When the object of transmission is not an object

A West African example (Guinea-Conakry)

DAVID BERLINER

l. Memory in objects
In memory studies,l a recently burgeoning approach has
emphasized-sometimes ad nauseam-the role of
memory in relation to material objects, to the extent that
memory and materiality have become inseparable
concepts (Radley 1990; Rowlands 1993; Ash 1996;
Debray 1997; Hoskins 1998; Kwint, Brewart, and
Aynsf ey 1999). By virtue of their resistance, objects are
seen as somehow linked to the notions of permanence,
memory, and transmission. "Where else should be the
place of memory, if not in the 'loci' made visible in the
figures of culturaf monuments such as Giotto's Virtues
and Vices in the Arena Capella in Padue?" asks Kûchler
(1999:53). Are not all tangible and concrete artifacts
suited to be "aide-memoires" (Rowlands 1993:144) or
"lieux de mémoires" (to use the concept of Nora)? In
This text is based on fieldwork carried out between January 1998
and May 2OO1 in the Bulongic country, where I stayed for the majority
of the time in the village of Monchon. My fieldwork was generously
funded by the Barbier-Mueller Museum (Ceneva) and by the Belgian
National Foundation of Scientific Research (FNRS). I would like to
thank all those who have helped me so much in Cuinea; in particular,
Hervé Camara, Momodoubé Bangoura, Abdou Bangoura, and Abou
Soumah. lam very grateful to David Parkin, Peter Ceschiere, Philippe
Jespers, Pierre Petit, Rita Astuti, Michael Lambek, and Filip de Boeck
for their insightful comments on my work. My special gratitude goes to
Ramon Sarro who has constantly shared with me his advanced
knowledge of the different Baga subgroups. This piece was written at
Harvard University, during my post doctor fellowship from the Belgian
American Educational Foundation. For hospitality and good
conversation that aided this reflection, lam very thankful to Randy
Matory, Michael Herzfeld, Fred Lamp, and Suzanne Preston Blier. I
af so thank Francesco Pellizzi and two anonymous readers for their
perceptive comments on my essay. Finally, lowe a special word of
thanks to Roxana Popescu for reading the manuscript and making
valuable editorial comments.
1. Today "memory" is a key concept in the humanities (Olick and
Robbins 1998; Lambek 1996; Klein 2000). I have written more fully
on the uses and abuses of this notion by anthropologists (Berliner
2005a). In anthropology in particular, the introduction of the concept
of memory was critical as it contributed to the recognition of "the
historical dynamism of other people as well as their memory of it"
(Price 1989:67). lt gave scholars the opportunity to consider the
persistence of their objects of study-that is, the reproduction of
societies through time despite dramatic changes in context.
other words, do objects not "put the past in place" as
"they are the prim ary source of its concrete
implacement in memory// (Casey 2000:206)?
Once ascribed biographical meanings, material
objects, not unlike the famous Madeleine cake of
Proust, can indeed trigger powerful mnemonic
responses (Kirshenblatt-C imblett 1 989). Hallam and
Hockey Q001) reveal the importance of material objects
(such as photographs, flowers, and residual funerary
scu lptu res) in experiences of grief, mou rn ing, and
memorial i zing. Others have analyzed commemorative
practices and highlighted the role of monuments,
buildings, ruins, and memorials as objects that bear and
articu late memories (You ng 1 98 6; Cillis 1994; Werbner
1998). In situations of survival, David Parkin (1999)
describes the role of these tiny objects-mementos that
become for refugees "the dormant bearers of recessive
culture . encoding the continuity between and across
generations." Objects can indeed maintain, store, and
steer specific cultural memories. For the Luba (in the
Congo-Kinshasa), for example, Mary Nooter Roberts and
Alf en Roberts show how " objects and performances
generate memory for historical documentation, political
negotiation, and the everyday problem-solvi ng" (Roberts
and Roberts 1996:18). They describe how "visual forms
. encode and stimu late mnemon ic processes//
(ibid.:33), such as in the case of the lukasa, a wooden
object used to "teach neophytes sacred lore about
culture heroes, clan migrations, and the introduction of
sacred rule" (ibid .:37).
