Exploring Present Pasts: Popular Arts as Historical Sources
Exploring Present Pasts: Popular Arts as Historical Sources
- Bogumil JewsiewickiBogumil JewsiewickiDepartment of History, Laval University
- and Allen F. RobertsAllen F. RobertsDepartment of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California Los Angeles
Summary
To incorporate sub-Saharan senses of artistic production and practice into scholarly reconstruction of African pasts, distance must be sought from deeply embedded positivist notions of Art, History, and Art History. As Rowland Abiodun exhorts, the “African” must be returned to “African art.” Following African ways of knowing, how do works of art from earlier as well as contemporary times make pasts present to help people cope with current circumstances as inspired by ancestral wisdom? Cases from urban Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo demonstrate the dynamism of such social processes.
Keywords
Subjects
- Cultural History
- Historiography and Methods
