholoers in the
estate.
28
These posts were the material manifestations of the history of the com-
petitive circulation of titles among a restricteo group of householos. Most such
posts are, as the name literally implies, merely a woooen stake stuck in the grouno.
They are planteo so as to be publicly visibleat the entrance to a compouno court-
yaro or unoer the veranoa of the compounos most permanent ano prominent
builoing. Most such stakes are carveo ,often perfunctorily, in aesthetically pleasing
abstract shapes. A cluster of such formsa stack of inverteo cones, a vertical yet
slightly curveo form culminating in two outstretcheo armlike projectionslook like
a collection of sculpture by Brancusi.
Within local genres, which were characterizeo by abstraction, the gurative im-
ages useo by many Manjaco as posts were a oouble innovation. Not only were they
representational in form, but the status of their prooucers in relation to their con-
sumers was also oierent. Most commemorative carvings were ano are maoe by
a kinsman of the ancestor to be enshrineospecically someone who counts as a
sisters son. The person is selecteo by oivination ano that person can in turn ask a
n\n corirs o
Iigure :... Cluster of Manjaco ancestor posts, showing abstract ano gurative
forms. Fhoto by Eric Gable.
more oexterous family member to oo the actual work, but the point is that the ob-
ject proouceo itself is of less signicance than the web of sociality its proouction
entails. The carver is paio for his work, but again the payment is a part of an ex-
plicit ritualization of kinship, for he returns part of the payment later to complete
a cycle of reciprocity. By contrast, the gurative commemorative carvings were
clearly objects in a system of conspicuous consumption. Notably, cash ano cattle
gureo in the transaction, ano carvers oevelopeo reputations that were if not
transethnic at least translocal.
Iigurative carvings were specically marketeo to colonial-era chiefs ano rulers
ano their familiesthe ouly constituteo authorities of colonial neo-traoition.
Three carvers are tooay remembereo as the innovators of three oistinct, yet imi-
tateo, styles. I briey met the most renowneo of these carversSoga Menoes
ano intervieweo the family of the anotherJon Biku Finambewho oieo in :q8.
Of the thiro innovator, Uut, I learneo very little. He may have begun carving as
early as the :q.os. His sculptures are birolike gures that resemble the styles of the
Nalu ano Baga in southern Guinea-Bissau ano Guinea.
29
He may have continueo
carving into the :qos, ano he is the only Manjaco artist to have one of his pieces
on oisplay at a European museuma piece more than likely appropriateo from
an ancestor shrine by Fortuguese troops ouring the revolution.
Soga Menoes initially imitateo a gurative style from a neighboring ethnic
group, the Bijagos, where he hao spent years working on a large German oil-palm
concession. Soga supplementeo his income making kitschy images of Africans ano
parooies of Fortuguese for sale to Europeans. Soga began to reach a wioe auoience
when he was inviteo to proouce ano sell his work as part of the events commem-
orating the ooth Anniversary of the Discovery of Guinea, which was, again, a
key element in the Salazarist aoministrations attempt to put Fortugals oloest en-
clave ano most peripheral possession on the mooern colonial map. The celebra-
tion involveo the creation ano oisplay of traoitional culture, ano inoigenous crafts-
people were organizeo by the Catholic Church to make works to sell at kiosks in
the recreateo villages. It was there that Soga rst solo his stereotypeo tourist-art
renoerings of A Manjaco Ruler ano His Wifethe king in toga ano top hat, the
queen carrying a gouro bowl on her heao. Soon, however, such gures became
popular among chiefs in the southern Manjaco lanos, where the top hat style was
inoeeo an ocial uniform ano where it continues as such on formal occasions
to this oay. Soga also began to get commissions for similar icons of traoition from
rulers in lanos where such a royal uniform hao never been the fashion. At the ooth
anniversary celebration, Soga also maoe carvings imitating the bronze busts of
the Fortuguese governors of the colony, both in uniform or in mufti, ano he sculpteo
at least one bust of Doutor Salazar.
30
Versions of these also founo their way into
Manjaco shrines.
Jon Biku Finambe began his carving career making woooen shoes in the north-
ern European traoitional style for Africans who hao never hao the opportunity
n\n corirs o,
of visiting these exotic locales. Later, following Sogas leao, he began working on
European gures. He suereo from leprosy ano hao, accoroing to family members,
only stubs for ngers, making it impossible for him to clutch the fulcrum shovel ano
cultivate the wet-rice elos as most Manjaco men shoulo. He hao taken up carv-
ing while on an extenoeo convalescence ,possibly at a missionary hospital, in the
southern town of Catio. There he learneo to carve from the Naluan ethnic
group whose carveo work is, like that of the Bijagos, well representeo in European
collections. He is responsible for the carvings of the gures in military uniforms,
o8 rnic o\nrr
Iigure :..6. Manjaco ancestor posts by Uut. Fhoto by Eric Gable.
ano those in suits ano feooras. Like Sogas, his style was wioely, if more briey, im-
itateo.
The images these men maoe became the fashion of choice among the local aris-
tocracy. Tooay, such gurative posts seem ironically incongruous: a plump colo-
nial ocer in a white tunic, his face ano hanos painteo pink, the pockets of his tu-
nic festooneo with brightly coloreo meoals, a oapper little white-faceo man with
long black sioeburns ano a Hitlerian moustache oresseo in a black suit with a white
n\n corirs o
Iigure :... Manjaco ancestor posts by Soga Menoes. Fhoto by
Eric Gable.
hanokerchief ano a row of pens peeking out of the pockets, a severe birolike avatar
oeckeo out in a top hat, clutching a tax book unoer one arm ano holoing a foun-
tain pen in the other hano.
They oo not seem to belong in a peasant village. Ano inoeeo nowaoays they are,
like scarication, artifacts of past traoitions, for there are no longer any carvers
making gurative images for money in Manjaco lanos.
31
Most posts carveo tooay
are in the abstract style ano by a kinsman in the appropriate relationship to the
oeceaseo. Occasionally, someone will fashion a gurative imagea heao mounteo
on an unembellisheo trunk. More rarely, the family will bypass the kinsman to go
across the river to neighboring Ziguinchor to buy airport art ano then return to
plant these generic images of primitive Africans or cruoe knockos of colon
gures as posts in home villages. I once encountereo a carving commissioneo in
Dakar, the carver hao useo a photograph of the oeceaseo as a mooel. But this was
the exception to the general postcolonial reversion to abstraction.
.o rnic o\nrr
Iigure :..8. Cluster of Manjaco ancestor posts, incluoing some by Jon Biku
Finambe. Fhoto by Eric Gable.
Manjaco posts, whether gurative or abstract, are obviously anthropomorphic,
but they are not in a primary sense portraits. In the abstract post, what is be-
ing signaleo is a moment in a life-cycle ano a relationship. The shape the post takes
ano the manner in which it is planteo signals the moment when a young man as-
serts his right to builo a conjugal hut arouno the courtyaro of the corporate house.
32
It marks the moment when a youth becomes a man with oomestic responsibilities.
The planting of such a post is normally oone by sons to honor a father once these
sons become eloers ano have mature ano marrieo, or about-to-be marrieo, sons
of their own. It heralos the eloers right to be a stakeholoer in house corporate prop-
ertyto oistribute use rights to house rice elos, for example, to newly marrieo
sons. In a sense the postano inoeeo the ancestor it ostensibly enshrines as a con-
tinuing presence in householo aairsis a kino of proxy, an egy of the living
eloer who plants it.
This was even more oirectly the case where claims to the corporate properties
of royal or chiey titles were concerneo. It was a common practice in the cli-
max of colonialism for families to put forth canoioates who were olo enough os-
tensibly not to care whether they personally suereo supernatural reprisals for holo-
ing a title for which their qualications were oubious. Such men, however, coulo
act as fronts for family corporate interestsyounger men who receiveo from them
various titleo elos that were the titleholoers right to parcel out.
Thus it makes sense that gurative carvings oio not so much resemble an inoi-
vioual as the congeries of technologies that the various subalterns functionaries
neeoeo to master in oroer to work behino the scenes to ensure that a family coulo
claim ano holo a political title. What seems to have occurreo in many cases is that
sons ano granosonsthe stock boys, the clerks, the returneo emigrantscommis-
sioneo images of ancestors that enshrineo their powers ano attributes in what An-
thony Appiah labels a neo-traoition. Discussing a Yoruba carving that curators
calleo Man on a Bicycle, Appiah argues that it was proouceo by someone who
ooes not care that the bicycle is the white mans invention: it is not there to be other
to the Yoruba Self.
33
The Manjaco sculptures of ancestor gures reveal this same
matter-of-fact ano pragmatic appropriation, an olo icon incorporateo new, but also
ephemeral, iconography.
34
COPYING?
Thus far I have suggesteo that colonial-era political unrestthe scramble for chief-
taincies that went on after the scramble for this part of Africa reoeneo the tech-
nologies of power ano authority in Manjaco villageswas the historical frame-
work for carvings of Manjaco ancestors in suits ano photographs of scarieo
Manjaco maioens. Both the gurative carving ano Meireless photos of scarieo
torsos are visible refractions of the same, by ano large invisible, subject. This sub-
ject remaineo invisible by a form of collusion between the colonizer ano the colo-
nizeo. This subject is the so-calleo nucleus apart who hao the bureaucratic means
n\n corirs ..
to get their gureheao in oce or someone elses gureheao out of oce, so that
family members coulo enjoy the usufruct rights to rice elos, ano the access to vil-
lage labor that possession of such titles entaileo. These shaoowy operators are the
local versions of the universally oerioeo bao copy.
As such, these juxtaposeo imagic genres reveal a wioely remarkeo upon par-
aoox inherent in colonialist practice ano oiscourse.
35
Colonialists neeoeo to moo-
ernize backwaro Africans in oroer to make the colonial enterprise a success. But
to oo away with their backwaroness, get Africans to become ccolo, to assimi-
late, as the Fortuguese put it, is to oestroy the founoations of colonialism. The
problem for the colonialist inevitably became: what to oo with the otmtlooo? One
wioely invokeo solution, ano the Fortuguese were haroly unique here, was to ig-
nore their presencethey were inauthentic no matter how many of them there
were or how long they hao existeoano substitute images of a timeless
Africa.
36
This is the assertion of the illuminations bracketing the articles in Bo-
lcttm Coltotol oo Gotr Pottogogco ano the function of the Types ano Aspects of
Guinea photo gallery at the back of each issue, ano just as Fortugal was hurrying
to institute mooernizing schemes at the level of the villagewells, schools, clin-
icsin the so-calleo Guin Melhor campaign. Such imagery became even more
prevalent as Fortugal was losing control of its oloest African colony. As the revo-
lution reouceo Fortuguese zones of control to urban areas ano a few patches of
countrysioe, Scenes of Guinea hio their erasure behino the mask of a smiling
maioen.
Fortuguese aoministrators, ocial Salazarist assimilation policy asioe, neeoeo
nakeo Manjaco to practice a self-valioating paternalism. Ano it coulo be argueo
that, for Fortuguese, this generic colonial neeo was exacerbateo by a long history
of insecurity about their own mooernity as compareo to other colonialist powers.
This insecurity unoerwrote the unintentional parooy of the scientic enterprise
that Meireles unoertook.
The way I have supplieo a narrative frame for these images, not to mention the
images themselves, is ooubtless familiar. Ior at least the past fteen years, scholars
in art history, anthropology, ano history have maoe creative use of the kinos of the
colonial-era aesthetics that governeo the proouction of art objects on both sioes of
the encounter to critically appraise that encounter.
37
Inoeeo, one result of schol-
arly interest has been that kitschthe colon gure, postcolonial genre painting,
tourist arthas increasingly become of interest to museums.
38
Just as actual colo-
nial imagery is oisplayeo in oroer to parooy or criticize the ioeas of their makers,
when we look at colon gures such as the Manjaco ancestor carvings, we like to
reao into them parooies ano caricatures of colonial aoministrators, ano by exten-
sion, a colonial critique.
39
But such a reaoing is haro to sustain, ano is inevitably
oestabilizing, precisely because of the ambiguities inherent in copying or mimicry.
40
Ultimately, we neeo to know how these gures were reao by Manjaco ano For-
tuguese at the time of the colonial encounter. We woulo hope that not only woulo
Manjaco have recognizeo their gurative innovation as a form of appropriation,
.: rnic o\nrr
in the sense that artists ano critics tooay use the term, but that Fortuguese recog-
nizeo it in that way too ano felt its sting.
It is unfortunately not possible to recover what Manjaco wisheo to communi-
cate about their Fortuguese colonial rulers when they planteo these gures in local
chiey shrines. During the :qos ano :q6os, however, Manjaco inventeo praise
names for their shaoowy sepoys ano clerks, names beaten out on funeral orums,
which continue to be useo tooay for their contemporary analogues. One such name
was Whites Ears Are Whiter. It became a popular, in fact, generic praise name
for any of the Manjaco of the time who workeo in the colonial government. Fraise
names are aphorismsthey begin as frozen fragments of oialogue, often a recol-
lection of an insult ung in one oirection ano reclaimeo as a compliment. In this
case, so I was tolo by the chief of the funeral orummers in the village where I oio
elowork in the late :q8os, Whites Ears Are Whiter originateo as mockeryone
Manjaco accusing another, a low-level clerk, of having put on airs because he wore
a whites clothes or coulo write in the whites woros. In Manjaco, ears can
simply be a synecooche for appearance, but ears is also a metaphor for intelli-
gence. The clerk responoeo to the insult by claiming that the whites ears may be
whiterthat is, that a white will always look more white than any Manjacobut
that he, in fact, was smarter, more eoucateo, than his ostensible superiors. In short,
Whites Ears Are Whiter is at once a recognition of colonialisms inequities ano
an assertion that the conoition is temporary. Copying is more than mimicry, it is
ooing the same thing, only better.
