220

I.
SchmuckDenken [ChinkingjewellerYI -thus the theme of this symposium - but
I should at this juncture like to anticipate what I am going to say in the following
by admitting that I am not going to tall< about jewellery as such but rather about
particuiar types of object that are often associated with jewellery because they
reveal a particuiar elective affinity with it. My talk will be about fetishes, specifi-
caliy West African fetishes. I think rhat explaining and analysing them and espe-
cially showing how they have been perceived from the viewpoint of European
explorers and missionaries will serve to highlight certain qualities of profane
pieces of jewellery. After all, pieces of jewellery are far more than mere objects
used for decoration, for beautifying the body and mal<ing the wearer more
attractive. Wearers of pieces of jewellery often regard them as embodying a
power we tend to call magical when we encounter it in other cultures. Apart
from one or two minor references, I shall not always expressly point out the
parallels between pieces of jewellery and fetishes.
Che well-known art historian and mediologist Hans Oelting has written in his
Bild-Anthropologie: 'Oetween images and places relationships exist that have yet
to be interpreted. Just as we speak of the body as a place of images, so it is pos-
sible to speak of geographic locations that have been given their familiar appear-
ance only through the works of sculpture located there." Although Oelting is
referring in this observation mainly to the European cultural landscape, it can
just as well be applied to a field that might be termed the imagology of European

Fig. I: Philipp Galle. Allegorie der America, ca 1598. Phoro: Karl-Heinz Kohl (ed.). My/hen der Neuen Weir.
lur Entdeckungsgeschichre lClfeinonJerikos, Berlin 1981, p. 12.
 221

colonialism. On early maps of the world, for instance, it was the usual practice
to mark Brazii with a group of cannibals or even Amazons,' representations of
which had become quite popuiarthrough the copperplates produced in Cheodor
de Bry's workshop (Fig. 1). In the curiosity cabinets and Wunderkammer owned
by those who wished to represent the whole known world by means of a choice
seiection of objects in a singie room, bizarre Aztec statues of deities and obsidian
tools stood for Central America, martial cudgels and feather cloaks for Brazii,
mummies for enigmatic Egypt, Eskimo seal clothing for the Arctic north and
Buddha statues for remote Asia. Each region of the world was thus represented
by a work of art or at least a man-made artefact. Lil<e pre-colonial Mexico with
the statue of the blood-thirsty Huitzlipochtli, Egyptwith its funerary culture and
India with its manifold images of deities, Africa, for its part, was associated in
European imagology until the close of the colonial era with fetish figures.
However, whereas the Aztec, Egyptian and Indian statues of deities even in
the museum, that modern 'refuge for images that had lost their place in the
world',' still recall their original local cultures and according to the theory
advanced by Krzysztof Pomian, an art historian, have remained 'semiophores'
of exotic faraway lands,' the uniqueness of African fetishes consists in the cir-
cumstance that they continue in their concrete material form to stand for spe-
cific geographical places, that the idea associated with them, on the other hand,
has been dissociated from ties to a particular place to refer to something more
universal: since the eighteenth century, the term 'fetishism' has been used to
denote a primitive form of thinking not yet capable of rationally relating cause
to effect so that it imbues the next best thing with a will of its own and views it
as an agent of causality. Fetishism is - as Hegel would later put it - 'individual
arbitrariness amounting to empiricism" Che phiiosophers of the Enlightenment
viewed fetishism as a stage in religious history, which the so-called 'civilised'
peoples had once also gone through and of which certain remnants still clung
to Christianity. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, criticism from
the disciplines of political economy and psychology dissociated the term from
its history of religion frame of reference and lent it even more universally appli-
cable weight. In his three-stage theory of the history of philosophy, Auguste
Comte viewed fetishism as the earliest of all stages of thinking rather than as a
religious phenomenon. Karl Marx and the exponents of Marxian social theory
used the term to denote a pseudo-sacral relationship to the products of human
iabour, which, paradoxically, had been what brought forth the economically
most advanced form of society, i.e. capitalism, in its most highly developed form.
Che French psychoiogists Charcot, Magnan and Binet took over the term from
Comtian phiiosophy to designate an aberration in human sexuality thanhey and
their contemporaries found disturbing. Finally, Sigmund Freud and psycho-
analysis believed the enigma of sexuai fetishism to have been resolved by deriv-
ing it from traumatic experiences in early childhood and conjectured that the
fetish was a substitute for the mother's non-existing phallus. Che above brief
222

historical outline of the term fetishism would be incomplete if the aesthetic of

West African fetish figures were not mentioned that, in part directly and also
mediated by psychoanalysis, gained in importance for the radical change in
style undergone in early twentieth-century avant-garde art. 'le t'aime, je t'aime'
the heroine of Andre Breton's surrealist story Nadja hears the African fetish whis-
per that she sees in an artist's studio.' And the magic figurines from Africa really

