africa, empire and anthropology

8/6/2019 Africa, Empire and Anthropology

1/22

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1999. 2857 7-98Copyright C 1999 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

AFRICA,EMPIRE,AND ANTHROPOLOGY:APhilological Exploration of Anthropology'sHeart of Darkness

Andrew ApterDepartment ofAnthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637-1539;e-mail: aapter@mi&ay.uchicago.edu

Key W ords: Africanist ethnography, imperial culture, colonial spectacle, race,textualityAbstract As an artifact of imperial culture, Africanist anthropology ishistorically associated w ith the colonization of Africa in ways that underminethe subd iscipline 's claims of neutrality and objectivity. A critical literature onthe ideological and discursive inventions of Africa by the W est challenges the

very possibility o f Africanist an thropology, to which a variety of responses haveemerged. These range from historical reexaminations of imperial discourses,colonial interactions, and fieldwork in Africa, including dialogical engage-ments with the very production o f ethnographic texts, to a more dialectical an-thropology o f colonial spectacle and culture as it was coproduced and recipro-cally determined in imperial centers and peripheries. Understood philologi-cally, as an imperial palimpsest in ethnographic writing, the colonial legacy inAfricanist ethnography can never be negated, but must be acknowledged underthe sign of its erasure.

CONTENTSIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578Africa, Anthropology, and the Colonial Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .579The C ritique of Pure C olonialism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583Dialogics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583

Dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585Notes from the Postcolony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592


2/22

578 APTER

I returned deliberately to the first I had seen-and there it was, black,dried, sunken, with closed eyelids, a head that seem ed to sleep at the top ofthat pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line ofteeth, was sm iling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocosedream of that eternal slumber....Rebels! W hat would be the next definition Iwas to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers-and these wererebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks.

Joseph Conrad, H ear t of DarknessINTRODUCTION

In a revea ling passage of his Ra ces ofAfrica-first published in 1930 and reissuedfour times by 1966-Seligman quotes D r. W ilhelm Junker on the African pyg-my's "amazing talent for mimicry": "A striking proof of this was afforded by anAchua whom I had seen and measured four years previously in Ru mb ek, and nowagain met at Gam [b]ari's. His comic ways and quick movem ents made this littlefellow the clown of our society. He imitated with ma rvellous fidelity the peculi-arities of persons whom he had once seen; for instance the gestures and facialexpressions of Jussuf Pasha . . .and of Haj Halil at their devotions, as well as theaddress and movem ents of Emin Pasha 'with the four eyes' (spectacles).. .and nowhe took m e off to the life, rehearsing after four years, down to the minutest details,and with surprising accuracy, my anthropometric performance when measuringhis body at Rum bek" (Seligman 1966:26-27). The passage is strangely decontex-tualized by Seligman, with no reference to the southern Su dan, where the eventtook place, or even to the text in which it was originally recorded (Junker1892:86), and it would have reflected nothing more than a typical trope of thetime-i.e. the diminutive Africa n as mim ic and clown-were it not for the formi-dable reputations of Seligman and his collaborators, including E Gellner, EEEvans-Pritchard, P Bohan nan, D Forde, M Fortes, P Kaberry, SF Na del, DJ Sten-ning, J Be attie, L Ma ir, J Perstiany, J Barnes, M Douglas, and I Schapera listed inlater editions. We cannot assume that they consciously endorsed every page ofSeligm an's book, but the docum entary use of Junk er's observations, the passageitself, and its relationship to the rest of Seligm an's ethnological text exem plify the"awkw ard relationship" of Africanist anthropology to the politics and culture ofempire more generally. Treating Seligman's quotation of Junker's text as para-digmatic of the im perial palimpsest in Africanist anthropology, I review key posi-tions and debates shaping its theory and practice today. The philologicalmetaphor framing this review is not merely rhetorical, but has significant meth-odological implications for navigating into and out of anthropology's heart ofdarkness.I begin by reviewing the strongest critiques of Africanist anthropology in rela-tion to em pire because they raise fundam ental challenges that must be taken intoaccount by anyone w orking in the field, and they represent a grow ing literaturethat is developing in interesting ways. Somewhat polemically, in both explicit and


3/22

AFRICA, EMPIRE, ANTHROPOLOGY 579

implicit response to these challenges, I then review a range of studies that serve torecuperate Africanist anthropology from its imperial conditions of impossibility,first by examining its dialogical dimensions, and then by illuminating the d ialec-tics of imperial culture not only in Africa but "between metropole and colony"(Stoler & Cooper 1997). I focus mainly on British and French Africanist contextsand traditions and blur the boundary between anthropology and history.

AFRICA, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE COLONIALLIBRARYWhen work by Mudim be (1988) won the Herskovits award in 1989, anthropolo-gists working in Africa faced a rigorous theoretical challenge. Focusing on noth-ing less than "the foundations of discourse about Africa," Mudimbe (1988:xi)traced a genealogy of models in which representations of the African "other"functioned not as windows into another world but as signs of imperial domina-tion. Previous scholars had already exam ined the connections between anthropol-ogy and colonialism in Africa. In the im portant collection by Asad (1973), James(1973) could cast the anthropologist in Africa as a "reluctant imperialist" capa-ble-like Malinowski in his bet ter mom ents--of openly criticizing colonia lauthority and policy, whereas Faris (1973) could confirm that those like Nadelwere w illing co-conspirators in imposing theoretical-cum-colonial order and con-trol. In an equally im portan t publication the previous year, Leclerc (1 972) loca tedimperial ethnocentrism at the very core of anthropological method, refined byfunctionalism and transformed by relativism but never transcended or erased.Indeed, the first monumental indictment of Africanist ethnography was by Leiris(1968), which first appeared as L 'Afrique antsrne in 1934, then d isappeared in1941 by order of the Vichy regime, and reappeared in three subsequent editions(195 1, 1968, 1981) as a meticulous testimony to co lonial fantasy and desire(Jamin 1982a; see also Leiris 1989). In one entry, Leiris likens "l'enqu&te ethno-graphique" of the historic Dakar-Djibouti expedition (Jamin 1982b, Clifford1983) to police interrogation, declaims the possibility of ever know ing what Afri-cans actually think, and displaces his frustrated ethnographic desire into uncon-summ ated lust for the racialized o ther: "Je n'ai jama is couche avec une femm enoire. Que je suis donc rest6 europeen!" (see Jamin 1982a:206). Clearly Leiris'''fant8meX prefigu res Mudimbe's "invention" in these respects, but unlike theformer poetics of documentation, the latter project was explicitly grounded incritical theory and method, posing as its central problem the location of gnosis inthe order of knowledge about Africa.

As argued elsewhere (Apter 1992b), gnosis functions for Mudimbe as a duplexsign anchoring the form and content of "traditional" African philosophies withinthose Western d iscourses that purport to represent them. In other words, gnosis isboth a body of secret knowledge to be m astered, and an imperial/colonial trope ofauthen tic alterity, which, like the Holy Grail, is nob ly pursued but endlessly dis-placed. W ithout denying the existence and local authority of actual African gnos-


