Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:06:14.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mapping Senufo: Reframing Questions, Reevaluating Sources, and Reimagining a Digital Monograph

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi Open the ORCID record for Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi [Opens in a new window]  and
Constantine Petridis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mapping Senufo: Art, Evidence, and the Production of Knowledge – an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication – will offer a model for joining theories about the construction of identities and the politics of knowledge production with research and publication practice. In this article, we examine how computational methods have led us to reframe research questions, reevaluate sources, and reimagine the form of a digital monograph. We also demonstrate how our use of digital technologies, attention to iteration, and collaborative mode of working have generated fresh insights into a corpus of arts identified as Senufo, the nature of evidence for art-historical research, and digital publication. We posit that the form of a digital publication itself can bring processes of knowledge construction to the fore and unsettle expectations of a tidy, authoritative narrative.

Résumé

Résumé

Mapping Senufo: Art, Evidence, and the Production of Knowledge, une publication en cours, collaborative et nativement numérique, offrira un modèle pour joindre les théories sur la construction des identités et les politiques de production de connaissances avec la recherche et la pratique de publication. Dans cet article, nous examinons comment des questions informatiques nous ont amenés à recadrer les questions de recherche, à réévaluer les sources et à réinventer la forme d’une monographie numérique. Nous démontrons également comment notre utilisation des technologies numériques, l’attention portée à l’itération et le mode de travail collaboratif ont généré de nouvelles perspectives sur un corpus d’arts identifié comme Sénoufo, sur la nature des sources pour la recherche en histoire de l’art et sur la publication numérique. Nous postulons que la forme d’une publication numérique elle-même peut mettre en avant les processus de construction des connaissances et perturber les attentes d’un récit ordonné et faisant autorité.

Type
Special Section on the Digital Humanities
Information
History in Africa , Volume 48 , June 2021 , pp. 165 - 209
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the African Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adenaike, Carolyn Keyes, “Contextualizing and Decontextualizing African Historical Photographs,” History in Africa 23 (1996), 429–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, “The Danger of a Single Story,” TEDGlobal 2009 talk (July 2009), https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story (accessed 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup, and Sibeud, Emmanuelle, Maurice Delafosse. Entre orientalisme et ethnographie: l’itinéraire d’un africaniste (1870–1926) (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1998).Google Scholar
Andrews, Emmanuelle, “Listening to Images, Troubling the Archive,” in Paul, Basu (ed.), [Re:]Entanglements (London: SOAS University, 2020), https://re-entanglements.net/emmanuelle-andrews/, (accessed 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity (New York: Liveright, 2018).Google Scholar
Ball, Cheryl E., “Show, Not Tell: The Value of New Media Scholarship,” Computers and Composition 21 (2004), 403–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bassani, Ezio, and Fagg, William B., Africa and the Renaissance: Art in Ivory (New York: Center for African Art, 1988).Google Scholar
Breakstone, Joel, Smith, Mark, and Wineburg, Sam with Rapaport, Amie, Carle, Jill, Garland, Marshall, and Saaverda, Anna. Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait (Stanford: Stanford History Education Group, 14 November 2019).Google Scholar
Brett-Smith, Sarah C., The Making of Bamana Sculpture: Creativity and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Brett-Smith, Sarah C., “The Mouth of the Komo,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 31 (1997), 71–96.Google Scholar
Buthelezi, Mbongiseni, “We Need New Names Too,” in Hamilton, Carolyn and Leibhammer, Nessa (eds.), Tribing and Untribing the Archive: Identity and Material Record in Southern KwaZulu-Natal in the Late Independent and Colonial Periods (Portland: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2016), vol. 2, 587–599.Google Scholar
Clamens, Gabriel, “Notes d’ethnologie sénoufo,” Notes Africaines 59 (July 1953), 76–80.Google Scholar
Colleyn, Jean-Paul, Bamana (Milan: 5 Continents, 2009).Google Scholar
Convers, Michel, “L’Aventure de Massa en pays Sénoufo,” Primitifs: art tribal, art moderne 6 (1991), 24–34.Google Scholar
Convers, Michel, “In the Wake of the Massa Movement Among the Senufo,” Tribal Arts 3–4 (1997), 52–66.Google Scholar
