Fashioning Africa: Power and Politics of Dress.

Fashioning Africa: Power and Politics of Dress

ed. by Jean Allman

Indiana University Press, 2004; 256 pages, 36 b&w photos, index. $50 cloth;

$21.95 paper

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Jean Allman's edited volume on African dress adds substantially to research on dress as nonverbal communication with its focus on power and politics. The book is a gem. I followed its development from attendance at the two panels of papers presented at the 2001 African Studies Association meetings to its publication in 2004, assigning it for my seminar on Dress and Culture, where it stimulated lively discussion. The chapter contributors are interdisciplinary, dominated by seven historians, followed by two anthropologists, an art historian, a dress scholar, and a communications specialist. Allman selected several writers already known to Africanists as having published books or articles on African dress, such as Judith Byfield (2002), Margaret Jean Hay (1992, 1996), Elisha Renne Q995), Victoria Rovine (2001), and Phyllis Martin (1996). Newcomers are Heather Akou, Marissa Moorman, Andrew Ivaska, and Boatema Boateng.

Allman's phrase "the sartorial study of power" (p. 4) succinctly introduces the common issues featured in the chapters. As a historian who normally deals with written documents in library or government archives, she points out that all contributors use "clothing or dress as an enormously valuable, yet largely untapped, archive" (ibid.). Allman's introduction also tackles the topic of modernity versus tradition, taking the stance that "tradition does not exist either prior to or in opposition to the modern" (p. 5), and she asserts that both tradition and modernity can and do exist simultaneously. She points out that textile examples used for dress and thought of as traditional, such as mudcloth from Mall and kente from Ghana, are used effectively as a base for contemporary fashions, and the chapters by Rovine on mudcloth ("Fashionable Traditions: The Globalization of an African Textile") and Boateng on kente ("African Textiles and the Politics of Diasporic Identity-Making") provide detailed analyses of her point of this dual existence.

In addition to the themes of power and politics, chapters illustrate how dress displays many other facets of identity, most particularly focusing on gender. In "Remaking Fashion in the Paris of the Indian Ocean: Dress, Performance, and the Cultural Construction of a Cosmpolitan Zanzibari Identity," Laura Fair pinpoints gender when she asserts that "new forms of dress were worn as public articulations of women's new definitions of self" (p. 13). She begins her argument with a description of both men's and women's dress in the nineteenth century (for both freeborn and slave, high status and low), giving as an example how, after abolition, former slaves began appropriating formerly forbidden items. Also at that time, the cotton printed textile known as kanga took on significance and became popular. Women began to create a new image for themselves, a cosmopolitan image, by creating a hybrid mixture from a variety of cultural styles formerly worn by people from many different backgrounds in Zanzibari history. Fair sees women's selection of garments from a past that embraced both "Arab and African, slave and free" (ibid.) as their opportunity to display a Zanzibari national identity. Her chapter is densely packed with material that analyzes how dress became significant in various rituals and performance and stimulated hybrid fashions.

In an example from the other side of the continent, Byfield, in "Dress and Politics in Post-World War II Abeokuta (Western Nigeria)," discusses how many Yoruba elite during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rejected wearing items of Victorian dress introduced by British colonialists and returned to wearing what were seen as "traditional" Yoruba outfits. Byfield argues that their act visibly illustrated to colonial authorities that the elite were not only setting themselves apart from colonial authorities and values but also showing commitment, both political and cultural, to being Yoruba. Within Yoruba culture, the type and quality of cloth were significant, and Yoruba wardrobes included imported textiles, such as velvet, as well as those locally woven. Also, fine embroidery, deep and rich colors (especially indigo), along with the generous amounts of fabric used in a garment were important. Byfield strategically inserts the example of the significance of dress to the members of the Abeokuta Women's Union (AWU), a group concerned with social issues, including the role of Mrs Funimalayo Ransom-Kuti, one of "Nigerigs emerging intelligentsia" (p. 35) as a mover and shaker within it. Ransom-Kuti decided, as she became a voice of the AWU on behalf of many women's issues, to wear the Yoruba head-tie (gele), wrapper (iro), and blouse (buba) and to speak Yoruba to colonial authorities, even though she spoke fluent English.

