Luba.

Luba

by Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts

Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007. 145 pp., 63 b/w photos, bibliography. $34.95 paper

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Luba art has been popularized through books and exhibitions on African art but serious academic studies that address the meaning of Luba art remain scattershot and largely superficial. Moreover, there is a notorious absence of an insider voice, as doctoral dissertations on Luba art, religion, and politics are scarce and most published studies of Luba art, culture, and history were produced by Western missionaries and scholars from the very countries that colonized the Congo. This is why the unconventional work by Mary Nooter and Allen Roberts is so important and also calls for careful scrutiny.

In a sense, Luba is a segue from the Roberts' already well-known Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (Prestel, 1996), an edited volume which explored Luba worldview from various angles through fieldwork and the expertise of local and Western scholars. However, the new book is a different type of work. Published in the series "Visions of Africa" Luba is written solely by two American authors who have specialized in the art and culture of the Luba and Lubaized people. Allen Roberts conducted his doctoral research in anthropology on the Batabwa (one of the Lubaized peoples), while Mary Nooter focused her doctoral dissertation on the art of the Luba heartland. Together they bring their expertise to bear on the Baluba and have done impressive work in this region over the last twenty years.

The book can be divided in three sections: the first offers a systematic essay on the nature, function, and meaning of Luba art. Luba is articulated around the central themes of beauty, power, and spirituality. It proposes a theory of art referred to as an "aesthetics of efficacy" (p. 58). It is followed by color plates of sixty-three Luba sculptures. These magnificent large photos are followed by captions providing some description and explanation of the art objects. The book ends with an excellent annotated bibliography of some of the most important authors and books on Luba culture.

The originality of the book is in its narrative about the meaning of Luba art. As the authors put it clearly, the book is not about Luba art, but rather about "the work of art" in Luba culture and the meaning and role of art within its cultural context. It focuses on Luba royal arts and analyzes art objects that belonged to men of noble status. This enables the authors to examine the prominent role that women occupy in an art so central to political power. Contrary to the facile assumptions made by many non-African scholars who saw in Luba representation of women in art merely the manifestation of a phallocratic dominance celebrating fertility or in search for "sexual frisson," Mary Nooter discovers a complex philosophy that accepted and honored the power and wisdom of women, maintaining, as a Luba proverb put it, that "kingship is a woman." This section is thoroughly researched and presents compelling arguments for what may be considered a traditional Luba "feminist" worldview. The book goes on to explore how Luba art mores from wood carvings of human forms to the transformation of the human body itself into a work of art, especially through scarification.

The fundamental contribution of the book lies in its methodological approach, which makes extensive use of postcolonial hermeneutics. Responding to Rowland Abiodun's call "to put the African back into African art history," the authors intend to move beyond Western categories that impede a genuine understanding of African cultures and their material expressions. This is why they denounce a plethora of academic prejudices and engage in a vigorous "conflict of interpretations." They remind those who reduce African art to fetishism to pay attention to the role of Byzantine icons and various images in Christianity.

Some statements are striking in their elegant understanding of Luba worldview: Luba art was and continues to be a repository of profound cultural and spiritual wisdom (p. 13)', in Luba past and contemporary times, the arts are dynamic agents of social, political, and spiritual transformation; art objects are not inert things, but objects that have active powers; the efficacy of Luba objects can change the lives of those who make and use them. Indeed, Luba art brings wellbeing to peoples' lives (pp. 1, 58, 59); for Luba, the work of art is the work of spirits and the Bavidye (ancestral spirits) are regarded as the true authors of Luba art (p. 59).

What strikes the reader is the humanism of the work. This book of impassioned and meticulous scholarship emerges as a much-needed counterbalance to centuries of romantic confabulations about Africa. We are far from the classical gruesome anthropological accounts of prelogical savage cannibals. Here one discovers not "les negres de tintin-au-congo" but real human beings, subjects rather than mere objects of history, indeed people who stand tallas agents of their own destiny and magnificently use their art to express such ala agency. The book is largely accurate in its description of Luba culture and thought as well as in its rendering of Luba names and words.

The only limitations may be in the insufficient treatment of the meaning of kingship (Bulopwe) and in the problematic interpretation of Luba concept of beauty. The authors grasp well the fact that for the Baluba the essential conception of political power is not based on arbitrary whims of the king, but rather on rules, regulations, prohibitions, and interdictions. Relying on the history of Kalala Ilunga, the paradigmatic founder of Luba kingdom, the authors understand well that kingship carne to the Luba with a culture bearer who stood apart for his cultivated habits and sophisticated manner and spiritual values. This is why the Bulopwe rejects vulgarity and obscene brutality, embodied by Kongolo Mwamba. The royal institution of Bulopwe with its most important components (Mulopwe, mfumu, mwadi, kioni, kutomboka, kitenta, lupona, dikumbo, kobo ka malwa) is very well described. However there is one problematic note. By relying much on the erudite yet somewhat phantasmagorical speculations of Luc de Heusch, the book seems to exoticize the whole Bulopwe institution. A reader not well versed in Luba history and the complexity of royal mythologies may come away with the impression that all Luba kings were dangerous, blood-drinking cannibals regarded as semi-divine monsters and blindly obeyed. Although the book states that Luba royal art is a repository of profound spiritual wisdom, the sections on "Bulopwe and the Making of Kings" and "Kings of the Sacred Blood" do not demonstrate this point. They do not address the issue of counter-power and the whole raison d'etre of political power. The notions of kobo ka malwa and dikumbo (p. 13) should have been analyzed more deeply.

Another discordant note can be found in the way the book responds to the fundamental question of Luba notion of beauty. The book cites an informant who claimed that "when a man looks at a woman, he doesn't look at her face ... he looks at her scarifications. If she has beautiful scarifications, then one says that she has a beautiful face" (p. 55). This statement is reductionist and overlooks many other dimensions of Luba vision of beauty. Love songs abound in Lubaland where young girls and boys engage freely in a highly romantic celebration of physical attributes as well as the beauty of a body in motion, the beauty of women who know "how to walk the walk;' and how to raise waves with their generously swinging hips. People sing the graceful elegance of eyes, lips, teeth, neck, hair, or smile. Most importantly in Africa, where most languages use the expression "Muntu muyampe" (in Kiluba) or "Mutu Muzuri" (in Kiswahili) to refer to a beautiful or a good person, beauty is essentially viewed as elegance of character. It is therefore misleading to emphasize scarifications as the fundamental criterion of beauty. Notwithstanding these minor limitations, the book is extremely accurate in its description of the Luba artistic worldview.

What Roger Bastide said about the Yoruba is also true for the Baluba. Indeed, what Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen Roberts show is that there is among the Baluba an entire "civilization of spirituality" comparable to that of the finest African wood carvings. This is why this book is so valuable not only to artists and art historians, but also to scholars and students interested in the disciplines of political science, philosophy, theology, religious studies, history, and gender studies. Most importantly the book is a testament of friendship and understanding between Africa and the West, indeed a superb example of the possibility of genuine dialogue among people, cultures, and civilizations in this global village that our world is increasingly becoming. It is also for many Africans a sigh of relief that there are non-African scholars who "get it" and who are determined to fight the global intellectual terrorism that Africans have suffered so long at the hands of thinkers who constantly delight in presenting Africans as a caricature of humanity and Africa as the heart of darkness.

MUTOMBO NKULU-N'SENGHA was born and raised in the Luba Heartland (Kabongo) and is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University Northridge. [e-mail]