In the same vein , museum studies have produced a
huge corpus of literature dealing with the objectification
(or materi alization) of memory (Healy 1 994; Crane
2000). The museum is seen by rany scholars as an
institution which, through its material collections,
"stores memories" (Crane 2000:3). But the theories of
"objectified memory" have even invaded the field of
archeology. Can even stones remember and forget? A
symposium recently held at Columbia University,
"Excavating Memories: The Archeology of Remembering
and Forgetting" (2003, Barnard College), addressed the
materiality of the world through the concept of memory.
BB RES 51 SPRINC 2OO7
The few examples noted here suffice to demonstrate
that studies examining the material culture of
remembrance, material memories, and the materialities
of transmission are decidedly in fashion today.
According to Kûchler (1999), the conception that
defines objects as places of memory dates back to the
scholastic and medieval "art of memory" analyzed by
the historian Frances Yates. The art of memory originally
was a technique for memorizing long poems or
speeches based on the use of images and objects to
facilitate learn ing. H istorically, Kûch ler argues, such
a conception of memory as "stored in visual
representati on" has forged our contemporary "memory
in objects" paradigm. In this essay, through an
ethnographic example, I would like to delve into the
object-memory paradigm , ànd challenge the hackneyed
notion that what is material (that is, embodied in objects
and other physical things) is more memorable than what
is not.2
Of course, I do not intend to dismiss the object-
memory paradigm. I believe in the "power of objects to
evoke particular images of the past" (Lovell 1998 17)
and in the fact that material images can be "constructed
in order to assist the retention and transmission of
memories" (Burke 1 989:1 01 ). However, following
Adrian Forty, I also think that "the relationship between
objects and memory is |ess straightforward than Western
thinking has been in the habit of assuming it" (Forty and
Kuchf er 1999:7). Does the absence of objects always
mean non-durability, as well as the impossibility of
prolonging and preserving memories between and
across generations? What about these "ephemeral
objects," such as th e Malanggan sculptures from New
lreland, whose "recollection . anticipates and arouses
out of the disappearance of the memorial objects"
(Kûchler 1999:61)? In this case, Susanne Kûchler
remarks that:
The imagery of art is not transmitted from one generation to
another through the preservation of material culture . .
What is valued in this society is not the real sculpture, but
the memory (Kûchler 1 987 :239-240).
Among the Bulongic (one of the Baga subgroups of
Cuinea-Conakry, West Africâ),3 pre-lslamic memory is
2. Since the 1970s, similar ideas have been expressed by artists
belonging to the "anti-monument movement" (Cillis 1 994:1 7). Some
Cerman artists indeed have begun rejecting "the notion of memory
sites and want to . . . dematerialize remembering" (ibid.).
3. Bulongic people are a small group of 6,000 rice cultivators.
Ethnographically speaking, they are practically unknown (Paulme
still vivid, but not necessarily connected to material
objects any more.4 In the past, Bulongic people were
great sculptors of wooden masks and statues (such as
the famous Nimba and Bansonyi headdresses) that are
now considered the pinnacle of African art. Most public
performance masks and woodcarvings disappeared fifty
years ago with the definitive establishment of lslam.
However, local discourses concerning some of these
masks emphasize their permanence in spite of their
absence as objects. In this essay, I examine, within the
context of the recent religious history of the Bulongic,
the contemporary memories attached to one of their
initiation masks-a serpentine headdress better known
in the art world as Bansonyi (Delange 1962; fi1. 1).
I l. Baga objects
In anthropological and art history literature,
descriptions of the Baga people are nostalgic and
usually articulated in the past tense. Already in the
1950s, French anthropologist Denise Paulme wrote three
short articles about the Baga sitem and the Bulongic.
"Threatened on all sides," she writes, "Baga society will
soon disappear. lt is already too late to record the
essentials" (Paulme 195 8:407 , here and thereafter all
translations from French are mine). Elsewhere, she adds
that "the ethnologist arrives too late to record beliefs or
note rituals whose performers, even if they still practice
them, no longer comprehend their meaning" (Paulme
1 957:263). lslamization and Susu-isation (the ongoing
process of assimilation to the culture and language of
their Susu neighbors) have indeed been identified by
anthropologists and art historians as wreaking havoc
among the coastal populations of Cuinea. This nostalgic
discourse, which is allergic to modernity and mainly
concerned with authenticity, is, as we know,
stereotypical of the ways in which many people discuss
1956, 1957,1958; Berliner 2002). The Bulongic belong to the Baga
people located along the Cuinean coast from Conakry to the border
between Cuinea and Cuinea-Bissau. There are seven related Baga
subgroups (Baga kalum, koba, kakissa, sitem, mandori, the Pokur, and
the Bulongic) (Lamp 1996; Sarro 1999a).
