Measuring Time: Karin Barber and the Study of Everyday Africa

1. Trekking Around the Subject: In Praise of Karin Barber

In the 1980s, in the pages of the Nigerian Guardian, Isidore Okpewho, the respected Nigerian scholar and folklorist, contributed the short article “Michael J. C. Echeruo: The Dignity of Intellectual Labour” to a debate about the value of scholarship. In Okpewho’s view, his former teacher and friend, M. J. C. Echeruo—the scholar, critic, and poet—fit well “in any roll call of literary scholars on the Nigerian scene”; and what is more, “whereas most scholars are content to spin off a series of disconnected papers and the odd booklet that do not rise above the level of what may be called an ‘ethnography’ of the subject, Echeruo gives a good deal more time to exploring an idea until he can come out with a solid book on it” (142). Okpewho concludes by saying that Echeruo sees “himself and his efforts as primarily beholden to intellectual history and a larger life of the mind” (145).

Citing Okpewho’s endorsement of the dignity of committed intellectual labor is most pertinent to the ambition of this volume. This is because the subject of Okpewho’s article has much in common with the scholar that we celebrate in this volume, Karin Barber. Like Okpewho, we, the editors of this special issue of Research in African Literatures, along with the contributors to this volume, are out to celebrate a scholar whose worth speaks for itself and is marked by, to quote Okpewho, an intellectual attitude committed to exploring an idea until a “solid book on it” comes forth (142). Indeed, Barber’s “efforts are primarily beholden to intellectual history and a larger life of the mind” (145). This is one of the many reasons why this volume is dedicated to reexamining one of the finest and most influential essays she has published to date, “Popular Arts in Africa” (1987). This special issue is dedicated to that essay and to Barber, but also to the timely reexamination of the scholarly field of African popular arts.

Barber’s essay continues to be regarded as groundbreaking, incisive, decisive, and the most influential work on African popular arts in African studies scholarship. In our opinion, it is the most eloquent essay to date on the subject. Returning to this piece of work twenty-five years later, it is clear that it has not lost its magic. The essay’s foundation was built on solid field research and thoughtful, inspired analysis, the kind of which we can only compare to a few other scholars in the field. This essay, we will argue, does what Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa did for the study of oral performance culture. It brought order and some measure of respectability to the study of African popular performance in its broadest sense. The scope of the essay’s exegetic concerns is prodigious, so too is its scholarly gravity and energy. Its scholarly audacity is inspiring and at the same time humbling. Many aspects of this essay’s exegetic nuances are likely to remain unsurpassed in the field for many years to come. Its eloquent articulation of the other Africa, the Africa that is hardly captured on the radar of the postcolonial literary and scholarly establishment, is, for want of a better word, stupendous. Published twenty-five years ago, “Popular Arts in Africa” has influenced the work of a generation of Africanists in Africa and all over the world. Going back to this essay reminds us that a lot may have changed since it was published, but the desires and methods of expressing want, deprivation, happiness, hope, and aspiration on the streets of the continent are more or less the same as they were twenty-five years ago.

Yet, it is important that we remind readers that as significant as this essay may be to us and to those who follow this trend in the field, this is just one of the many essays and books that Karin Barber has published in an illustrious career spanning more than three decades. What we do know for...