Stamping History: Stories of Social Change in Ghana's Adinkra Cloth

African art and visual culture;textiles;dress;and fashion;Humanities (General);Humanities;History of Art

Martino, AllisonRenne, Elisha P ;

University of Michigan

关键词: African art and visual culture;    textiles;    dress;    and fashion;    Humanities (General);    Humanities;    History of Art;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/144188/allimart_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Adinkra is one of the best-known textiles of Africa. This dissertation examines how adinkra cloth has evolved from royal dress among Akans in Ghana during the early nineteenth century to its expanding roles today as a global icon of Africa. Akans wear adinkra cloth to communicate messages through the cloth’s distinct graphic symbols that evoke proverbs, moral beliefs, and cultural values. These messages are not fixed. They change. Joining visual and verbal arts, Ghanaians have transformed the symbols to represent personal meanings as well as narratives about Ghanaian history and African identity. ;;Stamping History” traces the ;;biography” of adinkra, bringing together diverse voices that have reinterpreted the cloth across time and space. This approach places field and archival research in conversation with interdisciplinary theoretical issues of object biography, fashion, and social memory. By reframing adinkra cloth as fashion rather than ;;traditional” – a label that evokes unchanging practices – the dissertation argues that Akans have given multiple, changing meanings to adinkra that revitalize the past in contemporary life. Through research in Ghana, England, and the Netherlands, the dissertation reveals the dynamics of adinkra cloth that have contributed to how Ghanaians have expressed identity and navigated relationships for over two hundred years. ;;Stamping History” contributes to fields of African social and cultural history, including Ghana and Akan society. The dissertation intervenes in critical debates on the complex relationship between history and memory to advance scholarship on how historical artistic practices have become markers of cultural and national identity.