41
If some Manjaco saw copying in that way, many Fortuguese saw in the kinos of
objects Manjaco copieo evioence of an enouring inferiority. They useo such ob-
jects to retrace the rhetoric of a timeless ,ano backwaro, Africa by employing aes-
thetic versions of the trope of the bao copy ano the nucleus apart. Thus in an arti-
cle calleo Fainting ano Sculpture in Fortuguese Guinea that appeareo in the
Bolcttm in :q6, Iernanoo Rogaoo Quintino, using a work from Soga Menoes as an
illustration, alloweo that local carvers who obey clearly Western conceptions be-
tray oexterity in their preparations.
42
But Quintino emphasizeo that such copying
of Western styles inverts a parallel borrowing by Western artists of African styles.
If the European artist mooernizes his art in being inspireo by the styles of African
art . . . then the African artist, his way paveo by the abanoonment of his archaic no-
tions, proouces banal works in the European style.
43
When Europeans copy the
cultural materials of colonial others they make originals. Their appropriation of the
work of others is evioence of Europeans intrinsic capacity to create. By contrast,
Africans copy because they have abanooneo or lost their cultural moorings ,their
archaic notions, ano the best they can proouce as a result are banal works.
Ior Quintino, this tenoency to copy was pregureo in traoitional culture it-
self. Artists, he wrote, habituateo to a blino subjection to patterns oictateo by mys-
tical belief, without the power to create, without the spirit of invention, search for
subjects in Western art ano proouce the cruoest imitationswithout formal beauty,
without expressiveness, without artistic value.
44
n\n corirs .
Nowaoays, Quintinos oichotomizing aesthetic might seem easy to oisparage
a reection of the safely oistant mentality of Salazarist Fortugalour bao copy,
as it were. Yet when I show slioes of Manjaco carvings to college stuoents, most of
them respono to them in ways that echo Quintino. Stuoents no the colon African
ancestor gures o-putting. What they see in the carveo gures of white men in
perfectly turneo out suits ano ties knotteo just right, is yet more proof of Africas
current inauthenticity, of natives who have succumbeo ,out of weakness, out of
slavish ignorance, to the charms of the West. I no it haro to change their minos
even after I have oetaileo the long history of such appropriation by Manjaco, of
its typicality: of appropriation as ethos.
45
Meanwhile, when I show them slioes of
the photographs of the nakeo African maioens the Fortuguese took, these nakeo
Africans are accepteo as appropriately authentic. Stuoents are often oisturbeo by
the marks of scarication that etch these womens booies. Someone will inevitably
ask how a young woman coulo stano ithow coulo she let someone cut into her
esh like that? But they oo not, as a rule, see the frame that makes the picture
the colonial power that forceo these women to expose themselves to the lens, the
colonial authority that imagineo that such exposures were scientically proouctive.
In short, stuoents often reao the two genres in much the same way as colonialist
woulo have. As with stuoents, so with other auoiences. There are authentic ano
inauthentic Africans, ano Africans who seem to imitate us are oiminisheo.
Thus it appears that the colonialist unoerstanoing of the bao copy persists as
a vernacular aesthetics of authenticity, ano that it unoerwrites a Western politics of
ioentity tooay.
46
Ior my stuoents, to copy is to conoemn oneself to inferiority, to copy
is to cheapen oneself, to turn oneself into a fake. In assuming this, many of my stu-
oents are ooubtless anxious that they themselves are unoriginal. But collectively they
also exhibit a kino of conoence, or even prioe, in the fact that they are inheritors
of a civilization characterizeo by a long ano varieo genealogy of creativity.
To such a peoigree, it seems almost impossible to aoo the sort of creativity Man-
jaco evince when they copy, when they prouoly let themselves be praiseo as Whites
Ears Are Whiter, when they borrow busts of Fortuguese governors in oroer to make
commemorative carvings for their aristocrats. But such people are cosmopolitans. In
a powerful critique of theories of culture in comparative stuoies of African ano
European philosophies, Faulin Hountonoji argues that for Africans, the right to be
unoriginal is an assertion of the right to be a fully enfranchiseo citizen of the worlo.
Why, asks Hountonoji, shoulo Africans be oenieo the right to appropriate Western
works ano ioeas, while Westerners still have the right to exteno their own curiosity
to all continents ano cultures without losing their ioentity?
47
Ior Hountonoji, cer-
tain ioeas happen to be empowering or liberating, ano to label them Western is a
mistake, anyone can take them ano use them. Gooo ioeas oo not belong exclusively
to any one culture, itself a spurious reication. Cultural values are like venereal
oiseases: they ourish here ano there, oevelop in one place rather than another ac-
coroing to whether the environment is more or less favorable, but this purely histor-
ical accioent cannot justify any claim to ownership or, for that matter, immunity.
48
. rnic o\nrr
I woulo suggest that Hountonojis eloquent argument woulo be congenial to the
Manjaco I came to know in my brief sojourn in Guinea-Bissau. Such Manjaco
are ano have been for a very long time quick to takefrom Fortuguese, from Bi-
jagos, from Naluwhatever they no currently useful, not because they look up
to others ano look oown on themselves, but because they know that the place that
everyone inhabits may inoeeo only be a periphery. It is this kino of casual oisre-
garo for the proprieties of a misplaceo authenticity that is the founoation for a
true cosmopolitanism. To copy is to create.
NOTES
I received funding for research in Guinea-Bissau (from August :q86 through February :q88)
and in Portuguese archives in Lisbon from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropolog-
ical Research, the National Science Foundation, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute at
the University of Virginia. I also received a grant from Mary Washington College to track
down the photographic imagery on the Portuguese side of the colonial encounter. I thank
the Urinque family for hosting me while I undertook research in the court-village of Catama.
And I thank Jennifer Nourse, Peter Huber, Deborah Kaspin, and Paul Landau for helpful
comments on versions of this essay.
:. For an excellent introduction to Guinea-Bissau in the revolution and after independ-
ence, see Joshua Forrest, Guinea-Bissau: Power, Conict, and Renewal in a West African Nation (Boul-
der, Colo.: Westview Press, :qq.).
.. Rui Pereira has begun the task of situating Portuguese ethnography in the context of
New State politics. He argues that anthropology was taken far more seriously in the New
State colonial administration than it ever was in similar regimes in Great Britain or France.
See Pereira, A antropologia aplicada na politica colonial portuguesa do Estado Novo, Re-
vista Internacional de Estudos Africanos (:q86), :q.o6; and id., Colonialismo e antropolo-
gia: A especulao simbolica, ibid. :o:: (:q8q): .6q8:.
. For an overview of colonial-era ethnographic eorts and their failure, see A. Teix-
eira da Mota, Inqurito etnogrco, organizado pelo governo da colnia no ano de . (Bissau, :q).
On several occasions between :q:8 and :q6, the central government tried to organize the
systematic collection of ethnographic data by devising questionnaires (based in part on con-
sultation with museum-based anthropologists in Portugal) and ordering local administra-
tors to compile reports based on them. The results were in general poor. Most adminis-
trators never bothered to submit reports. In :q:8, only one response survived long enough
to lodge itself in ocial archives. In :q., six responses were collected; only two (one on
the Manjaco) were published. In :q, one response became available in printed form to
ocials in the colony. Moreover, the questionnaires themselves covered such a broad range
of topics that the part dealing with local politics ended up as little more than footnotes in
the few reports that were submitted. It is mainly due to the singular eorts of the prolic
autodidact Antnio Carreira (see bibliography) that Manjaco entered the colonial-era
ethnographic record (see also the several entries for Artur Martins de Meireles).
. See Antnio Carreira, Documentos para a histria das ilhas de Cabo Verde e Rios de Guin:
Sculos XVII e XVIII (Lisbon: Antnio Carreira, :q8).
n\n corirs .
. A. Teixeira da Mota, Guin Portuguesa (Lisbon: Agencia Geral do Ultramar, :q), is
the best typology of the colonys ethnic groups.
6. Luis Antnio de Carvalho Viegas, Guin Portuguesa (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional,
:q6o), :.
. Ibid.
8. For more on Portuguese Guinea, see Luiz Nunes da Ponte, A campanha da Guin (.o8):
Breve narrativa (Porto: Empreza Guedes, :qoq); Carreira, Documentos; and Viegas, Guin Por-
tuguesa. R. S. Hammond, Portugal in Africa, .8...o: A Study in Uneconomic Imperialism (Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, :q66), argues that the Portuguese were motivated to
colonize Africa less by economic interest than by a sense of shame driven by inferiority
by nationalistic vergonha, explicit in Governor Honorio Barretos (:8) expos of colonial
weakness and corruption. Barreto, a negro with the soul of a white, became a revered
ancestor in the Salazarist version of Portugals civilizing mission in Africa, and his critique
was republished in :q to censure the Portuguese for their lack of vigor in colonizing
Guinea. Elsewhere, the vergonha theme was repeated by various governors, military ocers,
and visitors, bemoaning the tumble-down praa with its rusted cannon and drunken garri-
son; local chiefs visiting to collect tribute and wearing European clothes in improper ways,
savages who claimed to be the Portuguese senhores, or owners of the land, and so forth.
Tall, strong . . . they live a lazy life of orunkenness ano ootcrcot |pimps|. They only ght. It is
the women who work ano sustain the men. . . . It is the women who come to the praa to sell wa-
ter, fruit, eggs, milk. . . . The husbano waits at the gates of Bissau. . . . After receiving the money,
he goes to buy rum to get orunk, or buys gunpowoer, which he uses to celebrate his oeao or to
ght us,
wrote Frederico Pinheiro Chagas, Na Guin (.o,.o8) (Lisbon: J. F. Pinheiro, :q:o), xxx,
in a typical refrain.
q. The idea of the bad copy comes from V. Y. Mudimbe, The Surreptitious Speech:
Prsence africaine and the Politics of Otherness, .,.8, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :qq.). Paul Landau sums up a parallel colonialist aesthetic for missionaries who fos-
tered educated attitudes through their own teachings yet despised their students as infe-
rior poseurs, who wanted natives to dress but were put o when they dressed up. Such
people (the French called them volus) were dangerously hybrid (see Homi K. Bhaba, Of
Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse, October .8 [:q8]: :.)
rather than comfortably other (see id., The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial
Discourse, Screen ., 6 [:q8]: :66). [T]hey threatened a state of being that missionar-
ies held as natural and undivided, but which, strangely, could never quite be put into words,
Paul Landau observes in The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern
African Kingdom (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, :qq), 6.. An aesthetic sensibility such as
this is more completely revealed in images than it is glancingly perceived in textual asides.
For characterizations of the colonialist aesthetic, see Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow,
The Myth of Africa (New York: Library of Social Science, :q); Abdul Jan Mohamed,
Manichean Aesthetics (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, :q8); and id., The Econ-
omy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Dierence in Colonialist Literature,
Critical Inquiry :. (:q8): q8; Christopher Miller, Blank Darkness (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, :q8); and John Cullen Grueser, White on Black: Contemporary Literature about
Africa (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, :qq.).
:o. In the now classic typology of British and French versions of indirect rule, Michael
Crowder notes that while the British colonial ocer usually respected the [traditional] chief
. rnic o\nrr
as separate but equal . . . it was the educated African before whom he felt uneasy. He openly
expressed his contempt for the savvy boy or the trousered African. Crowder argues that
the British were more likely to have such an attitude than were the Frenchespecially French
colonial ocers steeped in a republican and modernist ethosbut those with more direct
experience under French rule would disagree. See Michael Crowder, Indirect RuleFrench
and British Style, Africa , (:q6): .o; V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Phi-
losophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, :q88); and Paulin
J. Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (:q8; .d ed., Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
::. See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, :q6), ::.
:.. For a sense of the early chaotic years of the postconquest colony, see Lady Dorothy
Mills, The Golden Land: A Record of Travel in West Africa (London: Duckworth, :q.q); Archibald
Lyall, Black and White Make Brown: An Account of a Journey to Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea
(London: Heinemann, :q8); Viegas, Guin Portuguesa; and Mota, Guin Portuguesa.
:. Henrique Pinto Rema, O Centro de Estudos da Guin Portuguesa lembra . anos
de existencia, Boletim Cultural da Guin Portuguesa .6, :o: (:q:): .:6:, is an inventory of all
the articles published in the journal in its rst . years.
:. For good analyses of the imagery of the ethnographic gaze, see Historical Photographs
in Anthropological Inquiry, ed. Joanna Cohen Sherer, special issue of Visual Anthropology ,
(:qqo); and Anthropology and Photography, .8o.:o, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, :qq.).
:. Lyall, Black and White Make Brown, .:.
:6. This was, for example, the argument Portugals most inuential anthropologist made:
Antonio Jorge Dias, Contribuio para o estudo da questo racial e da miscegenao,
Boletim da Sociedade de Geograa 8 (:q6): 6..
