The mirror and the tomb: Africa, museums, and memory

African Arts, Autumn, 2001 by Francoise Lionnet

   "I see neither spoons nor forks," an old lady said in astonishment.

  "That, madame, is because the oasis dweller, like our ancestor Adam, eats
   with his fingers. There is no shame attached to that. Everyone picks up a
   little handful of food with his right hand, transfers it into the hollow of
   his left palm, rounds it into a little pellet, and then with the thumb of
   his right hand pushes it to the tip of his fingers and puts it into his
   mouth" (p. 67).

As he proceeds to demonstrate the gesture, the guide is "imitated by a few of the tourists, whose clumsiness raised some laughter." The "clumsiness" of the tourists underscores the unsurmountable gap between these modern travelers and the oasis dwellers who represent the prehistory of mankind ("like our ancestor Adam"), that is, a premodern approach to everyday life and feeding practices. Johannes Fabian (1983:31) has eloquently shown how this anthropological gaze implies a denial of coevalness that situates the viewed and living culture in another temporal framework: one that belies its status as contemporary, evolving, and dynamic, and thus reinforces the Western viewer's false sense of superiority.

As Tournier's anecdote makes clear, both spectatorship and performance take place at the site of display, and although the border between the viewer and the viewed seems to be easily crossed as the tourists try their hand at a "primitive" style of feeding, this activity only serves to buttress the viewers' sense of their own advantage over such clumsy beginnings. Indeed, the visitors enact the alimentary behavior of the oasis dwellers, but in so doing, they experience their own civilized difference from and advantage over the "natives." Finally, they receive from the guide a perfectly composed and succinct ethnographic lesson on the virtues and system of values of this belated--i.e., temporally "remote"--Saharan culture, about which he must nonetheless talk in the present tense, since they exist in the here and now of the Saharan universe:

   But you must not believe that the oasis dweller is therefore lacking in
   civility. The elementary rules of politeness in the Sahara are well known.
   Before every meal, one must wash one's hands, and not in stagnant water....
   Allah's blessing must also be invoked. One does not drink while eating, but
   after the main dish ... (p. 67).

Respectful understanding of the other thus serves to reassure the modern spectator that despite the (constructed) temporal and geographic distance, these peoples are indeed the human ancestors we seek to comprehend so that we might understand ourselves better. Their existence and their religious beliefs are contextualized before our now deferential eyes. Their culture is given a certain degree of "thick description" (Geertz 1973:3) as the tour guide's narrative completes and gives meaning to the objects presented. Reassurance about the role of difference in the human community is then the ultimate outcome of the exhibit. The spectators are reconfirmed in their own sense of identity; they have safely evolved beyond the archaic stages of primitive behavior represented by these cultural or human specimens to whose values they can also now relate.