Farah Wins the Neustadt

The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. ISSUE NUMBER THRS & FOUR • 1988 • in the preceding year (1996, or in some case, Nigeria. Statistics from the entries here show 1995). In all there are sixty-six publishing some sixty-six book printing presses, seventy houses. University Press Pic, Ibadan, estab- bookshops and book distributors, and 824 li- lished in 1978 and with more than 1,000 books braries. The libraries include state, national, in print, could release only fourteen titles in school and special libraries. 1995. University of Lagos Press, established Two most thoughtful inclusions in the Di- in 1980, with 102 titles in print, released only rectory are the last two segments entitled Ap- three books in 1996. Again in 1996, Evans pendix and Indexes. The Appendix features Brothers, established in 1966 and with over questionnaires on all the directories. This will 2,000 books in print, released only ten books, enable those who were not included to furnish and Fourth Dimension, established in 1977, information for inclusion in a future edition; it with over 800 titles in print, released only ten could also be used to update already published books. The deduction could be reached that information. The Indexes - listed alphabetical the decay in publishing hit an all-time high in by surname for authors, and business names the past ten years. If the companies above were for publishers, printers, etc.,- make tracing any publishing ten books or less annually since entry in the Directory a delight. their establishment in the 60s and 70s, they Directory of Nigerian Book Development is could not have released such large number of a well laid-out and timely publication that at- titles that they have. While the contemplation tests volubly to the editorial skill of of this landscape of decay depresses us, Spec- Chukwuemeka Ike. Hopefully an update would trum Books, Kraft Books and Zim Pan African follow soon. Perhaps, the Directory of Publishers come, like unravished maidens Organisations Involved in the Production, Im- bearing a bouquet of hope, with their 36, 16 and 15 new titles respectively in 1996. portation, and Distribution of Paper and other Materials for Book Development in Nigeria, Another interesting fact emerging from a and the Directory of Nigeria Book Publishing study of the entries in this part is that Nige- and Distribution Personnel shelved for lack of rian publishers have not yet come to grips with adequate data will be included then. For that the mechanics of international book distribu- future edition, the segment on published Ni- tion. Most of the companies distribute their gerian authors should indicate the type of book books through one outlet: their showroom/ written/edited by an author, and the ISBN. warehouse/office. Almost all the publishers These pieces of information would help inter- have no overseas distribution agent/channel; national acquisition librarians immensely. In only a handful have an arrangement with Af- its present state, however, with five directories rican Books Collective, and because ABC ac- (on Authorship, Publishing, Printing, Distribu- cepts a very limited number from one publisher tion - bookshops - and Libraries) the Directory at a time, this arrangement is grossly inad- of Nigerian Book Development is a unique ref- equate. erence material on the book industry in Nige- The other parts of the segment on Directo- ria. ries (parts 111-V) feature the directories of Book Printing Presses; Bookshops and Book Agbayi. a writer, is on the editorial team of Obifee Distribution Organisations; and Libraries in Under Western Eyes Krydz Ikwuemesi INCE the beginning of this decade, They are interesting, too, not so much for there has been a re-newed interest in their scope and ambition as for the history they African art within Western art circles. generate. In the characteristic Occidentalist This has given rise to a number of ex- tradition, each of these exhibitions is accom- Shibitions and other projects focussing panied by quality publications, some of them on African art in Western Museums, galleries grand narratives, which extend the frontiers and related institutions. Such international of what could be seen as internationalist shows as Africa Hoy! Africa Explores, Les monologic artistic discourse led by the West. Magiciens de la Terre, Contemporary African Out of the exhibitions cited above, The Poetics Artists: Changing Traditions, Africa '95, The of Line and Transvangarde are the most recent Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka and, in line with tradition, they have given rise Group, and Transvangarde are very familiar. to two separate books. The first, written by Giendon Baoks Supplement 32 ISSUE NUMBER THRE ft FOUR • 1988 Simon Ottenberg, NEW TRADITIONS FROM NIGERIA, SEVEN ARTISTS OF THE NSUKKA GROUP, Smithsonian Institution Press in association with The National Museum of African Art, Washington & London, 1997. 