4/22

580 APTER

tic systems, Mudimbe (1988:186) locates them within "a Western epistemologicalterritory" where they remain colonized and thus beyond adequate representationand understanding. Of the African worlds portrayed by such scholarship,Mudimbe (1988: 186) asks: "Is not this reality distorted in the expre ssion o f Afri-can modalities in non-African languages? Is it not inverted, modified by anthro-pological and philosophical categories used by specialists in dominantdiscourses?" Although the ethnophilosophical investigations of Griaule (1952,1965) and Tempels (1969) are most directly attacked for reproducing the politicsof paternalism in their "cultivated sympathy" (Einfiihlung) for the African sage,the critique extends beyond ethnophilosophy as such to embrace virtually allAfricanist ethnography, including de Heusch (1982, 1985) on symbolic func-tions, and Turner (1969, 1981) on social dynamics and ritual mediations, not tomention African intellectuals who remain unwitting heirs to a colonial "philoso-phy of conquest" (Mudimbe 1988:69). There are of course other readings andarguments in Mud imbe 's rich study, with his multifaceted "idea" of Africa devel-oped further in a sequel (Mudimbe 1994), but the problem of gnosis and the colo-nial library poses fundamental questions concerning the very limits ofanthropological reason itself.To illustrate, can Junker's description of a pygm y, quoted in Seligman (1966)above, be easily dismissed as a relic of an earlier ideology, or does its rupture intoSeligm an's discussion represent a deeper subtext in Africanist ethnography thatremains hidden by various mutations and guises to this day?On the surface, Seligm an's ideological legacy am ong his Africanist progenyseems merely nominal. Their aforementioned names appear in a publisher's noteto the third (Seligman 1957) and fourth (Seligman 1966) editions, together withtheir writings in an expanded bibliography, bu t can they be held accountable fo rthe sins of their father (cf Kuklick 1978)? The very framework of the InternationalAfrican Institute's Ethnograp hic Survey of Africa series emphasized the socialorganization and cultural life of African peoples rather than their physical charac-ters and racial types. But here is precisely where the conceptual elisions ofM udim be's epistemological territory take place. H ow is it possible that a bookentitled Races ofAfrica, with its designated diacritica of "skin colour, hair form,stature, head shape, and certain characters of the face, e.g. prognathism, and o f thenose" (S eligman 1966:2-3), a book that also explicitly invokes the Hamitichypothesis and the childlike simplicity of African languages, contains so muchmaterial on social organization , econom y, burial, etc? Here the racial, linguistic,and cultural domains form an integrated whole, with the classification of racialtypes (Bushmen, the True Negro, Hamites, Bantu, and Semites) informing thedistribution of tribes and traditions, such that society and culture are effectivelysubsumed by race. There is no question that Se ligm an's students and colleaguesworking in Africa disavowed such subsumptions on political and intellectualgrounds, but does not an implicit racial logic--cloaked in the essentializing cate-gories of native administration and custom ary law-slip unnoticed through theback door? Insofar as modern A fricanist ethnography has sought pristine mod elsof social structures (British tradition) and systems of thought (Griaule school),


5/22


has it not endorsed the fundam ental objectifying, essentializing, and even implicitracializing of im perial science at large? Like Junker's pygm y breaking into Selig-ma n's text, does the logic of racialization constitute the imperial palimpsest ofmodern A fricanist research?Supporting evidence for this radical thesis illustrates how implicit impe-rial/colonial logics and categories have been imposed on Africa and interpolatedback into the preco lonial past. This has occurred in two rela ted registers that canbe crudely labeled narrative and inventive. If evolutionism served as the domi-nant narrative paradigm in Victorian anthropology (Stocking 1987, Brantlinger1986), supporting imperial ideas of racial difference, destiny, and hierarchy, italso provided the working guidelines for colonial officers and governmentanthropolog ists follow ing Lugard's (1965) "dual mandate" in Africa-the uplift-ing of native peoples according to their natural (i.e. racial) capabilities whilebenefitting com merce and industry at hom e (Kuklick 1991). Within this BritishAfrican context, the challenge posed by functionalism to evolutionary thinkingcould be developed by "pure scholars" unfettered by policy (and funded by theRockefeller Foundation through the IAI), but m ethodological strictures notw ith-standing, evolutionary thinking and its hidden racial assumptions were not so eas-ily transcended. Functionalists could jettison pseudo-historical speculationsabout the undocum ented histories of African peop les, replacing diffusionist andevolutionary origins with the more rigorous concept of "social function"(Radcliffe-Brown 1952:3, 12-14), but-as Fabian (1983) argued with respect tothe anthropological objec t of knowledge at large-their societies were not onlyfrozen in time, they also functioned im plicitly as living relics of the past. Lurk ingbeneath the genealogical and political morphologies and typologies was an evolu-tionary assumption, still difficult to exorcise, that acephalous societies like theTallensi, Nuer, or Tiv were structurally more primitive than the centralized"states" that formed precolonial kingdoms and em pires, and hence less advancedor capable of civilization. The tenacity of such chrono topic displacements is mostclearly illustrated by the so-called Bushm en or San-speaking peoples o f southernAfrica, whose enduring image as stone-age hunters and gatherers providing a liv-ing museum of minimal society has been perpetuated not on ly by cultural ecolo-gists and materialists (Lee 1979, Lee & Devore 1976), but also by culturalanthropologists like Sahlins (1972:l-39), who found in Bushm en "bands" apaleolithic parable of "the original affluent society." It was not until Wilmsen'sdefinitive analysis of such images and ideologies against the historical conditionsof Kalahari political economy-based on archeological, archival, and socioeco-nomic data of ancient trade routes and mo dem relations of production-that themyth of the Bushm en could be explained and debunked as a mo dem fiction pro-jected back in time (Wilmsen 1989).In the more "inventive" register of reification mentioned above, more stronglyassociated with B ritish func tionalism and indirect rule (Kuklick 1984, Pels 1996),we fin d a variety of innovations and transformations ranging from imperial pag-eants to customary law (Ranger 1983). We return to this range in due course, buthere we focus on those colonial categories that were imposed on Africans in the


6/22

582 APTER

name of local tradition. As Ranger (1983:250) writes, "The most far-reachinginventions of tradition in colonial Africa took place w hen the Eu ropea ns believedthemselves to be respecting age-old African custom. What w as called customa rylaw, customary land-rights, custom ary political structure, and so on, were in factall invented by colonial codification." Qu oting Iliffe (1979:323-24) on the crea-tion of tribes in colonial Tangan yika, Ran ger sh ow s how the essentialized units ofindirect rule retained a racial inf lectio n: "The notion of the tribe lay at the heart ofindirect rule in Tanganyika. Refining the racial thinking common in Germantimes, adm inistrators believed that e very African belonged to a tribe, just as everyEuro pean belonged to a nation .... Tribes were seen as cultural units 'possessin g acom mo n language, a single social system, and an established com mo n law.' Theirpolitical and social system s rested on kinship. Tribal me mb ership was hereditary.Different tribes were related genealogically .... As unusually w ell-informed offi-cials kne w, this stereotype bore little relation to T anga nyika 's kaleidoscopic his-tory, but it was the shifting sand on which Cameron and his disciples erectedindirect rule by 'taking the tribal unit.' The y had the power and created the politi-cal geography" (see Ranger 1983:250).No stronger demonstration of Mudim be'sthesis regarding the colonial invention of Africa can be fo und , and e ven if ques-tions remain con cernin g the representativeness of the Ta ngan yikan case, its Ger-man colonial legacy, and more important the dialectical character of theinventions themselves, the example illustrates the implicit racial logic of tribalorgan ization and classification as it was framed by colonialism and interpolatedinto the past. Of course custom ary law was no t invented ex nihilo, but fixed flexi-ble principles into written statutes that were app lied in the name of the chiefs andtheir traditions, thereby effecting a hidden transformation of "traditional law"itself (Cha nock 1985, Man n & Roberts 199 1). Similarly, A mselle (1 998) exam-ines the "hardening of identities" by colonial policy rather than their inventiontout court, deve loping a more accurate perspective in wh ich "Africa is the jointinvention of Africans and Europeans" (Amselle 1998:xv). But these more his-torically situated approaches to the codifying forms and functions of colonialgovernmentality in Africa do not necessarily vitiate Mudimbe's radical critiqueand m ay in fact extend it to the very m ethod s and models of scientific an thropo l-ogy operating at the time. It takes no major effort to see the formal similaritiesbetw een the adm inistrative units of indirect rule and the ethnographic classifica-tions of Hailey (1957) and of the classics by Radcliffe-Brown & Forde (1950),Fortes & Evans-Pritchard (1940), and Forde (195 4). Less obvious, how ever, isthe significance of the role played b y k inship and descent in establishing the a pri-ori framew ork of tribal structure and its "comparative morphology" (Radcliffe-Brown 1952:195).

Follow ing the Tan gany ikan exam ple of Iliffe (1979 ), I sugg est that the racialdimensions of Victorian evolutionism and imperial pseudo-science slipped intothe functionalists' obsession with kinship, descent, and genealogical method,where in a sense, function followed n ot only structure but also form. Despite theexplicit disavowal by Radcliffe-Brown (1952 ) of conjectural history in favor ofsocial fun ction and-more to the point-his rejection of biological for social kin -


7/22

583FRICA, EMPIRE, ANTHROPOLOGY

ship, forms of racial reasoning remained em bedded in biological metapho rs andmatrices. Not only do es the physiological model the social for Radcliffe-Brow n(1952:188-204), it also hides within the generative matrix of kinship and thesocial order, masquerad ing beneath the axiom of am ity of Fortes (1 969), infusingthe extensionist thesis, and even revealing its face in such unguarded mom ents aswhen Fortes (1969:309) proclaims: "I regard it as now established that the ele-mentary components of patrifiliation and matrifiliation, and hence of agnatic,enatic, and cognatic mod es of reckoning kinsh ip are, like genes in the individualorganism invariably present in all familial systems." As Smith (1973:122)observed, this view "comes dangerously close to reintroducing the confusionbetween biology and kinship." Does it not in fact represent Junker's pygm y pop-ping up like a jack-in-the-box from the depths of Fortes' text? If it does, this is notto discredit Fortes' u ndeniable insights and achievements in Africanist ethnogra-phy and kinship stud ies (Goody 1995), but to show that the imperial palimpsestsurvives in the mo st unexpected places and informs the ethnographic reificationsof an Africa observed.