Cronon, William, “Breaking Apart, Putting Together,” Perspectives on History (1 May 2012), https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2012/breaking-apart-putting-together, (accessed 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
de Formanoir, Maxime, “Pour une approche de la statuaire du sud-ouest du Gabon et de la République du Congo sous l’angle des sociétés initiatiques,” Anthropos 113 (2018), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Formanoir, Maxime, “Response to Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi and Yaëlle Biro, ‘Beyond Single Stories: Addressing Dynamism, Specificity, and Agency in Arts of Africa [First Word]’,” African Arts 53–3 (2020), 18-19.Google Scholar
Delafosse, Maurice, “Le cercle de Korhogo. La Côte d’Ivoire,” in Notice publiée par le gouvernement général à l’occasion de l’Exposition Coloniale de Marseille (Paris: Émile Larose, 1906), 312–340.Google Scholar
Delafosse, Maurice, “Le peuple siéna ou sénoufo,” Revue des études ethnographiques et sociologiques 1 (1908), 16–32.Google Scholar
Delafosse, Maurice, “Le peuple siéna ou sénoufo,” Revue des études ethnographiques et sociologiques 2 (1909), 1–21.Google Scholar
Diamitani, Boureima Tiékoroni, “Identities, Komo Societies, and Art among the Tagwa Senufo of Burkina Faso,” PhD dissertation, University of Iowa (Iowa City IA, 1999).Google Scholar
Dieterlen, Germaine, and Cissé, Youssouf, Les fondements de la société d’initiation du Komo (Paris: Mouton, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drucker, Johanna, “Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship,” in Gold, Matthew K., Debates in the Digital Humanities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-88c11800-9446-469b-a3be-3fdb36bfbd1e/section/0b495250-97af-4046-91ff-98b6ea9f83c0, (accessed 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
Einstein, Carl, “À propos de l’exposition de la Galerie Pigalle,” Documents 2-2 (1991 [1st pub. 1930]), 104–112.Google Scholar
Elsner, Jaś, “Style,” in Nelson, Robert S. and Schiff, Richard (eds.), Critical Terms for Art History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003 [2nd ed.]), 98–109.Google Scholar
Förster, Till, Die Kunst der Senufo (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1988).Google Scholar
Förster, Till, Zerrissene Entfaltung: Alltag, Ritual und künstlerische Ausdrucksformen im Norden der Côte d’Ivoire (Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 1997).Google Scholar
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, “Crossing Borders, Pushing Boundaries: Arts of Power Associations on the Senufo-Mande Cultural Frontier,” PhD dissertation, University of California (Los Angeles CA, 2010).Google Scholar
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, “Mining the Rubin Archive: Mid-Twentieth Century Documentation of Two Mumuye Masquerades,” in Berns, Marla, Fardon, Richard, and Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield (eds.), Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum, 2011).Google Scholar
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014).Google Scholar
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, “Mapping Senufo: Mapping as a Method to Transcend Colonial Assumptions,” in Brown, Kathryn (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History (New York: Routledge, 2020), 135–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, and Gardner-Huggett, Joanna, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Spatial Art History in the Digital Realm,” Historical Geography 45 (2017), 17–36.Google Scholar
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, and Petridis, Constantine, “Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa,” African Arts 48–1 (2015), 6–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geary, Christraud M., “Photographic Practice in Africa and its Implications for the Use of Historical Photographs as Contextual Evidence,” in Triulzi, Alessandro (ed.), Fotografia e Storia dell’Africa (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1995), 103–130.Google Scholar
Glaze, Anita J., Art and Death in a Senufo Village (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Glaze, Anita J., “‘The Children of Poro’: A Re-examination of the Rhythm Pounder in Senufo Art, its Form and Meaning,” Connaissance des Arts Tribaux 20 (1983), 1–6.Google Scholar
Glaze, Anita J., “The Senufo,” in Barbier, Jean Paul (ed.), Art of Côte d’Ivoire from the Collections of the Barbier-Mueller Museum (Geneva: Barbier-Mueller Museum, 1993a), vol. 1, 30–35, 413.Google Scholar
Glaze, Anita J., “Call and Response: A Senufo Female Caryatid Drum,” The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 19–2 (1993b), 118–133, 158, 196–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, Matthew K., and Klein, Lauren F., “Introduction: A DH That Matters,” in Gold, Matthew K. and Klein, Lauren F. (eds.), Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-f2acf72c-a469-49d8-be35-67f9ac1e3a60/section/0cd11777-7d1b-4f2c-8fdf-4704e827c2c2, (accessed 4 May 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldwater, Robert, Bambara Sculpture from the Western Sudan (New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1960).Google Scholar
