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WILL ALL THOSE STILL ALIVE
PLEASE STAND UP?
In the past year or so, the exchange of views on pertinent issues concerning the study of African art seems to have moved to HAfrArts by way of the Internet, and the submissions to Dialogue have dealt instead with the varying shades of character assassination. Amy Futa once joked that we ought to call this column Diatribe instead, and, since the 1997 Benin Centenary issues, virtually all the unsolicited letters have been of the personal "you did/I didn't" variety. The special issues on Benin and on women's masking raised provocative scholarly questions, some of which almost begged for responses, but the only reactions forthcoming were from contributors who had been specifically invited to comment. These were of course extremely valuable, and some were provocative themselves, but to no avail.
What has happened to spontaneous debate? Are chat lines the only places where we express opinions anymore? Internet discussions are sometimes very good, such as the one which occurred on H-AfrArts last September on the questions surrounding the definition of tourist art. But what about the carefully crafted short essay in response to an issue? Are we all too busy for that nowadays? After all, it barely counts as a "publication" (somewhere down there with shorter book and exhibition reviews), so who can afford...