Paper short abstract:

This text aims to disrupt a narrative about how a series of representational critiques in the 1980s changed the rules of the game for the future of Anthropology and African Studies by breaking with a modernist past.

Paper long abstract:

In the disruptive wake of Writing Culture (Clifford & Marcus 1986), more than one wave of criticism has attempted to come to terms with this legacy, but in many cases these efforts have only re-asserted the written word as the locus of anthropological knowledge and the notion of representation as the primary concern for generations of anthropologists to come. This text sets out to disrupt a self-perpetuating narrative about how a series of critiques in the 1980s (alternately referred to as the "crisis of representation literature" or the "literary turn" or the "Writing Culture debates") changed the rules of the game for the future of the discipline by breaking with a modernist past. As a number of commentators have observed, the break with the past signaled by the crisis of representation literature was not actually very clean (Tyler 1987, Fabian 1990), in part because it did not seek to undermine representation, but rather to make ethnographic representations more accurate (Said 1989; Nencel et Pels 1991). Furthermore, while Writing Culture did call attention to the political nature of representation, it failed to fundamentally problematize the notion of text, and—more importantly for the argument here—it was unable to explain how knowledge from ethnographic encounters is produced and put to use. Now, as the contributors to these debates have moved on to other themes and theories, and a generation of scholars influenced by this writing has come of age, it is not clear what the legacy of this movement will be.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the concept of representation(s) and notions of space and place, this paper reflects on the methodological and epistemological implications of a research project on representation(s) of mobility and success and the relation to the city of Senegalese and Malian migrants in Johannesburg.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on the methodological and epistemological implications of a research project on the representation(s) of mobility and success and the relation to the city of Senegalese and Malian migrants in the inner city of Johannesburg. Starting from a project on migration, the paper shows how the city itself gradually became both an object and protagonist of research.

Together with recent approaches to the notion of space and place, the paper draws on the analytical and epistemological potential of a concept of representation(s) which lies at the intersection of anthropology, social psychology, and German philosophy of culture and which fully accounts for the dynamic construction of representation(s), of places, and of academic knowledge through creation, sense perception, symbolic processes, and social interaction and practices. I will show how old and new lines of exclusion in the inner city of Johannesburg influenced on the migrants' emplacement and ways of navigating the city and how these dynamics imposed restrictions on my methods, mainly ethnographic observations and non-directive interviews, but also opened up unexpected possibilities. This will contribute to wider debates on how methods like non-directive interviews adapt to different contexts, on how they can contribute to theoretical questions, as well as on questions of fragmentation and diversity in the inner city of Johannesburg.

Paper short abstract:

I examine bus portrait art as a status economy for peripheral men in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. This portraiture reflects an Abidjanais imaginary situated within an African diaspora. As a politics of representation, men’s search for status fuels a cultural movement and an associated economy.

Paper long abstract:

The absence of formal sector work in many African cities leaves many men unable to achieve an aspirational/idealized wage-earning masculinity such that socially they remain boys. They may contest their denigrated status by investing in practices that supplant this dominant narrative. Specifically "black urbanism," a mode of surviving in and belonging to the city for marginalized subjects, entails identification among members of a global black diaspora (Simone, 2010). It may fuel lucrative economies whereby the urban periphery transmutes supra-local cultural referents to buttress local identities. Examining the politics of representation in these status economies tracks the dollars and dreams on Africa's urban periphery.

This paper discusses the practice of baca [bus] portrait art in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Basing my analysis on participant observation research I conducted with men in Abidjan's informal economy from 2008 to 2009 and supplemented with my photos of baca portraiture from the field, I explore the nexus between bus art, the informal economy, and masculinity to understand how peripheral men's search for status generates a cultural movement and an associated economy. Baca drivers are master navigators of the periphery endowed with relatively high skills and capital. Their commissioned paintings of iconic black men reference their linkages with the African diaspora and serve as social signals within Abidjan. As a theoretical intervention, the imaginaries depicted in these portraits speak to a politics of representation among peripheral black men globally.

Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2010. City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads. New York: Routledge.

