The need for roots.

The extraordinary objects in the exhibition "Genesis" reflect the concern of people in a particular range of societies with questions of origin. These objects, and the practices within which they were intended to live, can best be made sense of against a background of narratives about the earliest common ancestors of the people of a particular place--a creation myth, a Genesis story, whose subject may be a family, a clan, a social group, a nation, or our species.

One way in which the societies that produced these objects were, and to some degree still are, different from ours today is in the sense that people had in them of the continuing presence of the ancestors. The centrality of funerals and funerary art in African societies reflects, of course, a recognition of the enormous significance of the transition from life here on earth to whatever follows, but it does not mark a transition in which the dead are no longer part of our community (Fig. 1). In the family shrine of my abusua (matriclan) in my hometown, elders gather regularly to feed the ancestors through the blackened stools that represent them; one old lady I know dreams of my dead father and passes on his messages and tells me how he is doing. For her these dreams are conversations, not fantasies: his sunsum, his soul, converses with her soul as she sleeps.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

While the dead matter differently, in short, they still matter; and we can appeal to their interests and concerns, especially their concern with the maintenance both of the family and its living members and of conformity to norms. Here we can say that granny wouldn't have liked yon to do something or ask you to do something in honor of her memory; in Asante I can tell you that granny won't like it and that you are not only despoiling her memory but upsetting her. And in Asante you have to worry whether she'll do something about how she feels. When certain things happened at my father's funeral that interfered with the plans of those who didn't want his will carried out, it was an obvious hypothesis--floated by many people that I talked to--that he was working in the background to achieve his ends. How he was able to do this is one of the mysteries that people accept: we could see his body lying in the casket, so we knew he was not acting through it anymore.

That is one way the sculptures in this show work: they embody now the ancestor whose living body is gone, they solve the problem of how the dead can act. Through them an ancestor can be present in a masquerade or a shrine (Fig. 2). And the performance of the masquerade and the offering at the shrine are ways of maintaining a relationship that can no longer be maintained by ordinary human interactions. We are defined, each of us, in part dialogically, as the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor puts it. (The idea, he would be the first to insist, goes back at least to Hegel.) Through dialogue with others we define ourselves ... by contrast with them, but also through shared projects and understandings. For the people who made these objects, people who died did not exit the conversation that defined them, did not inhabit it only through memory; they were still there, if in a new way, and that sense of the presence of the past--the life, if I may put it this way, of the dead--is something we can surely feel in these objects.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

It is almost inevitable with African art shows outside Africa that our interest in the objects is likely at first to focus on differences of this sort between us here and now and them there and then, on the ways in which what they did there is not like what we do here. No harm in that, I think, unless it leads us to forget what is human in our focus on what is African, in general, or, more specifically, Baga, Boyo, Bwa, Bwende, Chokwe, Dogon, Fang, Kuba, Luba, Kurumba, Hemba, Mossi, Tabwa, Hemba, or Yoruba. But I should like to speak mostly about some impulses we share with the creators of these objects, impulses that have to do with the deep way in which most societies, including our postmodern New York metropolis, depend on narratives of origin to give meaning to contemporary identities (Fig. 3). So I shall be talking mostly in these brief remarks about the human need for roots.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

To speak of identities in this context is, I think, completely natural for us, because what strikes us about these genesis stories is that they narrate the beginnings of a group--a lineage, a clan, a state, a people, a community--or a practice--agriculture--and, in so doing, give shape to some collectivity in the present (Figs. 4, 5). The vocabulary of identity is our natural response to such processes, because we see communities as mattering in large measure not in themselves but because of what they provide for members of those communities. And part of what they provide is aid for each of us in shaping our lives, which they do by way of their role in helping to make our individual identities (Figs. 6, 7). The story of Osei Tutu and Okomfo Anokye, the founding narrative of Asante, where the family narratives of Abena Busia's father and mine begin, is important now, we are inclined to think, because being-Asante matters to certain people (and, perhaps, because not-being-Asante matters to others). So it is easy for us to move between thinking of Asante as a collectivity--the Asante people--and thinking of being-Asante as an identity, the one that the members of the collectivity share.

[FIGURES 4-7 OMITTED]

In the "Genesis" show there are objects that reflect the origins of agriculture and in so doing give meaning to the identity of members of the Bamana ci wara society; that narrate the beginnings of kingdoms, and so give sense to Kuba, Luba, and Chokwe identities; that express an understanding of the origins of a family or clan, thus granting Baga, Bwa, Kurumba, Mossi, Fang, Bwende, Tabwa, Hemba, and Boyo lineages distinctness within their own societies; or that tell the story of human creation--whether through the Yoruba Creator God Obatala or the Senufo Kolotyolo--and thus identify a meaning for our common humanity. These objects were produced by and for people who cared for them and who, in caring for them, expressed their attachment to the groups to which they (like the objects) belonged. To cease to care about these objects and these stories in that way would have been either to abandon or to rethink those communities and thus the identities that they sustain.

