The Historical Life of Objects African Art History and the Problem of Discursive Obsolescence

Abstract

his essay evaluates how the field of African art history deals with the problem of cultural and discursive changes de riving from its canoni zation of specific objects of African art by inter rogating the Mbari architecture of the Owerri-Igbo, a ritual complex of distinc tive practices that is largely extinct, and whose archival inscription and contem porary interpretations are thus open to debate. It interrogates the increasing gap between the continued representation of distinctive ethnic forms of material production through historically dated art objects and the emergence of contem porary forms of art in those contexts that bear little formal resemblance or meaning to canonical cultural artifacts. The problem engendered by this con junction of temporality and historical specificity can be defined as the prob lem of discursive obsolescence: If icon ic objects assume different forms and meanings in different historical periods, how do these changes affect scholarly interpretation of the objects and of the archives that narrate their historically spe cific meanings?