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Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta
African Arts, Autumn, 2003 by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
(3.) This focus on indigenous interpretations of cultural and social organization reflects what Andrew Apter calls a "hermeneutical focus [that] examines how indigenous forms of knowledge and power constitute the critical conditions of social reproduction and change" (1992:7).
(4.) For instance, Aidan Campbell (1997:6) argues that the conception of absolute ethnic identities is an ideological framework for Africa constructed in the West.
(5.) Anderson and Peek (p. 30) identify this idea as the "refugee area" hypothesis and point out that E. J. Alagoa, a contributor to the catalogue, stands opposed to this hypothesis. Nevertheless, the disruptive warmongering of the Edo kingdom of Benin played a great role in the history of the Niger Delta. For analysis of how Edo hegemony and expansion affected Niger Delta communities see Okpewo 1998.
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(6.) See in this respect the special edition focused on the Niger Delta by TELL magazine (2003), a major Nigerian publication. In addition to graphic stories of environmental degradation and subjugation of the local population by Nigerian military forces, TELL chronicles the medical effects of endless gas flaring and oil spills on the population. See especially the illustrations on p. 58 of a baby with "congenital malformation" and the boy with his brain growing outside his skull.
(7.) The collection of objects in Tom Phillips's Africa: The Art of a Continent (1995) may be interpreted as a basic canon of "classical" African art. The questions of validation and cultural patrimony raised by this canon are noted but not discussed in that publication.
(8.) The objects in the re-created Isoko shrine ensemble are an example. It should be noted that shoddy workmanship does not in any way interfere with the efficacy of the shrine as a locus of spiritual power. A process of consecration that calls the spiritual power invoked into being activates objects used in shrine ensembles. To that extent, the objects themselves undergo further transformation through accretion resulting from sacrifices, thereby becoming powerful objects defined not in terms of their physical forms but in terms of their affect.
References cited
Anderson, Martha G. and Philip M. Peek (eds.). 2002. Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Apter, Andrew. 1992. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Campbell, Aidan. 1997. Western Primitivism, African Ethnicity: A Study in Cultural Relations. London: Cassell.
Dike, Kenneth Onwuka. 1956. Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830-1885: An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria. London: Oxford University Press.
Okpewo, Isidore. 1998. Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony and Identity. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Phillips, Tom (ed.). 1995. Africa: The Art of a Continent. London: Royal Academy of Arts.
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