4. "Material" and "non-material" are the two pairs of a culturally
loaded dichotomy whose usefulness one can call into question in a
crosscultural context. In this essay, I use these terms very carefully, as
they help capture the way my interlocutors actually spoke about their
pre-lslamic masks. This will appear more clearly when I describe the
impact of lslamic iconoclasm and demystification campaigns. Both
Muslim prophets and Marxist politicians tried to get rid of so-called
"fetishist" objects by disclosing publicly their material aspects and by
emphasizing their manmade origin
 Berliner: When the object of transmission is not an object 89

African art and culture (Clifford 19BB; Price 1989; Kasfir

1992; Steiner 1994).
The role of material objects in shaping Baga studies
has been crucial. Since their first encounters with
travelers and missionaries (as of the sixteenth century),
Baga people have always been described as overloaded
with "fetishes," ritual objects, and masks (Lamp 1996;
Sarro 1999a). In the twentieth century, the reputation of
Baga objects-along with Luba, Baoule, and Dogon
sculptures-became well established in the world of art
collectors and art lovers. In Europe and the United
States, Baga masks and statues fascinated artists such as
Pablo Picasso, Alberto Ciacometti, and Henry Moore,
who felt that the aesthetic quality of their shapes
captured the essence of beauty (Rubin 1991 ; Lamp
1996). We can infer that, for these historical reasons, the
Baga people have attracted much more attention from
anthropologists and art historians than their Susu or
Mikhiforé neighbors, who were not known as "art-
producing" peopf e and who were assumed to be fully
lslamized. Furthermore, the presence (or absence) of
those pre-lslamic ritual objects has also been a decisive
element in perceiving contemporary Baga cultures and
in shaping their study. For the few art historians working
on the Baga since the Cuinean Independence
(established in 1958), the loss of tangible and concrete
ritual objects has been a sign of a cultural void, an
evidence of the incapacity of these societies to survive
lslam, modernity, and cultural contacts. lf there are no
objects "to see" today in the Baga country, or if they are
not spoken about, then there is surely nothing
"fundamental" any more. This nostalgia is echoed in the
writings of art historian Frederick Lamp:
The state of the traditional Baga culture is that very few
elements now remain in effect, and what little can be Figure 1. Bansonyi mask. 215 cm. lnv. 1001-21. Barbier-
salvaged is now largely in the form of impressions in Muef ler Museum, Geneva. Photo: Ferrazzini Bouchet.
memories of elderly men and women (Lamp 1986:64).

His statement implies that one can draw a general

representation of the "state" of a culture from its
material and visible objects and rituals. Furthermore,
according to Lamp, the "final, disastrous disruption of
Baga culture that occurred just before independen ce"
(Lamp 1996:224) made way for the "most austere
aspects of lslamic life" (ibid .:237). ln the absence of
materiality and the presence of lslam, consequently,
"there is an extraordinary vacuum left in Baga cultural
life" (ibid .:237). ls not an lslamized African culture
without the so-called visible pre-lslamic ritual objects a
"ship lost in the sea" (Kuchler 1999:53), or, less
poetically, a society lacking memory?
It seems to me that at this point, we start to touch
upon projections and phantasms. At the b"ginning of my
fieldwork, l, too, was enchanted by the mystique of the
Baga object. Why had the Baga, enshrouded in the
mangrove swamps, drawn my attentioo, if not because
of my own secret wish to see some day in the shade of a
sacred bush, even in a distant future, the famous
Bansonyi serpentine mask in its very physicality? Or if
not the Bansonyi itself, then one of its material avatars,
reinvented in modernity? In my fieldwork, I did not
witness anything of the sort, and for a while I was
90 RES 51 SPRING 2OO7
disappointed by the absence of the Bansonyi object,
which I could only observe on display in the museum.