THE CRITIQUE O F PURE COLONIALISMI have pushed M udimb e's thesis (1988, 1994) in a particular direction to illustratehow a putatively precolonial and hence traditional Africa has been invented bycolonial structures and categories. The thesis contains a powerful critique ofanthro polog ical reason in Africa, and the argum ent can be illustrated historicallyin relation to travel narrative, missionary discourse, language standardization,colonial medicine, and cartography as well as ethnography per se (Comaroff &Comaroff 1992, Fabian 1986, Fanon 1 96 7 :1 21 45 , Hunt 1997, Noyes 1994,Thornton 1983, White 1995). In this section, I signpost a literature that mightappear to "refute" Mudimbe's epistemological reductions of Africanist anthro-pology to colo nial discourse, but it need not and in fact should not be seen contrahis position. In wh at follows, I attempt a synthesis of what o therwise look likecounter-arguments.

DialogicsThe simplest alternatives to the radical reductions of Mudim be (1988 ) belong tothose studies that complicate the hegemonic picture with a range of ambiguousand am bivalent voices found within the colonizing discourses themselves. Cocks(1995), for example, sho ws how the rhetoric of science could be invoked to undoas well as uphold colonial policy, focusing on Wilson's (1941, 1942) criticism ofthe "native problem" as a case in point. Forster (1994) demonstrates a linkbetween functionalism and the cultural nationalism of Kenyatta and Banda.Goo dy's (1995) somewhat rambling defense of Africanist anthropology againstcolonial critique takes great pains to sho w how the non-British funding sourcesand nationalities of many A fricanists insulated the discipline from im perial influ-


8/22

584 APTER

ence and control, also revealing how anthropologists like Fortes were suspi-ciously regarded as "Jews" andlor "Reds." Nor did anthropologists of Africaremain obsessed with the primitive, seeking pristine models of precolonialsystems. In Britain, the Manches ter School had focused on the social dynamics ofcolonial transformations and dislocations in both town and country since the1950s (Werbner 1984), a perspective paralleled by Balandier's "sociologie actu-elle" of the "colonial situation" (Balandier 1966, 1970) in Francophone Africa.If hegemonic d iscourse was not exactly mon olithic, neither w as it monologic.Stud ies of resistance have redefined various colon ial situations (includ ing patriar-chal and neocolonial dom ination) as a dialogical encounter ranging from poeticand prophetic voices of self-expression and empowerment (Abu-Lughod 1986,Bodd y 1989, Fernandez 1982, Ma cGaffey 1983) to signifying practices in bothritual (Com aroff 1985) and armed struggle (Lan 1985). These studies have devel-oped framew orks for analyzing the dialogics of colonial discourse within local-ized political fields. Such "dialogues" take many forms, extending from ex plicitlydiscu rsive speech-genres and ritual languages-what we might call the study ofcritical locutions in Africa (Apter 1992a, 1998a; Barber 1991; Finnegan 1969;Irvine 1993; Lam bek 1993)-to the mim etic appropriation (Stoller 1995, Krame r1993) and political negotiation of colonial power and autho rity by socially situ-ated actors. An important essay by Ranger (1983) discusses how Africansmanipu lated "invented custom" to promote a national cu lture, to prevent the ero-sion of geron tocratic authority by wage-laboring youth, to redefine gender rela-tions, or sim ply to agg randize political power. The strength of such perspectivesis that they put Mudimbe's principles into historical practice, revealing that thefictions and inventions of colonial discourse and power are indeed social factsand, perhaps most important, how they become social facts. We can now readJunker's pygm y not s imply as a relic of imperial racism but as the paradigma ticsubaltern voice, com menting on the idiocy of imperial authority and anthropom e-try through a form of mimicry in which the master becomes the fool (Bhabha1997).Within this dialogical m ode of captu ring the colonial situation and its legacy inAfrica, two "philological" approaches to the production of ethnograp hic texts es-tablish a way of w riting within and beyond the constraints of Africanist discourse.In a bold experimental initiative, which followed M udimb e (1 988) and W ilmsen(1989) in winning the Hersk ovits Award, Fab ian (1990) produced a critical eth-nography of a theatrical performance in which the anthrop ologist played a "lead-ing" role. Working with a popular acting troupe in Shaba, Zaire, Fabiandocum ented the production, direction, rehearsal and performance of a play thatdeveloped in direct response to questions he asked about the saying "Le pouvoirse mange entier, Pow er is eaten whole" (Fabian 1990:3). Extending the ethnogra-phy of speak ing and performing to creating and fash ioning through social praxis,Fabian's ethnography and the play that it in effect coproduced emerge as part of alarger communicative interaction within an evolving framework of historical,political, and cultural mean ings. To a certain extent, Fabian answers the challengeof reflexive anthropology without falling into self-serving solipsism because he


9/22


incorporates his interlocutors into a performan ce abo ut which, but not of which,he remains the author, although many of the middle chapters-recordingrehea rsal takes verbatim-make for tedious reading. W hat is salutary in thisattempt, however, is how philology recapitulates epistemology, in that the objectof ethnographic knowledge as a meaning-making activity is framed by its owntextual history. At the very least, Fabian has blazed a path between the historichegem ony of imperial positivism and the self-centered penitence of ethnography"degree zero" to say som ething interesting about popular performance and con-sciousness in postcolonial Zaire. Most recently, he has extended this appro ach toZairian painting and historical consciousnes s (Fabian 1 996).Pels (1994) has ap plied similar philological concerns to the production of mis-sionary and administrative ethnographies in the Uluguru mountains of (then)Eastern Tanganyika, examining the textual production of "tribal" traditions interms of "the complex interplay of colonizing and resisting strategies and thehybrid co-production of know ledge which results from it" (Pels 1994:345). Dis-tinguishing three phases of these processes-the prbterrain of power relation-ships in the field, the "ethnographic occasion" or socially organized encounterbetween observing ethnographer and natives observed, and the "writing up" offield notes into the ethno graph ic traditions of ethnographic texts-Pels revea lssignificant differences between adm inistrative and missionary metho ds and gen-res. W hereas the form er invented tribal histories and chiefs within a "pidgin poli-tics that kept the Realpolitik of Lugu ru big men an d lineages out of bureaucraticprocedure" (Pels 1994:336), the latter "aimed at the selection and transfo rma tionof assum ed parts of so cial practice, not at the preservation of assumed w holes"(Pels 1994:339 ), focusing on life cycles, economy, magic, and healing. Not onlydoes co mparison o f these g enres, taken as processes of textual production, com -plicate the colonial picture on both s ides of the imperial divide, but m ore impor-tant, it shows how the prbterrain shaped ethnographic encounters that in turnoverdetermined the ethn ographic "facts," and how these facts subsequen tly circu-lated to serve the interests and agendas of colonizers and colonized alike.