:. Hugo Adolf Bernatzik headed a research expedition to the colony and produced per-
haps the most beautiful collections of photography in the service of ethnography ever pub-
lished, in thiopen des westens: Forschungsreisen in Portugiesisch-Guinea (Vienna: L. W Seidel & Sohn,
:q).
:8. Artur Martins de Meireles, Mutilaes tnicas dos Manjacos, Publicaes do Centro de
Estudos da Guin Portuguesa: Memrias, .. (Bissau, :q6o), :.
:q. Viegas, Guin Portuguesa, :: ::.
.o. Ibid.
.:. Despite the constant reiterations that administrators needed to assemble detailed
ethnographies in order to run the colony better, the questions they asked slighted practical
issues. Their avor can be sampled from a few excerpts on Family Life from the :q6 in-
quiry in Motas Inqurito etnogrco, 88: Articial deowering before marriage. . . . The im-
portance conceded to virginity. The social position of the wife: slave and beast of pleasure
of the man, or free. . . . Indicate if there exists professional prostitution. . . . Degree in which
marriage alienates the liberty of the woman . . . punishments, payments of indemnities. . . .
Forms of marriage. . . . Individual marriagepolygamy and monogamy. Polygamy results
from social progression and is linked to the implantation of the notion of individual prop-
erty. The woman is the object of pleasure and of work, and therefore treated like any other
property: the more women one has the richer one is.
... Meireles, Mutilaes tnicas, :.
.. Ibid., ..
.. Ibid., .
n\n corirs .,
.. Ibid., 6.
.6. Bhabha, Of Mimicry and Man, :.6.
.. In the New State imaginary, prostitutes removed leg and armpit hair.
.8. See Eric Gable, Women, Ancestors, and Alterity among the Manjaco of Guinea-
Bissau, Journal of Religion in Africa .6, . (:qq6): :o.:. For the best descriptions and analy-
ses of such corporate groups in neighboring wet-rice farming societies, see Olga F. Linares,
Power, Prayer and Production: The Jola of Casamance, Senegal (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, :qq.), and Marc Schloss, The Hatchets Blood: Separation, Power, and Gender in Ehing Social
Life (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, :q8).
.q. Antnio Carreira, Mutilaes ethicas dos Manjacos, Boletim Cultural da Guin Por-
tuguesa .o (:q6:): ::, oers this speculative sketch on Uut, as well as photographs of some
of his work.
o. Ibid. Lampreias inventory of objects collected in the ethnographic museum con-
tains several such examples attributed to Suga (or Soga) Mendes. I have tracked down
some of these works in storage at the national Ethnological Museum in Lisbon, but not,
unfortunately, the very intriguing bust of Salazar. See Museu da Guin Portuguesa, Catlogo-
inventrio da Seco de Etnograa do Museu da Guin Portuguesa, por Jos D. Lampreia (Lisbon:
Junta de Investigaes do Ultramar, :q6.).
:. It is tempting to link the decline in the gurative innovation to the end of colonial-
ism. When Guinea-Bissau won its independence from Portugal in :q, the government also
abolished the traditional rulerships, treating them as exploitative relics of colonialism.
Moreover, they abolished the Manjaco title system and privatized lands once controlled
by the rulers and chiefs. Manjaco by and large accepted, even applauded, these mandates.
See Eric Gable, The Decolonization of Consciousness: Local Skeptics and the Will to be
Modern in a West African Village, American Ethnologist .., . (:qq): ...
.. See Antnio Carreira, Simbolos, ritualistas, e ritualismos anima-eticistas na Guin
Portuguesa, Boletim Cultural da Guin Portuguesa :6, 6 (:q6:): oo, and Gable, Women,
Ancestors, and Alterity, for more thorough discussions of the iconography of Manjaco
ancestor carvings.
. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Is the Post- in Post Modernism the Post- in Postcolonial?
Critical Inquiry : (:qq:): .
. As I have argued in The Decolonization of Consciousness, Manjaco are cultur-
ally polyglot and pragmatic, in a way modern, and this is their tradition. For another
manifestation of Manjaco responses to modernity, see Eric Gable, A Secret Shared: Field-
work and the Sinister in a West African Village, Cultural Anthropology :., . (:qq): .:.
. Hountondji, African Philosophy.
6. Christopher Miller, Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, :q8), :o.
. See, e.g., Bennetta Jules-Rosette, The Messages of Tourist Art: An African Semiotic System
in Comparative Perspective (New York: Plenum Press, :q8); Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized
Places (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q8q); Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Painting in Zaire:
From the Invention of the West to the Representation of the Social Self, in Africa Explores:
Twentieth-Century African Art, ed. Susan Vogel (New York: Center for African Art; Munich:
Prestel, :qq:), ::; and Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture
and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
.8 rnic o\nrr
8. See, e.g., Herbert Cole, Icons: Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, :q8q).
q. We tend to ventriloquize our own desire for subversion, as Graham Huggan argues
in Colonialism, Anthropology, Mimesis, Cultural Critique 8 (:qq8), his critique of Michael
Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity (New York: Routledge, :qq). Fritz Kramer, The Red Fez: Art and
Spirit Possession in Africa (New York: Verso, :qq) argues similarly against Julius Lips, The Sav-
age Hits Back (:q; New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, :q66), the originator of the the-
ory that colon statues represent a critical satire. Kramer stresses that such African portraits
of whites are not caricatures but eorts at mimetic mastery. Paul Stoller, Embodying Colonial
Memories: Spirit Possession, Power and the Hauka in West Africa (New York: Routledge, :qq), qo,
also criticizes Taussig for stressing mimesis as critique, arguing that colon images such as
the Igbo mbari Taussig discusses were a mimetic attempt to master whiteness . . . a way of
tapping into circuits of colonial and postcolonial power. Yet Stoller ends up concluding that
embodied oppositions to whiteness in West Africa took on many forms: armed rebellions,
individual deance, remarkable ruses, mocking mascarades, and mimicking plastic arts
(ibid). In short mastery (one way of imagining copying) migrates into mimicry.
o. One of the destabilizing questions is audience reception. As Christopher Steiner
argues in his wonderfully informative ethnography of contemporary primitive art pro-
duction in the Ivory Coast, African Art in Transit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
:qq), :, the colon gure is now an art object because its very ownership signies the reap-
propriation of Africa and is thus prized as an image which pays homage to the conquest of
the continent. As such, it is perhaps the ultimate postmodern creation. In Steiners esti-
mation, colon gures do not achieve their value or authenticity by an emphatic denial of
foreign contact but instead are interpreted by their buyers as a celebration of modern
Western expansionism. See also Philip R. Ravenhill, Baule Statuary Art: Meaning and
Modernization, Working Papers in the Traditional Arts, and 6 (Philadelphia: Institute for the
Study of Human Issues, :q8o).
:. Here I am following Huggan, Colonialism, Anthropology, Mimesis.
.. Fernando Rogado Quintino, A pintura e a escultura na Guin Portuguesa, Bole-
tim Cultural da Guin Portuguesa :q, (:q6): .8:.
. Ibid., .8.
. Ibid., .88.
. For example, the Manjaco gurative innovation in carving is anticipated by a simi-
lar innovation in Manjaco textile design. Well before the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Manjaco weavers created the tradition (see Appiah, Is the Post- in Post Modernism
the Post- in Postcolonial?) of incorporating abstract North African inspired motifs into elab-
orately woven textiles for a thriving local interethnic market. Since the early twentieth cen-
tury, Manjaco weavers have increasingly incorporated gurative imagerybottles, ags,
shipsinto these expensive prestige textiles. See Antnio Carreira, Panaria Cabo-Verdiano-
Guinense: Aspectos histricos e scio-econmicos (Lisbon: Junto de Investigaes do Ultramar, :q68).
6. See Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places.
. Hountondji, African Philosophy, xi.
8. Ibid., :.
n\n corirs .
Conclusion
Signifying Power in Africa
Deborah D. Kaspin
The preceoing chapters oescribe several roles playeo by visual images in the polit-
ical lanoscapes of Africa. We have focuseo on images, not because they represent
a uniquely ecacious meoium of expression, but because they compress complex
intentions in economical forms, ano because, as Faul Lanoau notes in his intro-
ouction, they often move more easily than language across cultural bounoaries.
Thus visuals are not simply meaningful but oiversely meaningful accoroing to the
variety of their social ano historical contexts. By concentrating on images, then, we
can concretely trace the movement of cultural artifacts across social circles ano
situations ano assess the changes in meaning that accompany them. This means,
too, that our project is not simply about visuality, but about cultural contact ano
political encompassmentpeoples ano powerengenoereo by European expan-
sion in Africa.
I shall concluoe this book, then, by reecting on the cultural transformations our
authors have oescribeo. This means shifting the oiscussion from images specically
to signifying practice more broaoly, ano from particular signs to the fabrics of mean-
ing they presuppose. It also means giving special attention to those cultural meoia
that normalize the polity in the public imagination. Thus the issue at hano is how the
signs of imperialism are reao ano reformulateo by its various subjects.
MYTH AND IMAGE
To echo issues raiseo in Lanoaus introouction, ano to embrace the range of ois-
ciplinary backgrounos the preceoing chapters represent, I no a theoretical point
of oeparture in the culture critic Rolano Barthes. Beginning in the :qos, inspireo
by the American logician Charles Sanoers Feirce, Barthes useo semiotic theory to
interrogate Irench popular culture ano political consciousness.
1
He oescribes signs
as vehicles of social values ano juogments, conveying meanings that are public,
:o
irreoucible, ano morally freighteo. They not only communicate ,ano conceal, in-
formation ano intentions but oistinguish virtue from sin, frieno from foe, worth
from worthlessness. Barthes goes on to oemonstrate the ubiquity of signs in every-
oay life by exposing the ioeological subtexts of commonplace things. He writes, for
example, about the following image of empire:
I am at the barbers, and a copy of Paris-Match is oered to me. On the cover, a young
Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably xed on a fold
of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I
see very well what it signies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons,
without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her ag, and that there is no
better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this
Negro in serving his so-called oppressors.
2
This portrait of the African as Irench patriot elicits nationalist sentiments by
juxtaposing a few highly chargeo ano contraoictory imagesthe African soloier,
the Irench ag, the military saluteano wrapping the African other in the moral
fabric of the Irench nation-state. In so ooing, the picture recoros, falsies, ano
mysties the Irench imperial lanoscape at one ano the same time. While it accu-
rately reects the racial oiversity of colonial Irance, it implies that national loyal-
ties unify this oiverse population, notwithstanoing the rebellions of African colonies
against Irench rule erupting at the same time. Ano it conceals its ioeological inec-
tions in the seeming objectivity of photography, appearing to the observers eye as
the benign oepiction of a simple social fact.
Barthes refers to this type of sign as myth, because it communicates a vision
of the worlo ano worlo oroer beyono the ostensibly neutral information it con-
veys. Similar myths, he argues, saturate popular culture in lms, aovertisements,
entertainments, cuisine, ano so forth, bringing national projects into the realm of
mainstream consumption. By circulating wioely ano innocuously through public
life, they naturalize imperial interests in the consciousness of the masses, erooing
the oiversity of ioentities ano outlooks within a common bourgeois mythology
this even as the Irench empire oisintegrates.
3
Barthess semiology provioes a useful umbrella for this volume. Our authors
share his interest in consumer gooos as myths, in the commonplace as the politi-
cal, ano in the seemingly innocuous images that normalize imperial vistas in pop-
ular consciousness. At the same time, they complicate his concerns by aooressing
the frontiers of empire, as well as its center, ano the arc of its history, as well as its
eno. Thus in eect they oescribe bourgeois mythology in the making, as colonial-
ism creates new myth makers ano brings new cultural repertoires into the polity.
Inoeeo, they confront not a single bourgeois mythology, but, minimally, two
Africans ano Europeansano explore both the fragmentations ano consolioa-
tions of public culture wrought by imperial expansion.
Arguably, then, our collective purpose is a kino of mytho-history, one that traces
the collisions, collusions, ano transformations of mythologies as imperial projects
coxcrtsiox: sioxirvixo rovrn ix \rnic\ :.
unfolo over time. This means following two paths of analysis. Iirst, our authors
reveal the social interests ano preoicaments expresseo in mythic form, ano, in so
ooing, problematize Barthess notion of a homogenizing bourgeois mythology. Ac-
coroingly, myths serve the interests of empire, publicly legitimating the ocial ois-
tributions of power ano privilege by making them appear commonsensical ,Burke,
Lanoau, Goroon, Hooeir, Skotnes, Gable,. Myths also provioe the oiscursive me-
oia for challenging empires, using public fora ano private spaces to scrutinize the
instruments of authority ano to expose hypocrisy in high places ,Hunt, Olaniyan,
Skotnes,. More ambiguously ano, perhaps most commonly, myths serve very per-
sonal interests, as oroinary citizens internalize ano recast the signs of oomination,
ano at the same time, resist ano reform the circumstances of their oisempower-
ment ,Mustafa, Girshick, Goroon,.
Secono, our authors show how mythological systems fare as systems when po-
litical history raoically alters the character of the material worlo. Sometimes
mythologies accommooate new elements ano environments, while retaining their
interior logic as semiotic systems ,Bunn, Lanoau, Drewal, Hooeir, Gable,. Some-
times they give way in their entirety ano are replaceo by new mythologies along
with new political economies ,Goroon, Skotnes,. Ano sometimes they unoergo fun-
oamental transformations, retaining aspects of their original character while revalu-
ing their elements in new ano surprising ways ,Hunt, Olaniyan, Mustafa, Girshick,.
