Paper short abstract:

In 2010, a found photograph of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba caused a controversy in the Senegalese public sphere. This paper explores why the photograph questioned the established iconography of the Saint and how its authenticity was hotly debated - creating a disturbance in the decolonial archive.

Paper long abstract:

Media afford experiences of the sacred that are no less genuine than more immediate experiences of the sacred. Responding to Walter Benjamin's thesis on mechanical reproduction, the anthropology of religion researches the conditions of possibility for media to provide authentic experiences of the sacred. This paper examines the authorisation of auratic imagery in the medium of photography, and how their authority can be contested.

The colonial mug shot of the Sufi Saint Cheikh Ahmadou Bambou constitutes the only recognised photograph of the Saint in Senegal. Demanding recognition for their Cheikh, his followers have disseminated his image and established the Saint's legacy as a national heritage. The photograph has become enchanted and sacralised as the only authentic icon of the Saint, its colonial status as "document" overwritten by a new regime of visual devotion. When, in 2010, another photograph of the Senegalese saint was found and printed in a Senegalese newspaper, the "authenticity" of that photograph was immediately questioned and its distribution forbidden.

This paper examines how the found photograph disturbed the established iconography of the Saint and how the suppression of its circulation aimed at re-stabilizing the religious doxa of a decolonial archive. Focussing on the public contestation of the photograph, this paper examines how it was subjected to a process of de-authentication that situated the photograph squarely in the colonial archive, purifying the decolonial archive.