However, after several months in the field, I realized that
the material absence of the Bansonyi did not mean the
disappearance of narratives, representations, and
emotions about the spiritual agency that it was said to
represent. Far from being a flatus vocis, the mask is a
living spirit that continues to inhabit the interpretative
landscape of the people and not merely a cognitive and
mnemonic entity for the elders who saw it before its
disappearance in the 1950s.
lll. The disappearance of the material
When I spoke with Bulongic elders, they recalled the
male initiation to manhood, performed with the
initiation masks Mossolo Kombo and Sangaran, as one
of the most important pre-lslamic ritual practices. Both
masks supervised the circumcision of boys every twenty-
four years and were represented by the serpentine
headdress Bansonyi.Of these initiation spirits, I am
focusing only on Mossolo Kombo, because it played the
most important role in the pre-lslamic ritual life. The
Mossolo Kombo mask appeared in many locations and
contexts: for instance, at funerals and rituals of the
collective magical purge of the village. To call for rain,
Bulongic elders would make sacrifices in Mossolo's
sacred grove. A moral authority, Mossolo Kombo was
said to pu n ish th ieves, liars, and deviants of all kinds;
people also swore oaths on it. Above all, it was an
initiation entity operating the transformation of
uncircumcised boys (bilakoro) into circumcised men
(bilsbili). Under the aegis of the old initiates, Mossolo
Kombo created an atmosphere of terror. Like the
Arapesh Tambaran, it was a fait social total, the
"personified mystique of a total way of Iife" (Tuzin
1 980:325).
At the beginning of the last century, French
missionaries began to proselytize Christianity among the
Bulongic. The Bulongic appeared to be uninterested in
Christianity and they soon reverted to the ritual practices
designated by the term "cnstom." lslam had a far greater
pulf : ln the 1920s, a few leading figures of the region,
starting with canton chiefs, called on karamoko (lslamic
experts) and gradually converted to lslam. Almamy
Oumarou, a canton chief, firmly encouraged
lslamization and started the battle against former ritual
practices. As the elders say today: "Although the village
was still full of fetishes, Almamy Oumarou knew that the
Bulongic needed religion now." The Muslim converts
emptied all the ritual houses of medicines, burned down
the shrines, and built a mosque in the Bulongic village
of Monchon. The first Koranic schools appeared in the
region concurrently. According to some rumors, people
were forced to prày, and those who refused were
publicly beaten.
The 1950s were a turbulent period of religious
transition for the Bulongic. In 1954,lslam was already
deeply embedded in the Bulongic country, and the
process of lslamization reached its climax that year. The
sacred grove was still active despite increasing protests
against old ritual practices, and a last initiation of young
men was undertaken. The following year, canton chief
Almamy Oumarou died, and an lslamic expert named
Asékou Bokaré (also called Asékou Sayon) entered the
Bulongic country. His arrival resulted in the definitive
end of practices of initiation and of most other pre-
lslamic rituals. The sacred bushes of several villages
were cut down, including that of Mossolo Kombo.The
elders who kept masks, altars, and medicines were
denounced, and their ritual objects were burnt or sold to
Eu ropean tradesmen.
The intervention of Asékou Bokaré was explicitly
required by the ibilgbilifang (the initiators) of most of the
Bulongic villages. These were the circumcised group of
1937, who had been empowered to lead the male
initiation of 1 954 and who were now leading men of
the villages. In an attempt to move away from old
customs, which were seen as symbols of backwardness
at this time in Cuinea (Rivière 1971 ; Sarro 1999a), they
wanted to purge the villages of their fetishes-against
the will of the elders.
Ramon Sarro (1999a) lucidly described the process of
lslamization and the iconoclastic trip of Asékou Bokaré
among different Baga subgroups. The technique the
lslamic experts and the new converts used to get rid of
practices of custom was to publicly expose the secret
paraphernalia associated with them. They hoped that
once the elders' spiritual agencies were exposed to non-
initiates (youth, women, and non-Bulongic strangers) as
merely pieces of wood, the elders would be so
humiliated that they would abandon their cults.
According to Claude Rivière:
With an audacity that surprised his opponents, he lAsékou
Bokarél penetrated the Baga forests, taking out the masks,
exposing them to the village where he covered them with
ridicule and malediction, after which he asked the crowd
that gathered to pray with him. . . . After his passage, Baga
fetishism disappeared (Rivière 1971 :245).
On the whole, fetishes were publicly denounced as
being nothing more than material objects, as if the

denunciation and destruction of these physical things
would lead to the disenchantment and the
disappearance of such cults. In the years that followed,
former president of Cuinea Sékou Touré supported an
anti-fetishist policy and set up demystification
campaigns. These campaigns did not touch the Bulongic
area specifically, but the atmosphere in Cuinea was
already strongly anti-fetishist at this time (Rivière 1971).