In other woros, mythologies aojust to historical situations, ano vice versa.
We are interesteo, then, in both the human preoicaments that seek mythologi-
cal expression, ano the systemic transformations that take place in booies of myth
as political economies are transformeo. These issues oefy simplication ano gen-
eralization, given the several cultural histories that colonialism brought together,
ano the ambiguous oistributions of power that colonial ano national states have
wrought. Still, the many insights oereo by the preceoing chapters may be sys-
tematizeo by aooressing the following problem: the fate of bourgeois mythologies
as empires rise ano fall.
MYTHOLOGICAL REPRODUCTIONS:
AFRICA OBSERVES EUROPE . . .
Although colonial ano postcolonial stuoies tooay oo not often examine the cul-
tural elements of precolonial Africa that surviveo Western encroachment, the pre-
ceoing chapters oescribe several African mythologies that have accommooateo
icons of ano from foreigners without oisrupting the myth systems qua systems.
Henry Drewals chapter on Mami Wata is a case in point. He begins with the snake
charmer of European popular culture, a seouctive woman of the Orient who can
bewitch even the oeaoliest of creatures. When her lithographic image traveleo to
Africa, she inspireo a new set of mythological elaborations baseo on local concep-
tions of femininity ano power. Like her European counterpart, she is a mysterious
:: nrnon\n n. k\srix
other, but as an African sign, she rises from the waters oepths to bring fertility
ano wealth to her oevotees. An image of exotic femininity for both Europeans ano
Africans, she connotes eroticism to the rst ano abunoance to the latter, inoicative
of the oierent fabrics of meaning into which she is woven.
Drewals analysis of cultural oiusion reminos us that the impetus for cultural
change ooes not arise from the ow of foreign gooos ano persons into new places.
Rather mythologies can absorb new elements without funoamentally altering their
internal logic, since the value of novelty lies in its familiarity as a mythic type: even
the stranger is a familiar type founo in well-traveleo lanoscapes of selves ano
others. Eric Gable makes a similar point in his stuoy of colonial Guinea-Bissau.
During Fortuguese rule, Manjaco artisans began to proouce statuary of white colo-
nial ocers to incluoe among the ancestor gurines oecorating important graves.
Colonial whites ,ano Gables own stuoents, saw the new portraiture as evioence
that Manjaco were seouceo by Western culture ano were rapioly losing their own.
Gable, however, argues that the appropriation of outsioers is, among Manjaco, a
long-stanoing cultural practice, whereby icons of foreigners are valueo accoroing
to local matrices of meaning. Specically, the mortuary gures represent powerful
allies, who protect the lineage ano ensure its ourability across time ano genera-
tion. Accoroingly, it is the Manjaco who oomesticateo the European ano not the
other way arouno.
By illustrating the capacity of African mythologies to encompass novelty, Drewal
ano Gable oemonstrate their intrinsic elasticity as meaning systems, whose logical
integrity ooes not oepeno on their isolation ano insulation. Evioently, social change,
like cultural meaning, is in the eye ,or myth, of the beholoer. Faula Ben-Amos Gir-
shick explores the ip sioe of this proposition, that mythologies generate their own
transformations accoroing to the social locations of their practitioners. Thus arti-
san guilos serving the Benin royal court relieo on a conventional iconography of
power ,the front-facing pose, the towering gure, the animals symbolizing magical
power, ano so forth, to proouce highly reaoable images of kingly charisma. Their
work was very oierent from that of the Omaoa carvers, who also learneo their craft
in the kings court, but sought their clients among his suboroinates ano common-
ers. Using ano abusing the iconography of guilo art, Omaoa art sought to oimin-
ish the king, elevate his inferiors, ano rioicule the Europeans who proclaimeo them-
selves the new rulers of the realm. Two artistic traoitions thus sprang from the same
mythological repertoire ano oevelopeo in tanoem, one conservative, the other in-
novative, one the instrument of the state, the other of its competitors ano critics.
By attesting to the vitality of African myth systems, these three chapters also
aoro us a glimpse of the mythological universe that Europeans entereo ano how
they were perceiveo, at least in West Africa, early in the colonial era. Outsioers in
all their guisesas men, mermaios, or wilo beastswere potential sources of
power with positive ano negative implications: they coulo bring fertility ano
strength, or sterility ano oeath. The African might hope, therefore, not to vanquish
coxcrtsiox: sioxirvixo rovrn ix \rnic\ :
the foreigner, but to secure his or her allegiance ano to obtain this alien power as
an aspect of ones own. Thus just as the Benin king claimeo the leoparo as his an-
imal ally, a chief or merchant might claim a European in oroer to enhance his
stature among his rivalsunless, as Omaoa artwork suggests, the European squan-
oereo his cultural capital by behaving boorishly. Outsioers acquireo aooitional
signicance if they were associateo with water, as illustrateo by the crocooile fa-
miliars ano muosh legs attributeo to Benin kings. Both Mami Wata ano European
colonial ocers came from across or within the ocean, an other worlo whence
life comes ano whither it returns. The ocean was the semantic equivalent of the
heavens, the grave, ano the spirit worlo, all interchangeable as other worlos in
the polarities of self ano other, substance ano spirit, life ano oeath. Life in
this worlo coulo be enhanceo only through ones connections to these other worlos,
hence encounters with mysterious strangers were as necessary as they were risky.
. . . AND EUROPE OBSERVES AFRICA
Although many examples of mythological reproouction can be founo in mooern
Africa, they are sometimes more evioent when the topic is not African but Euro-
pean sensibilities. By this I mean the propensity of Europeans to represent Africa
accoroing to mythological schemas that preoate European explorations there. Ior
well over a millennium, the worlo in European imagination was oivisible into
realms of light ano oark, Christenoom ano heathenoom, civilization ano wiloer-
ness. When Europe colonizeo Africa, the African became the newest gure in a fa-
miliar lanoscape, one in which a goolike, enlighteneo, masculine, ano aoult self
is juogeo against a monstrous, backwaro, feminine, ano chiloish other.
4
The pre-
ceoing chapters oescribe many reproouctions of this olo typology in European oe-
pictions of Africa ano Africans ,Lanoau, Burke, Mustafa, Skotnes, Hooeir, Gor-
oon, ano Gable,.
Faul Lanoaus chapter on colonial-era photography, for instance, shows how a
new technology of image making founo its aesthetic parameters in this olo mythol-
ogy, notwithstanoing its purporteo capacity to recoro just the facts. Taking its se-
mantic cues from big game hunting, the camera bore witness to European mas-
tery of the African wiloerness by shooting the exotic creatures who inhabiteo it.
Naturalists exploiteo this new tool, since it facilitateo their own eorts to oevise ano
oocument taxonomies of the animalincluoing the human animalkingoom for
encyclopeoias ano museums. Ano colonial aoministrators followeo on the heels of
the naturalists, seeking typologies of the tribes they sought to rule, ano turning to
photography for the iconic images that coulo oistinguish one tribe from another.
Ior all these photography acionaoos, the cameras value lay not only in its ease of
operation but also in its apparent objectivity. Ano yet photographic images were
as susceptible to mythological imaginings as painting or poetry. Thus the eort to
recoro social types was forever compromiseo by the impulse to separate the civi-
lizeo from the uncivilizeo, the enlighteneo from the nave, the hygienic from the
: nrnon\n n. k\srix
ruoe, in short, the fully human from the largely bestial. In European hanos, the
camera woulo relentlessly seek out those Africans who t the primitive type, ano
whose physical featureslike unusual genitalia or scarieo booiesevokeo their
anity with the wiloerness.
The ourability of this mythology was oue in part to the fact that its principal
consumers were in Europe, where the ioeal woulo never be juogeo against the ac-
tual. Here Africa entereo European consciousness only by artice, giving myth mak-
ers, from Henri Rousseau to Eogar Rice Burroughs, full rein to oesign Africa ac-
coroing to popular sensibilities. Often these mythic proouctions were oriven oirectly
by their marketability, as reecteo in the ability of Itrg Iorg to pay for itself many
times over. But sometimes they were contriveo in oroer to enlist public interest in
imperial projects. This was the case with the Irench colonial exhibitions oescribeo
by Catherine Hooeir. These multimeoia proouctions took up several city blocks,
the sheer scale of the exhibition impressing the public with the breaoth ano
granoeur of the empire it recreateo. Within its connes, Africa ano other exotic
lanos were portrayeo accoroing to the conventions of theater ano the iconogra-
phies of primitivism with which Irench spectators were alreaoy familiar. Here so-
ciological accuracy was sacriceo for mythological type by oisplaying only those
cultural practices that suggesteo no European inuences ano evokeo the simple,
happy tribesman living close to nature. The exhibitions were thus able to assert Eu-
ropeans cultureo superiority over the fascinating but chilolike savage, while plac-
ing Africans within an evolutionary tableau vis-a-vis other exotic peoples. In so
ooing, they establisheo the moral rectituoe of colonialism by enlisting the specta-
tors as subjects in its outwaro-looking paternalism.
European myths of Africa were easily esheo out in Europe, where their ele-
mental signs were alreaoy familiar ano only their popular appeal was at stake. They
were much haroer to esh out in Africa, not onlyor even primarilybecause the
oiscrepancies between the mythical ano the actual were too apparent, but because
here the colonial enterprise itself was on the line. Ior the colonizers, bourgeois
myths provioeo the mooels ano shoreo up the resolve to create, not facsimiles of
the wiloerness in Europe, but a factual Europe in the wiloerness. This meant bring-
ing mythic mooels to life in ways that were simultaneously oramatic ano munoane.
Davio Bunn oescribeo the urgency of this enterprise in evocative oetail. South
Africas white settlers treateo the frontier grave as the physical ano moral bouno-
ary between the Christian community ano the pagan wiloerness. Death was an op-
portunity not only to commeno the soul to Christ but to reoraw the line between
the saveo ano the savage. Ano while settlers useo the churchyaro to oirect a moral
lesson inwaro, soloiers useo the unfenceo frontier to oirect a complementary les-
son outwaro. To whit, the fallen soloier markeo a step in an ongoing march to wrest
the wiloerness from savages ano to bring it, but not them, into the embrace of
Christenoom.
So essential was this imagery to European oomination that it was replicateo in
at least one national monument of white-ruleo South Africa. This is the Voortrekker
Monument in Fretoria, which commemorates the victory of Afrikaners over Zu-
lus at Blooo River, an event reao by Afrikaner nationalists as a sign that Goo in-
tenoeo whites to win the lano from blacks. The monument is a large, block-shapeo
builoing reminiscent of a tomb or crypt, whose walls contain not the booily re-
mains but the sculpteo images of heroic frontiersmen ano -women. It is encircleo
by a low wall on which a bas-relief of ox wagons ano pioneers forms the loogct
that protecteo white settlers from black warriors at Blooo River. The monument
thus oepicts not only the battle but a circle of salvation arouno the Afrikaner na-
tion, as the laager wall separates the souls of the heroic oeao from the Kaers
,Kars, from Arabic, inoel,, who are forever banisheo from the kingoom.
5
As these monuments to European oomination attest, the contrast between civ-
ilizeo selves ano savage others is starkly orawn when the conquest of the wiloer-
ness is meant to be absolute, as it was in South Africa. Moreover, once the conquest
is complete, it is possible to conscript Africans into the role of the savage, making
the European mythology that much more convincing. This is the case with south-
ern Africas Bushman population, whose place in the colonial imagination is re-
counteo by Robert Goroon ano Fippa Skotnes. Ferhaps the longest-suering vic-
tims in African history, tooays Bushmen have founo their way into the global
economy by playing the part of pure primitives for lmmakers, photographers,
ano even ethnographers accoroing to a Western mythology of pristine Africa.
Goroons chapter oescribes at length the role playeo by Western cinematogra-
phers in capturing Bushmen in an iconography of primitivism. Serving the in-
terests of tourism ano the South African state, the prototypical lm Bushman repli-
cates the cultural politics of Hooeirs colonial exhibitions, a prototype that is well
known to ,ano cherisheo by, countless moviegoers from the hit lm Tlc Goo Mot
Bc Cto,.
6
In an artful interweaving of comeoy ano sentimentality, the movie shows
the graceful little people of the Kalahari living in paraoisiacal isolation, far from
the stresses of civilization. The artice of the imagery is exposeo, in turn, by the
oocumentary lm ^!ot, Tlc Stot, of o !Iorg 1omor.
7
Here we learn that the South
African Defence Iorce restricteo mobile Bushman groups to a xeo settlement,
where they hao insucient resources to sustain a livelihooo. These Bushmen were
in oesperate straits when the makers of Goo came to their community to fashion
an image of Eoen in the oesert. Acting a part in a movie oereo a path out of
poverty, at least for a few, making Goo only one episooe in a long history of con-
quest ano conscription.
The brutality behino the making of Goo is part ano parcel of the tragic point
that Skotnes makes, that the myth of the living Bushman oepenoeo on the ois-
memberment of actual Bushmen. Thus, while Goroon oescribes the proouction
ano persuasiveness of celluloio images, Skotnes shifts our gaze to the booy itself,
whose parts ano casts are preserveo in the timeless venue of museum collections.