Fig. 2; t"he studio of Guill<lume Apollinaire, Paris ca 1900. Photo: William Rubin led.}. Primirivismlls in der Kunsr
des zwonzigsren jahrhunderrs, Munich 1984, p. 320.
 223

were part of the immovable inventory of the workshops and libraries of such
luminaries as Picasso, Matisse, Max Ernst, Andre Breton and Guillaume Apollinaire
(Fig. 2).7
What, however, made the West African fetishes and the cults devoted to them
so fascinating for the history of European thinking and art? Why was it the cultic
artefacts from coastal West Africa, which are, seemingly, so much less spectacu-
lar than the Egyptian works of sacred art, that captivated us intellectually? A
possible answer to this question is that the fetish cult concealed something
beneath an outlandish appearance that was fundamentaily more familiar to
European travellers, missionaries and colonisers than the blood-drenched
human sacrifice practised by the Aztecs before the grotesque-looking figures of
their deities, or than the flowers and food laid by the East Indians before theirs
as libations or than the gloomy rituals associated with the cult of the dead that
was observed in ancient Egyptian tombs.

11.
that the African fetishes must have appealed to that feeling of familiarity is
shown by the origin of the term used to denote them. It had played a role as early
as the theological debates engaged in by the early Church Fathers. the word
fetish derives, etymologically speaki ng, from the Latin adjective facrltills (Engl ish:
factitious), derived from the past participle of the iterative verb facrim (in turn
derived from facia) and meaning 'artificial' or 'manmade', with the connotation
'deceptive', which is encountered as early as Pliny.8 the Church Fathers were said
to have used it later in connection with what they had to say about the Bible
proscribing Images and condemning idolatry. Portuguese feiri,a .. designating
'charms' and amulets in the late Middle Ages in turn derives from the Latinfacrl-
rillS. the term feiti,o had evidentiy become such commonplace usage by the
fourteenth century that King Joao I of Portugal expressly forbade the practice of
fetish worshi p along with invocations of the devil and other sorcery in his wi tch-
craft edict of 1385.'
Incidentally, many things argue that the borders between the amulet and a
piece of jewellery have always been fluid. In all probability, the first pieces of
Jewellery were nothing but charms. this is shown, for example, by a spectacular
prehistoric find made a few years ago during excavations in the Swabian Alb: a
female figure, barely 6 cm high, carved of ivory and estimated to be about 35,000
years old." She has broad pendulous breasts and an enlarged vulva but instead
of a head, she has an attached lug, which implies thatthe figure was worn by its
owner as a pendant hung round his or her necl<./f that is so, it was probably used
both as bodily adornment and as a fertility symbol with magical and apotropaic
properties to fend off evil. that the latter is highly lil<ely to have been the case
can be concluded from the use of the exposed vulva as a symbol above the
gables of Men's Houses in new Guinea. not only in Melanesia but innumerous
224

other cultures as well, including that of Hellenistic Asia Minor and Egypt - one
should bear in mind Baubo cult figurines n - the exposed female genitals
promised to ward off evii spirits. Similarly, representations of the male phallus
in erection have been used for similar purposes throughout the world. On rhe
Indonesian island of Sumba, for instance, both men and women wear gold jew-
ellery consisting of the male and female genitalia, which are symbolic of the
ancestors and are given as part of a girl's dowry. And the same symbolism evi-
dently informs the Hand of Fatima so widespread in regions adhering to Islam
with the middle finger pointing and an eye on the palm. (he Hand of Fatima is
used to ward off the Evil Eye, for which purpose a gesture is used in southern
Italy, for instance, that is regarded as obscene in our latitudes." A comparable
form must have been made and worn by Portuguese sorcerers and sorceresses,
from which the term fetishism would derive.
It was after all those very feirir;:os, familiar to them from their own culture,
which Portuguese mariners more or less spontaneously equated with the mag-
ical objects owned by the inhabitants of the West African coast, with whom they
had come into contact through trading and colonisation activities. According to
contemporary sources, those were all sorts of objects, either left as found or
made of wood, clay, bone and other materials and to which the Africans attri-
bured certain powers (Fig. 3). Early chronicles of travels, on the other hand, pro-
vide us with virtually no accurate information on the appearance of such objects.