Since the end of Tou ré's regime in 1984, the new
government has opened up to "religious pluralism."
However, there has been no process of revitalization of
initiation among the Bulongic as occurred in other areas
of Cuinea, such as the Toma (Hojbjerg 1998).
lV. Transmitting the invisible
During my fieldwork, I was particularly interested in
the difference with which the religious past of these
irréductibles fétichisfes is perceived, used, âod valued in
contemporary Bulongic society: How do elders currently
speak about Mossolo Kombo, the male Bulongic
initiation, lslamizattotr, the disappearance of ritual
objects and practices? What is the perspective of the
youth and urban elites on pre-lslamic ritual practices?
What is the memory and evolution of an initiation
society and its agencies, which apparently vanished
forty years ago? | started my interviews with the old
Bulongic initiates of 1937 and 1954, all of whom were
remarkably discrete about the subject. "We abandoned
everything of the custom. There is nothing left here/'
they stated repeatedly, confirming my own anxieties
about a cultural void in the wake of lslamization. After a
few months, as we sat talking, I started showing them
photographs of the contemporary Bansonyi displays in
Western museums. In this way, the material object
became a clear mediator in my relationship with my
Bulongic interlocutors. The men I spoke with initially
appeared to be astonished and bothered that I had had
access to this object, and they firmly refused to talk
about it in front of the women and children. In private
they would then cry " Mossolo Kombo," smile, start to
sing, and talk with nostalgia. The elders of 1937 and
1954 would then describe this period with much
emotion as a golden âB€, an idyllic past. But, they
would also stress the real loss of ritual power that the
conclusion of this period brought about.
In their local context, Bulongic initiation masks were
much more than material objects, a classification that
imposes a very narrow definition. A long tradition of
ethnographic studies has effectively shown that masks
are spiritual agencies per se that cannot be confined to
Berliner: When the object of transmission is not an object 91
the category of the artifact (Pernet 1 992). The French
anthropologist Alfred Adler writes:
The mask objects are spiritual entities and cannot simply be
reduced to artefacts destined to representation only. By
nature, these entities have the capacity to manifest
themselves spontaneously within the visible world (Adler
1 998 :17 5).
Local narratives about them rarely, if ever, focus on
the object, but rather deal with non-material entities. For
instance, among the Dan of lvory Coast, Daniel Reed
has established how the word "mask" embraces "the
philosophy, the education, and the institutional aspects
of this phenomenon" (Reed 2003:3).
Masks societies create a highly specific distribution of
knowledge based on secrecy (Bellman 1984; Zempléni
1996). Before 1954 in the Bulongic country, the male
ritual practices presupposed extremely exclusive
practices and bodies of secluded knowledge, buttressed
by their system of ritual prohibitions. Performance and
attendance at these ritual practices were not open to
everyone. Those who were involved reinforced the
secrecy, by confusing and intimidating those who were
not initiated. They maintained the existence of secrecy
through their manners, body languâg€, attitudes, or what
Andras Zempléni had described as the sécrétion
(Zemplén i 1996).
Conversely, those who did not know the secrets-the
uninitiated-were burdened with prohibitions and the
threat of death if they attempted to discover them. In
Bulongic country, only men who wore the costumes
could approach the highest mask. Women were never
able to enter Mossolo's sacred grove and were kept at a
distance. An initiates' song reveals what awaits a woman
who is too curious: "Mariama has seen. We cannot do
anything. She will die" (Mariama o pomo, mba kontuto).
When the masks appeared in the village, women were
expected to flee or rush immediately into the houses.
Even when some of the performances were public, they
had to stay at a respectable distance. In this ritual
context overloaded with secrecy, it was highly
prohibited for the initiates to publicly disclose the object
nature of the mask. Neither before 1954 nor afterward
was Mossolo Kombo discussed as an object-it was a
silence enforced by tl^re threat of death. "ln olden times,
they would kill you if you said it is a piece of wood,"
the old initiates say today. Secrecy was propagated
through initiation, after which the novices would gain
access to new information and discover a new side to
the praxis of secrecy. In the Bulongic country in 1954,
neophytes were told that Mossolo Kombo was, in part, a
92 RES 51 SPRINC 2OO7
deception, and they were taught some of the tricks and
illusions of the men's cult.
To this day, it is still difficult to say in front of a non-
initiated audience (the women, youths, and non-
Bulongic) that the circumcising mask was merely a
wooden artifact. Nevertheless, most of my old
interlocutors confided in private that it is indeed a
carved piece of wood: "That lthing] on the picture is
only a piece of wood. We sculpted it." Those who
agreed to speak to me admitted that since 1955 there
have been no sculptors left to carve the mask, nor any
collective initiations or public dances to stage its
appearances. Just before Asékou Bokaré arrived, the
elders are said to have gathered together and to have
burned the wood representin g Mossolo Kombo, so that
the object would not be discovered and the Bulongic
secrets would not fall into Asékou Bokaré's hands.
Does this mean that Mossolo Kombo, the entity, has
disappeared? Of course not. While they privately
recogntze the material aspect of the mask, the old
initiates add that "there is something besides the wood."
Mossolo Kombo was indeed a piece of wood carved by
man, but it was first and foremost the spiritual agency
represented by that wood. When speaking about
Mossolo Kombo, the elders presented it as a
"something," as a spirit (calè) to be found in the sea and
in the mangrove swamps. To this duy, spirits play a
crucial role in the everyday world of the Bulongic.
Endowed with extraordinary magical powers, these
unpredictable and potentially dangerous entities live in
a parallel world to human beings and are held
responsible for human success and misfortune.
Despite the disappearance of its material
representation, my interlocutors did not think that the
spiritual agent Mossolo Kombo had disappeared: "We
don't have the carved wood anymore, but a spirit
doesn't die," whispered an elder to me in hushed tones.
Another elder said:
The wood disappeared, but the people who were doing that
are still alive. Objects are gone, but the people and the
places are still there. Only the objects are missing." I have
heard many times such sentiments as: "The wood is not
there-it was just wood-but our spirit is still there.
Once the question of the object is settled ("it was just
a piece of wood"), most of the old initiates present
Mossolo Kombo as "their" spirit. Of course, they
acknowledge that Mossolo Kombo has changed since
the time of custom: He is now quieter. lslam does not
allow the Bulongic to hold the initiation ceremonies
anymore, and for some very pious elders Mossolo
Kombo has now shifted toward the negative. But, as they
emph asize ambiguously, he is still present, though
invisible, and walks around in Bulongic villages. Some
people who have the gift of double vision (cèt pé kupo)
can still see him. There may still be some people who
secretly call on him and hear him cry.
V. The object of transmission is not an object
As much as the elders are reluctant to speak about
these sensitive issues, young Bulongic people can be
very loquacious.s The narratives of the adult men and
women born after 1955 are startling and particularly
informative, because what they retain about Mossolo
Kombo is precisely its non-material permanence. Born
after 1954, they have never seen the headdress or its
performances. However, young Bulongic people possess
a great deal of information about Mossolo Kombo. They
have been told about the painful initiation of boys in the
sacred groves and about powerful rites, secret places,
and ritual prohibitions imposed by Mossolo Kombo's
presence. From the younger generations' point of view,
there is no doubt that in spite of lslamization, Mossolo
Kombo is still very active. For example, Lansana, who is
fifteen, eXplained to me that " Mossolo Kombo was a
very dangerous spirit living with our parents. Until now,
he is there in the mangrove swamps. But only our elders
know how to speak to him." Similarly, Abdoulaye,
nineteen years of âge, said that " Mossolo Kombo, he is
in Tukoro [a grove in the Bulongic village Monchon]. He
is dressed like an old Peul tFulanil and is physically
handicapped. lf you meet him in the mangrove swamps,
he will never look you in the eyes. He wanders
everywhere in the area." Another said to me: "When
you shoot a bullet gun here in Monchon, you can see
Mossolo Kombo in Tukoro." Young people repeatedly
tofd me that "everybody is still scared of Mossolo
Kombo, he still kills a !ot. He is everywhere in the
Bulongic country. Tout est là [Everything remains] ."
Working with pictures of the Baga objects now
displayed in Western museuffis, I observed that most of
them were unknown to the young villagers. For instance
when I showed them a picture of the serpentine
headdress Bansonyi, they did not recognize it. I then
realized that they were not aware that Mossolo Kombo
had a material component. As it is still prohibited to
5. I have written more fully on the attitude of the Bulongic youth
toward the ritual past (Berliner 2005c).

