The Red Fez: On Art and Possession in Africa

by Fritz Kramer, Malcolm R. Green (Translator)

Kramer sets out to show that African images of Europeans—in sculpture, masquerades and above all spirit possession—are the reverse and also the counterpart of European images of the Other as savage, whether noble or ignoble. In ways which may echo 19th-century European realism, they reveal the power of the a feather, a car, or the eponymous red fez which runs like a leitmotif through spirit possession cults of the early colonial period. “The Red Fez” demonstrates not only the startling likenesses to ourselves and our culture, but also reflections of forms of knowledge which this civilization has submerged.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Alienne Laval]

Finest ethnology. It helped me a lot to understand the syncretism in Brazil and elsewhere. I used the structuralist method of Claude Lévi-Strauss to trace mythem transformations.