Deftly stressing change along with the theme of gender in "Changes in Clothing and Struggles over Identity in Colonial Kenya," Margaret Jean Hay establishes a baseline of the early 1900s for types of dress considered proper for wear in specific situations by Kenyan men and women, adults and children. Many examples provided only minimal coverage or appeared exotic, composed of skins, feathers, paint, or wire, giving Europeans, whether residents or travelers, "picturesque photo opportunities" (p. 68). Dress during British rule from 1895-1915 encompassed many of these examples, and also saw the emergence of new forms. Wearing both indigenous forms and Western-style clothing brought about criticism from Europeans, for some outsiders protested that although they believed European-style clothing was not appropriate, they nevertheless wanted nakedness to be covered with items such as wrappers for women or a simple gown or tunic for men. Hay develops her chapter around three conflicts during the 1920s and 1930s in western Kenya regarding clothing and identity: 1) between Christians and labor migrants and Luo traditionalists, (2) between elders and young men, and (3) between fathers and daughters and husbands and wives. Her point is that individual and regional variation existed during that time. She concludes by observing that at the time of World War II, many types of dress, such as skins and beads, were gone, and "the men and women of western Kenya were proudly claiming an identity as modern Africans in modern clothes" (p. 79).

Marissa Moorman and Andrew Ivaska, in "Putting on a Pano and Dancing like our Grandparents: Nation and Dress in Late Colonial Luanda" and "Anti-Mini Miltants Meet Modern Misses: Urban Style, Gender, and the Politics of 'National Culture' in 1960s Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania" respectively, deal with the 1940s through the 1960s in Angola and the 1960s in Tanzania. Moorman uses the concept of the global ecumene in regard to a series of cultural practices that included clothing items worn by members of a cosmopolitan youth culture. Moorman emphasizes that cosmopolitanism involves conscious decisions by people about clothes, music, and dance styles, both as individuals and as members of a group. The Angolan scene was complex over time, for it involved first acceptance and then rejection of Western-style clothing, with the development of hybrid types such as panos (pieces of cloth, apparently wrappers) combined with Westernstyle dress. Ivaska documents the history of the ban on the miniskirt and other items such as wigs, skin-lightening creams, tight pants or dresses, and short shorts, which began on New Year's Day, 1969, and launched a campaign by the Youth League of Tanzania's ruling party TANU. Although the ban supposedly applied to dress infractions by both males and females, primarily females were targeted as transgressors. Ivaska analyzes the ban as one that related to larger issues than just "modern" fashions that seemed inappropriate to wear. He ties the uproar over fashion transgressions to struggles within urban areas relating to gender and generational conflicts. In his view, the visibility of fashions became "extraordinary indices of social conflict, registering debates over national culture and 'modern development,' the construction and crises of new femininities and masculinities, general conflicts over resources and contest over public space in a postcolonial capital" (p. 118).

Also focusing on the wearing of miniskirts, this time in Zambia, Karen Tranberg Hansen, asks the question, "What is it about miniskirts that continues to provoke public ire about questions concerning culture, gender, and sexuality?" (p. 166). She begins with a general discussion of the significance of the dressed body in her chapter, "Dressing Dangerously: Miniskirts, Gender Relations, and Sexuality in Zambia" and leads into an extended analysis of expected differences in Zambian society for male and female dress. She contrasts reactions about the introduction of the miniskirt in the late 1960s and early 1970s to its re-introduction in the 1990s. Her chapter, like all of the chapters, is intricately argued and substantiated. She concludes that for Zambians, "debates about miniskirts have diverged in tenor because the socioeconomic and political circumstances against which they have played out are different" (p. 180).

Jean Allman's chapter also develops an extended example of gender and dress in '"Let Your Fashion Be in Line with Our Ghanaian Costume': National, Gender, and the Politics of Clothing in Nkrumah's Ghana." She covers historical materials about what was thought of as the "problem of nudity" for women, particularly in the northern area of Ghana. She unravels some of the factors referring to "naked" and "nude" as socially constructed concepts generally, as well as specifically by colonial authorities and missionaries in Ghana, who wanted bodies to be covered with cloth and who did not believe that beads, skins, or leaves could count as dress. Two important references are neglected in the chapters by Allman, Hansen, Hay, and Ivaska. The first is an article by Ali Mazrui, "The Robes of Rebellion: Sex, Dress, and Politics in Africa" (1970), in which Mazrui analyzed the definition of nakedness in Kenya and Tanzania in the 1960s, analyzing the uproar over miniskirts in comparison with the minimal dress of the Masaii. The second is the volume by Adeline Masquelier, Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body's Surface (2005), which expands on the difference between the concepts of "naked" and what Masquelier calls "undress."