Ernest Renan, the great French historian of religion, wrote in his essay "What Is a Nation?"

   A nation is a soul a spiritual principle.
   Two things, which, in truth, are
   really just one, make up this soul,
   this spiritual principle. One is in the
   past, the other in the present. One
   is the possession in common of a
   rich legacy of memories; the other
   is current consent, the desire to live
   together, fire willingness to continue
   to maintain the value of the heritage
   that one has received as a common
   possession." (1)

Renan claimed that it is our common history--and the contemporary commitments that history underwrites--that gives meaning to national identity now. What he meant by a shared history was a story of the past held somehow in corn men, what he called, in his memorable formula, a "rich legacy of memories." The nation for Renan is bound together not by the past itself--by what actually happened--but by stories of that past that we tell one another in the present. What we remember--and Renan famously added, what we forget--makes us the nation that we are. For the story of the past is made both by holding on to some events and by letting go of others. It also may include a certain amount of untruth, fantasy disguised through unacknowledged invention. "Forgetting," Renan said, "and I would even say historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a nation and that is why progress in historical research is often a threat to nationality." (2)

Renan's idea is naturally expressed by saying that national memory is at the heart of national identity. Still, the metaphor of memory here is just that: a metaphor. None of us individually remembers the American Founding. What we remember are facts about it. Nor can it be literally true that the nation as a whole remembers the Founding, since nations have no minds or thoughts about anything, including their pasts. When we try to cash out in literal terms the idea of national memory, we are led back to Renan's idea: the national memory consists of stories from the past, kept alive in the present--whether in the minds and memories of individuals or in externalized memorials, written in books, performed on stage or screen, encoded in monuments and in sculpture--available, at least in principle, for any of us to draw on as a basis for our continuing willingness to live a life together (Fig. 7).

So we can see the sculptures in this show as part of the collective memory of various societies: objects through which a story of the past is sustained that binds people in the present together.

To connect our postmodern identities with these projects, I think we need only to think about what the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit has called "the ethics of memory." Early in his book of that name, Margalit makes an important distinction between two kinds of relationships that we have with other people: the "thick relations" that "are grounded in attributes such as parent, friend, lover, fellow countryman" and the "thin relations" that "rely on some aspect of being human, such as being a woman or being sick." (3) Both generate obligations, but our thin relations are not dependent on any thing other than our shared humanity and the fact that other humans can be in need and entitled to our aid. Thick relations, on the other hand, depend on a special relationship with others: something beyond our common humanity. And they are "anchored in a shared past or moored in shared memory." (4)

Margalit uses the word "ethics" to refer to the demands that thick relations make on us, and "morality" to refer to what the thin relations demand. This is clearly a crucial distinction in thinking about our obligations to remember or forget if, indeed, thick relations (unlike thin ones) have this special relationship to a shared past and shared memories of it, a sort of special relationship that Renan identified for the nation. And, indeed, one of Margalit's central claims is that such mnemonic obligations as we have are mostly ethical obligations, not moral ones: they are obligations we have only to people with whom we have thick relations of fellowship.

A community that has an obligation to maintain shared memories is, in the phrasing suggested by Margalit, a "community of memory." The obligation is collective: each individual member has only the responsibility of making sure that someone is keeping up what ought to be kept up. But the "we" that remembers is also a community extended in time. One can only "maintain the value of the heritage that one has received as a common possession," as Renan put it, if there is a heritage that one has received. Since the obligation to remember people arises largely, as Margalit believes, for thick relations, it seems that, in a community of memory, we have thick relations between the living and the dead. We honor those who died in warfare for our country through memorials, through institutions such as Memorial Day, through the stories we teach to our children in history classes. We are tied to them by love and loyalty; and that is what makes it right to remember them.

In thinking about these ideas, I am reminded that memory is a burden and an obstacle, as well as something to celebrate. One thing to remember is something Horace says in the sixth book of the Satires about what happens when someone comes forward to work for Rome, to save the empire in Italy, the shrines of the gods. According to Horace, when you do that, they ask you, "Who is his father and does his mother have good enough blood?" While these memories bind people together, they may also exclude people and hold people out. So we should not be only celebratory about the role of identity, because identity can be a mechanism of exclusion as well as mechanism of inclusion. (This is an old thought: Horace had it. Horace was born to a freed man, and in the sixth Satire he's praising Maecenas, a very high-born person and he's contrasting their positions by discussing the differences in their ancestry.) Ancestors can be a burden as well a privilege, a mechanism of exclusion as well as mechanism of inclusion.