DialecticsThe colonial library acqu ires a new significance within such a philological turn,introducing a more socially grounded appreciation of how colonial inventions ofAfrica have been coproduced to become sociocultural realities. At issue is notwhether the colonial figures and categories of Africanist discourse should be (orever could be) abandoned, but how they have been indigenized, Africanized, andin some cases even nationalized through processes of ethnographic writing andrepresentation. Whatever weight we m ay attribute to the role of anthropology assuch in colonizing Africa, ranging from considerable (Kuklick 1991; cf Goody1995:191-208) to trivial (Asad 1991 3 15), its location w ithin the larger contex tsof im perial politics, science, and culture can be seen as an advantage rather than aliability. Turning anthropology o n its own im perial culture introduces a measureof reflexivity that, far from undermining the discipline's knowledge claims,underscores them with self-conscious recognition. From this more object-


10/22

586 APTER

oriented perspective, a growing body of scholarship has emerg ed to illuminate thedevelopm ent of imperial cu ltures and their political configurations in the colo-nies. In brief, colonial anthropology has given rise to an an thropology of colonial-ism.Key texts that chart the course o f this development (Callaway 1987; Mitchell1991; Hansen 1989, 1992; Coop er & Stoler 1997; Comaroff & Comaroff 1991,1992, 1997) are complemented by work on imperial ritual and colonial optics(Coom bes 1994, Geary 1988, Edw ards 1992). These and other num erous studiesof colonial cultures and encou nters in Africa engage a vast historical and theoreti-cal territory that can be characterized with reference to certain paradigmatic posi-tions an d breakthroughs in research. In a study of European wo men in ColonialNigeria, for example, Callaway brings together insights on "the theatre ofempire" (198755)-like the durbar, installation ceremon ies, Em pire Dayparades, staged arrivals and departu res, and more quotidian routines o f dining anddressing-with the reneg otiation of gend er roles and relations both within andbetween E uropean an d African social categories, enhancing female professionalautonom y among the former while dim inishing it among the latter. Developing anuanced notion of imperial culture that includes official ideologies of gender andrace, male fantasies of heroic conquest, and the political cosmology of livedspace, Callaway's study represents one of the first systematic anthropologicalapproaches to social distinctions and practices among Europeans in Africa,revealing fem ale visions and v oices that tell another story of empire behind thescenes (see also Kirk-Greene 1985). This perspective is important not onlybecause it explains how the "trappings" of power were central to establishingcolonial authority, but because it highlights the dynam ics of dom esticity in colo-nial life before and after the w ar. If the form er theme is brilliantly developed inM itchell's (1991) analysis of imperial spectacle, illuminating ho w a visual on tol-ogy of colonial representation valued the exhib ition above the "original," the lat-ter is elaborated in an important collection by Hansen (1992), which reveals howgender, race, and class were historically reconfigured by ideologies and practicesof dom esticity that include "labor and time, architecture and spac e, consump tionand accu mulation, body and clothing, diet and hygiene, and sexuality and gender"(Hansen 1992:5; see also Hansen 1989, 1997; Hunt 1997; M cClintock 1995;W hite 1990, 1995; Wildenthal 1997). One of the major them es em erging fromthis literature is how the politics of imperial culture in Africa belonged part andparcel to politics in the m etropoles, as centers and peripheries developed histori-cally and dialectically. This theme break s do wn into two significant variations:imperial spectacle and colonial conversions.

Imperial Spectacle If research on colonial exp ositions and industrial world'sfairs has blossomed over the past two decades, revealing how spectacular dis-plays of commodities and racial hierarchies represented the imperial order ofthings (Benedict 1983; Benn ett 1996; Celik 1992; Celik & Kinney 1990; Corbey1993; Greenhalgh 1988; Hinsley 1991; Leprun 1986; Rasool & Witz 1993; Ry-dell 1984, 1993; Silverman 1977), recent studies have begun to unpack the "dia-


11/22


lectics of seeing" (Buck-M orss 1991) in relation to com mo dity fetishism and itsvalue form s. We know , for instance, that anthropologists were consulted to show -case scientific know ledge in native displays, even publishing voluminous ethn o-graphies for such events to educa te the public and ratify its progressive place inthe world. We can also appreciate how the metropolitan centers remade them-selves in the images of their colonized others, by way of explicit contrasts be-tween civilization and barbarism as well as by the imp licit assimilation of "thesavage within" (Kuklick 1991). Indeed, the grand era of colonial expositions,from L ondon's Crystal Palace of 185 1 to the Exposition C oloniale Internationaleof Paris in 193 1, literally and figuratively staged Europ e's civilizing mission inAfrica, producing knowledge of the territories for domestic consumption whileexporting mo dels of trusteeship and enlightenment abroad. But if European cen-ters and their African colonies were so intimately imbricated in each other's im-ages, such connections were not limited to material interest and strategic intent;they also spoke to an ontological transformation of "the real." Here Mitchell(1991) achieves an .important breakthrough in analyzing colonial power and rep-resentation. Beginning with E gypt at the 1889 Universal E xposition in Paris, heidentifies a revealing optical illusion whereby an exhibited Egypt produced in theWest becam e mo re real and authentic than the land and people themselves. Thisinversion of simulacrum and original-a kind of comm odity fetish writ large-has profound implications for understanding colonial power and statecraft. Oneimplication is that imperial spectacles at hom e assum e an active role in the con -struction of colonial overrule, not as supportive props o r legitimating ideologiesbut as fram ing devices whereby m odels and plans becom e political realities withperceived truth-effects. A second implication is that such "techniques of the ob-server" (Crary 1990) produce the very split between colonial state and society,one that begins as an internal distinction and develops into an external boundary.From this perspective, the state is not assumed in advance or taken whole; itemerges from representational technologies an d practices into a n institutionallyreified "domain." This insight helps us rethink the status of civil society in post-colonial Africa (see below), and it is relevant for understanding how inventions ofAfrica became African realities.As two further "breakthrough" studies reveal, inventions of Africa becam eEuropean realities within Britain and France as well. In a landmark study ofmuseum displays as well as regional and national exhibitions in Late Victorianand Edwardian England, Coombes (1994) examines the relationship of "scien-tific" and popular know ledge of Africa to ideologies of race and national culturewithin Britain (for the politics of the cam era, see also S treet 1992, Vansina 1992,Faris 1992, Geary 1988, Prins 1992). Bringing the rise of professional anthropol-ogy-including theories of evolu tion and degeneration-to bear on popularforms o f ethnographic display as well as on q uestions of aesthetics and culturalvalue, Coom bes argues that museum s and exhibitions became temples and spec-tacles of em pire that remade the British nation and its various publics through theimages and objects of its African others. Nor w ere such displays directed exclu-sively to a national public sphere. They also redirected didactic attention to m ater-


12/22

588 APTER

nal and wifely obligations in the private sphere by invoking the African wom an a san object lesson against "feminist tendencies amongst white British women"(Co om bes 1994:99-100). It is within this contrapuntal development o f profes-sional knowledge and popu lar imagination, of British racial and cultural unifica-tion and African racial and cultural classification, that the categories ofMudimbe's colonial library were forged and refined, and the grammar of itsselections and sub stitutions set into historical motion. Althoug h m ore glob al in itsimperial scope, Lebovics (1992) reveals a similar dialectic at work in France,relating debates and divisions between physical anthropo logists and ethnologiststo the location of Africans, and indeed Franks and Gauls, within the shiftingbound aries and policies of nation and em pire. Exam ining the colonial expositionas "the simulacrum o f greater France," Lebov ics (1992:67) argues that it not onlyprom oted an imp erial consciousness an d a new sense of national identity at hom e,it also produced "a governing ideal" that recognized "the wrapping of culturesaround a French core as a kind o f mutual a pprenticeship in citizenship: on the oneside natives learning to be French while of course retaining their local customs;on the other European French, recalling their own ap prenticeships as Gasco ns orBretons, learning to welcome the new French" (Lebovics 1992:79). That thisideal diverged dram atically from the realities of racism and corvee labor need notdisrupt the truth-effects of the governing discourse, in that-following the insightof M itchell (1991)-the simulacrum surpasses the original within the politicalontology of imperial spectacle.Colon ial Conversions Und erstood as a mode of objectification and even fetish-ism grounded in colonial relations of production (McClintock 1995), imperialdiscourses and spectacles of Africa defined centers and peripheries, citizens andsubjects (Man dam i 1996), through the camera ob scura of class. If Europe an classrelations were mapped onto race relations abroad, projecting the dislocations ofthe industrial revolution on to the sav agery and heathenism o f the dark continent,class differences at hom e we re increasingly cast in racial terms as well. M oreover,the class-race axis was further transposed into g ender, religious, and national dif-ferences-and discrim inations of "sexuality and sentiment" (Cooper & Stoler1997:26)-forming an emergen t imperial culture at large. Here is where histori-cal anthropology and anthropological history converge. Focusing o n Tswana en-counters ca 1820-1920 with non-conform ist Christian missionaries in South Af-rica, Comaroff & Comaroff (199 1) wrote a nuanced historical ethnography of thecultural forms of conversion and domination, sho wing how the "colonization ofconsciousness" through religious rhetoric and quotidian reform led to the "con-sciousness of colonization" ranging from embodied poetics to overt politicalstruggle. Crucial to their analysis in this volume is a model o f how he gem ony andideology-seen as two ends of a continuum-operate reciprocally within a cul-tural field, bringing implicit cultural form (which rem ains unconscious o r dimlyapprehended) and more explicit meaning or content (more consciously grasped)to bear on the sym bolic and material production o f the social world, not throughendless mechanical reproduction, but dynamically, in relation to shifting align-