In contrast to debates over miniskirts, Heather Akou takes up what is worn by Somali women who have left the African continent and relocated in metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul (the Twin Cities). She offers an explanation of Somali women's dress that distinguishes them in a highly visible way in their new locale as an important factor in Somali construction of their political past. She sees their way of dress as exemplifying a new type of national dress. A history of dress in Somalia includes periods when both Somali men and women could be found wearing various examples of Western dress (including the miniskirt), but over time, in response to many factors such as the dictatorship of Siad Barre, women turned to wearing religious dress as part of a growing commitment in general to Islamism. Thus, Akou sees the variations of covering that Somali refugees wear in the Twin Cities as not only symbolic of a religious commitment, but also as a way of constructing a way to announce that they are Somali.

Elisha Renne turns to a different topic in "From Khaki to Agbada: Dress and Politcal Transition in Nigeria," and initially provides a history of the use of robes in Nigeria by traditional leaders before British rule and British introduction of khaki uniforms. She describes the use of khaki from mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth and the relationship of the British to indigenous Nigerians in regard to uniforms for the latter, when footwear was not issued and various items of their uniform, such as long shorts, the Zouave jacket, and the fez, exoticized them as well, certainly clearly differentiating them from British military. After independence in 1960, the Nigerian military adopted khaki uniforms that have continued, with only minimal change, into the twenty-first century, although after independence, some leaders serving in civilian regimes wore civilian dress. In one example, when Shehu Shagari took over as president of the Second Republic in 1979, he began to wear a distinctive civilian ensemble, in contrast to the uniforms characterizing the military rule of General Obasanjo, who preceded him. The phrase "khaki to agbada" was used to capture the idea of shifting power from military to civilian rule. After Shagari's overthrow, khaki uniforms again appeared. Thus, Renne recounts and analyzes both khaki to agbada and agbada to khaki examples and offers a more complex set of factors for consideration than that of a simple power shift symbolized by a change of garment types. She declares that often members of the public expressed skepticism about such power shifts, for they did not believe that those in charge who began wearing "robes" (agbada) instead of military uniforms, actually changed their orientation to power.

I am particularly fond of edited collections that end with an Afterword to leave the reader with penetrating comments. Phyllis Martin provides a summary overview with three major points. 1) For centuries, African dress has been permeated with meaning. 2) Identity is easily established through dress. 3) Exploring the political parameters of dress provokes us as academics to reconsider some of our analytical tools, such as a "predilection for negotiation." In her appraisal of "the fashioning of power," Martin suggests that the authors illustrate not only the limits of hegemony but also the limits of negotiation with their data. Martin concludes, "Dress is symbolically powerful, made all the more so by its monetary, emotive, moral, and aesthetic implications. Power resides in unexpected domains" (p. 230). A newspaper headline appeared as I was completing this review that chillingly reinforces her conclusion: "Why Did 3 Die in Baghdad? For Wearing Shorts" (Gamel 2006). The article reports that leaflets distributed in two Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad warned people not to wear shorts, because wearing them violates Islamic principles by showing forbidden parts of the body; gunmen flagged a car carrying an Iraqi tennis coach and two players who were wearing shorts and shot them to death.

References

Byfield, Judith. 2002. The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Women Indigo Dyers in Western Nigeria, 1890-1940. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.

Gamel, Kim. 2006. "Why Did 3 Die in Baghdad? For Wearing Shorts." Minneapolis Star Tribune. May 28, p. A7.

Hay, Margaret Jean. 1992. "Who Wears the Pants? Christian Missions, Migrant Labor, and Clothing in Colonial Western Kenya." Discussion Papers in the African Humanities, African Studies Center, Boston University.

--. 1996. "Hoes and Clothes in a Luo Houswehold: Changing Consumption in a Colonial Economy." In African Material Culture, eds. Mary Jo Arnoldi, Christraud Geary, and Kris Hardin, pp. 243-61. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Martin, Phyllis M. 1996. Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mazrui, All A. 1970. "The Robes of Rebellion: Sex, Dress, and Politics in Africa." Encounter 34 (2):19-30.

Masquelier, Adeline, ed. 2005. Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body's Surface. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Renne, Elisha. 1995. Cloth That Does not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Rovine. Victoria. 2001. Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mail Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

JOANNE B. EICHER is Regents Professor Emerita, Department of Design, Housing, and Apparel, University of Minnesota, and editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, to be published in 2010. [e-mail]