{"title":"Walking towards a camera obscura","authors":"George Mahashe","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1750968","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The paper is located within the wider field of decolonial practice where those of us who were previously marginalized from ‘mainstream’ knowledge production by colonialism and its structures address the question of how we navigate ways of knowing from our own point of view. The paper places the concept of ‘walking about’ in relation to the Khelobedu saying ‘go sepela ke go bona’, both of which have parallels with the methodologies that Walter Benjamin espoused through the figure of the flâneur. The paper tracks my walkabouts as I follow the travels of several Balobedu from north-eastern South Africa to Berlin in 1897, by travelling to Berlin and other contemporary art centres myself. The practice of travelling offered opportunities in the form of dream as a khelobedu text, introduced me to installation art and led me to experiment with the idea and practice of the camera obscura, allowing me to confront some of the limits of photographic documentation. Overall, the paper argues that ‘walking about’ as a methodology resolves some of the difficulties with ideas of visuality associated with khelobedu and with mediating a text that demands a critical awareness of the relationship between the senses. The camera obscura, as a space that houses a body, becomes this medium and the text.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"218 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical African Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1750968","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The paper is located within the wider field of decolonial practice where those of us who were previously marginalized from ‘mainstream’ knowledge production by colonialism and its structures address the question of how we navigate ways of knowing from our own point of view. The paper places the concept of ‘walking about’ in relation to the Khelobedu saying ‘go sepela ke go bona’, both of which have parallels with the methodologies that Walter Benjamin espoused through the figure of the flâneur. The paper tracks my walkabouts as I follow the travels of several Balobedu from north-eastern South Africa to Berlin in 1897, by travelling to Berlin and other contemporary art centres myself. The practice of travelling offered opportunities in the form of dream as a khelobedu text, introduced me to installation art and led me to experiment with the idea and practice of the camera obscura, allowing me to confront some of the limits of photographic documentation. Overall, the paper argues that ‘walking about’ as a methodology resolves some of the difficulties with ideas of visuality associated with khelobedu and with mediating a text that demands a critical awareness of the relationship between the senses. The camera obscura, as a space that houses a body, becomes this medium and the text.
这篇论文位于非殖民实践的更广泛领域,我们这些以前被殖民主义及其结构从“主流”知识生产中边缘化的人解决了我们如何从我们自己的角度出发的问题。这篇论文将“行走”的概念与Khelobedu所说的“go sepela ke go bona”联系起来,这两者都与沃尔特·本雅明(Walter Benjamin)通过fl neur的形象所支持的方法有相似之处。这篇论文记录了我在1897年跟随几个Balobedu人从南非东北部到柏林的旅行,我自己也去了柏林和其他当代艺术中心。旅行的实践提供了以梦的形式作为khelobedu文本的机会,向我介绍了装置艺术,并引导我尝试使用暗箱的想法和实践,让我面对摄影记录的一些局限性。总的来说,这篇论文认为“行走”作为一种方法论解决了与khelobedu相关的视觉观念和调解文本的一些困难,这些文本要求对感官之间的关系有批判性的认识。暗箱作为一个容纳身体的空间,成为了这种媒介和文本。
期刊介绍:
Critical African Studies seeks to return Africanist scholarship to the heart of theoretical innovation within each of its constituent disciplines, including Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Law and Economics. We offer authors a more flexible publishing platform than other journals, allowing them greater space to develop empirical discussions alongside theoretical and conceptual engagements. We aim to publish scholarly articles that offer both innovative empirical contributions, grounded in original fieldwork, and also innovative theoretical engagements. This speaks to our broader intention to promote the deployment of thorough empirical work for the purposes of sophisticated theoretical innovation. We invite contributions that meet the aims of the journal, including special issue proposals that offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into African Studies debates.