Towards A Reappropriation of Anthropology: Three Pioneering Black Women

How Writing A Story For Naïfs Magazine About Zora Neale Hurston, Eslanda Goode Robeson, and Katherine Dunham Debunked My Bias About African American Culture Being Self-Centered

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For the fourth edition of Naïfs Magazine, I went away from fashion to dive into the world of curators and museums. In February, I visited the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris to cover the exhibition “Beyond Anthropology” curated by historian and archivist Sarah Frioux-Salgas.

In a museum, I am usually the type of visitor who reads every caption to soak up all the knowledge I can get, but this time, I came as a journalist tasked to interview the curator on their work setting up an exhibition about three African American women who marked the history of anthropology. So, it meant that I wasn’t just living the experience. I had to document it. I took pictures and wrote about what I saw and heard on Samsung Notes, but I also recorded my first impressions as a visitor and then as a journalist. For me, visiting this exhibition was as personal as professional because it was held in a place for which, quite frankly, I had little consideration. Yet, I reevaluated my opinion once out of the museum. The same happened with the subjects of the exhibition, I came full of preconceived ideas and got humbled even before I interviewed the curator.

And this is precisely what this piece is about.

Although the exhibition is no longer on display, I hope you will feel you have been there with me reading my words. This would be this writer’s ultimate satisfaction.

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Founded at the initiative of President Jacques Chirac in 2006, the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, formerly known as the Museum of Arts and Civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, is a place as fascinating as it is fraught with contradictions. It houses a collection of objects that belonged to civilisations that either disappeared or were dominated due to slavery and colonialism. Both a place of knowledge and a celebration of the hegemony of France, Europe, and the West over the rest of the world, the Musée du Quai Branly is a place steeped in history but also a reminder of the wounds and scars left by centuries of Western domination over these civilisations and peoples, who are still perceived today as a vague mass whose cultures and arts are often considered primitive and only become Art and Culture when appropriated by the dominant.

In June 2020, Congolese political activist Mwazulu Dyiabanza seized a funerary pole belonging to the Bari people (Chad) from the Musée du Quai Branly, shouting that he would return it "home." This dramatic act echoed a conversation that no one wanted to have but which President Emmanuel Macron initiated in 2017: namely, the commissioning of a report by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy to establish the restitution of African artworks held in French museums. Despite the controversies, on December 24, 2020, the National Assembly passed a law to return cultural property to Benin and Senegal. As a result, the French government committed to returning 26 symbolic objects from the Kingdom of Abomey, currently held at the Musée du Quai Branly, to Benin. Twenty-six may seem a small number, considering that the museum's website states that its collection includes "300,000 works from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, 700,000 heritage and contemporary photographs, 320,000 documents (books, periodicals, audiovisual documents, etc.), 8,000 works from the History collection (prints, paintings, sculptures, etc.), 10,000 musical instruments, and 25,000 textile pieces or garments."

Yet, the extent of the museum's collection, which belongs to the state, confirms that this controversial space is indeed a guardian of precious knowledge. As I wandered through this true labyrinth last February, I felt like I was travelling across several continents, encountering masks, statues, and symbolic objects with as sole indication their place of origin and the culture and people to which they belonged without further explanation. This drawback made me realize how lucky I am. Growing up in a mixed family that frequently travelled between Cameroon and France, I have always been surrounded by art objects from African countries where my white French father worked for almost thirty years. A true enthusiast of African cultures he encountered during his assignments, my father brought back multiple objects that are now part of the décor and heritage of our family home. From Bamileke stools from Cameroon, Fang masks from Gabon to Ife heads from the Yoruba people in Nigeria, and late 18th century and Empire furniture, my parents' house resembles an intriguing antique shop. It always elicits reactions from adults and children, like my 7-year-old cousin J., who exclaimed when it was time to leave, "Oh no! I don't want to go. If I could, I would put this house in my pocket. There are too many interesting things!" He was fascinated by all the objects he saw, especially the stories accompanying each of them. Yes, because my father not only knows where each object he bought comes from but also their history with a capital H. However, when I visited the Musée du Quai Branly for the first time, I was surprised by the cruel lack of context for such a vast collection. Especially when among the more than one million annual visitors who navigate the twists and turns of this temple of knowledge, there are families with children and school groups. I also thought about those like me who are part of the diasporas of each continent represented in the museum and who, as they walked around, thought they would obtain information about their other culture but found themselves faced with objects as familiar as unfamiliar. It's one thing to grow up surrounded by objects from your culture, but it's another to know their meaning and history.