13/22

AFRICA, EMPIRE, ANTHR OPOLOG Y 589

men ts and strugg les. On e of the strengths of this form ulation is that it opens up thegray area between dom ination and resistance in the amb ivalent and hybrid termswith which Tswana experienced the colonial encounter, thereby accounting forhow they responded, ranging from struggles over space and time to struggles overwords and water. In mo re historical terms, the study sho ws how the class positionof the Wesleyan missionaries on the "social margins" of bourgeois Britain engen-dered (in both senses of the term) a pastoral vision of the African landscape andthe cultivation of its gardens and souls, placing them at odds with dom inant fac-tions of the colonial elite (Stoler & Coop er 1997:27) and gradually giving rise,through its impo sition on the Tsw ana, to a growing "sense of opposition betweensekg oa (European ways) an d setswan a (Tsw ana ways), the latter being perceivedfor the first time as asystem ofpractices" (Com aroff& Com aroff 1991:212). Herewe see how the colonial encounter produced the very op position that more con -ventional anthropo logy and historiography presupposes, reifying a Tswana cul-ture of language, law, and cu stom that the Tswan a themselves came to recognizeand appropriate (for a comparable dialectic in colonial Tanganyika, see Pels1999).Within the broader dialectics of center and periphery, Com aroff& Comaroff(1 992) relate evangelical m odels of bod ily an d household reform-promotingnuc lear hom es for the more cultivated Tswana Christians-to the politics ofdom estic reform in Britain , where the "dangerous classes" and their squalid slumswould be tam ed and cleansed by enlightened social policy. In C om aroff& Coma-roff (1 997), these them es are extend ed and expanded to the reordering of publicspace through architecture and town planning (see also W right 1997), the recast-ing of public and private do mains, bourgeois self-fashioning, the m oral and m ate-rial "currencies of conversion," the comm odified forms and signs of salvation,and the em erging racial and gend er ideologies that characterize a bourgeois mod-ernity not simply imposed o r resisted but reciprocally determined by the imperialcenter and its colonial frontier. In a me thodological shift that resembles the criti-cal optics of M itchell (1991) by revealing how internal distinctions materializeinto the e xternal boundaries of social order and m eaningful space, the Com aroffssolve the problem of the colonial library by taking the developm ent of its genresand categories into ethnographic account. If this method works for historicalanthro pology, does it have a place in postcolonial A frica?

NOTES FROM THE POSTCOLONYFor M afeje (1998) it does not. In a dam ning indictment of all major attempts toreinvent anthropology for a postcolonial Africa, M afeje condem ns the disciplineto-at best-ntropic dea th. Co ming from a classica lly trained soc ial anthropolo-gist who produced one of the first critiques of the ideology of tribalism (M afeje1971), this strongly principled attack represents the most recent version ofM udim be's more scholastic challenge, inviting a serious response.Focusing on "the deconstruction of Anthropology with reference to the ex-colonial world," Mafeje (1998: 1) makes the case that whatever the pretentions of


14/22

590 APTER

liberal apologists and revisionists from "the North," African scholars todayshould disp ense with the discipline. Caught in the double bind o f either reproduc -ing colonial reifications or losing the ethnographic referent in self-reflexiveconfusion, anthropology has become a lost cause for postcolonial African schol-ars. Reviewing, and at times excoriating, efforts to develop an adequ ate post-colonial anthropology (Asad 1973, Hym es 1974, Scholte 1974, Clifford &M arcus 1986, Comaroff & Com aroff 1992, Moore 1994), M afeje is also hard onhis African colleagues who seek refuge in development or alternatives in femi-nism or unmodified Marxism. But his solutions underscore a more generalprocess of indigenizing the ghosts of colonialism in Africa under the guise ofdecolonization.Mafeje (1991) proposes a way out of the anthropological double bind byreplacing the anthropological concepts of "society" and "culture" with revisedconcepts of "social formation" and "ethnography." By social formation, Mafejedeparts from standard Marxian mod es of articulation to sp ecify "the articulationof the econom ic instance and the instan ce of power," a move that brings politicsinto the "base" to recast "kingdoms" more historically in relation to colon ialism.From this perspective, what matters is "not which people were called Ba-N yoro,Ba-Gan da, Ba-Hindi, Ba-Hutu, Ba-T utsi, etc., but what they were actually doingin their attem pts to assert themselves" (M afeje 1998 :36). Such a perspective isuseful if not entirely original, given stud ies of cultural ethnogenes is as a historicaland sociopolitical process (Amselle 1985, Peel 1989), but more unusual is hisnotion of ethnography, referring to those texts authored by the people them-selves in the course of their social struggles and identity politics, as well as therules o f social discourse underly ing such textual production. It is up to the socialscientist to relate the "ethnography" of native (and nativist) d iscourse to the his-torical dynam ics of the social formation, and thus to disclose its "hidden" signifi-cance: "As I conceive of it, ethnography is an end product of social texts authoredby the people them selves. All I do is to study the texts so that I can decode them,make their meaning apparent or understandable to me as an interlocutor or [?Ithe 'other. ' What I convey to my fellow-social scientists is studied and sys-tem atised interpretations of existing but hidden knowledge" (Mafeje 1998:37).There are several ironies in this revisionist reversal of an ethnography withoutanthropology, not least of which is the nearly full-circle return to M udim be'smod el of gnosis-the hidden know ledge produced by the other and revealedby the ethnographer-that characterized the ethnop hilosophical illusion of thecolonial library. Mafeje (1998:37) actually cites Griaule for establishing anappropriate methodological precedent for his ethnographic elicitations. But whatis of interest are the philological dimensions of M afe je's solution and its logic ofindigenization.Briefly stated, Mafeje's dismissal of Africanist anthropology as inseparablefrom the co lonial politics of knowledg e actually relocates it in the historical ter-rain [o rpr kte rra in (Pels 1994)l of the social formation, and in the cultural domainof what he no w calls ethnography. Like Monsieur Jourdain with his prose, Afri-cans now learn that they have been speaking ethnography all of their lives!


15/22


Whether g enerated "through conversation, as Griaule or Dum ont did, or throughinterviews, recordings, participant observation, oral traditions, artistic expres-sions, or written accounts, is immaterial," M afeje (1998:37) m aintains, becausethese discourses constitute prima facie knowledge production as ethnographictexts unto themselves. B y taking the anthropological concept of culture out of eth-nography, the resulting social science is cleansed of its colonial accretions. But isit really? Has not the colonial palimpsest of the culture concept slipped into thenative voice under the sign of its erasure? Mafeje has indigenized the concept ofculture by displacing it into a textual model that actually remains complex,embracing both the explicit enunciations of ethnic identity politics and theimplicit gram mars o f their production. And it is at these deeper levels of discur-sive and textual production that something between a social formation and aninvented ethnic identity-namely culture-resides. Jun ker 's pygm y is stillclowning around despite the most vigilant efforts to exorcise his ghost.Mafeje's argum ent is particularly interesting because it represents a philolog i-cal variation of the decolonization paradigm in African studies and cu ltural pro-duction. Variously represented by negritude (Senghor 1964; Diop 1987, 1991),Pan-Africanism (Tho mpson 1974, Esedebe 1982, Padm ore 197 I) , or African per-sonality or consciencism (Nkrumah 1970) and summ arized succinctly by Ngu gi(1986), the paradigm m aintains that true liberation from colonial and neocolonialdomination requires a "cultural decolonization [which] has yet to be accom-plished" (Stoler & Cooper 1997:33). My meta-critique of Mafeje (1998), how-ever, suggests that we pay close ethn ograph ic attention to what goes on under theguise of cultural decolonization. What we find behind different strategies o f cul-tural production and recuperation is the indigenization of colonial culture itself,such that its structures, categories, and even rituals o f incorpora tion becom e Afii-canized as local, regional, national, or ev en Pan-African traditions.For exam ple, the du rbar ceremony celebrated with such fanfare in Nigeria dur-ing FESTAC '77 (the Second World Black and African Festival o f Arts and Cul-ture) actually reproduced a central ritual of colonial overrule that had developedin India and w as adapted by Lugard to northern Nigerian co nditions and practices(Apter 1999). This is not to deny the indigenous dimensions of Nigerian du rbars,like the jaJ salute, which colonial durbars appropriated, but to underscore theirhistorical development as rituals of colonial subjugation. What is interestinganthropologically is how the very decolonization of cultural tradition based on therejection o f imperialism proclaimed by FEST AC involved the nationalization ofcolonial tradition by the postcolonial state. Explicitly erased, such traditions asthe durbar an d regatta were indigenized through the very festivals and ministriesthat objectified culture for citizens and tourists (for a Francophone ex ample ofthis process, see Austen 1992 ). Here we see in reverse, as it were, the colonial pal-impsest in postcolonial Africa, mirroring anthropological history in its spectacu-lar productions of a precolonial past. M y point is not that cultural decolonizationhas yet to be accomplished, but that it cannot be accom plished by simple nega-tion. Rather it is accomplished historically by the very processes of indigenizationand nationalization, such as FESTAC's festivals and Mafeje's nonanthropologi-


16/22

592 APTER

cal anthropology, in which colonial forms of culture and knowledge are appropri-ated and reinscribed by Africans. That is both a process for Africanistanthropology to study and a practice that African anthropologists can more criti-cally pursue.