In so ooing, she also shows how Bushmen were oierently imagineo as colonial his-
tory unfoloeo. During perioos of territorial expansion, whites saw Bushmen as sav-
ages who shoulo be hunteo oown like vermin to clear the way for civilization. But
: nrnon\n n. k\srix
once the territory was securely in their hanos, ano the Bushman population oeci-
mateo, the innocent, but exotic primitive replaceo the savage as the oominant sign
in a mythology of benign governance.
MYTH-EDUCATING AFRICANS
It shoulo come as no surprise that the most vivio portraits of savage Africa are pro-
ouceo where settlers most aggressively aovance ano maintain their territorial claims.
But Europeans oio not uniformly share this territorial ambition or the belief that
Africans were irreoeemably alien. Ior many, Africans were the newest members of
their moral universe ano were to be enlisteo in its mythologies of power ano or-
oer. Thus their mission was not to force Europe onto the wiloerness but to oraw
Africa into civilization, a task that requireo African participation as political sub-
jects ano as Christians.
Colonial histories are replete with examples of the myth-eoucation of Africans.
8
Christian missions, for instance, not only provioeo religious teachings but also ran
primary schools, clinics, ano mooel farms for the Africans they hopeo to convert. As
Jean ano John Comaro oetail, Methooist missionaries not only oereo religious in-
struction but oemonstrateo a range of cultural practices, from lanoscaping to lit-
eracy, to the Tswana among whom they liveo ano preacheo.
9
Ano as Nancy Hunt
oescribes in this volume, Catholic missionaries useo a variety of tools, incluoing
cartoons, to instruct Congolese in the proprieties not only of worship but of mar-
ital conouct ano personal hygiene.
Similarly, many aoministrative policies imposeo European cultural habits upon
Africans in the belief that this woulo improve their quality of life. In Nyasalano,
for instance, agricultural policy forceo Africans to aoopt a quintessentially British
aesthetic of lano usesingle crops planteo in straight, parallel linespurporteoly
to improve crop proouction.
10
Ano in Zimbabwe, as Timothy Burke reports, pub-
lic health ocers ano commercial aovertisers useo lms ano cartoons to teach a
new booy aesthetic in the name of health ano hygiene. In similar fashion, Africans
throughout the continent learneo elements of European work culture, from clock
watching to collar starching, as they fullleo the monetary obligations imposeo on
them through taxation ano lano ano labor policy.
Europeans throughout colonial Africa set out to civilize the savage, ano yet
this eort was fraught with ambiguities. Only by preserving the mythological sta-
tus quo coulo Europeans claim authority over Africa, for by civilizing Africans,
they were grooming their own replacements as rulers: elevating the other nec-
essarily meant oiminishing the self, like the king who rears his own usurper. Tim-
othy Burke explores this oilemma in his oiscussion of white ambivalence about
African eoucation. On the one hano, colonial teachers ano marketing agents useo
pictures to inculcate Western practices in Africans, on the assumption that Africans
coulo ano shoulo be civilizeo. Yet these same whites suspecteo that Africans were
unable to reao the images correctly, given incapacities of perception rooteo in their
coxcrtsiox: sioxirvixo rovrn ix \rnic\ :,
essential nature as primitives: the intellectual sophistication involveo in symbolic
thought was simply beyono their ken. White farmers, in contrast, feareo that
Africans were not only eoucable but too intoxicateo with European achievements
to remain content with their status as savages. Thus these whites believeo that eo-
ucators ano aovertisers were giving Africans the means ano motives to rise above
their station ano overturn the status hierarchies on which the settlers oepenoeo.
As Eric Gable points out, this kino of ambivalence is the inevitable ioeological
by-proouct of colonialism. European empires neeoeo the primitive as their essen-
tial justication ano therefore saw what francophone colonizers calleo the colo as
both their best ambition ano worst nightmare, for the westernizeo African meant
that colonialism hao succeeoeo ano that European preeminence was over. To pre-
serve the colonial enoeavor, then, volus woulo always be regaroeo as poor imi-
tations ,bao copies, of whites ano, therefore, the exceptions to alterity that proveo
the rule.
11
Only then coulo Europeans create oases of authentic civilization sur-
rounoeo by what remaineo, at least by comparison, a savage lano. Then, too, signs
of savage Africaoecorative masks, animal skin hearthrugs, woven baskets, ano
so forthcoulo selectively enter European homes as evioence that the oomestica-
tion of the wiloerness was unoer way, but forever incomplete.
12
AFRICAN APPROPRIATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
While Europeans contemplateo the risks ano benets of civilizing Africans, Africans
contemplateo the risks ano benets of associating with Europeans, given their own
cultural preoilection to seek out strangers ano obtain the valuables they might oer.
But if each was orawn to the other, it was neither for the same reasons nor with
the same unoerstanoings. Africans evioently oio not, for example, share the Euro-
peans oesire to refashion the other, either in their own image or as their mytho-
logical opposite. Many, in fact, were more than willing to mimic these strangers,
whether in aomiration or revulsion, in celebration or satire. On the face of it, the
African propensity to imitate complementeo the European impulse to acculturate
ano may have persuaoeo some colonizers that their impact on Africans was con-
sioerable. But imitation, like missionization, is culturally motivateo ano cannot be
taken at face value as evioence of conversion or assimilation. The more pertinent
issue is how Africans put European cultural materials to their own uses.
Certainly, many political myth-signs in Africaas elsewhere in the postcolo-
nial Thiro Worlowere introouceo ouring colonial rule ano are reproouceo to-
oay as the insignia of inoepenoent nations: the high-ying ag, the military salute,
ano the presioential motorcaoe are all elements of a national political culture that
Europe brought to Africa along with the notion ,ano necessity, of the nation-state.
13
Notwithstanoing their ioeological convenience to the Irench public, African sol-
oiers really oio salute the Irench Tricolore, preguring their many successors ano
cultural cousins who salute the ags of inoepenoent Africa tooay.
14
More com-
plexly, European ano American missionaries introouceo Christianities to Africa
:8 nrnon\n n. k\srix
unoer the aegis of oomesticating the savage ano left behino a legacy of myth signs
that connoteo civility, mooernity, ano authority. Accoroing to Lanoau, for instance,
nineteenth-century Ngwato royals saw Christs kingoom ano their own as isomor-
phic ano therefore requireo their subjects to convert to Christianity or risk oenun-
ciation as enemies of the state.
15
Frotestantism is similarly implicateo in contem-
porary African class structures. In Malawian professional circles, I continually meet
oevout Fresbyterians who atteno church every Sunoay, recite grace at every meal,
ano oecry non-Christians as backwaro, immoral, ano potentially oangerous. In the
political arena ano the private home, the city ano the farm, African Christians ioen-
tify faith with virtue ano achievement, paganism with sin ano incivility, ano un-
oerstano salvationin this worlo or the nextto be the oestiny of the observant.
Still, if Africans have mastereo European cooes of value, they have also rein-
venteo them to reect ano amplify their own concerns ano circumstances. Huoita
Mustafas chapter is a case in point. She begins by reviewing the conventions of por-
traiture that European photographers brought to Senegal, conventions that sepa-
rateo civility from savagery ano rulers from ruleo. She then recounts how, in Dakar
,the Faris of Africa,, these conventions came to connote sophistication ano ruoe-
ness to urban Africans as they fashioneo their social personae. A colonial represen-
tational style thus informeo the portraiture of their urban Senegalese clientele by
local photographers, with, however, a crucial revision: Africans rejecteo the beauti-
ful savage ano insteao aoopteo the postures of haute culture. Ultimately, weooing
albums became prizeo oocuments of Senegalese cosmopolitanism, oepicting sub-
jects who are clotheo, rich, ano sophisticateo, rather than nakeo, poor, ano simple.
The oevelopment of a local inoustry in portrait photography thus accompanieo
,ano recoroeo, both the inoigenization of a European mythology ano a shift in its
frame of reference. Civilization ano savagery came to imply less the oistance be-
tween Europeans ano Africans than the oierences between categories of
Africansbetween the urban ano the rural, the auent ano the inoigent, lifes suc-
cesses ano its failures. The European virtually oisappeareo from the semantic set,
whose contrasting images reecteo class strata ano social aspiration more often
than race.
Nancy Hunt makes a similar point in her chapter on Congolese cartoons. She
begins with the gurative styles of Hergs Ttrttr oo Corgo ano follows their oevel-
opment through several generations of Belgian ano African cartoonists. Many of
the stylistic conventions remaineo constant, such as the mischievous twins, the
oanoieo volu, even the thick-lippeo blackface of minstrelsy. But as the artists
perspective changeo, the sympathetic self was ioentieo in new gures ano opposeo
to a new array of others. In MFilas M/o oro Mpto, for instance, the heroes are
two oelinquent black boys, while their antagonist is the sometimes minstrelesque
volu. Europeans, on the other hano, are rarely oepicteo at all, reecting their rel-
ative unimportance in the artists imagination. Ior him, the signicant selves ano
others are not opposite races, but opposite classes, ages, ano ethnicitiesneighbors
in a worlo where white people rarely enter the elo of vision.
African image makers became equally aoept with the civilizeo sophisticate ano
the uncivilizeo primitive. This is perplexing, for while the emblems of civilization
were abunoant everywhere in colonial Africa, those of primitivism were not ano
hao to be contriveo by the photographers ano lmmakers who poseo African sub-
jects for the postcaros, picture books, ano popular movies that circulateo among
Europeans. Ano yet, oespite its artice ano its circumscribeo spheres of consump-
tion, the mythic primitive was taken up by African image makers, such as the en-
trepreneurs who set out to market icons of tribal culture to those who sought an
encounter with the exotic. Like the actors Goroon oescribes, these businessmen
ano -women honeo their skills as performers ano artisans accoroing to the mythol-
ogy of authentic Africana that their ,primarily white, customers expecteo to no.
I saw this enterprise close at hano when I workeo as a lecturer for a tour group
in Kenya ano Tanzania. I was struck by the extent to which local culture was
moloeo to t the requirements of the tourist traoe. Nothing entereo the tourist mar-
ket in original form, rather, cultural artifacts were reviseo, even wholly inventeo,
to appeal to foreign buyers. Tribal oances were choreographeo for the stage ano
performeo at museums, cafes, ano hotels where spectators coulo watch in com-
fortable anonymity. Bus tours were available to Maasai villages, where the family
patriarch lectureo on local culture, while his wives solo home crafts. Ano numer-
ous colorful tribesmen appeareo on the highways throughout the oay, selling
photo-ops to passing motorists. All of these images were replicateo in the many
postcaros, books, ano vioeos on sale in hotels ano gift shops, forming a hermeneu-
tic circle that embraceo buyers ano sellers, Europeans ano Africans alike.
16
The tourist inoustry is not, however, the best evioence that the prototypical prim-
itive has been embraceo within African social imaginations. Ior this we must look
at cultural transactions among ano between Africans to see if savages gure as per-
vasively ano complexly as sophisticates in their own oiscourses of ioentity. Hunt
suggests that they oo, as illustrateo by MFilas cartoon buoon Monoko, who is
both the pretentious volu ano the black-faceo fool, ano by Lukembos school-
teacher, an apelike savage who speaks broken Irench to his more urbane pupils.
In both cases, the savage within the wannabe is exposeo by youngstersrascals
in one instance, sophisticates in anotherwho, because of their youth, must be
true to themselves, ano whose authenticity reects baoly on the artice of aoults.
But perhaps the more pointeo re-creations of these contrasting images are oe-
scribeo by Tejumola Olaniyan in his chapter on Akinola Lasekan. A Nigerian na-
tionalist, Lasekan orew political cartoons to fuel public interest in the inoepeno-
ence movement ano oevelopeo a pictography of social types that pitteo a
muscular Nigerian nationalism against a corpulent British colonialism. These
gures orew, in part, on the mythology of savagery ano civilization, by juxtapos-
ing a semi-nuoe African ano an elaborately oresseo European. At the same time,
they inverteo the political values encooeo in that mythology, by portraying the
African as robust, virile, aoult ano virtuous, ano the European as abby, weak, chilo-
ish, ano immorally oepenoent. Lasekan founo an icon for Nigerian nationalism
o nrnon\n n. k\srix
by giving the unoercivilizeo African a positive inection in pointeo contrast to his
acutely civilizeo oppressor.
By making use of a European bourgeois mythology, Africans realizeo the best
ambition ano greatest fear of these colonizers, surpassing them in their own game
of cultural sophistication ano moral authority. Inoeeo, while Africans orew on im-
perial mythologies to orient themselves as colonial subjects, they orew on these same
myths to oisrupt colonial authority ano reorient the polity. Lasekan is a case in point,
for he useo the images ano meoia that colonialism introouceoas a means of ac-
culturation, no lessto incite public opinion against the colonial state. Of course,
his success in mobilizing the Nigerian public may have oweo less to the content of
his cartoons than to the fact of them: like Beneoict Anoersons print capitalism, he
createo in his reaoership an imagineo community of Nigerians, in itself a senti-
ment incompatible with colonial rule.
17
Still, the instruments ano images of impe-
rial control provioeo the means of its unooing, precisely because the colonizeo be-
came so aoept at using them, ano because they representeo the most oirect route
from the margins to the centers of political power.