However, on Friday, 23rd February, a beautiful archipelago of enlightened knowledge was hidden within this space, resembling a blind map: the "Beyond Anthropology" exhibition. Located in an intimate space of the museum, it was accessible by a staircase. Upon arrival, visitors were greeted, unlike the rest of the museum, by a written presentation on a wall of the three women featured in the exhibition. Three African-American women, each of whom has embraced a discipline born with the exploration of "new lands" and the "discovery" of their peoples: anthropology. It is precisely because it emerged at a specific time and in a very particular context that Sarah Frioux-Salgas, the curator of the exhibition and my interested and interesting interlocutor, defines it as a "white people’s discipline." However, it is the reappropriation of this discipline by three African-American women through the lenses of literature, activism, and dance that prompted Sarah Frioux-Salgas to choose them as subjects. "Anthropology, defined as the study of man, is a discipline that emerged in the early 19th century. From its inception, it justified racial hierarchy, and thus colonisation, the violence it engendered, and domination. This is why I say that anthropology is a white people’s discipline," explained the curator.

I spent just over an hour discovering the work of the novelist Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), the dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), and the journalist and activist Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895-1965). Three African American women who arrived at a pivotal moment in the history of anthropology, as confirmed by Sarah Frioux-Salgas: "At the time these women engaged with anthropology, the discipline was undergoing significant changes, thanks to figures such as Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinovsky, and Melville J. Herskovits, mentioned in the exhibition, who revolutionized the discipline by ceasing to make it an object. Of course, their perspective remained somewhat external, but they disrupted the discipline by not focusing anymore on the hierarchical relationship between civilisations and races. Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, and Eslanda Goode Robeson took advantage of this period of evolution."

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

In addition to Sarah Frioux-Salgas introducing the three protagonists at the exhibition's entrance, visitors were greeted by the women’s words describing their anthropological approach. Quoting them made them almost come alive, or even better, the true guides of this exhibition. Here is how each of them welcomed the visitor. 

Zora Neale Hurston: "I had to distance myself, go to university, and be away from my native environment to begin to see myself as someone else, to stand aside and realize what I was made of. I had to put on the glasses of anthropology to do this."

Katherine Dunham: "It has always seemed to me that what was important was not the research and recording of field data but rather their use and practical, tangible translation."

Eslanda Goode Robeson: "All I had to do was go to Africa, see, meet, study with my own people on their own land. Then I could truthfully say: I, too, have been there, and I know."

Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895-1965)

Animated by music, videos, objects, sketches, and photos, the choice of the exhibition's name, "Beyond Anthropology," then took on its full magnitude. Anthropology was not the main tool for any of these three women, which makes the dance between this "white discipline" they reclaimed back and their work as a novelist, a journalist, and a choreographer-dancer all the more fascinating. As I navigated through the exhibition, a question increasingly occupied my mind: what does the work of a curator entail? I pondered this because it is a job that is often mentioned but whose implications are little known. However, upon seeing this exhibition, one could sense a commitment on the part of Sarah Frioux-Salgas to immerse us in the world of Zora Neale Hurston, Eslanda Goode Robeson, and Katherine Dunham. When I visited the Musée du Quai Branly, the curator was not there to explain her approach, which she regretted. Therefore, instead of a guided tour, we had a Zoom call where she explained that "the challenge [of the exhibition was] to see how these three women use[d] anthropology in literature, politics, and dance within their particular context." Trained as a historian, Sarah Frioux-Salgas is an archivist specializing in the history of slavery and pan-Africanism. She is therefore interested in the history of Black people and their diaspora in the 20th century. According to her, the role of a curator is to "enable viewers to engage with subjects they know little or nothing about, or to address those who have some knowledge [of the subject], and to present sound, paper archives, etc., with an insightful critical apparatus. It’s years of experience. And the idea of such an exhibition is to achieve the right balance between these audios, images, and texts so that they are not just exotic archives, so to speak."