Paper short abstract:

Mofokeng, Boshoff, Munyai, three prophets or diviners, have accepted that the artistic form of expression permits to translate their inventiveness. Their essential approach to representation seems to be conducted in a mode of “remembering something that we did not yet know”.

Paper long abstract:

Any interlocutor of these three artists will comment on the vast imagination emanating in any words they will utter. Munyai will transform these imaginings into images captured in the form of enigmatic wooden sculptures, submitting himself to an intense struggle with the material before it will release tangible form. Willem Boshoff has developed the fiction of "Gardens of Words". By remembering the names of extinguished plants, or words gone out of usage, he is able to prolong their lives. As long as they exist in his memory, they have not ceased to exist. The memory is the pivotal position where probing tools extending far into the past can be turned towards the future and be projected beyond that which is as yet visible. Santu Mofokeng has developed the idea of "Blind Photography", while seeing everything in perfect photographic clearness we do not see the essential, which is provided by our memory.

These three approaches speak of a gaze turned inward, a mental space generating newness, a powerhouse for the future, nourished by past experience, extending towards the generations that have gone before us. The philosophy of memory of Henri Bergson has inspired several artists of the twentieth century, it has never been tested for its potential in the understanding of artists working from Africa. The idea of prophetic memory as the essential characteristic of artistic invention was elaborated by Jean-Philippe Antoine who insists that the only approach to this concept is through "individuation". Any idea holds good for one artist at a time.

Paper short abstract:

Set within a zone of conflict and humanitarian action in North Kivu, DRC this paper examines photographic creation and interpretation showing how a combination of ethnographic and photographic methodologies exposes connections between representation, identity, and regional politics.

Paper long abstract:

Western photographs of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - a space marked by conflict and humanitarianism- often portray a victimized and helpless population. However, ethnographic research employing a combination of photography, interviews, and participant observation in North Kivu (DRC), shows that individuals alter desired representations of themselves depending on their assumed audience. For the West, they often foreground their suffering, while for local audiences they emphasized family-ties, globalization, and dignity. While these boundaries remain fluid, the distinction between representation for the West and for the Congolese reflects both political and social awareness through which individuals creatively shape photographic representation to reflect social identities and public selves. This paper builds from the 'writing culture' push for more innovative, subjective, reflexive, and collaborative research by engaging the heuristic potential of a combination of photography and traditional anthropological methodologies to explore the intersection of representation, politics and subjective identities. Focusing on vernacular and humanitarian photography of the Congolese, this paper shows how individuals creatively deploy and interpret identity within the dynamics of a conflict marked by identity politics (ethnicity, gender, regional affiliation) and a powerful humanitarian presence. By examining the spaces and acts of image creation and interpretation for context, intention, desire and (re)action, individual agency and inter-subjective creation become visible. This paper's linking of photographic methodology, representation, and individual creativity shows how subjects, viewers, and photographers articulate or challenge critical, and sometimes dangerous, social and political identities within the space of conflict and global humanitarianism.

Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes a multi-faceted approach towards the analysis of the photographic representation of refugees in examining photographs from different categories of photographic representation in the Dadaab refugee camp.

Paper long abstract:

Photographic representations contain the ideologies, interests, perspectives or notions of their particular producers. Thus, when there are numerous actors representing refugees, their photographic representations can be grouped into their respective categories in order to illuminate the underlying features that influence their production. In the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, four different categories of Media representation, Commissioned photography, Themed photography, and Refugees' self photography were identified. An analysis of the four representational categories offers comprehensive information concerning the refugees. Studies on representation however have in most cases focused on one category of representation at a time while not examining all available representational categories collectively (Moyo Okediji 2003). The case has often been to focus on media representation for example, at the expense of self representation, and the vice versa is true. This has often led to the privileging of self-representation as emancipatory and capable of transforming the stereotypical mass-media representation subjects have been rendered. Using the photographic work on refugees in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, the paper proposes a shift from such a trend towards a collective analysis of all the available representational categories of refugees in the camp, with the aim of not merely comparing, nor giving preference to any of the categories, but through a pluralist approach, highlight their inherent dynamics and appreciate all as building blocks towards a broader understanding of the photographic representation of refugees.