18
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE
Images ano empires have intersecteo in many ways in colonial ano contemporary
Africa. Empire builoing has coincioeo with the reproouction of essentially stable
mythologies, the erosion ano replacement of local mythologies by imperial mytholo-
gies, ano the transformation of local ano imperial mythologies as empires are built
ano rebuilt. This oemonstrates the many oimensions of African mooernities ano
serves as a caveat against oversimplication in larger oebates about oomination ano
resistance, globalization ano localization, change ano continuity. Still, some reao-
ers may object that I have listeo here not three outcomes of imperialism but three
aspects of one outcome, namely, transformation. Thus the mythologies that ac-
commooate colonial incursions ano retain their internal coherence can also engage
their social environment in new ways. This is illustrateo by the royal portraiture of
Benin kings, whose form never changes, but whose signicance to the community
it inhabits can vary raoically, oepenoing on whether the king is successful in war or
oiminisheo by rivals. Similarly, the inoigenization of European mythemes in Africa
suggests that colonizeo Africans are reprooucing the cultural universe of their col-
onizers. But it also reects that Africans have the oiscursive means to engage ano
confront structures of power in ways that money- ano powerbrokers cannot mis-
construe. Some Africans, for example, are suciently practiceo in Western booy arts
,fashion, tourism, sports, ano so on, to make careers in the global meoia inoustry.
Others successfully use the institutional centers ano resources of elites, like churches
ano the civil service, to mobilize political pressure against those same elites.
It will, however, come as no surprise to other mytho-historians that reproouc-
tion ano transformation occur simultaneously. As Marshall Sahlins observeo al-
most two oecaoes ago, these are two sioes of the same coin, for signs are revalueo
coxcrtsiox: sioxirvixo rovrn ix \rnic\ .
through their usage, ano reuseo for the communicative possibilities they permit.
19
Cultural continuity is not, therefore, a sterile concept but complexly entaileo in cul-
tural revision.
At the same time, this volume oers some surprising revelations about the lim-
its ano loci of transformation, as Europeans seem singularly unwilling or unable
to revise their own mythologies. Although many colonial Africans became Chris-
tians, colonial Europeans oio not similarly become Muslims or animists. Al-
though the linguistic horizons of Africans have expanoeo oramatically, those of
Europeans have not, asioe from the inclusion of a few new woros into establisheo
European languages. Ano although contemporary Africans, like their colonial pre-
oecessors, combine inoigenous ano importeo cultural practices, their European
counterparts aohere, for the most part, to European mooels of oress, cuisine, ar-
chitecture, ano so forth. Inverting the oichotomy of hot ano colo cultures pro-
poseo by Clauoe Lvi-Strauss, or of peoples with ano without history as oispar-
ageo by Eric Wolf, Europeans relentlessly reproouce the same olo mythology of
cultural supremacy, even while Africans innovate.
This is not to say that transformations never take place on the upper sioe of
colonial class strata. Skotnes, for example, useo her position as a museum curator
to expose ano subvert the cultural politics of museum collections. Not only oio
she oirect the public eye to the violence unoerlying South Africas presumptive mul-
ticulturalism, but she also revealeo that her own politics were not constraineo by
the history of the institution that employeo her. Gable expresseo similar, albeit more
mooest, ambitions in his eorts to eoucate new generations of stuoents about the
politics of representation. This sentiment is echoeo throughout this volume, all of
whose contributors mean to expose the unoerbelly of colonial encounters ano the
multiple responses among Africans.
Still, we must be circumspect about the cultural authority of scholars on issues
of grave public importance. True, the Mtcot exhibit provokeo a vibrant public oe-
bate, but the exhibit ano the surrounoing oiscussion were symptomatic of a more
profouno raoicalism originating outsioe the museum, as South African statesmen
ano stateswomen tore oown the olo oroer ano replaceo it with a racially inclusive
oemocracy. The state that hao requireo the pristine primitive in oroer to legitimate
itself no longer existeo, giving public institutions the latituoeinoeeo, the moral
manoateto expose the abuses of the oeposeo regime. This is cultural revision,
to be sure, but it is permitteo by the political revolution that preceoeo it.
Gables classroom represents an alternative scenario. In the relative stability of
American college life, his stuoents are seloom persuaoeo that the authentic prim-
itive is a Western invention or that nuoity is not an inoicator of African cultural
integrity. Here, what is at stake is not a system of governance, but simply the right
to believe in ones own apperceptions. Yet even ,especially?, when the stakes are so
low, the professor as myth-critic can be left whistling in the oark about the hiooen
politics of signifying practice. Evioently, the heirs of colonialism oo not abanoon
their mythologies easilyor what is hegemony for?
: nrnon\n n. k\srix
Still, it is curious that Western hegemonic myths about primitive Africa are so
intractable, given the fact that the empires those myths supporteo collapseo over
thirty years ago. Ano yet, stanoaroizeo images of Africa are still part of Western
public culture, as a glance across the meoia reveals. The Uniteo Colors of Benet-
ton aovertising campaign, which purporteo to celebrate cultural oiversity, sunk
to familiar oepths in the early :qqos with the photo of an anonymous ,because
heaoless, African man holoing a human leg bone. With characteristic enthusiasm
for exoticism, the popular television show Tlc X-Ftlc has also portrayeo Africans
as sorcerers ano vampires, alongsioe its regular fare of ,mostly white, space aliens,
shape-shifters, ano mutants. The :qq movie Tlc Att Up Tlctc recasts the mission-
ary as a basketball coach, who goes to Kenya to no a natural athlete among its
tribesmen ano bring him into the light of civilization. Not coincioentally, the coach
wins the aections of a missionary who shares his parental feelings for this raw but
beautiful lano.
20
If images of primitive Africa enoure long after colonialism in Africa enoeo, it
is perhaps because the images are not funoamentally about Africa at all. They arise
from a Western bourgeois mythology of any ano all wiloernesses, inhabiteo by crea-
tures who are, alternatively, innocent ano savage, nakeo ano hairy, oark-skinneo
ano ghostlike. The mythology is ubiquitous. The Stot 1ot series ano a host of im-
itators recreate the imagery of unchartereo lanos as unoiscovereo solar systems,
with subtexts about civilizeo selves, primitive others, ano at least implicit ethnic
stereotypes. Lanoau ano I have both useo these movies in the classroom to oemon-
strate mooern myth making ano recommeno the exercise to other teachers. Or in-
vite your stuoents to watch the television show Bo, tlc |blono| Vompttc Slo,ct ,:qq.,
as a group of white youth oo battle with oemonsplayeo by black ano white ac-
torsin a curiously areligious version of Christian soloiers in the heart of oark-
ness. These are variations of the same mythology of alterity that gave Africa a
meaningful outline in the European imagination. The mythology persists, because
it is funoamentally about the selfunknowable, unseeable, unshapeable, except
in relation to an imaginary opposite to oraw itmeinto focus.
In the meantime, the imperial signs ano systems that colonialism introouceo in
Africa were alreaoy oomesticateo ,that is, Africanizeo, when the postcolonial era
began. Tooays African mythologies are as varieo as the social situations they in-
habit, having acquireo, ouring the several oecaoes of inoepenoent rule, new textures
ano intentions in the hanos of new creators ano consumers. We are not, however,
prepareo to speak of African bourgeois mythologies with the same conoence that
we speak of European ones. This may reect that bourgeois mythologies, as Barthes
conceiveo of them, are part of a specically Western imperial history, orano this,
I think, is more likelythat the concentrations ano oistributions of power that sus-
tain bourgeois myths are haroer to pin oown ano systematize across Africa ano its
histories. In other woros, one is haro-presseo to no a population that is oisperseo
across the continent, or a large stretch of it, ano yet ioeologically orawn into the
imagineo community of an elite. Still, this ooes not mean that such communities
coxcrtsiox: sioxirvixo rovrn ix \rnic\
oo not exist in Africa, bouno, in part, by their own mythologies of self ano other.
It means only that the work is cut out for mytho-historians to seek the sites ano signs
of African social imaginaries, ano to write them into historiography alongsioe the
mythologies that unoerpinneo Western imperial expansion. Africanists of several
oisciplines ano nationalities are now unoertaking this task, ano we are pleaseo to
contribute this volume to the eort.
NOTES
:. My principal source is Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Noonday Press, :qq.).
See also Terence Hawkes Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, :q) for an account of Barthess signicance vis--vis Ferdinand de Saus-
sure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Claude Lvi-Strauss, and the eld of semiotics.
.. From Myth Today, reprinted in Barthes, Mythologies, ::6.
. When Barthes wrote Myth Today in the late :qos, French forces had been driven
out of Indochina and were facing similar nationalist movements throughout Africa. For
Barthes, French bourgeois mythology and the crisis in French colonialism were centrally im-
plicated in each other, the one serving to conceal the other.
. The deeper history and contemporary applications of this mythology are discussed
in detail by Gustav Jahoda in Images of the Savage: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western
Culture (New York: Routledge, :qqq).
. In a longer version of his chapter, Bunn discusses the political use of mortuary mon-
uments or ancestor shrines by black homeland rulers, who use a similar sign system as
Afrikaners to legitimate their political authority. The monuments were as persuasive as the
rulers were popular, hence both were dismantled when apartheid ended.
6. The Gods Must Be Crazy, directed by Jamie Uys (:q8o).
. N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman, directed by John Marshall (:q8o).
8. The whole of European history contains episodes of cultural reeducation alongside
imperial expansion. Rome built temples to Caesar throughout Europe, introducing not only
an iconography of divine kings to German and Arab peoples but also the large-scale archi-
tectural interiors that came to signify the majesty of the ruling class. Later, the Catholic
Church replaced pagan rites with Christian rites, which not only turned savages into
Catholics but egg-laying rabbits and evergreen trees into Christian symbols. When Euro-
pean nations performed ceremonies of state to impress the majesty of European rule upon
their colonial subjects, they were following a well-honed cultural tradition, with much the
same eect: the empire fell, but its insignia remained.
q. John and Jean Comaro, Of Revelation and Revolution, vols. : and . (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, :qq:, :qq8).
:o. I discuss the aesthetics of agricultural practice in Nyasaland in Kings into Com-
moners: The Reinvention of Chiefship in Central Malawi, a manuscript in preparation.
::. As Gable points out, this argument originates with African intellectuals, Paulin Houn-
tondji in African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (:q8; Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,
:qq6), and V. Y. Mudimbe in The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowl-
edge (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, :q88) and The Surreptitious Speech: Prsence
africaine and the Politics of Otherness, .,.8, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :qq.).
nrnon\n n. k\srix
:.. I have spent many (very pleasant) hours in these oases of civilization created by
British expatriates in Malawi. Their households and social networks are organized around
routines of commensality, observing the same cycles of food and drink every day, and prepar-
ing standard ritual fare for holiday meals, such as turkeys for Christmas dinner, hot cross
buns for Good Friday, and roasts on Easter Sunday. Their ambivalence toward Africans sur-
faces in domestic discourse about household sta. Typically, the cook/housekeeper is the
celebrated volu, whose crisp clothing, prociency in English, and skills in the kitchen are
heralded as a sign of a happy marriage between European employers and African employ-
ees. The reciprocal is the gardener, whose limited skills in English and ragged work clothes
make him the butt of many jokes, usually about his stupidity when faced with European
technical sophistication.
:. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nation-
alism (New York: Verso, :qq:). Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradi-
tion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :q86).
:. Barthes, Mythologies.
:. Paul Landau, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender and Christianity in a Southern African
Kingdom (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, :qq).
:6. Deborah Kaspin, On Ethnographic Authority and the Tourist Trade: Anthropol-
ogy in the House of Mirrors, Anthropological Quarterly o, . (:qq): .
:. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
:8. Scholars have yet to examine the uses of primitivism in postcolonial identity politics,
a curious oversight, given the intensity of interest in ethnicity as a political strategy. And
yet, as Jomo Kenyattas Facing Mount Kenya ( New York: Vintage Books, :q6) attests, Africans
have long undertaken projects of ethnographic self-discovery to assert their membership in
moral communities that predate colonialism and have survived its demise. Sometimes these
projects serve the interests of political opportunism, such as Gatsha Buthelezis Inkatha Free-
dom Party, which raised the specter of tribal warfare in the :qqos in an attempt to scuttle
South Africas democratic transition. But more often, the formalization of ethnic categories
is simply the needful reformulation of signs of identity that are at once African and mod-
ern. Although this volume cannot provide any answers, we can at least pose the question:
do ethnic politics incorporate the mythologies of primitivism that colonialism brought to
Africa?
:q. Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History
of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, :q8:) and Islands
of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :q8).
.o. The Air Up There, directed by Paul Glaser (:qq).
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cox+ni nt+ons
Davio Bunn is chair of history of art ano heao of the new Wits School of Arts at
the University of the Witwatersrano in Johannesburg ano acaoemic oirector of the
University of Chicago anthropology stuoy abroao program in South Africa. He
has written wioely on visual theory ano history, lanoscape, memory, ano trauma,
ano contemporary South African culture.
Timothy Burke is associate professor of history at Swarthmore College. He receiveo
his Fh.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University. He is interesteo in com-
mooication, oomesticity, colonialism, popular culture, ano cyberculture. His books
incluoe Ltfc/oo, Mcr, Lox 1omcr: Commootcottor, Corompttor, oro Clcorltrc tr Moo-
ctr _tm/o/.c ano Sototoo, Motrtrg Fccct: Gto.trg Up .ttl Cottoor Coltotc ,with Kevin
Burke,.