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006)

However, during our conversation, a question was burning my lips. Why the choice of three African-American women? Are there no Black French anthropologists? I got straight to the point because France always prefers to view Blackness through the American prism, refusing to look directly at its own history of slavery and colonialism and its impact on present-day society. The curator's response was academic, but she didn’t fail to mention colleagues who work on the subject but are not Black, which may indicate that the discipline in France has not yet sufficiently reflected on itself for these Black anthropologists to be known. "Research exists, but it is still in its infancy. There is an excellent researcher named Marianne Lemaire who works on these female ethnologists and anthropologists who have also been made invisible in the history of anthropology. In my case, my research topics revolve around how Africans, African Americans, and people from the Caribbean in the 20th century try to construct the definition of a diaspora to see what brings them together." Then she continued, "I was interested in seeing these women, in their discipline, in this broader context of pan-African or diasporic intellectual and political history, how there are people who have reflected on the practice of the diaspora, translations, how texts circulate, etc. After all, it could have been other women. I chose them because they are women I have studied for a long time. I love the books of Zora Neale Hurston; as for Eslanda Goode Robeson, I had the opportunity to work on her, which allowed me to get to know her, but I knew less about Katherine Dunham, who is an immense dancer completely off the radar."

Sarah Frioux-Salgas's passion for these three women was palpable through the choice of archives she decided to share with the visitors. The exhibition began with Zora Neale Hurston. In the images and videos of Black communities that she filmed in their daily lives, the African American novelist also appeared in that American South, where she herself was from. Born in Eatonville, Florida, she embarked on a journey in 1927 to her native region to document "her world through the lens of anthropology," words she used to describe her approach. The result is unique visual archives that make her one of the pioneers of visual anthropology and ethnographic cinema. From videos of Kossola, also known as Cudjoe Lewis, the last surviving African from the American slave ship The Clotilda to black workers in the isolated work camps of the Everglades forest, whose daily lives she preferred to film rather than the brutality of their working conditions to make them more human, to her self-portraits where she staged herself mimicking voodoo rituals, the archives of Zora Neale Hurston's work chosen by Sarah Frioux-Salgas are both emotional and representative of an anthropological approach, as it is as much a return to her roots emotionally as it is a return to origins from a scientific point of view. This is what made Zora Neale Hurston's work innovative and extraordinary at the time, as confirmed by the curator: "She allowed the cultures of the southern United States to be considered as an interesting subject of study within the American universities, showing that African Americans have cultural practices that are unique to them, whether it be myths, songs, tales, etc. These are cultural elements specific to African Americans and also, in a certain way, to American culture. That is to say, African Americans are also Americans." However, Sarah Frioux-Salgas did not forget that Zora Neale Hurston was also a novelist. So among the documents were books, excerpts from plays, and especially an excerpt from the "Harlem Slang Dictionary," a testimony to the linguistic contribution of African Americans to the enrichment of American English.