Fig. 3: nOIl-figurative nkisi nkond! of the BaKongo, before 1855. Photo: the '(rustees of the llrlrish Museum,
England. In: Wyart MaCGaffey, Mlchael D. Harris,Asronishrnent and Power, Washlnglon: Smirhsonlanlnstirutioll,
1993, p. 67.
 225

All we I<now is that they were confiscated along with the African 'idols' and con-
signed to the flames in the course of the systematic missionising of the indig-
enous peoples that set in towards the close of the fifteenth century.
[he Africans' idolos, which were probably statuettes of their ancestors, and
their feirir;os are always mentioned together in the texts and are virtually indis-
tinguishable. What does emerge unequivocally from those accounts is that the
Catholic missionaries, not content with destroying them, repiaced them with
crucifixes, images of the saints, rosaries and other Christian devotional objects,
which they distributed to converts." [he indigenous population seems to have
ascribed more efftcacious powers to those things than to their own magical
objects. Christian devotional objects were in any case coveted and were often
used very much in the manner of traditional fetishes. Mightthe exceptional suc-
cess of the missionising on the West African coast and the Congo basin in the
early decades of contact between the Portuguese and the indigenous population
have been due to the greater efficacy attributed to the Catholic cult objects 7
By 1490, barely ten years after the mouth of the Congo was discovered by
Diogo Cao, the indigenous ruler of Songo had converted to Christianity. He was
soon followed by rll<uwu rlzinga, the ruler of the Kingdom of Congo, who tool<
the name joao I and had Africa's first Christian church built in his capiral, San
Salvador. [he Christianisation of his I<ingdom continued to progress under his
son Afonso I despite resistance offered by local dignitaries. According to the
portuguese sources, Afonso I waged a rigorous campaign against feitir;os and
had them consigned to the flames along with their heathen worshippers.
Afonso's son Henrique studied theology in Rome and was ordained by the pope
as Bishop of Utica in 1520. Incidentally, two hundred and fifty years would pass
before an African would again be honoured in this way.
Considering the successful history of missionising the West African coastal
areas and the Congo, one wonders how authentic the fetishes and the cult sur-
rounding them really were. [he cultwas constantly reported in accounts oftrav-
els in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In West Africa the Portuguese
had encountered cultures in whose traditional systems of beliefs and conduct
those efficacious objects occupied a pivotal position that were regarded in
Portuguese culture, on the other hand, as sacriiege and idolatry when used for
certain magicai practices. [he Portuguese called such objects used by the coastal
West Africansfeirir;os. Moreover, as we can learn from early sources, that term
was taken over from the Africans themselves in a pidgin form,fareish, or ferissos.
[he Africans, for their part, were confronted with the devotionai artefacts asso-
ciated with observances practised by the Catholic Church, such as rosaries, mon-
strances, relics, and so forth, to which as far as the Africans understood them,
the Portuguese ascribed powers similar to those the Africans attributed to their
own traditional magical objects. In many cases the Africans had obviously
exchanged their own objects for the Portuguese ones because they obviously
possessed more efftcacious powers.
226

Hence the conclusion to be drawn from this is that the West African fetish cult
actually represented a syncretism, a combination of two forms of religion that
emerged from the encounter and mutual misunderstanding - or perhaps it was
not a misunderstanding? - between two cultures which could hardly have been
more different but nevertheless found something in common in the attention
they paid to certain material objects they viewed as sacred, Gy the way, an affin-
ity of sorts between the cultic practices of the Catholic Church and the Africans
had been noted by some Protestant travellers as early as the seventeenth cen-
tury. che Swabian surgeon Andreas Josua Ultzheimer wrote as follows In his
account of his travels published in 1606: 'At the close of my description of Guinea,
I cannot fail to mention that - just as the Papists go about their plots or fields
annually on Corpus Christi to bless them against bad weather - the inhabitants
of Guinea gather yearly in all villages on a certain day in April. chere they make
their fetishes or images of the Devil or idols in honour of the Devil. chis is noth-
ing but a pile of compressed dung. With that they have, as mentioned above,
almost the same ceremonies as the Papists at their Mass. When these fetishes
are finished, they then asl< the Devil how the grain and other fruits will be this
year, what foreign ships will arrive and what diseases will amict them, how their
pregnant wives will bear their children and what war will take place.'''
Another Protesrantwriter, Olferr Dapper of the Low Countries, had no qualms
about equating West African fetishes with the Catholic saints and devotional
images of them when he reported in his Description of Africa (pub!. 1668) that the
inhabitants of the Gold Coast hung 'various fetishes or saints' about their per-
sons to 'protect themselves from accidents' when travelling in their boats." So
there it is again: amuiets which were worn like pieces of jewellery as was also
the case at the same time in the Carholic regions of Europe.
And Willem Gosman, a Calvinist trader, who was in the employ of the Dutch
West India Company towards the close of the seventeenth century, wrote in A
new and aCCllrare descriprion ofrhe coasrof Guinea, divided inta the Gold, the Slave,
and rhe Ivory Coosts (publ. 1?04), which was so infiuential in its day that it was
translated into English, French, German and Italian: 'If it was possible to convert
the f1egroes to the Christian Religion, the Roman-Catholics would succeed better
than we should, because they already agree in several particulars, especially in
their ridiculous Ceremonies I...]'''
Admittedly, the above quoted observations exemplify the polemics so often
published at the time by Protestant writers. Placing the Catholic variant of
Christianity, so much richer in incarnations of the divine, on the same footing as
the religions practised by 'savages' was commonplace in the era of the great
European religious connicts and the Counter-Reformation." if, however, one
bears in mind that the items of information contained in the early Portuguese
texts that are the sources for the cult objects and practices of the inhabitants of
the West African coast are definitely vague and that the Africans, moreover, used
a pidgin word derived from the Portuguese termfeitit;o to designate their magi-
 227