Henry John Drewal is professor of art history ano Afro-American stuoies at the
University of Wisconsin at Maoison. He has investigateo ano written about the arts
of Africa ano the African oiasporas, ano especially about Yoruba traoitions in
Africa, Brazil, ano Cuba. His books incluoe Gclcoc: Att oro Fcmolc Po.ct omorg tlc
1oto/o ano Bcoo, Boo,, oro Sool: Att oro Ltglt tr tlc 1oto/o Urtcctc. He is working on
an exhibition ano book about Mami Wata.
Eric Gable is associate professor of anthropology at Mary Washington College. He
has stuoieo the intersection of religion ano politics in Sulawesi, Inoonesia, ano
Guinea-Bissau ano examineo the proouction of public history in the Uniteo States.
He is the author of Tlc ^c. Httot, tr or Olo Mocom: Ctcottrg tlc Pot ot Colortol
1tlltom/otg ,with Richaro Hanoler,.
Faula Ben-Amos Girshick is professor of anthropology at Inoiana University at
Bloomington. She has written Tlc Att of Bcrtr ano Att, Irrocottor, oro Poltttc tr
,.
Etgltccrtl-Ccrtot, Bcrtr. She is the coeoitor ,with Arnolo Rubin, of Tlc Att of
Po.ct/Tlc Po.ct of Att: Stootc tr Bcrtr Icorogtopl,.
Robert J. Goroon is professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont. He
has spent time researching ano teaching in Fapua New Guinea, Namibia, Lesotho,
ano South Africa. His books incluoe Lo. oro Otoct tr tlc ^c. Gotrco Htglloro: Er-
coortct .ttl Ergo ,with Mervyn J. Meggitt,, Tlc Bolmor M,tl: Tlc Moltrg of o ômt/-
tor Uroctclo ,with Stuart Sholto-Douglas,, ano Ptctottrg Bolmcr: Tlc Dcrcct Afttcor
Expcotttor of .:. He is currently working on a lm about non-Nazi Germans in
Namibia.
Catherine Hooeir holos a Fh.D. in history from Faris I Sorbonne. Her book on
the history of colonial big business ano the movement towaro inoepenoence in
the Irench colonies will be publisheo in .oo.. She is currently cooroinating an in-
ternational conference on the economic evolution of Irance from :q to the pres-
ent ano oirecting a project to write the history of Sooexho, the worlo leaoer in
catering. She is the coauthor of Lcxpotttor colortolc, ..: Lo mmottc oo tclc ,with
Michel Fierre,.
Nancy Rose Hunt is associate professor of history ano obstetrics/gynecology at the
University of Michigan. In .ooo she receiveo the Herskovits Frize for her rst book,
A Colortol Lcxtcor: Of Btttl Rttool, Mcotcoltottor, oro Mo/tltt, tr tlc Corgo. She has writ-
ten historical essays about meoical equipment, colonial oomesticity, bicycles, mean-
ing, ano power in colonial central Africa ano is currently working on a book about
manhooo ano infertility scares.
Deborah D. Kaspin is currently working on Coltotc /, Corttot, a book about theories
of culture ano contemporary public policy oebates in the Uniteo States. She holos a
Fh.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago. She was a lecturer in African
ano Afro-American Stuoies at the University of Virginia ano an assistant professor
of anthropology at Yale University. She has written about tourism in Africa ano re-
ligion, ritual, ano ethnicity in Malawi ano orafteo a book, provisionally entitleo Itrg
trto Commorct: Tlc Rctrccrttor of Cltcfltp tr Ccrttol Molo.t, about the transformations
of Chewa chiefship in colonial ano contemporary Malawi.
Faul S. Lanoau is associate professor of history at the University of Marylano at
College Fark. He has written essays about Botswana, slioe shows, ano Bushmen,
as well as screen ction ano a book calleo Tlc Rcolm of tlc 1oto: Lorgoogc, Gcroct,
oro Clttttortt, tr o Sootlctr Afttcor Itrgoom. He is working on a book about lanoless
peasants, mistranslations, ano oisplaceo ioentities unoer colonial rule, calleo Tlc
Somoclttc of Sootl Afttco.
Huoita Nura Mustafa is assistant professor of anthropology at Emory University.
She receiveo her Fh.D. from Harvaro University in :qq8. She is interesteo in glob-
alization ano urban life, the informal sector, fashion, ano genoer in West Africa.
,: cox+nint+ons
Her forthcoming book is calleo Ptocttctrg Bcoot,: Cttt, Voloc, oro tlc Clollcrgc of Sclf-
motct, tr Cortcmpotot, Dolot.
Tejumola Olaniyan is professor of English ano African languages ano literature at
the University of Wisconsin at Maoison. He is completing a book about political
cartooning in Africa. His scholarship ano teaching concern African ano oiasporic
culture, literature, ano popular culture ano the theory, history, ano sociology of
orama.
Fippa Skotnes is an artist ano the oirector of the Michaelis School of Iine Art ano
professor of ne art at the University of Cape Town. She has createo works in the
genres of book art, printmaking, ano photography ano contributeo scholarship
on the people calleo Bushmen. She eoiteo Mtcot: ^cgottottrg tlc Ptccrcc of tlc Bol-
mcr ano wrote Sooro ftom tlc Tltrltrg Stttrg, Hcoccr Tltrg: A Stot, of tlc /Xom,
ano /Ioggcr Gttcf ,forthcoming,.
cox+nint+ons ,

Action Group, :
Aoministration gnrale oe la coopration au
oveloppement, :oq
Aoorno, Theooore, .
Aovertising, :
Africa: European image of, .6, artists in,
::o:., ::
African art, 6q, sculpture of Europeans in,
.6. See also comics, Mami Wata, Man-
jaco, Omaoa
Africans: appropriations ano transformations of,
.8:, authentic, :., :8q, color
perception ano, ., in movies, :o, types/
categories, :.6, :o., :, :6, :8
Air Up There, The,
Akeley, Carl, :o
Alloula, Malek, :6
alterity, :
ancestors, .
Anthing, Louis, .q
anthropology: at colonial exhibitions, .8o,
Fortuguese colonialism ano, .q, oo, :n
anthropometry, :
Apolosa moniteur, ::, ::
Appiah, Anthony, ::
Aragon, Louis, .8
art, , 8, resemblance ano signification in,
:o::. See also African art
aura, ., :.
authenticity, :., African politics ano,
:8q, of Bushmen, :, .:., photogra-
phy ano, :., staging, ..
Ayliff, John, 8
Azikiwe, Nnamoi, :.., :, :8
Baartman, Saartjie, .
Bahloul, Joelle, :8
Bain, Donalo, ...., ..
Baines, Thomas, 6
Bamba, Amaoou, q, .6
Banania, :., :, ., .on::
bandes dessines ,BDs,. See comics
Bantu Eoucational Cinema Experiment,
Barkas, Natalie, :8
Barra, Fierrot, .o6
Barreto, Honario, :6n8
Barthes, Rolano, :88, .o..
Baruti, Barly, qoq:, :oq, ::6, :.n8
Baul, 8, .., ., .6
Beau Geste,
Behreno, Heike, .
Belgian Congo. See comics, Tintin au Congo
Belgium, Tintin au Congo in, qoq
Benin state. See Eoo Kingoom
Benjamin, Walter, 6, ., :.
Bernatzik, Hugo, ..6, oo
Bhabha, Homi, .
blackface, .., characters in comics, q, q8,
:o, ::
Blancharo, Fascal,
Bleek, Dorothea, .on, .6, .
Bleek, Wilhelm, .6:
Bloch, Maurice, 6, , 8n
Booy art, ., .q:q
Boletim Cultural da Guin Portuguesa, .qqoo, o:,
:.
Bono, James, .6.
Borgatti, Jean, :q:n.
Botswana, .
Bouroieu, Fierre, :.
Bowler, Thomas,
boys aoventure stories,
British Museum ,Natural History,, .6., .6
Bronte, Emily, 86n..
Brownlee, Irank, 6
Bruner, Eowaro M., .:n.
Burroughs, Eogar Rice,
Bushmen: Abraham, ..o, acceptance of movie
makers by, ..o., authenticity ano, :,
.:., oance of, .:.:, .., oiorama at South
Africa Museum of, .6, genitals of,
., Jeremais, ..:, /khanako, ...,
Khomani, .6., movies of, .:, .:8, ..:..,
.., .6, as pejorative term, .6, phono-
graph ano, .:6, photographs of, .::6, .:,
..., tourism ano, :, .., ...6, ..8,
white mans magic ano, ..o, /Xam, .6:.
See also Miscast; names of specific individuals
Butler, Henry, ,
Caole, Ernest, :, .:
cannibal humor, q8, :::
cannibals, :,
captions, :
caricature, :.o, .q
Carreira, Antonio, oo, o:
cartoons: African, .q, o:, oanoy figures in,
:oo, realism in, :qn. See also comics
Casset, Mama, :
categories, human, :., photography ano, :6
censorship, of films: in Namibia, .:q, .on., in
Southern Rhooesia,
Cetshwayo, King, 666, 6q
Chagas, Ireoerico Finheiro, :6n8
Charles-Roux, Jules, .6
Christianity, .8.q, o:. See also missionar-
ies, Catholic
Churchill, Winston, :.q, :o
cinema: contrasteo with still photography, .:,
introouction into Africa of, , 8, misun-
oerstanoings of, , in Namibia, .:8
claptrap, .:, .., ..
Coca-Cola, :8
Coeurs Vaillants, .
Coleman, James, :, :8n.
Colonial Exhibition :q:, ., aovertisements for,
.8, .q, African visitors to, .6, architecture
at, .:, oioramas at, .qo, oissonant
voices at, ., entertainment at, ., fic-
tion about, .
colonial exhibitions: African settings at, .o,
craftsmen at, ., .6, entertainers at,
., list of, .8, Senegal at, .,
.o:, .. See also Colonial Exhibition
:q:, Universal Exhibition :88q, Universal
Exhibition :8q, Universal Exhibition :qoo,
Universal Exhibition :q
colonialism: images ano, :., :q, photogra-
phy ano, :8, :6:, unnaturalness of,
:..q, writing ano, ::.
colonialist aesthetic, bao copy in, .q, .qq, :
comics, ::, in Belgian Congo, fifties, :o8,
in Belgian Congo, since inoepenoence,
:o8:6, in Belgian Congo, interwar, q8:o.,
in Belgian Congo, postwar, :o, blackface
characters in, q, q8, :o, ::, Catholic influ-
ence on, ::o::, central aspects to, q, Con-
golese orawn, q8, qq, :o6:o, :::6, oanoy
figures in, :oo, :::, street, in Kinshasa,
::.. See also Tintin au Congo
Congres international et intercolonial oe la soci-
et inoigene, .o
Cook, James, .
Coombes, Annie,
Coq Chante, Le, :oo, :o:
Cornell, Ireo, ..
Cosmo-Kin, :oo, :o:, :o.
Crary, Jonathan, :.
Croix du Congo, La, :oo, :o., :::
Crosby, Oliver, ..:
Crowoer, Michael, :6:n:o
Curtin, Fhilip, ., :q
Dakar, :., :8, fashion shows in, :8:,
:8., photography of social events in, :8o8:,
:88
oance, 8, .:.:, of Bushmen, ..
Dart, Raymono, :o:
Degrelle, Lon, ::8n:
Dening, Greg, .:, .6
Denver African Expeoition, .:6, ..:, ..
De Schauensee Expeoition, ..:..
Diagne, Blaise, .
Diawara, Mamaoou, 8
Dillon, Roger, :
Drawing, qo:., :.o

Dress, :88o, :8q
Drewal, Margaret, 8
Drury, James, .6
Du Bois, W. E. B., .qn:
Duchamps, Marcel, q
Duggan-Cronin, A. M., ..., .:n
Eastern Cape, South Africa: conflict in, 6:6.,
European ano military graves in, 8, 6o6:,
, 8, map of, q, settlement of, 8.
See also Nguni, mortuary practices of,
Sanoile, Xhosa, Ngqika
Eastman, George, :8
Eoo Kingoom ,Benin, Nigeria,, .o.:, .6, .8,
British conquest of, ., craft guilos of,
.8q. See also Igbesanmwan, Omaoa
Egharevba, Jacob, .6
Ekwebelam, Margaret, .oo, .o.
Elliott, William, 6o
Elongo, Gabriel, q8
Engelbrecht, Martin, .6
Enwezor, Okwui, :88
Equiano, Olauoah, ., .8.qnq
Etosha Game Fark/Reserve, ..., .., ..
Europeans: oepicteo in African sculpture,
.6, oepicteo in Benin art, .8, .86, .8,
.88, .8qq:, image of Africa of, .6,
intractibility of, ., mythological repre-
sentation of Africa by, ..
Ewe, .o, .o, .o
exhibitions, .., .
Ezra, Kate, .8
Iabian, Johannes, 8, qo, q6
Ianon, Irantz, ::::.
Iarini, The Great, ..
Iilms, :, ::o, .:..
Ioroyce, Colonel, , 6, 8
Iortier, Eomono, :.
Iourie, Louis, .:6:8, ..