So I do not think that the projects of memory embodied in the sculptures that brought us here are doing something we no longer do. Which is to underline the point that these objects reflect universal human concerns, even if they also reflect ideas and practices that are different from ours. To go back to differences, the very way in which I have framed the question might have seemed to many of those who made and used these objects quite unrealistic, because, as I said toward the beginning of my remarks, they did not think the dead were dead and gone. Acknowledging them was not something we could easily avoid doing: there they were. And yet, at another level, there is always an awareness that it is through our activities--our masquerades, our offerings, and our prayers--that those who were no longer alive among us are kept in being. When people in Asante are trying to explain what is so terrible about dying without heirs (which means, for a man, dying without your sisters' having children and, for a woman, not having children yourself), they will often talk about how there will be no one left to remember you, no one even to carry out your funeral. Without the cult of the ancestors, not just the memory of the ancestor but the ancestor herself will fade. And so in recounting the ancestors the makers of these objects were not only shaping their own identities, which allowed them, through their common membership, to live in solidarity and to make sense of their individual lives, but they were also keeping the ancestors in being. These sculptures didn't just represent the ancestors; in the masquerade or the shrine offering, they were the ancestors. They gave embodiment to those whose bodies were no more.

Nigerian born Sokari Douglas Camp discussed her sculptures at the "Genesis" symposium. Her comments are reproduced here.

1. Sokari Douglas Camp Alagba in Limbo, 1998 Steel, feathers, wood, mirrors; height 2.18m (7') Collection of the artist

"There are rather strange reasons why I made this piece. Ken Saro-Wiwa was killed, and I just felt that Nigeria was lost. Ken made the world aware of the oil situation in the Delta, and he was hanged and his body buried and acid poured on him. This was a shocking act for Nigerians, especially because we like to say good-bye to the deceased by viewing the body. It was shocking for people all over the world.

"At the time, I was invited to take part in an exposition in Copenhagen. I decided to send Alagba because I was quite fed up and just wanted the spirit disgraced, actually. Alagba is special because she starts the spiritual year. The point of the exhibition was to show something from your home port, wherever it was in the world. The British container had sounds you could listen to from a harbor in Wales. Mine contained my favorite masquerade in disgrace. The sculpture was packed tight as if it should not be seen or displayed. Ken's execution was a shameful thing, like a father killing his son. Our ideas/sons in Nigeria were represented as jettison washed up onto the coast of Europe.

"I wanted a feeling of unrest and distress: that is why I have Alagba being carried. Alagba's performances do consist of the spirit being carried by her supporters, but generally masquerades are not touched (because they are gods) unless they have failed to perform well--then they are carried away in great haste. Alagba is in a very uncomfortable state in the way that it's constructed. It's got its legs wide open, and the men look as if they're wailing. This is the first time I made sculpted faces, because up to this point I kept to the rule that if you made something too realistic as an artist it would somehow come to haunt you. I'd been able to work around that just because I believe in a lot of traditions my people believe in. When Ken was killed, I felt so disappointed with Nigeria that I thought, well, I can do absolutely anything; nothing will happen to me."

2. Sokari Douglas Camp Church Ede (Decorated Bed for Christian Wake), 1984 Steel, cloth, electric motor; height 25m (8') National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

"I made this piece in memory of my father. It has three, figures in it. It was done at a time when I just wasn't brave enough to sculpt real faces or bodies I felt that it was quite expressive and called on my heritage. When my father passed away I had to stand by his body, which was on this ceremonial bed that was decorated with white lace. I kept flies and things off his body with a handkerchief that I had, and my other sisters came to join me from time to time to do the same. This piece is about that. It's an ede, the most prestigious thing that you can have when you pass away, but it's a modern tradition.

"In my studio I used parts of the sculpture to dress myself--the top of the figure is represented as a head tie and comes off, so anyone could wear it. The figures are concave, so I could get close to the sculpture and become part of it. I guess the bed represented my father, and my actions were my trying to get close to him. But the main thing is that there's a little motor here at the tip of the figure's arm that makes this handkerchief in the sculpture's hand swivel round and round over the surface of the bed, which of course doesn't have a body on it. This style of bed basically comes from the tradition of decorated beds."

