Art Traders and Spirits: Negotiating Values for Self-Determination in a Frame of global Development

In his book In Search of Africa, Manthia Diawara tells the story of his childhood friend from Guinea, mask-carver Sidimé Laye, who lost his wife because of his deep relation to the spirits, while selling his masks to Western art traders for good money. Sidimé’s life can be taken as a paradigm example to understand agency and self-determination in a postcolonial situation. This chapter aims to give a focus beyond the postcolonial theory that focuses on the rapacious deeds of the former colonial powers. Although the postcolonial analysis is necessary to discover and identify the inhumane deeds of invasion, illegal extraction, and oppression, just like any approach it highlights certain things and obscures others. What it leaves undertheorised is the agency and self-determination of the inhabitants of formerly colonised nations, while they negotiate traditional and modern, local, and global values. The story of the mask-carver and his life choices will be treated somewhat extensively, followed by a discussion of different views by African thinkers on culture, identity, and self-determination in the globalised and globalising world. This discussion is completed with an interpretation of the consequences of the discussed theories for epistemological and ontological reflections.