Vigilant Things: On Thieves, Yoruba Anti-Aesthetics, and The Strange Fates of Ordinary Objects in Nigeria

An Ontology of the Broken

217 an ontology oF the broken Somebody who is gaining from something has to make it more powerful. —Babaláwo K�láwọlé Ọshìt�lá, 11 October 1998 Ko mu t’ọwọ r� wa ko gba t’ọwọ ẹni. One who does not give should not expect to receive. —A Yoruba proverb Receiving, giving, giving, receiving, all that lives is twin. Who would cast the spell of death, let him separate the two. —Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons . . . the broken object, precisely because it is broken, exhales aura, and returns our gaze. —Michael Taussig, Defacement So chiggidi-check yo self, before you wreck yo self. . . . —Ice Cube, “Check Yo Self” La poésie consiste dans sa plus grande conscience de sa qualité de voleur. Poetry lies in [the thief’s] full awareness of being a thief. —Jean Genet, Journal du Voleur 218 Portraits and Punishments DesCriPtion, transition, seParation oruba proverbs, even when they are written, are not written in stone. Not only does the significance of a proverb shift in accordance to the specific context of its application, but also the contents of the phrase may be subtly transformed to better address the issue at hand. The voice of authority, the authoritative voice of the individual speaker, the actively engaged receiver, and the “subject” of the utterance are brought into a relationship that is at once traditional and novel. To illustrate this, I draw upon a single proverb uttered in three different circumstances, by three different speakers. The proverb in question is a miniature discourse on the limits of cultural knowledge, and the consequences of acting beyond those limits. In D. O. Fagunwa’s novel Ògbójú ọdẹ nínú igbó irúnmalè (Forest of a Thousand Daemons), we have the proverb in Wole Ṣoyinka’s translation. It addresses the bravery of the hunter, whose line of work requires that he face and master the unknown terrors of the bush, isolated from the embrace of the human community: “He who must do what no one has done before him will experience that which no man has experienced before” (1982:36). P. S. O. Aremu explicitly draws the proverb into an argument on tradition and novelty in Yoruba arts, articulating the artist’s unique but culturally tempered production in a metaphor of seeing (1993:133–34): Ẹni ti ó ba ní ohun fẹ ṣé n ti ẹnìkan ò ṣé ri / ojú ré yíó rí n ti ẹnìkan ò rí rí. One who attempts to do what nobody has done before [will] see what nobody has seen before. Babaláwo K�láwọlé Ọshìt�lá mentioned this proverb during an early conversation on ààlè (7 October 1998). In this instance, the proverb becomes deeply conservative in tone—it speaks neither of daring nor creativity, but of thievery and its consequences. Ẹni tó bá ṣé asẹmásẹ, ojú á rí o n t�ni kò ríri. He who did what shall not be done, his eyes will see what nobody has ever seen. Here we have reached the limits of the allowable. In Yoruba society, which so clearly emphasizes intersubjective relationship as a fundamental component An Ontology of the Broken 219 of the individual subject, there are boundaries beyond which one cannot act and still be considered a person in full. Symbolic ààlè mark these boundaries , reminding the would-be thief of the presence of lawful, vigilant power at sites where no other humans are present. Ààlè are set in place at important sites of transition: the farms that constitute a buffer zone between civilization and bush, the markets where the contingency of social life is realized in economic exchange, the roadsides where firewood is collected and stacked. At these sites, ààlè offer a would-be thief an opportunity—in some cases, a final opportunity—to engage in dialogue, to “look and remember” that he or she is implicated in an intersubjective, and necessarily reciprocative, social network. Symbolic ààlè communicate the effects of power by describing in form the projected consequences of theft. For the person who has chosen (or, indeed, who is destined) to actively disavow socially appropriate reciprocation, there awaits a seemingly endless variety of terrors. Ààlè display coded but recognizable objects that are often ruined or broken, or that signify in some way such a diminished condition of being. In the reception of such unmistakably negative symbolic messages, the thief activates their efficacy by interiorizing them...