cal objects, it can be inferred that more might be concealed behind such remarks
than mere interdenominational sniping,
In addition, the hypothesis that the African ferishes were hybrid formations
produced from an intercultural·contact situation is further supported by the use
to which they were put that is frequently attested to in accounts of travels to the
region, In the reports written by Portuguese, Dutch and English traders there are
numerous references to the fact that fetishes played a major role in the conclu-
sion of rrading treaties between the Europeans and the Africans, lust as the
Europeans swore oaths on the Bible, the Africans were said to have sworn by
their fetishes to keep treaties,(heirwhite trading partners usually copied their
behaviour. Fetishes were evidently viewed by both sides as mediators of, and
guarantors for, peaceful relations. (he Africans believed they were bowing to
European custom whereas the Europeans thought they were paying obeisance
to African practice. (he American epistemologist William Piet2 has concluded,
on the basis of this and other source findings that the idea of the fetish emerged
in a mercantile inrercultural space which had been created between fundamen-
tally differing cultures through trade relations. Hence, according to Pietz, the
idea of the fetish cannot be unequivocally assigned to either African or European
Christian thinking."

Ill.
A further argument for a culturally hybrid genesis of West African fetishism can
be induced from the aesthetic design of the fetish figures which have been
brought to Europe by collectors and anthropologists since the nineteenth cen-
tury. Of course all those artefacts are of recent make since the older pieces
tended to be sacrificed to missionaries' zea I in converti ng the Africa ns and were
consigned to the names along with other pagan objects. Hence we do not know
how old the anrhropomorphous appearance of such figures, which probably
did not become commonplace until later, really is: in early accounts of travels
and summarising descriptions of the fetish cult, there is nor so much talk of
figurative representations as there is of more or less material things such as a
tree, a lion's tail, a piece of wood, a shell or a pebble, to which 'the negroes' - as
Charies de Brosses says in his innuenrial book Du Cu/re des dieux Feriches (pub!.
1757) - 'who devote to them a strict and respectful cult, address their vows, offer
sacrifices, carrying them in processions (... ) or wearing them on their persons
with a great show of veneration and consulting them on all impottant occasions;
regarding them in general as guardians of men and as powerful preservers from
all sorts of mishaps.'''
(he fetishes from the Congo basin and the coast of West Africa dating
from the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries kept in our ethno-
graphic museums are, however, decidedly more complex. Apart from
some non-figurative fetishes, almost all of them are figures of human
228

beings or animals. Furthermore, ali sorts of objects, each with a signifi-

cance of its own, are suspended from the figures. rhus a sort of magical
reduplication tal<es place. rhe magical figures, powerful in their own
right, in turn wear, like human beings, magical amulets as jeweliery on
their bodies.
I should like to demonstrate the special features these figures have
compared to other objects produced for the figurative-sacral art of Africa
by drawing on some examples taken from the Yombe and other Kikongo-
speaking tribes of the Congo region, a region in which Roman Catholicism
has exerted an influence for more than three centuries." From this region
come the nail and mirror fetishes in particular, which are nowadays
viewed as the star exhibits in large ethnographic coliections and by now
have a marl<et value of hundreds of thousands ofeuros.rhey include the
Yombe witch figures of the Choloango Valiey region (Fig. 4), which in the
Yombe language are calied Minkisi Nkondi. Workshops used to specialise
in making these figures. Anyone who needed a Nkisi Nkondi commis-
sioned it from a carver.rhe appearance of such figures depended on the
purpose for which they were made. Female figures were used for thera-
peutic purposes and for facilitating parturition. rhe male figures, usualiy
executed in aggressive poses, were used, on the other hand, for hUllting
down miscreallts and witches. Calied Teke in Kikongo, a wooden statue
of this kind was not efficacious in its own right although the more meticu-
lously worked the more powerful a Nkisi was believed to be. It could only

