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Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and Dissonance in African Traditions

2021; UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center; Volume: 54; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/afar_r_00606

1937-2108

Jenny S. Martel,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

In his most recent book, Nobel laureate, poet, essayist, and political activist Wole Soyinka offers a personal and poetic look at the politics and aesthetics of collecting. As a longtime art collector, Soyinka argues—usually passionately so—for the power of collecting as a vehicle for reclamation of Yoruba tradition and against dogmatic colonial and religious cultural cleansing. Beyond Aesthetics was developed and expanded from a three-part series of Richard D. Cohen Lectures delivered by the author at Harvard University in 2017. Of likely interest to art historians, the lectures were delivered concurrently with an exhibition at the Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, which included objects from author's personal collection as well as the contemporary work of Nigerian artists Peju Alatise and Moyo Okedeji, among others. Following the lecture format, the book is split into three chapters: “Oga, Na Original Fake, I Swear!”; “Procreative Deities: The Orisa's Triumphal March”; and last, “From Aso-Ebi to Nwood.” Like an unprintable profanity, Soyinka obscures “Nollywood,” the common sobriquet identifying commercial Nigerian film and industry. The meaning of this gesture, not immediately explained, but derived eventually through the chapter's jaunty personal narrative, is representative of Soyinka's literary method of delivering meaning in Beyond Aesthetics. The discussion is achieved through highly personal narrative rather than organized chronologically, geographically, or by medium—this is not to say that Beyond Aesthetics is illogical, quite the contrary. However, much of the meaning and thematic application is discovered after reading and rereading, allowing the weaving storylines to permeate the consciousness in an organic way. Appropriately to the author's background, the text is best considered in the way one might process a well-written play—language, story, and characterization may not obviously express underlying sociopolitical ideology; rather, these elements allude to deeper insights of this nature.In the first chapter, Soyinka explains the acquisition process of some of his favorite objects, replete with ample tangential and amusing commentary. True to his literary character, Soyinka's first object—an entire domestic Sango shrine—is not exactly an object and was never actually acquired, much to Soyinka's chagrin. The sacred objects comprising the ancestral shrine were retrieved in their entirety by a mystery curator before Soyinka was able to do so himself. In addition to the shrine, Soyinka discusses the acquisition of a bracelet from the Sungbo Eredo and a Korean Silla dynasty clay mug. The second chapter continues with a discussion of an overtly sexualized “unmatched pair” of objects from the author's collection: a male monkey and a caryatid. This much admired (or reviled, depending on the audience), nearly life-sized duo graced the entry of his home study, creating what he calls a “Field of Force,” until they were stolen—never to reappear despite earnest attempts at recovery. Of the monkey-caryatid couple, Soyinka states: “My immediate purpose, of course, was to insist that we do not have to be solemn over antiquities or their substitutes, otherwise we present a distorted and prissy approach to the African art traditions” (pp. 80–81). The diversity of these objects and personal anecdotes serve to underscore two important aspects of Soyinka's deliberately tenuous definition of “aesthetics”: first, that a collection and therefore the objects within are ultimately a private extension of the self; and second, that there is an inherent beauty and value in ancient objects. These aspects include a highly personal and broadly applicable definition of aesthetics, respectively, but in the context of Beyond Aesthetics, Soyinka most enthusiastically maintains that admiring, collecting, and conserving the material embodiment of Yoruba culture is a weapon of good against cultural annihilation at the hands of religious zealots: “as long as one Santeria, bembe, or candomblé remains, and is placed at the service of its adoptive community—even as a reference point, or warren of options—humanity is enlarged and its totality benefits” (p. 127).Throughout the text, Soyinka champions the march of the Orisa against iconoclastic destruction—most notably through abiku, the Yoruba child who is born, dies, and is born again. Soyinka argues that the Orisa religion has “never indulged in other-demonization, yet it has survived the assault of centuries, and is destined to survive into the same eternity that other religions consider their own special preserve” (p. 101). In past publications Soyinka has explored cultural syncretism with some delicacy and interest, but here the author devotes a considerable portion of the book to railing against modern and past Christian and Islamic revivalist groups such as Boko Haram and the Nigerian Pentecostal movement of the 1970s. In a final acquisition example, Soyinka discusses a painting by the British-born artist Colin Garland, who at the time resided in Jamaica. Soyinka finds Garland placing the finishing touches on an evocative work—a male figure with eerily haunting eyes whom he immediately recognizes as abiku, much to the apparent confusion of the artist. Soyinka remarks, “Garland, a complete stranger to my world, had touched on something—call it identification, call it a primordial image transmission of the collective subconscious, but he, a white Britisher, had captured an essence that awakened an obscured image in this exiled, impecunious student” (p. 115). The significance of this cross-cultural communion continues when Soyinka visits Garland to purchase the beloved painting, which he finds had been wiped away: “Abiku's midwife, a white-faced garret dauber named Colin Garland, had needed a canvas for a new work,” but when the artist sees the error of this decision, he retraces his “infanticidal steps” to “reincarnate” Abiku (p. 118). Soyinka concludes that abiku remains a pertinent metaphor for African dispersal, and while “Abiku may have died on the black continent,” that child “was born to survive wherever it chose to resurface” (pp. 118–19).In the final chapter, Soyinka concludes with a discussion of aso-ebi, or family attire, especially the gele, or headwrap, and an event he has affectionately named the Gele Gala—which Soyinka describes as “distinctly Nigerian.” This is meant to stand in contrast to the visual spectacle of Nollywood, which he takes aim at in two ways, both the overt pomp and formulaic superficiality of what he decries it embodies, and of course, the name itself, which he takes issue with on the basis of Yoruba naming traditions that have significance in the name choice itself, as well as the actualization of their meaning. Before concluding, Soyinka manages to challenge the entire concept of the Harry Potter series as well as discuss the apparently regular occurrence of the author being mistaken for Morgan Freeman, a feat that both marks Soyinka's standard literary dexterity and illustrates Beyond Aesthetics' potential usefulness as a tool to facilitate classroom discussion. Soyinka's unabashed forays into personal narrative and kaleidoscopic approach to aesthetics invite the reader to consider the topic in a similarly contextual manner. This book could also be utilized in any course covering general aesthetics or specifically African aesthetics as a companion to more theoretical work—especially when considering objects and content from the concurrent exhibition at the Cooper Gallery. Throughout the lively, conversational text, one gets a sense of what it might be like to spend an afternoon with the prolific author. Soyinka overflows with life stories of the worldly sort, rooted in that gritty physical sensuality that stands in sharp contrast to an often technological, distanced modern existence. In tone, Beyond Aesthetics embodies a sort of longing for a fast-disappearing world of physicality that Soyinka partially fulfills through acts of collecting.Soyinka has an incredible legacy of literary achievement and political activism that is only hinted at in Beyond Aesthetics—to name two of the more remarkable features of his past, he is the first African to receive the Nobel prize in literature, and in the late 1960s was imprisoned for twenty-two months by the Nigerian government for his attempts at averting a civil war. The now 87-year-old graciously assures the reader that he currently has his “own form of political release—chopping up a cheroot with a samurai sword to the recital of names of criminal political leaders” (p. 80). One can be sure that there is an intriguing story behind the acquisition of the cheroot-chopping samurai sword repurposed to symbolically avenge political and cultural enemies. The reader does not get the sense that Soyinka will cease to collect either objects or life stories anytime soon. In response to verses from the Senagalese poet Birago Diop expressing the spirit of abiku, Soyinka has the following to say: