AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | What's in a Mask |
| Author: | Picton, John |
| Year: | 1990 |
| Periodical: | African Languages and Cultures |
| Volume: | 3 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 181-202 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subjects: | Igbira masks Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Architecture and the Arts |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1771721 |
| Abstract: | This paper is about the relationship between a person, a mask, and that person's masked identity, particularly among the Ebira, who live in the area southwest of the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers in Nigeria. The author develops a typology of masks which is a typology of end points on a four-part continuum: 1) masks that enable a dramatic intention by effecting distance between performer and audience; 2) masks that effect dramatic distance and at the same time deny human agency; 3) masks that create dramatic distance, but at the same time are literal embodiments of metaphysical energy, or 'spirit'; and 4) masks that seem to be none of these things. This typology seems to provide a historical model of Ebira masquerade. The proliferation of 'eku'rahu' ('masquerade of the night') and 'eku.ec.ic.i' ('masquerade of rubbish', the domain of the dead), when taken together with the declining interest in 'eku.oba' ('the mask performer that stretches up', referring to the height of the costume), the ancestral mask par excellence, can be understood as a movement away from 2, i.e. ancestral presence and the denial of human agency, towards 1, the mask simply as enabling dramatic distance. Those 'eku.ec.ic.i' that survive the declining abilities of their performers do so in virtue of a healing capacity embodied in the particular mask by means of medicine and sacrifice: the movement is from 2 towards 3. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