Fig. 4: nail fetish lnkisi nkondi) of the Vombe (Congo) from rhe studio of ChiJoango vallev region, ca 1900.
Photo: J.c. BeJliercollecfion, Paris. In:Ajrikanische 5kulpWf. Die crfindung der Figur, Museum lUdwig, 1990, p. 187.
Fig. 5: nganga or magic priesl of the oaKongo. Photo: 'nganga Madzia'. [n: Christiane FalgaVretre-leveau {ed.).
Am d'Afrique. Musee Dapper, Paris 2000, p. 258.
 229

be used Forrhe specific purpose desired aFter a Nganga or spiritual healer

(Fig. 5) had loaded itwith magical attributes. "Che load consisted of natural
substances, red or white clay, certain plants such as peppers, vines and
the leaves of specific trees, parts of animals such as a scrap of leopard
skin, a snake's head, a bird's wing or a crab claw. An indispensable con-
stituent of each load was the remains of a dead person who had to have
been particularly powerful while alive. On occasion, however, soil from
his grave would have sufficed. "Che exact mixture of such ingredients was
the witch doeror's secret. "Co activate the fetish, the blend of ingredients
was laid in a cavity that was usually hollowed in the back of the figure on
a level with its belly. Minkisi Nkondi From the Chiloanga Valley region usu-
ally boast a large cowrie shell on the belly. So here we again find the above
mentioned, universally widespread vulva symbolism. Other ilakongo fig-
ures are fitted in the same place with a mirror, behind which the magical
substances are hidden (Fig. G, 7).

Once male Minkisi Nkonde was charged with supernatural powers, they could be
used in the hunt for witches or miscreants. "Chis was done by pounding a nail
into the figure. Pounding in nails in this way was also the usual practice when
treaties were concluded. "Che Nkisi was believed to punish signatories to a treaty
who inFringed it. "Co reinforce a treaty, cords were twisted round the nails.
However, other objects of alien provenance, such as scraps of cloth and iron
filings, occasionally even small anthropomorphic figurines, were suspended

Fig. 6: nl<onde mirror ferish of Viii (Congo). Photo: Museum 13erg en Dal, Holland. In: A!rikanische Skulprur.
Die Erfinduog der Figur, Museum ludwig, 1990, p. 191.
Fig. 7: nkonde mirror fetish. llakongo lCongo). From: wyaft MacGaffey, MichaeJ D. Harris. Asronishmenrond
Power, washington: Smithsonian InstitUTion, 1993, p. 98.
230

From the nails (Fig.S). A Oal<ongo Nkisi Nkondo shows what sort of objects these
were (Fig. 9). Ch is witch figure is, incidentally, particularly instructive in other
respects as well: not only are all sorts of objects of foreign origin suspended
From it but it also wears, as a special ornament, a European hat.
In his study Der rote Fes [The Red Fez], the anthropologist Fritz Kramer has
pointed out the role mimesis has always played in Africa in the cultural contest
with the Other: the sphere oFthe jungle and foreigner. Paradigmatically,
striving to deal mimetically with the experience of a stranger perceived as over-
wheimingly powerFul is expressed above all in African possession cults. Such
cuits, like dance, masks and the cult figure itself, are the media for 'equation with
the other, something that is different to the subject that wants to attain repre-
sentation.''' [he formation of the Fetishistic complex on the coast of West Africa
was evidentiy grounded in mimetic behaviouroFthis kind. Like European famil-
iar spirits or Familiars, African Fetishes in possession cults had to sport particular
attributes of the white men: European headgear, uniForms or imitations of
European weapons. Objects of European origin are fastened to many of the
extant African fetish figures: mirrors, iron nails, scraps of cloth and so Forth, to
which particularly strong magical powers were attribured, evidently because of
their foreign provenance. [he boxes covered with glass panes or mirrors that
the fetishes bear at belly level may be imitations of reliquaries that had reached
the Congo region as early as the sixteenth century in the course of European
missionary activity. As has already been noted, the ingredients kept in the cav-