Goldwater, Robert, Senufo Sculpture from West Africa (New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1964)Google Scholar
Gombrich, Ernst H., “Style,” in Sills, David L. and Merton, Robert K. (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), vol. 15, 352–361.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Burkhard, Madebele, . Buschgeister im Land der Senufo (Les génies de brousse au pays des Senoufos) (Dusseldorf: Ursula Gottschalk, 1988).Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Burkhard, Sénoufo. Massa et les statues du poro (Dusseldorf: Ursula Gottschalk, 2002).Google Scholar
Hart, William A., “The ‘Lawyer’ of Poro?: A Sixteenth-Century West African Masquerade,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 23 (1993), 83–95.Google Scholar
Henry, Joseph, L’Âme d’un peuple africain. Les Bambara, leur vie psychique, éthique, sociale, religieuse (Münster: Aschendorffschen Buchhandlung, 1910).Google Scholar
Himmelheber, Hans, “Massa: Fetisch der Rechtschaffenheit,” Tribus 4/5 (1954/55), 56–62.Google Scholar
Holmes, Levell, “Tieba Traore, Fama of Kenedougou: Two Decades of Political Development, 1873–1893,” PhD dissertation, University of California (Berkeley CA, 1977).Google Scholar
Homberger, Lorenz, “Künstler in Werkstätten der Senufo,” in Fischer, Eberhard and Homberger, Lorenz, Afrikanische Meister: Kunst der Elfenbeinküste (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2014), 151–178.Google Scholar
Howell, Martha, and Prevenier, Walter, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Jespers, Philippe, “Masks and Utterance: The Analysis of an Auditory Mask in the Initiation Society of the Komo (Minyanka, Mali),” in de Heusch, Luc (ed.), Objects: Signs of Africa (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 1995), 37–56.Google Scholar
Jespers, Philippe, “L’Ouverture des yeux au Komo,” Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities 176 (2013), 37–66.Google Scholar
Karlholm, Dan, “Developing the Picture: Wölfflin’s Performance Art,” Photography & Culture 3–2 (2010), 207–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield, “One Tribe, One Style?: Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art,” History in Africa 11 (1984), 163–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kjersmeier, Carl, Centres de style de la sculpture nègre africaine (Paris: Albert Morancé, 1935), vol. 1.Google Scholar
Knops, Pierre, Les Anciens Sénufo, 1923–1935 (Berg en Dal: Afrika Museum, 1980).Google Scholar
Koulaseli [alias Michel Convers], “Le Processus de la vie dans la symbolique des motifs d’une porte sénoufo,” Bulletin annuel du Musée d’ethnographie de Genève 23/24 (1980/1981), 93–101.Google Scholar
Lamp, Frederick, Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention (New York: Museum for African Art, 1996).Google Scholar
Lamp, Frederick, “Africa Centered (First Word),” African Arts 32–1 (1999), 1, 4, 6, 8–10.Google Scholar
Langmead, Alison, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy (21 February 2018), https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/art-and-architectural-history-and-the-performative-mindful-practice-of-the-digital-humanities/, (accessed 17 October 2020).Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Launay, Robert, Beyond the Stream: Islam and Society in a West African Town (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Lem, F.-H., Sculptures soudanaises (Paris: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1948).Google Scholar
MacGaffey, Wyatt, “Meaning and Aesthetics in Kongo Art,” in Cooksey, Susan, Poynor, Robin, and Vanhee, Hein (eds.), Kongo across the Waters (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013), 172–179.Google Scholar
Maesen, Albert, “De plastiek in de kultuur van de Senufo van de Ivoorkust (Fransch West Afrika),” PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit te Gent (Ghent, Belgium, 1946).Google Scholar
Mann, Gregory, “Fetishizing Religion: Allah Koura and ‘French Islamic’ Policy in Late Colonial French Soudan (Mali),” Journal of African History 44–2 (2003), 263–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNaughton, Patrick, Secret Sculptures of Komo: Art and Power in Bamana (Bambara) Initiation Associations (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1979).Google Scholar
McNaughton, Patrick, The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Meskill, David, “Splitting or Lumping - de gustibus non est disputandum?,” The Historical Society (Thursday, 6 August 2009), http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2009/08/splitting-or-lumping-de-gustibus-non.html, (accessed 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
Monmonier, Mark, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 [2nd ed.]).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mundy, Joanna, and Palmer, Sara, “About Database Design,” in Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth and Petridis, Constantine, Mapping Senufo Beta (Atlanta: Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, 2019), http://www.mappingsenufo.org/about-database-design, (accessed 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert S., “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Critical Inquiry 26–3 (2000), 414–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newbury, David, “Canonical Conventions in Rwanda: Four Myths of Recent Historiography in Central Africa,” History in Africa 39 (2012), 41–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nooter, Mary H. (ed.), Secrecy: African Art That Conceals and Reveals (New York: Museum for African Art, 1993).Google Scholar
Ouattara, Tiona, “Les Tiembara de Korhogo, des origines à Péléforo Gbon Coulibaly (1962),” PhD dissertation, Université de Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris, 1977).Google Scholar
O’Hern, Robin, Pearlstein, Ellen, and Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, “Beyond the Surface: Where Cultural Contexts and Scientific Analyses Meet in Museum Conservation of West African Power Association Helmet Masks,” Museum Anthropology 39–1 (2016), 70–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pataux, Agnès, Cœur blanc, ventre blanc. Fétiches et féticheurs (Montreuil, France: Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2010).Google Scholar
Petridis, Constantine, “Olbrechts and the Morphological Approach to African Figurative Sculpture,” in idem (ed.), Frans M. Olbrechts (1899–1958): In Search of Art in Africa (Antwerp: Ethnographic Museum, 2001), 119–140.Google Scholar
Petridis, Constantine (ed.), Frans M. Olbrechts (1899–1958): In Search of Art in Africa (Antwerp: Ethnographic Museum, 2001).Google Scholar
Richter, Dolores, “Senufo Mask Classification,” African Arts 12–3 (1979), 66–73, 83–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Mary Nooter, and Roberts, Allen F. (eds.), Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (New York: Museum for African Art, 1996).Google Scholar
Royer, Patrick, “Le Massa et l’eau de Moussa. Cultes régionaux, ‘traditions’ locales et sorcellerie en Afrique de l’Ouest,” Cahiers d’Études africaines 39/2–154 (1999), 337–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schapiro, Meyer, “Style,” in Kroeber, Alfred L. (ed.), Anthropology Today (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 287–312.Google Scholar
Sieber, Roy, “African Tribal Sculpture,” PhD dissertation, University of Iowa (Iowa City IA, 1957).Google Scholar
Sieber, Roy, and Rubin, Arnold, Sculpture of Black Africa: The Paul Tishman Collection (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968).Google Scholar
Stanford History Education Group. Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning [Executive Summary] (Stanford: Stanford History Education Group, 22 November 2016).Google Scholar
Steiner, Christopher B., African Art in Transit (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Steiner, Christopher B., “Discovering African Art… Again? [First Word],” African Arts 29–4 (1996), 1, 4, 6, 8, 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strother, Z. S., “Iconoclasms as Sites for the Production of Knowledge,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10–3 (2020), 985–988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szecsi, Ladislas, “Stilgebiete der Elfenbeinküste,” Ethnologischer Anzeiger 3 (1933), 140–142, pls. IX–XI.Google Scholar
Tautain, , [Louis Frédéric Émile], “Le Diouladougou et le Senefo,” Revue d’ethnographie 6 (1887), 395–399.Google Scholar
Taylor, Alan, “Unnatural Inequalities: Social and Environmental Histories,” Environmental History 1–4 (1996), 6–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Robert Farris, and Cornet, Joseph, The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1981).Google Scholar
Van Beurden, Sarah, Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan, Art History in Africa: An Introduction to Method (London: Longman, 1984).Google Scholar
Veirman, Anja, “‘In Search of Not Gold and Ivory, but Art and Artists’: Olbrechts and the Expeditions to West Africa (1933 and 1938–39),” in Petridis, Constantine (ed.), Frans M. Olbrechts (1899–1958): In Search of Art in Africa (Antwerp: Ethnographic Museum, 2001), 234–253.Google Scholar
Vogel, Susan Mullin, “‘The Sheep Wears His Spots Where He Pleases’ or the Question of Regional Style in Baule Sculpture,” Iowa Studies in African Art 1 (1984), 29–44.Google Scholar
Vogel, Susan Mullin, Baule: African Art, Western Eyes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1997).Google Scholar
Vogel, Susan Mullin, “Whither African Art?: Emerging Scholarship at the End of an Age,” African Arts 38–4 (2005), 12–17, 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Leslie, “Response to Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi and Yaëlle Biro, ‘Beyond Single Stories: Addressing Dynamism, Specificity, and Agency in Arts of Africa [First Word]’,” African Arts 53–3 (2020), 16.Google Scholar
Zahan, Dominique, Sociétés d’initiation bambara. Le N’domo, le Koré (Paris: Mouton, 1960).Google Scholar