CONCLUSIONThe philological exploration of anthropology's heart of darkness has traced thecolonial palimpsest in the figure of Junker's pygm y to show that the discipline'simperial history unfolds through the very production of ethnog raphic texts andcannot be erased. In this respect, Mudimbe (1988, 1994) is correct in arguing thatthis history establishes important limits on the practice of Africanist anthropol-ogy. But when anthropology examines this history, as in the work reviewedabove, it deepens our understanding of the colonial encounter itself, providing adialectical perspective in which imperial cen ters and colonial peripheries devel-oped in reciprocal determination. As new research is beginning to reveal (Apter1998b, Comaroff & Comaroff 1999, Cooper 1994 ,1997, Mandani 1996, Werbner1998, We rbner & Ranger 1996), this approach applies to studies of civil societyand the public sphere in postcolonial Africa as well, in that the very historicaldeve lopm ent of civility and publicity in bourgeois Europe wa s part of the "civiliz-ing mission" in Africa , where-for better and worse-a new realm of res publicawa s forged that today sets the stage for democratization and political struggle.Returning to Jun ker's African exploits, however, there are other relics of animperial history, less loquacious if no less eloquent than the pygmy at Rumbek,that are buried even deeper in the archives of colonial memory. Describing histravels and tribulations, Junker (1892) records one appropriately "gruesome"event that he experienced in the service of natural s cience: "I had already taughtDsumbe how to prepare skeletons of mammals, and this work was now againtaken in hand .... These collections were now enriched by the gruesome present o fa number of hum an heads. I had merely given a general order to procure bleachedskulls, should the occasion present itself. But Z em io's people having once m ade araid on som e unruly A-K ahle people, those who fell were beheaded, and the headsnot ea ten, as is customary, but brought to me. I had them for the present buried in acertain place, and after my next journey prepared for the collection" (Junker1892:160-61). Junker's sketch (Figure 1) adds documentary force to this "grue-some gift," ostensibly illustrating African cannibalism and savagery but alsoimplicating the European explo rer in the very sam e crimes-framed by exchangerelations and modes of accumulation-which remain the hidden hallmark ofanthropology's heart of darkness. What is so remarkable about Junker's heads isnot just the cava lier violence of their collection and preparation , but the fact thatJunker actually took them home to Europe. These heads, bearing silent testimonyto European cannibalism and savagery in Africa, remind us that if anthropology 'simperial subtexts are to be acknowledged, they cannot be forgotten (Trouillot1995).


17/22


A CRt 'ES UME GIFT.Figure 1 Hu ma n heads brought to Dr. W ilhelm Jun ker for his scientific collection. Fro mJunker (1892:161).

Visit the Annual Reviews home page at www.AnnualReviews.org.

LITERATURE CITEDAbu-Lughod L. 1986. Veiled Sentiments:

Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society.Berkeley: Univ. Calif. PressAmselle JL. 1985. Ethnies et espaces: pourune anthropologie topologique. In AuCoeur de I'Ethnie: Ethnies, Tribalisme ett tat en Afrique, ed . JL Amselle, E M'B ok-010, pp. 11-48. Paris: DecourverteAmselle JL. 1998. Mestizo Logics: Anthropol-ogy of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere.Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.Transl. C Roya l (From French)

Apter A. 1992a. Black Critics and Kings: TheHermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society.Chicago: Univ. Chicago PressApter A . 1 992b. Qu e faire? Reconsidering in-ventions ofA frica. Crit. Inq. 19(1):87-104Apter A. 1998a. Discourse and its disclosures:

Yoruba women and the sanctity of abuse.Africa 68(1):68-97

Apter A. 1998b. Death and the king's hench-men: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the politicalecology of c itizenship in Nigeria. In Ogo-ni's Agonies: Ken Saro- Wiw a and the Cri-sis in Nigeria, ed. AR Na'allah, pp.121-60. Trenton, NJ: Africa Press Int.Apter A . 1999. The subvention of tradition: agenealogy of the Nigerian durbar. InState/Culture: The Study of State Forma-tion After the Cultural Turn, ed . G Stein-metz, pp. 213-52. Ithaca, NY: CornellUniv. PressAsad T, ed. 1973.Anthropology and the Colo-nial Encounter. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:HumanitiesAsad T. 1991. From the history of colonial an-
http:///reader/full/www.AnnualReviews.orghttp:///reader/full/www.AnnualReviews.org


18/22

594 APTER

thropology to the anthropology of westernhegemony. In Colonial Situations: Essayson the Contextualization of EthnographicKnow ledge, Histo? of Anthropology, ed.G Stocking, 7:314-24. Mad ison: Univ.Wisc. PressAusten R . 1992. Tradition, invention and his-tory: the case of the Ngondo (Cam eroon).Cah. Etud. Afr. 126:285-309

Balandier G. 1966 (1957). Ambiguous Africa:Cultures in Collision. London: Chatto &Windus. Transl . H Weaver (FromFrench)

Balandier G. 1970 (1955). The Sociology ofBlack Africa: Social Dynamics in CentralAfrica. New York: Praeger. Transl. D Gar-man (From French)

Barber K. 1991. I Could Speak Untzl Tomor-row: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yo-ruba Town. Washington, DC : SmithsonianInst.

Benedict B, ed. 1983. The Anthropology ofWorld's Fairs: San Francisco's PanamaPacific International Exposition of 1915.Berkeley, CA: Scolar

Bennett T . 19 96. The exhibitionary com plex.In Thinking About Exhibitions, ed. RGreenberg, BW Ferguson, S Nairne, pp.8 1-1 12. London: Routledg e

Bhabha H. 1997. Of mimicry and man: the am-bivalence of colonial discourse. See Coo-per & Stoler 1997, pp. 152-60

Boddy J. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits:Wom en, Men, an d the Zar Cult in NorthernSudan. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. PressBrantlinger P. 1986. Victorians and Africans;the genealogy of the m yth of the dark conti-nent. In "Race, " Writing and Difference,ed. HL G ates, pp. 185-222. Chicago: Univ.Chicago PressBuck-Morss S. 1991. The Dialectics of See-ing: W alter Benjamin a nd the Arcades Pro-ject. Cambridge, MA : MIT PressCallaway H. 1987. Gender, Culture and Em-pire: European Women in Colonial Nige-ria. Urbana: Un iv. Illinois PressCelik Z. 1992. Displaying the O rient: Archi-tecture of Islam at Nineteenth Centuly

World's Fairs. Berkeley: Univ. Calif.PressCelik Z, Kinney L . 19 90. Ethnography and ex-hibitionism at the Expositions Univer-selles. Assemblage 13:35-59

Chanock M. 1985. Law, Custom, and SocialOrder: The C olonial Experience in Malawiand Zambia. Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniv. Press

Clifford J. 1983. Power an d dialogue in eth-nography: Marcel Griaule's initiation. InObservers Observed: Essays on Ethno-graphic Fieldwork, Histoty of Anthro-pology, ed. G Stocking, 1: 121-56. Mad i-son: Univ. Wisc. Press

Clifford J, Marcus G, eds. 198 6. Writing Cul-ture: The Poetics andpo litics ofEth nogr a-phy. Berkeley: Univ. C alif. Press