Fig. 8; fll<isi nkondi of the Yombe (region Boma, Congo). Photo: Musee Royale de l'Afrique (entrale, t:ervuren-
In:!\frikanische SlwlpnJr. Die Erfindung der Figur. Museum ludwig, 1990, p. 183.
Fig. 9: nkisi nkondi of rhe BaKongo with European haT, before 1900. PhOTO: narional Museum of African
An. Washinglon. In: WViHf MacGaffev, Michael D. Harris, Asronishll1entand Power, Washinglon: Smlrhsonian
Jnsrirution. 1993. p. 100.
 231

ities of such usually included small bones from an important dead per-
son, through which he lenr his powers to the fetish. Such receptacles for magical
substances may also have been modelled after monstrances for displaying the
consecrated host.
As imitations of the objects venerated by the Roman Catholic clergy, fetishes
served apotropaic purposes. As is shown by their use when a trade treaty was
concluded with Europeans, on travels Into dangerous foreign lands and In gen-
eral to ward off harmful external innuences, they were used not least against
those from whom their image had been taken. nevertheless, the appropriation
of devotional images and liturgical implements from Roman Catholic Christianity
was based on a fundamenral misunderstanding. che Portuguese had turned out
to be superior to the Africans in weapons technology. However, the Africans
were not aware of how the really functioned. On the other hand, the
Africans were better able to deal with the forms of cultlc veneration
which the foreigners lavished on their reliquaries, monstrances, hosts and devo-
tional images. After all, religious observances of this I<ind were familiar to
Africans from their own tradition. chat is why they must have viewed the sacral
objects used by the Portuguese as the real basis of the Europeans' power even
though the symbolic meaning of those objects remained hidden from the Africans
without the necessary theological background knowledge. nonetheless, it was
easy to draw the conclusion that these were objects charged with power.
che Africans seem to have been particularly impressed by European statues
of saints. An early source reporrs, for instance that the Banza on the Congo used
as their new 'idol' a statue of the Virgin which happened to be washed ashore
where they lived. But they destroyed their own indigenous Idols because
they had proved incapable of providing any protection from an epidemic."
Images of the lesser saints were also interpreted as possessing magical powers.
In such cases they seemed even more powerful than the indigenous cult objects.
If it was not possible to obtain them directly, attempts were made to replicate
them. chat such Christian devotional images were the model for fetish is
shown by their appearance. Unlike the earlier ancestor the anrhropo-
morphous Minkisi Nkonde of the Congo region reveal stylistic elemenrs that do
not occur in the traditional regional art. chese elemenrs, too, might be Inter-
preted on the aesthetic plane as the result of a mimetic appropriation process.
Quite a high level of abstraction is characteristic of nearly all African ancestor
cheir makers deliberately sought to avoid any resemblance to living
persons, concenrrating instead on representing what was regarded in the cul-
ture concerned as typically human. Artists retreated to solitude when they were
carving images of the ancestors of their tribe or clan. chat was the only way of
avoiding the danger that the likeness of a particular individual might Innuence
the design of what was inrended as sacral Sculpture. It might even be contended
'that likenesses were banned by tradition in much of African art.'''chis is exem-
by the ancestor of the Mumuye in north-western nigeria (Fig. 10),
232

which would exert such a crucial influence on European Cubism with their
abstract design. nepresentations of ancestors were subjected to a 'likeness ban'
of this kind in most cultures of the Congo region. Among the Chokwe in north-
eastern Angola, who venerated their ancestors in the form of what are called
Muyombo poles, abstraction 'was heightened to total non-representationality'."
nealism was not unknown in other genres of African art, as is shown by the
bronze memorial heads from the Kingdom of Benin or the portraits of I<ings
found atexcavation sites in Ife, nigeria. nealism and individuality were eschewed
in representations of ancestors because images of them did not represent a spe-
cific individual but rather the ancestors of a specific group of descendants.
African ancestor figures were not pictures but representations that stood col-
lectively for all deceased members of one's own group.
Anthropomorphous fetishes from the Congo region, on the other hand, are
distinguished stylistically by a pronounced emphasis on individualising fea-
tures. [he faces of such figures at times look almost surrealistic. [he Minkisi
Nkondi of the Yombe with their meticulously worked noses, ears and chins are
prime examples of that characteristic. Grimaces with teeth showing, wide-open
eyes, arms akimbo with hands on the hips or a raised weapon signalise readi-
ness for aggression (Fig. 11). By contrast, other fetish figures from the Congo have

