Insight and Artistry in African Divination.

Edited by John Pemberton III

Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., and London, 2000. 209 pp., 71 b/w & 19 color photos. $65 hardcover, $29.95 softcover.

This publication presents fifteen essays by scholars on African divination; it was occasioned by an exhibition of a collection of more than 300 African objects loaned to the Mead Art Museum of Amherst College by the estate of Barry D. Maurer and by an accompanying symposium at Amherst College held in November 1996. Neither a catalogue of the divination objects in this collection nor a summary of symposium proceedings, this modest book continues the discourse begun by African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing, edited by Philip M. Peek, available through Indiana University Press since 1991.

The introduction by the editor, John Pemberton III, stresses the possibilities for cross-cultural studies in African scholarship and his rationale for choosing the essays, which study divination ritual, the use of ritual objects, and issues of methodology in cross-cultural inquiry. Thus the focus is clearly on ritual as articulating the world, affirming an intelligible order, and explaining and searching for answers to human sorrow. Artifacts associated with this process are subdivided into categories: objects used in the performance of a divination rite, objects present but not necessarily touched or handled in ritual, objects merely found in the shrines of diviners, and finally, objects created by a diviner for a client or created at the direction of a diviner. All are regarded as extensions of the diviner's powers of insight.

In the lead essay, Wyatt MacGaffey seeks a common structure and shared tradition that underlies the various cosmologies of central and west African peoples. He surveys distinct linguistic or culture regions in Africa according to various authors and then makes a case for a macro tradition that is neither static nor monolithic, one that "is simultaneously political, economic, and religious, and consists of institutions as well as mere ideas" (p. 17). Cosmologies deploying a series of complementary oppositions dominate, even though temporal relationships, whether cyclical or linear in concept, vary from place to place. In these cultures the unseen other world and the past is viewed as causal, authoritative, and a source of power and knowledge as opposed to an ambiguous sensual world Intervening between the other world and corresponding institutions of their own society, religious specialists manipulate the supernatural. Yet, oppositions recur. For example, the cult of ancestors and tutelary spirits, which extend the community in time and space, contrasts with antisocial individualistic cults. After emphasizing the categorical oppositions, MacGaffey shifts his focus to similarities and complementarities that mediate oppositions, namely graves, "fetishes," masks, chiefs, and witches around which metaphors endlessly cycle. In the dominant metaphor, powers from the land of dead are manifested as chiefs, witches, charms, or masks.

Philip Peek's contribution equally seeks comprehensive statements about the arts in divination systems of west and central Africa, building upon his previous approach to divination as systems of thought in action. As alternate ways of knowing and thinking, divination symbolism, communication, and ritual together create a unique environment in which the client can formulate a specific plan of action. The diviner employs the arts dramatically, heightening all the senses, to create and highlight this radically different setting for the oracular utterance. Moreover, the animal imagery affiliated with divination builds on the animal's anomalous characteristics, exceptional sensory ability, wisdom and otherworldly associations, and it underscores underlying principles of the systems they engage. This cognitive process thus integrates contemporary reality with a different knowledge in the decision-making process.

In "Telling and Foretelling," John Mack tackles the connection of art to divination once again, but from the standpoint of mystical order as reflected in visual harmony, and of mystical disorder as reflected in visual disjunction. The examples he presents derive from insights of the Malagasy mpanandro divination together with citations from subsequent essays in this volume.

The two remaining sections of this publication are devoted to specific divination contexts. For central Africa, there is Mary Nooter Roberts on the use of metaphor and tropes in Luba divination, Allen F. Roberts on the production of histories within Tabwa boiling-water oracles, Z. S. Strother on skepticism in Pende divination, Rene Devisch on the slit-drum and body imagery in Yaka divination, Manuel Jordan on the flexibility of divination types and techniques among the Chokwe and related peoples, and Alisa LaGamma on divination diversity for the peoples of the equatorial rain forests of Gabon. The essays on west African contexts are by Lorenz Homberger on the Mouse Oracle among the Guro, Barry Hallen on Yoruba ritual performance, and Wande Abimbola on continuity and change in performance traditions of Yoruba Ifa divination.

The only essay in this volume to deal with artistry is written by Rowland Abiodun and deserves separate mention. "Riding the Horse of Praise: The Mounted Figure Motif in Ifa Divination Sculpture" succinctly reviews the use of the horse, equestrian imagery, and the Ifa divination container called agere Ifa, with specific focus on an ivory example carved in Owo from the Zollman collection. Abiodun's essay refreshingly anchors divination research in the discussion of a single object and motif and then draws upon oral tradition for levels of interpretation.

What one misses in the discussion of divination as metaphor, metonymy, semantic privilege, and etiological discourse is how it relates to real individuals and specific occasions where actual ritual implements are utilized. How do people think of themselves in divination? Nowhere do we encounter an actual oral text or an actual speaker. Although translating this material from the original discourse can be daunting and always ends as an approximation, to neglect this essential source material is to doom genuine understanding.

The presentation of the text and illustrations in this publication is impeccable, and the price is particularly affordable in softcover edition.

ARTHUR P. BOURGEOIS is a professor of art history at Governors State University.