disclose publicly the object-nature of the mask, the
young people did not know that the mask of male
initiates had ever been represented by a piece of wood.
In fact, among the young, not a single narrative exists of
the spirit as an object. They see it mainly as a spiritual
entity known only by their elders, which is endowed
with autonomy and u npred ictability and wh ich still
rouses terror. They only know that Mossolo Kombo was
a very tall entity, "taller than the trees," just as the
Bansonyi headdress was a very long sculpture. Nor had
young people been told of the imaginative tricks and
if f usions necessary to perform the men's initiation ritual.
Similarly, very few young people know about the
sociaf and historical context of lslamization in the
Bulongic country. The fact that Asékou Bokaré arrived,
cut down the sacred groves, burned the ritual objects,
and publicly revealed the secrets of the men's cult was
not once mentioned to me by the young Bulongic. Also
totally absent from their discourse was the fact that the
rituals had been publicly denounced as a material
deception and that male legitimacy had been
challenged with the exposure of their secrets as tricks
and illusions. What they did know was that lslam had
deprived the Bulongic of this custom fifty years àgo, but
they were not aware of the violence and destruction that
accompanied this process. To put it succinctly, the
perception young Bulongic have of the pre-lslamic era is
one of a non-material and untouched past. What they
retain about Mossolo Kombo is precisely its
permanence, without giving consideration to its
materiality and the disappearance of the material nature
of the mask.
These omissions of materiality, destruction, and
revelation are highly significant. Although they have a
great deal of knowledge about the ritual past of their
parents, the young Bulongic have been told a very
partial-let us say enchanted-version of the past. In the
Bulongic country, old men continue to enforce secrecy
surrounding Mossolo Kombo, updating knowledge about
it and cultivating an ontology of spiritual entities. I
follow here Ramon Sarro when he emphasizes that Baga
sitem [neighbors of the Bulongic] elders play with
ambiguities "in a world of dissimulation and double
meanings. [They are] cunningly denying the possibility
of kakilambé lMossolo Kombo in susu languagel being
given a definitive objectivity and subsequently being
taken away" (Sarro 2OO2:228). In the Bulongic country
too, old initiates dissimulate what they know. They
ignore the object nature of Mossolo Kombo and
min tmize the revelation of the material nature of the
Berliner: When the object of transmission is not an object 93
secrets by the lslamic expert fifty years ago. Indeed,
although it is strongly embedded in the autobiographical
memory of the elders, it is neither the object that we
know in the collections of African art, nor its loss, that is
at the center of their narrative. Rather it is the spiritual
agency Mossolo Kombo and its historical continuation.
In these processes of transmission of the immaterial,
the role played by urban elites is also a crucial one.6
After being exposed to Western ideas related to the
objectification and preservation of culture and
appropriating for themselves the Western modernist
concept of "imperialist nostalgia," many of these city
dwellers claim the urgent priority to save the precious
(and for them already sentimentalized) past of their
ancestors, before it disappears forever. With their
westernized patrimonial conception of cultural heritage
and loss, the urban Bulongic elites of Conakry try to
convince the elders, to Iittle avail, to write down the
secrets of Mossolo Kombo or to perform these old rituals
again, before they die with them. Interestingly, their
discourse is not connected to the material dimension of
the Bansonyi mask. Mossolo Kombo is described by
most of them as a spiritual agency that is not confined to
the village, visiting frequently Bulongic people living in
the cities, whether it is in Conakry, Boffa, or Kamsar
(" Mossolo Kombo comes to Conakry to see the
ressortissants.T You will recognize him immediately. He
goes directly to play and chat with the kids. He always
has a walking stick and wears raphia," says one llongic
from Conakry). In addition to traveling between villages
and cities in Cuinea, the génie has also turned into a
transnational entity that goes after the Bulongic
expatriates outside of the country. As one ressortissant
tof d me: "Every single child from Monchon is followed
by Mossolo Kombo. lf an Ilongic goes to Europe,
Mossolo will go after him. He speaks all languages."
And the entity is now associated with the most recent
Western technologies, as it is said that " Mossolo Kombo,
he flies like a plane!"
