Paper long abstract:

Annang masking traditions have always been flexible and innovative. A vehicle of social hierarchy, inter-village union, regional trade, anti-colonial and anti-mission resistance, and modes of urban adaptation, masking has been a resilient and persistent idiom of aesthetic, sociality, and mobilization. These rich mask carving and performative traditions have been ossified in the literature from history, anthropology and art history alike. The temporarilty and trajectory of Annang masking traditions has been overlooked as a result. Recent developments point to a more thorough criminalization of masking traditions, especially the annual ekpo (ancestral) mask. Attempts by local governments to regulate the mask, including systems of licences which register once anonymous performers, have coincided with a marked concentration of the mask in the hands of healers, diviners and their families. In the face of opposition from the state and from mushrooming Pentecostal churches, however, masquerade performances continue within annual routines, as forms of collective and chieftaincy celebration and continue to assume innovative guises. While masquerade performance is sublimated within forms of everyday embodied practice, New Year 'cross-country' runs, and gang-style masquerades also combine with former traditions to populate the Annang social landscape.