3. Sokari Douglas Camp Ti, 1983 Wood, tin, cascamite, rope, cloth; tallest figure approx. 2.5m (8') Private collection

"I made this sculpture of Amonia, a priestess who becomes possessed by thirty-five spirits. The spirit represented in Ti is a healing spirit that jumped and propelled its arms as its performance; this seemed as if the performer was trying to fly. One thing about masks and things in the Delta is that they are associated with costume, mythology and sound, which is part of the costume. There are not many masquerades that do not have anklets of dried pods with stones tied in them that make a sound. It is like the Christmas season, which always seems to come with the sound of bells. I as a sculptor wanted to show this side of my heritage, because making an object to put on a mantelpiece really had nothing to do with what I thought meant something in my life. So this was one of my earliest attempts to show masquerade performances in reality."

4. Kalabari women, 1984 Photo: Sokari Douglas Camp Private collection

"The Kalabari love to repeat images, It's very, very effective. We have the women here supposedly dressed traditionally. They are dressed in blanket material which is the bottom half of their clothing. Then they're dressed in a material that is made by Igbo people in Nigeria, and then this fabric here that's made in Manchester [is used to make these] lacy tops. They also have head ties made in Switzerland and coral necklaces, supposedly coming from Portugal. Traditional things in the Delta are difficult to tie down, because we are traders and we accept this as our traditional look. But people outside the Delta find it rather peculiar."

5. Sokari Douglas Camp Audience Ensemble, 1986-87 Steel, paint; height 1.8m (6') National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

"I made this series of women to accompany a festival boat that I made just because it was another stage of my career and I wanted to show how we look on a shoreline while watching a boat. The young child that is sculpted here made a cheering noise, "AAAYY!" because Kalabari women love to cheer and praise their men when they're performing. I've dressed these ladies in all sorts of different traditional costumes that you would see in an audience watching a masquerade or festival boats."

6. Sokari Douglas Camp My World Your World, 1996 Steel, glass, wood, acetate; height 25m (8') Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo

"The thing about the Kalabari is that when they say goodbye to someone that's died they have an awful lot of ceremonies, and this happens too be one of them. We process through the town with photographs of the deceased. We carry these photographs in very elaborate dress as if we're celebrating their life really. What's striking about this kind of procession is that the people carrying the photographs look very similar because they're elated. I remember my aunt carrying a picture of her brother, my father. I was very moved by that and I think that's why I made this piece."

7. Sokari Douglas Camp Sharia Fubara, 2000 Steel, cotton; height approx. 1.4m(4 1/2') Indiana University Art Museum

"... [D]uein fubara [ancestral screens] are structures that I wasn't allowed to see as a child and wasn't allowed to see as a teenager either. I was discourage from looking on these things as a woman as well. They were in public view at the British Museum, and it look a lot to go and see these items I was reassured by my family that because they had crossed the water they had somehow lost their power, so I shouldn't be frightened and I should just go in and have a good look.... I also exhibited with seventeen of these screens at the Smithsonian when I had a show there in the '80s. The striking thing about duein fubara is the way they're made. I make sculpture like that sort of unconsciously--I construct things.

"I've started making a series of pieces, when I can, about duein fubara, but from the female perspective. In 2000 I was invited to do a short residency in Indiana, and I decided to make a woman in northern dress--not in buba and wrapper anyway--to make a statement about sharia law. Sharia law at the time was being introduced in various states in the north in Nigeria, and I found it very shocking. Then I was told on the way to my residency that they'd imported an instrument that could cut off your hands easier, and, being the kind of artist I am, I just got quite freaked out and made this piece just about that, about losing one's hands."

[This article was accepted for publication in January 2004.]

Notes

(1.) Translation mine. "Une nation est une ame, un principe spirituel. Deux choses qui, a vrai dire, n'en font qu'une, constituent cette ame, ce principe spirituel. L'une est dans le passe, l'autre dans le present. L'une est la possession en common d'un riche legs de souvenirs; l'autre est le consentement actuel, le desir de vivre ensemble, la volonte de continuer a faire valoir l'heritage qu'on a recu indivis." From "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?" (1882, chap. 3, par. 1), accessed at La Bibliotheque Electronique de Lisieux <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/bib_lisieux/ nation04.htm>.

(2.) Translation mine. "L'oubli, et je dirai meme l'erreur historique, sent un facteur essentiel de la creation d'une nation, et c'est ainsi que le progres des etudes historiques est souvent pour la nationalite un danger" (chap. 1, par. 7), accessed at La Bibliotheque Electronique de Lisieux <http://ourworld.com puserve.com/homepages/bib_lisieux/nation04.htm>.

(3.) Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 7.

(4.) Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, p. 7.