Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery, and Diplomacy in Madagascar

African Arts, Summer, 2003 by Randall Bird

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2002. 208 pp., 40 b/w & 68 color photos, 4 maps, glossary, bibliography, index. $35 softcover.

Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery, and Diplomacy in Madagascar is a collection of five scholarly essays that accompanies a related 2002 exhibition, "Gifts and Blessings: The Textile Arts of Madagascar," organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution (reviewed on p. 82). While focusing primarily on textiles, the book and exhibition examined additional aspects of Madagascar's material culture including historical postcards, photographs, and documents. One goal of the project was to allow its curators and authors to collaborate in the effort to collect and research these materials. In her introduction Christine Kreamer writes: "This book, the result of that research and scholarly collaboration, explores how, in the circulation of cloth, images, and ideas, the Malagasy have forged relationships both with each other and with the wider world" (pp. 15, 17). Most significantly, one of the collective aims of the essays is to provide a broader and "more holistic approach" to understanding the production and circulation of the textiles and other objects by exploring the more precise historical, social, and political conditions of community formation and belonging among the peoples of Madagascar (p. 18). This point of departure for examining various aspects of Malagasy material culture, both historical and contemporary, will open up more possibilities for future scholarship than one in which objects are simply categorized according to narrowly defined ethnic groups and centers of production.

Objects as Envoys is handsomely laid out and richly illustrated with beautiful figures of textiles, photographs, postcards, and paintings. Particularly impressive are the illustrations of textiles, which capture the brilliant colors, intricate designs, and often subtle character of this extraordinary Malagasy art form. The excellent quality of the images is a major feat considering the textiles' enormous size (dimensions often in the range of 240cm x 180cm, about 95" x 71"). Close ups showing design and border details and subtle shifts in color convey the qualities of materiality, tactility, and dimension. A glossary of Malagasy terms and the bibliography at the end of the book are a gold mine for anyone wishing to learn more about the material culture of Madagascar.

In his background essay, Jean-Aim6 Rakotoarisoa briefly summarizes Madagascar's various climatic zones and its history of migration and settlement. He sketches one of the most fascinating aspects of the island's history, namely its location at a crossroad between Africa and Asia. Plating Madagascar in the context of pan-Indian Ocean history and culture, Rakotoarisoa informs us that for the past two thousand years the island has been populated by successive waves of settlers from Africa, Asia, the Arab peninsula and, after the sixteenth century, by Europeans. He writes that the Malagasy have "selectively appropriated and recombined elements-linguistic, material and cultural--from sources scattered across the vast Indian Ocean and turned them into something new" (p. 25). As many other scholars have previously pointed out (e.g., Maurice Bloch, Jennifer Cole, Robert Dewar, Manasse Esoavelomandroso, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Pier Larson, Francoise Raison-Jourde, Henry Wright), the people and culture of Madagascar are neither "African" nor "Asian" but rather a unique combination of the two that have "developed in place, on the island" (p. 25). Rakotoarisoa's essay is disappointing, rehearsing these salient points but lacking the detail and insight that one would anticipate from a researcher who has an academic background in the history and geography of Madagascar and who has lived on the island for most of his life.

Sarah Fee devotes the first part of her essay, "Cloth in Motion," to the process of making textiles. She focuses on those elements closest to the loom, namely the weavers, materials, and the techniques of spinning, dyeing, and weaving. According to Fee, historically it was mostly women who practiced weaving in Madagascar, because clothing the family was among their chief domestic duties. Women were judged by how well they wove; male family members were, in turn, judged by the quality of cloth they wore. Men were also presented cloth as gifts (for example, to ease tension in a difficult marriage) or, in certain parts of Madagascar, as bridewealth. Fee points out that there is a strong association of women with the intensive labor and creativity involved with weaving and with passing on the art of cloth making to the next generation. This is evidenced by the number of Malagasy proverbs and sayings that are still heard today which allude to these themes. Fee's years of research and fieldwork on the island shine through in her ability to reclassify various kinds of cloth that were previously lumped together, to expand upon different fiber traditions (bark, cotton, hemp, raffia, silk) and loom types, and to clarify the distinctions among the enormous variety of widths and combinations of colored striping found in Malagasy textiles.