The archives on Eslanda Goode Robeson's side were fewer but no less impactful. Sarah Frioux-Salgas wanted to showcase the work of the journalist through the lens of Pan-Africanism as well as her activism. Committing to the fight against racial segregation as early as 1939 after years spent in London, Eslanda and her husband, actor, singer, lawyer, and activist Paul Robeson, both fell victim to the "witch hunt" organized by Senator Joseph McCarthy between 1950 and 1958. Eslanda Goode Robeson's writings are influenced by her years in London, during which she interacted with Anglophone African anthropology students who rebelled against English imperialism polluting the discipline. To mark the journalist's strong commitment, Sarah Frioux-Salgas explained, "I could have included several images of [Eslanda Goode Robeson] engaged in activism, but I preferred to choose one powerful image surrounded by texts she produced to demonstrate that she was very proactive in a very concrete way." Indeed, while the lack of images for Eslanda Goode Robeson was notable, the visitor's attention was immediately captured by a massive photo of the journalist, dating from 1961, giving a speech at the African Women's Day organized by the African Women's Movement for Freedom, which she partly founded. She was surrounded, for the occasion, by the Moroccan princess Laïla Fatima Zohra, Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones, founder of the Malawi Women's League Rose Chibambo, and the Somali ambassador to Britain Mahmoud Abdi Arraleh. An emotionally poignant image that summarized the journalist's work. It was placed opposite a series of photos taken from her book African Journey, which recounts her journey with her son to South Africa, Zanzibar, Kenya, and Uganda. The images, accompanied by captions, made the visitor understand that there was a story behind them. The people photographed had a first and last name, and their relationships with each other were known. A slight difference, yet humanizing, unlike the photos of British missionary Alice Seeley Harris, whose images not only served to document the horrors of Belgian colonization in Congo but also fulfilled an imperialist purpose: to show the atrocity of the Belgian Congo so that it would fall into the hands of the British Empire. The missionary's photos depicted mutilated Congolese without names, without history. With Eslanda, just the photos' captions made one want to open African Journey to learn more.

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The exhibition concluded with videos that Katherine Dunham filmed during a trip from 1935 to 1936 to Martinique, Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad. Like Zora Neale Hurston and Eslanda Goode Robeson, Katherine Dunham studied anthropology and used it as a tool. It allowed her to refine her dance techniques and thus contribute significantly to modern dance and theatre. In 1945, she founded the Dunham School of Arts and Research, where dance, music, theatre, arts, psychology, languages, and... anthropology were taught. If Zora Neale Hurston touched me and Eslanda Goode Robeson made me reflect on Pan-Africanism, Katherine Dunham amazed me. When I saw her, I thought, "Finally, a black dancer who isn't Josephine Baker!" because she is the reference in France. When I expressed my difficulty in accepting Josephine Baker because, in her desire to mock her white audience, she also stigmatized African women as an African American, Sarah Frioux-Salgas provided a more nuanced perspective: "Katherine Dunham is different. I didn't appreciate Josephine Baker for a long time, but when you dig deeper, you see she's much more complex. I think she makes fun of her French audience. She says, 'Okay, you want me to wear bananas, I'll do it, but then, I'll go for a walk with my panthers. I'll show you!' " The curator then returned to the dancer and choreographer and added: "But it's true that Katherine Dunham, who is younger, had a very different approach. She's truly an anthropologist, which is the next step, in fact. In her choreographic practice, she harnessed the power of Black cultures. She was greatly inspired by Caribbean and Brazilian dances. She is a character who is very little known in France, yet she is extraordinary because she transformed the history of African-American dance and dance in general. Thanks to Katherine Dunham, dancers unlocked their torso, a body’s part that was previously very little exploited."

Maybe I enjoyed this part of the exhibition more because I could observe, watch, and take the time to see the movements choreographed by Katherine Dunham to understand their extreme modernity. Ag'ya, one of the ballets filmed in 1947 and entirely choreographed by Katherine Dunham, featured a dancer who moved from head to toe in an incredible way because the choreographer's work skillfully combined ballet with modern dance movements and Caribbean dances such as the Cuban habanera, the Brazilian majumba, and the mazouk, biguine, and ag'ya from Martinique. So, a blend of genres that made the black-and-white videos scrolling before my eyes absolutely contemporary. In addition to the videos, the exhibition featured photos and sketches of Katherine Dunham and her dancers, but most importantly, texts revealed that she presented her first show at the Théâtre de Paris in 1948. It is also very important to note that she recontextualised her choreographies according to the spectators. So we are far from Josephine Baker's Bal Nègre. Dance is not just entertainment but a political art form, which led Katherine Dunham to be censored in Chile and Argentina following pressure from the U.S. government.

I, who initially felt defeated because I was "going to see yet another exhibition about African American figures," came out utterly delighted because each of the Black women presented had shown, through their work as anthropologists, that they knew how to go beyond the borders of the United States and embrace the concept of Black identity in its plurality and entirety.

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