In brief, today nobody in Bulongic country would
ever dare say Mossolo Kombo has disappeared: lt would
be a blasphemy. Children as young as five years old
know the name of Mossolo Kombo, while believing that
it refers to a spiritual, non-material agency. Young
6. A recently widened scope focusing on urban elites in Africa as
an emerging social category is burgeoning in the social sciences
(Ceschiere 1995, among many others).
7. Ressortissants is the name given by villagers to those individuals
who left the village and settled in the city.
 94 RES 51 SPRINC 2OO7
villagers are slill fascinated and terrified by the secrets of
Mossolo Kombo held by the old initiates.B Through their
ritual association (kèkè), Bulongic women still perform
pre-lslamic ritual practices and sing songs related to
Mossolo Kombo (Berliner 2005b). lt is not surprising that
the mosque of the village Monchon was built in the
neighborhood of the lineage that held the Mossolo's
mask fifty years ago. Today, the first Muslim authority in
the vif lage was the last person responsible for Mossolo
Kombo's sacred grove.
Vl. What is a mask?
In conclusion, I would like to focus on two
considerations that emerge from the Bulongic example
and make it such a fascinating case for art historians,
museologists, and anthropologists of art. First, I suggest
that it is sometimes necessary to be suspicious of objects
when we approach issues of persistence and memory.
Theoretically, the Bulongic case challenges our
assumption that objects and other material things should
contribute so powerfully to their "intrinsic memorability"
by their "stabilizing persistence" (to quote mutatis
mutandis Casey 2000:186). It is as if we had almost
forgotten that memory can also function in the absence
of material objects, without "the materiality of the trace
the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the
image" (Nora 1989:1 3).
Moreover, ethnographic studies have been oriented
towards people who produce art objects. lt seeffis,
however, that such a fascination with objects is
misguided in approaching Baga contemporary society.
While the object-memory paradigm focuses on the
durability and the stability of objects and their crucial
role in cultural memory, the Bulongic case exemplifies
the persistence of the invisible spiritual agencies in the
absence of the material masks. Already during the
1 950s, Bogumil Holas warned against this, offering an
interesting example of the l',limba dance performed
without the lrlimba object (a monumental headdress,
which is emblematic of the Baga people). The Nimba
mask, he says, has been replaced by a "lit up torch, but
the music, the songs, the rhythm, they all remain the
same, without a single change" (Holas 1950:61).e From
B. Among the Baga sitem, Ramon Sarro (1999b) provides
comparable data where the initiation spirit amanco ngopon is still
invoked through rumors and gossip, especially during soccer matches.
9. lthank Fred Lamp for advising me to remain skeptical of Holas's
factual description. Any ritual performance would rarely continue
completely unchanged, especially when everything around it has
changed dramatically (personal communication).
the Bulongic point of view, it seems that the current
ontological evolution of the entity Mossolo Kombohas
been built on a dismissal of its material dimension. The
young Bulongic generations have never known the mask
as an object, which is no longer an identity marker, but
they are nevertheless carrying an active memory of the
invisible power of the mask. Whereas its performative
dimension has now vanished, Mossolo Kombo, protector
for some, frightening for others, is still a powerful
marker of identity at the local level, producing subtle
social, generational, and gender distinctions, despite the
absence of the object and the presence of lslam.
Needless to say that whereas the Musée du Quai
Branly has recently opened its doors in Paris, it is
perhaps time to reflect on the way we tend to cage other
people's memories in their objects. In Bulongic cou ntry,
spiritual entities are permanent, and material objects are
impermanent. This statement leads us once again to
reflect upon the complexity in approaching masks and
the so-called ritual obiects in contemporary African
societies. A significant literature on iconoclasm showed
clearly that the introduction of lslam (and Christianity) in
Africa did not necessarily result in the elimination of
ancient masks and rituals (Mark 1992). "Masks come,
masks go, some endure for centuries" (Strother 1 999).
This, of course, begs the ontological question of what is
a "maski' a complexity that is candidly captured by the
words of Remo Cuidieri when he confesses his
ignorance: "l do not know what a mask is" (Cuidieri
1992:95). We are all familiar with the formula that the
mask is not necessarily the most important facet of
masking cults, but that we have to take into account
many other elements such as the wearer, costuffi€,
accessories, music, song, odors, audience, and dance.
The Bulongic example complicates this idea by
shedding new light on the capacity of masks to survive
even the disappearance of those material dimensions.
 Berliner: When the object of transmission is not an object 95

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