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The New South Africa, by Guy Arnold. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2000. 213 pp. £42.50 hardback. ISBN 0‐333918878.

The New South Africa, by Guy Arnold. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2000. 213 pp. £42.50... AFRICAN AFFAIRS increasing importance elsewhere in Africa. Further, they argue that in Cameroon and Kenya national governments have fostered autochthony in areas opposed to them in order to split the opposition votes. Thus while in Europe democratization has enhanced national identity at the expense of foreigners, in Africa it tends to strengthen local identities at the expense of those who are not `sons of the soil', whether or not they be legally foreign. One way of rewriting Africa is to re-exhibit museum collections. This was done at the National Museum of Ethnology at Osaka in 1997 and the curator of the new exhibition, Yoshida Kenji, contributes an illuminating paper to this book. Yoshida contrasts African art, which has been traditionally treated as ethnographic material of uncertain provenance and date, with Western art to which names and dates are almost invariably ascribed. The reason was an implicit assumption that the societies producing the ethnographic objects were `complete, closed and unchanging'. Such objects declared the uniformity of a culture; hence dating them and naming their creators were unnecessary. The division between art galleries and ethnographic museums implied a distinction between a Self that was complex and an Other simple enough http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Affairs Oxford University Press

The New South Africa, by Guy Arnold. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2000. 213 pp. £42.50 hardback. ISBN 0‐333918878.

Williams, Paul
African Affairs , Volume 100 (401) – Oct 1, 2001
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Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
Copyright The Royal African Society 2001
ISSN
0001-9909
eISSN
1468-2621
DOI
10.1093/afraf/100.401.665
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AFRICAN AFFAIRS increasing importance elsewhere in Africa. Further, they argue that in Cameroon and Kenya national governments have fostered autochthony in areas opposed to them in order to split the opposition votes. Thus while in Europe democratization has enhanced national identity at the expense of foreigners, in Africa it tends to strengthen local identities at the expense of those who are not `sons of the soil', whether or not they be legally foreign. One way of rewriting Africa is to re-exhibit museum collections. This was done at the National Museum of Ethnology at Osaka in 1997 and the curator of the new exhibition, Yoshida Kenji, contributes an illuminating paper to this book. Yoshida contrasts African art, which has been traditionally treated as ethnographic material of uncertain provenance and date, with Western art to which names and dates are almost invariably ascribed. The reason was an implicit assumption that the societies producing the ethnographic objects were `complete, closed and unchanging'. Such objects declared the uniformity of a culture; hence dating them and naming their creators were unnecessary. The division between art galleries and ethnographic museums implied a distinction between a Self that was complex and an Other simple enough

Journal

African Affairs – Oxford University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2001

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