302pp. John Picton, EL ANATSUI. A SCULPTED HISTORY OF AFRICA, Saffron Boobs in conjunction with the October Gallery. London, 1998, 96pp. Simon Ottenberg, with the title, New Tradi- century old; Anatsui's dexterity and tions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka transcultural vision as a sculptor blossomed Group, studies the origin and development of many years ago. Both issues have been part of Uli as a creative idiom in modern Nigerian art. the continuing debate - unsophisticated as it It uses the works of Uche Okeke, Chike might be - on African art here on the continent. Aniakor, Obiora Udechukwu, Tayo Adenaike, The two publications then must be seen as part Olu Oguibe, El Anatsui, and Ada Udechukwu of a discursive continuum and not the heralds as a pedestal from which it advances its thesis of an alternative, if more authentic, critique, and conclusions. The second book resulting which they seem to pretend to be. In the na- from the exhibition 'Transvangarde' is El scent politics of globalisation, the above view Anatsui: A Sculpted History of Africa, it is a is very important, for as Everlyn Nicodemus collection of essays on the world-renowned puts it, 'if we do not take every opportunity to sculptor, written by John Picton, Gerard influence those people who are in charge of the Houghton, Yukiya Kawaguchi, Elizabeth keys to the exhibition spaces in North America, Lalous-chek, Simon Njami, and Elizabeth Peri- Europe and Japan, contemporary African art Willis. Although the books are published in two will continue to be a playground for fancies'. different parts of the Occidental World - the One may ask, how much of the African 'influ- one by the Smithsonian Institution in Wash- ence' - the African voice - shapes the theses of ington, D.C., and the other by Saffron Books both books? I am afraid it is almost minimal, in conjunction with the October Gallery in Lon- appropriated through books, oral interviews don they share a number of conceptual simi- and sundry publications. But in spite of that larities on which I shall focus presently before 'influence', one cannot rule out the ever greater examining their individual characters and influence of the author's subjectivity or what merits. Everlyn Nicodemus describes as the 'curator's subjectivity,' especially in reference to one who First, the books bring up the issue of the is well immersed in the waters of the anthro- relevance or otherwise of the 'intimate outsider' pological, 'neo-primitivising' Self-Other psy- in the study of African art. They are written by chology which pervades Western thinking people whose antecedents would repute as 'ex- Thus in spite of their reliance on some materi- perts in African art'. But beyond that, at a more als by 'intimate insiders', the ultimate voice critical level, those 'experts' appear to be the which emerges in the books - and that is nor- same old voice, the voice of neo-colonialisation, mal - is that of the authors bolstered by the the voice of the ventriloquist West, seeking to abundance in their environment of research speak for itself and the rest of the world. They and publishing facilities which often breeds are thus a clear example of the Westerncentric, 'heavy intellectualisation and theorisation in neo-expeditionist interest in African art sud- postmodern Euro/American art criticism; denly manifesting at a very remarkable pe- ...mechanism for hiding, rather than dealing riod in history. Although it would be most un- with, the very basic struggles for survival of fair to dismiss the two publications as part of African-born artists and others.' Although the usual fin de siecle gropings by peoples, Ottenberg professes to eschew this technique groups and intellectuals for new ideas, fresh and does so to a considerable extent, it is al- spin-offs and challenges outside what is most fully at work in the other book. Never- known, one cannot obviate the fact that they theless, despite their similarities in this re- are fairly rich in the trappings of the spect both books ultimately paint the picture postmodernist discourse in its sense as an of a 'terra incognita'. They invoke that point of empty harangue on the newness of a rechris- disequilibrium which is bound to emerge 'when tened old child. In other words, neither the brutally efficient Western field confronts Ottenberg nor Picton et al tells us anything economically weak and not yet much devel- new. Uli as a modern idiom is almost half a Glendors Books Supplement 33 ISSUE NUMBER THRS & FOUR • 1998 • oped art structures,' like a child trying to domi- conjecture. Ottenberg's approach is largely nate a new set of toys.

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