African Verbal Arts and the Study of African Visual Aesthetics

In this paper I would like to briefly explore the possibilities that analyses of African verbal arts present for an understanding of "aesthetics" in African cultures. When used in African studies, by both nonindigenous and indigenous scholars, the Western-derived label "aesthetics" generally serves to refer to a given culture's views on "beauty" or related qualities. Scholarly attention has until now been largely focused on beauty as an attribute of human beings and anthropomorphic renditions in statuary art and masked performances, in addition to several other visual phenomena. Although analyses of African verbal arts, both oral and written, may also instruct us on notions of quality in nonvisual domains, in the present paper emphasis will be on what the opinions that are expressed in various literary types may teach us about the aesthetics informing the creation and evaluation of the visual arts in African cultures. While in keeping with the focus of this special issue of Research in African Literatures, this emphasis also reflects a disciplinary bias of the present author who has a background in African visual art studies.

Although in African studies aesthetics usually refers to the idea of beauty, a limited number of scholars in this field--additionally--employ the term in the sense in which it has been used by most twentieth-century Western philosophers, namely, as pertaining to "the philosophy of art." In the West, this conception of the label aesthetics has come to refer to--the study of--the philosophical views that throughout the documented history of Western thinking have been expressed vis-à-vis the phenomena of "art and beauty." Indeed, at least from the time of the ancient Greeks onwards, philosophers and others in the West have been concerned with systematic reflections on such topics as the origin and nature of the arts, their classification and various functions, the creativity and inspiration involved in their production, the experience and evaluation of their qualities, and the nature of these qualities themselves. In recent decades scholars have started to address the views that have been expressed on these and related topics in cultures beyond the West. Attention has until now been leveled particularly at the literate traditions of Oriental cultures, whereas research into the art philosophical views of so-called nonliterate or traditionally oral cultures has only just begun. Although the latter views do not constitute the main focus of this paper, I would like to seize the opportunity to encourage literary and other scholars to investigate art philosophical topics through the study of African oral traditions, in order also to thus contribute to the emerging field of study of "intercultural philosophy of art" or "world aesthetics." ²

If in this paper I draw attention to African literary types as potentially rich sources of information on aesthetics, I am simply echoing the calls that several African scholars have made during the past few decades. In one of the first essays on African aesthetics written by an African scholar, Harris Memel-Fotê already briefly suggested that we turn to the verbal arts in our attempts to learn about African views on beauty: "Ecoutons les contes et les légendes [. . .] dépositaires de l'esthétique" 'Let us listen to the tales and legends [. . .] depositories of the aesthetic' (50). Memel-Fotê argues that a consideration of the various literary types will inform us on the range of natural and human-made objects considered beautiful in African cultures. Furthermore, in a somewhat different context he suggests that the study of verbal art forms in Africa may also teach us about more philosophical views on matters aesthetic. Memel-Fotê more specifically refers to two "contes philosophiques" 'philosophical tales' of the Bete of Côte d'Ivoire that are concerned with the relative nature of aesthetic judgments. In one of these, a male chimpanzee and antelope are held captive near a village. The antelope is longing for his lovers who...