Fig. 10: Ancesrral figure of the Mumuye (nigefia). Photo: Private collection, Paris. In:Afrikonische Skulpruf. Die
Erfindung der Figur, Museum Ludwig, 1990, p. 139.
Fig. 11: nl<onde nail ferish of the Yombe, ca ]900. PhofO: Musee du quai Branlv. Paris. In: A[rikonische Skulpruf.
Die Erjindung der Hgur, Museum Ludwig, 1990, p. 186.
 233

contemplative features while others, on the other hand, have expressions of a

decidedly mournful cast. in such cases, associations with Christian images of
saints and devotional images immediateiy come to mind. Incidentaiiy, as early
as the nineteenth century, it was conjectured that Christian iconography might
have provided the prototypes for Minkisi Nkondi. [he German naturalist and
explorer Eduard PechuEI-Loesche, who spent some time in the 1870s in the
Loanga coastal region, was of the opinion that what were even then called 'nail
fetishes' might have been derived from representations of Christ on the Cross.
Summing up his observations on the fetishism of the region, he wrote as fol-
lows:
[he cause of this remarkable phenomenon might be viewed as the indirect
effect and repercussions of the earliest mission ising activity south of the Congo.
[he early missionaries, who devoted most of their efforts to courageously bap-
tising come what might, were in a position to excite the passions but neither to
rein them in nor to consolidate the new teachings in them. [he form of worship
they practised could only appear to the natives as a new, weii-governed and
magnificent form of fetishism."

IV,
Consequently, everything indicates that the fetishistlc complex of the inhabit-
ants of the West African coastal region, which at first had been regarded by
Europeans as proof of mental backwardness in the Africans and would later
cause such a stir in nineteenth-century philosophy and psychology, resulted
from a process of appropriative enculturation, that it represents an amalgama-
tion of traditional elements of African religions and elements drawn from
Christianity. In the imagology of colonialism, fetishistic sculpture did give the
African continent its special quality. Its true place, however, was the universal
space of intercultural exchange. Europeans and Africans had an equal share in
its emergence. As the Dutch anthropologist Peter Pels has put it, what has always
made fetishes seem so scandalous is their 'purely material presence'."lt places
them at once above and beyond the usual categorisation. If we distinguish
between a thing and its meaning, a symbol and its referent, a representation and
what it represents, the fetish seems to subvert this tidy fabric of reciprocal rela-
tionships. [he fetish draws on itself for its supernatural powers. It refers to noth-
ing else; it is both sign and signified in one; it is a sacral object devoid of
transcendency. Here, too, an analogy with a piece of jeweiiery is plausible. Like
a fetish, jeweliery can also serve various purposes: beautifying the body and
protecting the wearer, warding off the Evil Eye and attracting benign glances,
repulsion and attraction. Yet a piece of jeweiiery uitimately remains an excep-
tional object that is self-referential merely through its materiai presence.
[he fascination exerted by the West African coastal fetish cult on European
observers is due to the fact that in it they were forced to recognise their own
234

religious convicrions as if in a distorting mirror. che Portuguese encountered it

with repulsion because it reminded them of the indissoluble paradox of tran-
substantiation that was at the core of their faith: the dogma of the presence of
divinity in the material substances of the Eucharist. che Dutch traders, however,
read the West African fetish cult in an entirely different way as a parable of their
attitude to the world of material things. che 'savages' viewed gold as the white
man's fetish, Karl Marx at twenty-three would jot down in his notebook in 1841
after reading de Grosses' book on fetish deities. In an article published a year
later, he called fetishism 'the religion of sensual lust.''' che supernatural powers
attributed by the Africans to certain material objects were decidedly more famil-
iar to Europeans in the early Mercantile Age than they would have wanted to
admit even to themselves. lust as the inhabitants of the Congo basin had mimet·
ically appropriated the foreign element in theirfetishisticcomplex, the Europeans,
for their part, appropriated the result of that hybridisation process. Fetishism
became a pivotal concept in European thinking. Whether in philosophy or psy-
chology, this concepr came ro be dissociated from its geographic location and
its original meaning. Who, when talking of consumer fetishism or sexual fetish-
ism, still remembers the cultic observances of the Gal<ongo? lust as the fetish
from West Africa became a source of inspiration to Modern Art, the concept of
fetishism has become an integral part of the socially critical discourse of
Postmodernism, which, in its etymological ambiguity, ultimately itself refers to
the hybrid genesis of Postmodernism.
 235