Irance. See Colonial Exhibition :q:, colonial ex-
hibitions, Universal Exhibition :88q, Univer-
sal Exhibition :8q, Universal Exhibition
:qoo, Universal Exhibition :q
Iritsch, Gustav, .:
Gable, Eric, .:, ., .8, .
Gaeroes, Jan, ..:
Geary, Christrauo, , :q
Girshick, Faula Ben-Amos, .o.:, .
Goolonton, Robert, q, 8:
Gods Must Be Crazy, The, ..6., .6
Gombrich, Ernst, :o::
Goooman, Nelson, ::
Goroimer, Naoine, ..qn:.
Goroon, Robert Jacob, 6., 6
Graburn, Nelson, 8
graves/graveyaros, 6, Durkheimian theory
ano, 8n, Hertzian theory ano, 8n, inoex-
ical nature of, , 6o, as lanoscape signifiers,
6, :, Manjaco, .q6q8, mooernity
ano, 8n, Nguni, 6, 66, as signs, , un-
quiet, 66, Xhosa vs. European, 66,
Zulu, 6, 6, 666
Gray, Thomas,
Guinea-Bissau. See Manjaco
Haooon, A. C., .6
Hagenbeck, Carl G. C., :8, :q
Haggaro, Rioer,
Hahn, C. L. H., .:, .:8
Hailey, Loro, ..qn.o
Hall, Eowaro T., .:
Hall, Stuart, :
Hamburg, Germany, :qq
Hankasso, .6o
Hannerz, Ulf,
Hauka, .
Hay, George, 8, 8., 8
Heaorick, Daniel, :.
Hecht, Davio, 8, .
Herg. See Rmi, Georges
Herskovits, M. J., ::
Hertz, Robert, 66, 8n
Holmes, Burton, .:6
Hottentots, 6., 6. See also Khoisan
Hountonoji, Faulin, ::
Huggins, Goofrey, 8
Hunt, Nancy, .q, o
Hunt, William Holman, :
Hunter, Monica, 66
iconic signification, ::
icons, :o, :8, oecontextualizeo, .6., Tintin as,
q
Ife, :o
Igbesanmwan, .8q, .8:, iconography of
carvings of, .8., .8, .8
Igbos, , .oo, .o:
image-Africa, .6
inoexical signification, :o,
indigne, .o

Jacquemin, Jean-Fierre, ::
Jeunes pour Jeunes, ::
Jews,
Jewsiewicki, Bogumil, q6q
Johnson, Martin, :o, :
Johnson, Osa, :o
Josephs Holiday Adventure, :, :8
Jules-Rosette, Benetta, 8
Junoo, Henri, .
Kalibiona, Maurice, ::o
Kasfir, Sioney, .6
Kasongo, Bauoouin-Ireooy, q
Keita, Seyoou, :6
/khanako ,Olo Iig,, ...
Khoisan, .6., .6. See also Bushmen, Miscast
Khomani, .6.
King Kong, .:6, .
Kinshasa, q, qo::6
kitsch, :.
Kleurling Weerstanosbeweging ,Coloureo Resis-
tance Movement,, .68
Kooak Camera, :8q
Kouakou, Koffi, q
Kouyat, Tiemoko Garan, .
Kramer, Iritz, .
Krauss, Rosalino, :6
Krige, Eileen, 6
Kruiper, Dawio, ..8
Kukertz, Heinz, 66
Kumalo, Noansi, ::
Lane, Faul, :6q
Lasekan, Akinola: early cartoons of, :.6, :., Eu-
ropean mooels of, :., :o:, nationalism
ano, :., :o:, party politics ano, :.,
realism of, :, unnaturalness of colonialism
ano, :..q
Last Supper, The, :8
Latham, G. C., :8
Lebzelter, Viktor, ..:, .on.
Le Ileur, A. A. S., .
Lembeoe, Anton, :::.
Leonaroo oa Vinci, :8
Lips, Julius, .o
Livingstone, Davio, :
Lloyo, Lucy, .6:, .6, .n.8
Lomami Tchibamba, Faul, q8, qq, :.on
Lonores, Albert, .
Lotcutt, L. A., :8
Louchet, q8, qq
Louw, Gert, ..
Luaro, Nicholas, .:n.
Lugaro, Ireoerick, :
Lukombo, Sima, ::, ::
Lumumba, Fatrice, :o6
Lyall, Archibalo, oo
Lyautey, Marshal Louis, .o
Lye, Yoka, q6, ::6
Macoonalo, Coenraao Ireoerik, ..
Magic, .:.
Malaoamajaute, :q, :q
Mali, , 8
Mami Wata, :8, :q, ..., oreams/visions of,
.oo, .o, origin of, :qq8, rainbow oeity
complex ano, :qq.oo, self-oefinition of fol-
lowers of, .o8, .:o, shrines, .oo, .o:, .o.,
.o, .o, .oq, uses of, :qq8. See also
Santa Marta/Saint Martha
Mangels, Abby, ..
Manjaco, .q6, ancestor posts of, .q8, o::,
appropriation of outsioers by, ., booily
scarification by, .q, .q, .qqoo, o,
copying by, :.:, figurative innovation
of, .q, :qn, pecuniary polity of,
o:.
Maqoma, :
Marc, Irere ,Masta,, :o, :o, :.:n6
Marin, Louis, .q
Maroun, J. E., .
Marshall, John, .:., .:
Matamata and Pilipili, :o
Maurois, Anor, .6
MBila, F., :o6, :o, :o8
Mbu and Mpia, :o68, ::., ::
Mbumbulu, :o, ::., ::
McClouo, Scott, q
Meireles, Artur Martins oe, o., stuoy of scarifi-
cation by, .:, .q, .q, .qqoo, o
memorials, 68q, .q:q
Menoes, Soga, o, oq, :
Merle, Faul, :o6
Merleau-Fonty, Maurice,
Mfumueto, ::
Mickey Mouse, .6
Miller, Joseph, .
mimesis, ., :qnq
mimetic images, :, .
Miscast ,exhibition on Bushmen,, .6:6, .,
organization of .66, public reaction to,
.6o, rock art in, .o

missionaries, Catholic: comics ano, ::o::, films
proouceo by, :o, representation of, .
Mitchell, W. J. T., ::
Moffat, John ano Mary, :
Monoo, Eugene, .8
Montaigne, Michel oe, :, ., , :8, .6
Morphet, Tony, .6, .6q
Mota, A. Teixeira oa, :n.:
Mount, Marshall W., q
movie camera, .:
Mponoo, 66
Muoimbe, V. Y., q
museums. See exhibitions, Miscast
myths: Barthes on, .:, bourgeois, , eoucating
Africans in, ..8, representation of
Africans by Europeans in, ..
N!ai, The Story of a Kung Woman, .:., .:, .6
Namba, o:
National Council of Nigeria ano the
Cameroons, :., :., :o, :.
National Geographic Magazine, :6, :q, :6:
Neoerveen-Fieterse, Jan,
Ngani, ..
Ngonga, :oo, :o.
Ngubane, Harriet, 6, 6q
Nguni, mortuary practices of, 6., 6, 6, 66
Nigeria, political cartoons of, :.8. See also
Eoo Kingoom
Noirot, Commanoant, .q
Nos Images, :o, :o
Novels,
Nqeno, Chief, .
Omaoa, .q, ., oepiction of Europeans by,
.8, .86, .8, .88, .8qq:, Igbesanmwan
ano, .8., the kings ano, ., .8o8.
Oyiboouou, Thompson, .q:
paintings, :q.::
Fanofsky, Erwin, :o, :
Farry, Jonathan, 6, 8n
Feirce, C. S., :o,
Feires, Jeff, 6
Fenoe, 8
Fenn, Nigel, .q, .6o
performance, :.q., .:.., ..
Ferham, Margery, :., :
photographs: commemorative capacity of,
:88, as inoexical signs, :6, magical qual-
ity of, ..., manipulation of, :, realism
of, ::, :6:, :, stuoio portraiture,
:6, universal power of, :, viewing of
portraits, :888q
photography: the booy ano, :., ethnography
ano, ..6, .:n., guns ano, :6q, hon-
orific ano repressive function of, :,
hunting vocabulary of, :6, :q, influence on
movies of, :o, mythological imaginings of,
.., representation of human types by,
:6, technology of, :8. See also under
Dakar
Ficart, Bernaro, 6., 6
Ficasso, Fablo, :., .o8
Finambe, Jon Biku, .q8, o8
Foch, Ruoolf, .:., .::6, ..., ..
portraiture, :::, :.q.
Fortugal: anthropology ano colonialism of, .q,
oo, :n, Benin state ano, .8, .8, in
Guinea-Bissau, .q, :.
postcaros, :, :6
primitivism, , magical powers of, .., in
postcolonial politics, n:8
Fringle, Thomas, 8
Quintino, Iernanoo Rogaoo, ::
Rambo, .
realism, ., of Akinola Lasekan, :, in cartoons,
:qn, of photographs, ::, :6:, :
religion, 68q, :q.::
Rmi, Georges ,Herg,, q:q., qq, :oq,
::8n:. See also Tintin au Congo
Reni, Guioo, :, :
Renton, Henry, .
Ricoeur, Faul, 6, .
Riis, Jacob, :6
Rivet, Faul, .o, .6
Roberts, Anorew,
Rockefeller family, :6
Rony, Iatimah, .:.
Ruskin, John, :6n8
Ryan, James,
Ryoer, Alan I. C., .
Sahlins, Marshall, :.
Saio, Eowaro, .
Saint Faul Afrique, :oq, :::
Samba, Chri, ::., ::
Sanoile, ., 88
sase, :., :88
Santa Marta/Saint Martha, .o

Sao, :o6
Saussure, Ieroinano oe, .6
savages, .8.
Schoeman, F. J., ..
Schrire, Carmel, .68
sculpture, :q.::, .q
Sekula, Allan, ::, :, :88
Senegal: at colonial exhibitions, ., .o:,
., .6, history of photography in, :,
importance of pictures in, :, :q, marriage
in, :q. See also Dakar
Senghor, Lopolo Soar, :., .6
Seremetakis, Naoia, 6
Shone family, 6o6:
signs, .o.:
Simone, A. Maliqualim, 8, .
Sis, Mongo Awai, :oq
slave traoe, .
snake charmer image, :qq8, .o6
Soc, Ousmane, .
Soga, Tiyo, o, :
Solomon-Gooeau, Abigail, :.
Sontag, Susan, :
South Africa. See Bushmen, Eastern Cape, Mis-
cast
South African Entertainment ,Censorship, Act of
:q:, .:q
South African Museum, .6
Stanley, Henry Morton,
Stocking, George, :q
Stoller, Faul, :qnq
Stroh, Irancois, ...
Strother, Zoe, 8
Swahili,
symbol, :o
Szombati-Iabian, Ilona, 8
Taussig, Michael, ..o, :qnq
Thompson, Harry, q
Thompson, Robert Iarris, 8
Thonga, ..
Tintin au Congo, :, qo, in Belgium, qoq, as
icon, q, reception in Belgian Congo of,
qq, ::o, ::::.
tirailleur sngalais, :., ., .
tourism: Bushmen ano, :, .., ...6,
...8, local culture moloeo to fit, o, pho-
tography ano, ..6
Traill, Anthony, .q
Truth about the Colonies exhibition, .8
Truth ano Reconciliation Commission, .68
Tshibanoa Wamuela Bujitu, :.nq.
Tshibumba Kanoa Matula, qo, q6
Tswana, :, ., .
Twain, Mark, :, :, :
Uniteo Africa Company ,UAC,, :8
Universal Exhibition :88q, ., .o:
Universal Exhibition :8q, .:, .6
Universal Exhibition :qoo, ., .6
Universal Exhibition :q, .
Uut, o, o8
Uys, Jamie, ..6.
van oer Fost, Laurens,
Van Haelst, Iather, :.:n
Vaughan, Megan, :
Viegas, Antonio oe Carvalho, o
visual aovertising: in Belgian Congo, :o, misin-
terpretations of, :, :, restrictions on, q,
subliminal images in, , in Zimbabwe, ,
8:, .,
Vogel, Susan, 8
Voortrekker Monument, ..6
Walas, Mamisi, .o, .o, .o
Walker, William, :8
Wallez, Abb Norbert, q:q.
Waro, Harriet, 68
Watson, Stephan, .6o6:
Webb, Virginia-Lee, :q
Weinberg, Faul, .66
Wenol, Tobias, .
West African Pilot, :., :.6, :8n.
White, Hylton, ..8
Wittgenstein, Luowig, .6
Wolof, :8, .6
/Xam Bushmen, .6:
Xhosa, Ngqika, 6:6., colonial rhetoric ano
graves of, ., oesecration of grave of, , Eu-
ropean antipathy to burial practices of,
686q, mortuary practices of, :, 6, 6.
See also Sanoile
Xishe, Benjamin, ..6
X rays, :.
Zare, q
Zimbabwe ,Southern Rhooesia,: introouction of
film in, , visual aovertising in, 8:, .,
Zulu, ., ., mortuary practices of, 6, 6,
666

Compositor: Impressions Book and Journal Services, Inc.
Text: Monotype Baskerville
Display: 10/12 Baskerville
Printer and binder: Edwards Brothers, Inc.

Images and Empires - Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

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Images and Empires - Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

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r, or the Niger Hauka cult, in

aoopteo ano popularizeo the ioea of picturesque grave lanoscapes in a country-

izeks revision of Al-

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