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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:From Bandiagara to Paris: reflections on the travels of a Dogon sign
Author:Kandé, SylvieISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:31
Issue:4
Pages:21-28
Language:English
Geographic term:Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:periodicals
Dogon
symbols
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v031/31.4kande.pdf
Abstract:The author discusses a well-known Dogon sign that became the emblem of the journal 'Presence Africaine'. She argues (ŕ la Roland Barthes) that the representation of any object is ideologically invested and signifies in ways similar to language. The symbol adopted by 'Présence Africaine' is one of those signs collected by the ethnologist Marcel Griaule in the period 1931-1933. The sign travelled with the Dogon who left Islamic Mandé for the cliffs of Bandiagara in the 15th century. In 1947, it was found on the cover of the October/November issue of 'Présence Africaine', simultaneously distributed in Paris and Dakar. In its travels, the sign is not simply transposed from one site to another. Rather it undergoes, almost imperceptibly, a metamorphosis that liberates at each stage new possible significations. If one accepts that 'Présence Africaine', as conceived by Alioune Diop, was from its inception a manifesto and programme of action that wanted to bring into the very centre of French power and culture the dignity of otherness, then the Dogon sign also imposed itself as the emblem for the Négritude movement, of which Diop was a founding member. Bibliogr., notes.
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