Nores

HallS Belting, Bild-Anrhropolog/e: Entwiirfe fur eine Bildw;ssenscho!r, Munich 2001, p. 61: 'Zwischen Bildem
und Orren beslehen Beziehungen. die noch keinen lnrerprefen gefunden haben. Ebenso wie wit vom
Korper als einem Orf der Bilder sprechen, is! es moglich. von geographischen Onell zu sprechen. denen
onsanS(lssige Bildwerke erst ihr bekannres Gesichr verliehen.'
2 Cl. Karl-Heinz Kohl, 'Allegorien derdrei Erdreile und die EntdeckungAmerlkas'. [n: Berlin-Brandenburgische
Akademie derWissenschaftel1.lJerichre und Abhandlungen Vo1.14, 2008, pp. 25-49.
3 Hans Belting, Ibid.
.; Cf. Krzyszlof Pomian, Der ursprung des Museums. Vom Sammeln, Berlin 1993.
,5 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, vorlesungen Ober die Philosophie der Geschichre llectures on The
Philosophy of Historv], Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 123.
G Andre IlreTon, nadja. texte inregral, Paris 1964, p.132.
7 Cf. William Rubin (ed.), Primitivism in 20rh Cenrury Arr, Exhib. Cal. Museum of Modem Art, new York 1984.
8 Cr. William Pierz, 'the problem of the fetish, 11: the oogin of rhe fetish'. In: Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics
13, (1987), p. 25f.
9 Ibid. p. 34.
10 ef. 'Alresre Elenbein6gur derWelr enldeckr', Spiegel Online Wissenschaft, 20 lune 2007, hrrp:l1www.spiegel.
de!wissenschalr/mensch/O,1518,489660,00.htmllaccessed 20 Feb. 2010).
11 er. Georges Devereux, Baubi. Die mythische Vulva, Frankfurt am Main 1981.
12 Cr. thomas Hauschild, Der Base BUck. Ideengeschichtliche und sozialpsychologische unrersllchungen, Berlin
1982.
13 Cf. on the fOllowing Pierre Bertaux,A/rika. Van dervargeschichre bis zu dan SmOTen derGegenworr, Frcmkfurl
am Main 1986, p. 133f and also George Balandier, la vie quorid/enne (Ill royfIllme du Congo, XVle (1(1 XVI/le
slecle, Paris 1965.
14 Quored In Urs Bitrerli (ed.l, Die Enrdec/(ung Hnd Eroberung der Weir. Do/(ttmenre t1nd [jer/chre, Vol. I: AIllQr/ka
und Ajrika, Munich 1980, p. 209.
15 Olfert Dapper, Umbsrandliche und Eigenlliche Beschreibung von Africa, Und denen darzu gehOrigen
KOnigreichen und landschafren, Amsterdam 1670, p. 468. cr. also losef Franzthiel. Wassfnd Ferische'? Rorer
Faden zurAussrellung, Museum furVOlkerkunde, Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 16.
16 WiIlem Bosman, A new and Accurate Description of rhe coasr of Guinea, divided into rhe GOld, rhe Slave,
and rhe Ivorv Coasts: reissued London 1967, p. 154, Quoted in Pierz, The problem oj thejerish!/, p. 39.
17 Cl. Kirsren Mahlke, Oflenbarung im Weslen. Fliihe Berichle aus der neuen weir, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
18 Wmiam Pierz, The problem oj rhe fetish 11. In Res 15 (19871, p. 24.
19 Charles de Brosses, Du Culre des dieux Feriches ou Parallele de I'ancienne Religion de l'Egypte avec la
Religion aCluelle de la nigrilie, Paris 1760, p. 18f.; cf. KarJ·Heinz Kohl, Die Machr dQr Dinge. Geschichre !/nd
Theorie sakralerObjekre, Munich 2003, p. 72. French texr onllne ar: hrrp:/lgallica.bnUr/ark!12J48/bpt61<1 06440f/
fl6.image, p. 19: 'qui leur rendent un culre exact & respectueux, leur adressentleurs vawx, leur olfrent des
sacrifices, les promenenren procession [... 1, ou les portent sureux avec de grandes marques de veneration,
& les consulrenr dans toures occasions inferessantes: les regardanr en general comme tutelaires pour les
hommes. & comme de puissans [sicl preservatifs conrre route sorte d'accidens (sic].'
20 On the following cf. I{.-H. Kohl,loc. cir., pp. 191-202.
21 Fritz Kramer, Der rote Fes. Ober Oesessenheir und KUflSt in Afriko, Frankfurt am Main 1987. p. 241.
22 Cf. Heide Palme,Spiegeljetische Im Kongoraum t1nd ihre 8ez/ehungzu chrisrlichen Reliquiaren, Vienna 1975, p.
168.
23 Kramer. Oer rore Fes.loc. cil., p. 191.
24 Ibid. p. 197.
25 Eduatd Volkskunde von loango, srullgarr 1907, pp. 348-349. Quored in thiel. Was s;nd
Fetische?,loc. cit., p. 16.
26 Perer Pels, 'the spirit of the Matter. 011 Felish, Rarity, FaCT, and FancV'.ln: Palricia spver (ed.l, Dorder FerishisfllS.
MarQdal Objects In Unsrable Spaces, new York and London 1998, p, l12f.
27 Karl Marx, 'Der leirende Artikel in nr. 179 der Kolnischen zeifung', 1842. In: MEWVOI.I, Berlin 1958, pp. 86-104.
here p. 91.