Cocks P . 1 995. The rhetoric of science and thecritique of imperialism in British social an-thropology, c. 1870-1940. Hist. Anthr opol.9(1):93-119

Comaroff J. 1985.Bodjj ofpo we r, Spirit o fR e-sistance: The Culture and History of aSouth African Peop le. Chicago: Univ. Chi-cago Press

Comaroff J, Com aroff JL. 199 1. Of R evelationand Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism,and Consciousness in South Africa, Vol. 1.Chicago: Univ. Chicago PressComaroff JL, Comaroff J. 19 92. Ethnographyand the Historical Imagination. Boulder,CO: WestviewComaroff JL, Comaroff J. 199 7. OfRevelationand Revolution: T he Dialectics of Moder-n i p on a South African F rontier, Vol. 2.Chicago: Univ. Chicago PressComaroff JL, Comaroff J, eds. 1 999. Civil So-ciety and the Political Imagination in Af-rica. Chicago: Univ. Chicago PressCoombes A. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Muse-ums, Material Culture and PopularImagination. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ.PressCooper F. 1994 . Conflict and connection: re-thinking colonial African history. Am. Hist.Rev. 99(5) : 15 1 6 4 5Cooper F . 1997. The dialectics of decoloniza-


19/22


tion: nationalism and labor movements inpostwar French Africa. See Cooper &Stoler 1997, pp. 406-35

Cooper F, Stoler A, eds. 1997. Tensions ofE m -pire: Colonial Cultures in a BourgeoisWorld. Berke ley: Univ. Calif. Press

Corbey R. 1993 . Ethnographic showcases,1870-1930. Cult . Anthropol. 8(3):338-6 9Crary J. 1990. Techniques of the O bsew er: OnVision and Modernity in the NineteenthC e n t u v . Cambridge, MA : MIT Press

de Heusch L. 1982. Rois n b d 'un coeur devache. Paris: Gallimardde Heusch L. 1985. Sacrifice in Africa.Bloom ington: Univ. Indiana Press

Diop CA. 1987. Precolonial Black Africa.Westport, CT: Hill. Transl. H Salemson(From French)

Diop C A. 199 1. Civilization or Barbarism: A nAuthentic Anthropology. Westport, CT:Hill. Transl. YL Ngemi (From French)

Edwards E, ed. 1992. Anthropology and Pho-tography, 1860-1920. New Haven, CT:Yale Univ. Press

Esedebe PO. 19 82. Pan-Africanism: The Ideaand Movement, 1776-1963. Washington,DC: How ard Univ. PressFabian J. 1983. Time and the O ther: How An-thropology Makes its Object. New York:Columbia Univ . Press

Fabian J. 1986. Language and ColonialPower: The Appropriation of Swahili in theformer Belgian Congo, 1880-1938. Ber-keley: Un iv. Calif. PressFabian J. 1990. Power an d Performance: Eth-nographic Explorations Through Prover-bial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire.Madison: Univ. W isc. Press

Fabian J. 1996. Remembering the Present:Painting and Popular History in Zaire.Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press

Fanon F. 1967 (1959). A Dying Colonialism.New York: Grove. Transl. H Chevalier(From French)Faris JC. 1 973. Pax Britannica and the Su dan:S. F. Nadel. See Asad 1973, pp. 153-70Faris JC. 1992. Photography, power and the

southern Nuba. See Edwards 1992, pp .21 1-17Fernandez J. 1982. Bwiti: An Ethnography of

the Religious Irnaginiation. Princeton, NJ:Princeton Univ. PressFinnegan R. 1969 . How to do things withwords: performative utterances among

the Limba of Sierra Leone. Man 4(4):537-52Forde D. 1954. African Worlds: Studies in theCosmological Ideas and Social Values ofAfrican Peoples. London: Oxford Univ.Press

Forster PG. 1994. Politics, ethnography andthe "invention of tradition": the case of T.Cullen Young of Livingstonia Mission,Malawi. Hist. Anthropol. 8:299-320

Fortes M. 1969. Kinship and the Social Ord er.Chicago: AldineFortes M, Evans-Pritchard EE , eds. 194 0.Afri-

can Political Systems. London: OxfordUniv. Press

Geary C. 1988. Images from Bamum: Germ anColonial Photography at the Court ofK in gNjoya. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Inst.

Goody J. 1995. The Expansive Moment: Therise o f Social Anthropology in Britain andAfrica, 1918-1970. Cambridge, UK: Cam-bridge Univ. Press

Greenhalgh P. 1988. Ephemeral Vistas: TheExpositions Universelles, Great Exhibi-tions and Wo rld's Fairs, 1851-1939. Man-chester, UK : Manchester Univ. PressGriaule M. 1952. Le savoir des Dogon. J. Soc.Afr. 2 2 : 2 7 4 2

Griaule M . 1965 (1 948). Conversations withOgotemm &li: An Introduction to DogonReligious Ideas. London: Oxford Univ.Press. Transl. R Butler (From French)Hailey WM . 1957.An African Su we y: A Studyof Problems Arising in Africa South of theSahara. London: Oxford U niv. Press

Hansen KT. 1989. Distant Companions: Ser-vants and Employers in Zambia, 1900-1985. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. PressHansen KT, ed. 1992.African Encounters with

Domesticity. New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniv. Press


20/22

596 APTERHansen KT. 1997. Keeping House in Lusaka.New York: Columbia Univ. PressHinsley C. 1991. The world as marketplace:

commodification of the exotic at theworld's Columbian Exposition, Chicago,1893. In Exhibiting Cultures: The Poeticsand Politics of Museum Display, ed. IKarp, S Lavine, pp. 334-65. Washington,DC: Smithsonian Inst.Hunt NR . 1997. "Le bebe en brouse": Euro-pean women, African birth spacing, andcolonial intervention in breast feeding inthe Belgian Congo. See Cooper & Stoler1977, pp. 287-321Hymes D, ed. 1974. Reinventing Anthropol-ogy. New Y ork: Random House. 2nd ed.

Iliffe J. 1979. A Modern History of Tangan-yika. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.PressIrvine J. 1993. Insult and responsibility: verbalabuse in a Wolo f village. In Responsibilityand Evidence in Oral Discou rse, ed. J Hill,J Irvine, pp. 104-34. Cambridge, UK:Cam bridge Univ. Press

James W . 197 3. The anthropologist as reluc-tant impe rialist . See Asad 1973, pp. 41-69Jamin J. 1982a. Les metamorphoses de L'A f-rique fant6me. Critique 41 8:200-12Jamin J. 1982b. Objects trouves des paradisperdus: a propos de la mission Dakar-Djibouti. In Collections Passion , ed. J Hai-nard, R Kaehr, pp. 69-100. Neuchatel,France: Mus. Ethnogr.Junker W. 1892. Travels in Africa, 1882-1886, Vol. 3. London: Chapman & Hall.Transl. AH K eane (From German)Kirk-Greene A . 1985. Imperial administrationand the athletic imperative: the case of thedistrict officer in Africa. In Sports in Af-rica, ed. SA Mangan, W Baker, pp.8 1-1 13. New York: Holmes & Meier

Kramer F. 1993 (1 987). The Red Fez: Art a ndSpirit Possession in Africa. LondonNewYork: Verso. Transl. MR Green (FromGerman)Kuklick H. 197 8. The sins of the fathers: Brit-ish anthopology and African colonial ad-

ministration. Res. Sociol. Knowl. Sci. Art1:93-119Kuklick H . 1984. Tribal exemp lars: images ofpolitical authority in British anthropology,1885-1945. In Functionalism Histori-cized: Essays on British Social Anthropol-ogy, History ofA nthro polog y, ed. G Stock-ing, 2:59-82. Madison: Univ. Wisc. Press

Kuklick H. 1991. The Savage Within: The So-cial History of British Anthropology,1885-1945. Cambridge, U K: CambridgeUniv. PressLambek M. 1993. Knowledge and Practice inMayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sor-cery, andS piri t Possession. Toronto: Univ.Toronto PressLan D. 1985. Guns and Rain: Guerrillas andSpirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. PressLebovics H. 1992. True France: The W arsOver Cultural Ide ntip , 1900-1945. Ithaca,NY: Cornell Univ. PressLeclerc G. 1972. Anthropologie et Colonial-isme. Paris: FayardLee RB. 1979. The !Kung San: Men, Womenand Work in a Foraging Society. Cam-bridge, U K: Cambridge Univ. PressLee RB, Devore I, eds. 1976. KalahariHunter-gatherers: Studies of the !KungSun and their Neighbours. Cambridge,MA : Harvard Univ. PressLeiris M . 195 1 (1934). L 'Afrique Fantdme.Paris: Gallimard. 2nd ed.Leiris M. 1968 (1934). L 'Afrique FantGme.Paris: Gallimard. 3rd ed.Leiris M. 1981(1934). L 'Afrique FantGme.Paris: Gallimard. 4th ed .Leiris M . 1989 (1950). The ethnographerfaced with colonialism. In Bristes: BrokenBranches, pp. 112-3 1. San Francisco: NorthPoint. Transl. L Davis (From French)Leprun S . 1986.Le ThtLitre des Colonies: Sck-nographie, Acteurs et Discours de l'lma gi-naire dans les Expositions, 1855-1 937.Paris: Harmattan

Lugard F. 1965. The Dual Mandate in BritishTropical Africa. Hamden, CT: Archon. 5thed.


21/22


MacGaffey W. 1983. Modern Kongo Proph-ets: Religion in a Plural Society. Bloom-ington: Indiana Univ. Press

Mafeje A. 197 1. The ideology o f tribalism. J.Mod. Afr. Stud. 9(2):253-62Mafeje A. 199 1. The T heory and EthnographyofA fric an Social Formations: The Case ofthe Interlacustrine Kingdoms. Dakar,Senegal: CODE SRIAMafeje A. 1998. Anthropology and independ-ent Africans: suicide or end of an era? Afr.Sociol. Rev. 2(1):1-43Mandami M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Con -temporary Africa and the Legacy of LateColonialism. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniv. PressMann K, Roberts R, eds. 199 1. Law in Colo-nial Africa. Portsmouth, NH: HeinemannMcClintock A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race,Gende r and Sexuality in the Colonial Con-test. New York: RoutledgeMitchell T. 1991. Colonising Eg ypt. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. Press. 2nd ed.

Moore SF. 1994. Anthropology and Africa:Changing Perspectives on a ChangingScene. Charlottesville: Univ. VirginiaPressMudimbe VY. 1988. The Invention of Africa:Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order ofKnowledge. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.PressMudimbe VY. 1994. The Idea of Africa.Bloomington: Indiana Univ. PressNgugi WT. 1986.Decolonising the Mind: ThePolitics o f Language in African Literature.Portsmouth, NH: HeinemannNkrumah K. 1970. Consciencism: Philosophyand Ideology for Decolonization. NewYork: Month. Rev.Noyes JK . 1994. The natives in their places:"ethnographic cartography" a nd the repre-sentation of autonomous spaces in Ovam-boland, German South West Africa. Hist.Anthropol. 8:237-64Padmore G. 1971. Communism or Pan-Africanism. Garden City, NY: DoubledayPeel JDY. 1989 . The cultural work of Yorubaethnogenesis. In History and Ethnicity, ed .

E Tonkin, M McD onald, M Chapman, pp.198-2 15. Londo n: RoutledgePels P. 1994. The construction of ethnog raphicoccasions in late colonial Uluguru. Hist.Anthropol. 8:321-56Pels P. 1996. The pidginization of Ulugurupolitics: administrative ethnography andthe paradoxes of indirect rule. Am. Ethnol.2314:738-61Pels P. 1999. A Politics of Presence: ContactsBetween Missionaries and Waluguru inLate Colonial Tanganyika. Harwood Acad.Prins G. 1992. The battle for control of thecamera in late-nineteenth-century westernZamb ia. See Edwards 1992, pp. 2 18-24Radcliffe-Brown AR. 1952. Structure andFunction in Primitive Soc iety. Glencoe, IL:Free PressRadcliffe-Brown AR, Forde D, eds. 1950. Af-rican Systems of Kinship and Marriage.London: Oxford Univ. PressRanger T. 1983 . The invention of tradition incolonial Africa. In The Invention of Tradi-tion, ed. E Hobsbawm, T Ranger, pp.2 11-62. Camb ridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.PressRasool C, Witz L. 19 93. The 1952 Jan vanR ie-beeck tercentenary festival: constructingand contesting public national history inSouth Africa. J. Afr. Hist. 34:447-68Rydell RW. 1984. All the Wo rld's a Fair: Vi-sions of Empire at American InternationalExpositions, 1876-191 6 . Chicago: Univ.Chicago PressRydell RW. 1993. World of Fairs: TheCentury-of-Progress Expositions. Chi-cago: Univ. C hicago PressSahlins M. 1972. Stone Age Economics. Chi-cago: AldineScholte B. 1 974. Tow ard a reflexive and criti-cal anthropology. See Hymes 1973, pp.430-57

Seligman CG. 1957 (1930). Races of Africa.London: Thornton Bu tterworth. 3rd ed.Seligman CG. 1966 (1930). Races of Africa.London: Oxford Univ. Press. 4th ed.Senghor LS. 1 964. Libertt I: Ntgritud e et Hu-manisme. Paris: Seuil


22/22

598 APTER

Silverman DL . 1977. The 1889 Exhibition: thecrisis of bourgeois individualism. Opposi-tions 8:71-79

Sm ithR T. 1973. The matrifocal family. In TheCharacter of Kinship, ed. J Goody, pp.12 1 4 4 .Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.PressStocking G. 1987. Victorian Anthropology.New York: Free PressStoler A, Cooper F. 1997. Between m etropoleand colony; rethinking a research agenda.See Cooper & Stoler 1997 , pp. 1-56Stoller P. 1995. Embodying Colonial Memo-ries: Spirit Possession, Power and theHauk a in West Africa. New York: Rout-ledgeStreet B. 1992. British popular anthropology:exhibiting and photographing the other. InAnthropology and Photography, 1860-192 0, ed. E Edw ards, pp. 122-3 1. New Ha-ven, CT : Yale Univ. PressTempels P. 1969 (1959). Bantu Philosophy.Paris: Presence Afr. Transl. C King (FromFrench)Thompson VT. 1974. Africa and Uniw: TheEvolution of Pan-Africanism. London:LongmanThornton R. 1983. Narrative ethnography inAfrica, 1850-1920: the creation and cap-ture of an appropriate domain for anthro-pology. Man 18(3):502-20Trouillot M-R. 1995. Silencing the Past:Power and the Production of History. Bos-ton: BeaconTurner V. 1969. The Ritual Process. Chicago:AldineTurner V. 198 1. The Drums of Afliction: AStudy of Religious Processes Among theNdembu of Zambia. Ithaca, NY: CornellUniv. Press

Vansina J. 1992. Photographs of the Sankuruand Kasai River Basin Expedition under-taken by Emil Torday (1876-1931) and M.W . Hilton Simp son (1881-1936). See Ed-wards 1992, pp. 193-205Werbner R . 1984. The Man chester school insouth-central Africa. Annu. Rev. Anthro-pol. 13:157-85Werbner R, ed. 1998. Memory and the Post-colony: African Anthropology and the C ri-tique of Powe r. London: Zed BooksWerbner R, Ranger T, ed. 1996. PostcolonialIdentities in Africa. Atlantic Highlands,NJ: Zed BooksWhite L. 1990. The Comforts ofH om e: Prosti-tution in Colonial Nairob i. Chicago: Univ.Chicago PressWhite L. 1995. "They Cou ld Make Their Vic-tims Dull": genders and genres, fantasiesand cures in colonial southern Uganda . Am.Hist. Rev. lOO(5): 1 3 7 9 4 0 2Wildenthal L. 1997. Race, gender an d citizen-ship in the German colonial empire. SeeCooper & Stoler 1997, pp . 263-83Wilmsen E. 1989. Land Filled with Flies: APolitical Economy of the Kalahari. Chi-cago: Univ. Chicago PressWilson G . 194 1.An Essay on the Economics ofDetribalization in Northern Rhodesia, PartOne. Rhodes-L ivingston Paper No. 5. Liv-ingstone: Rhodes-Livingstone Inst.Wilson G. 1942.An Essay on the Economics ofDetribalization in Northern Rhodesia, PartTw o. Rhodes-Livingston Paper No. 6. Liv-ingstone: Rhodes-Livingstone Inst.Wright G. 1997. Tradition in the service ofmodernity: architecture and urbanism inFrench colonial policy, 1900-1930. SeeCooper & Stoler 1997, pp. 3 2 2 4 5

africa, empire and anthropology

Documents