Transgressing Boundaries: New Directions in the Study of Culture in Africa. Edited by Brenda Cooper and Andrew Steyn. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 1996. 226 pp.^©

This collection of essays is based on a September 1993 conference at the University of Cape Town that concerned the status of African Studies in South Africa. The collection consists of revised papers and discussions presented at the conference as well as papers commissioned afterwards. The editors' intention is to examine the state of African cultural studies in South Africa from a variety of viewpoints and to highlight some of the issues in contemporary theory and method that are debated among Africanist scholars. Additionally, the pros and cons of eradicating the boundaries between the traditional disciplines is discussed at length by several of the contributors. In the introduction, the editors' note that "African Studies" does not exist in South Africa as a discipline per se, but rather, these "studies" span widely divergent departments and disciplines. As a result, they are "situated within diverse politics, language, theories and methodologies (p. 1)."

This is a timely and interesting topic of discussion. South Africa's political and social structures have changed profoundly in the past few years, and the country's relationship with the rest of Africa has changed as well. Unfortunately, Cooper and Steyn's understandable desire to present a wide array of theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary viewpoints diminishes the overall coherence of the book. One problem is the definition of "African Studies." What is meant by this phrase changes throughout the book depending upon the author. For example, most of the contributors use the term to refer to South African cultural studies undertaken in South Africa, but when filmmaker Haile Gerima discusses "African cinema," he uses the term in the broadest sense. A related problem with the collection is the lack of coherence that results from presenting such a diverse array of subjects: the essays included range from lucid discussions of contemporary theory in the social sciences to movie reviews. The book's structure, however, is not entirely without merit. In certain instances, the editors have wisely chosen to maintain the conference-like format in which critics respond to specific articles. This a useful way to present the larger theoretical and methodological debates discussed, as both the major issues that are in dispute are elucidated. Additionally, this method reveals the difficulty of taking different theoretical viewpoints and disciplinary backgrounds and bringing them to bear on an inherently broad and diverse field such as area studies.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first, entitled "Mapping the Field," deals with the theoretical issues that are raised in contemporary African studies, especially in the South African context. The discussions primarily revolve around current debates about the applications of post-modernism and Marxism as theoretical models. Although there is considerable difference of opinion on specific issues, particularly regarding the utility of boundaries between the disciplines, the three authors featured in this section (Lovell, Bundy, and Comaroff) all agree that some rapprochement between Marxism and post-modernist approaches to cultural studies is necessary to further the field. Each author stresses the importance of recognizing both the "subject positions" (to use Comaroff's terminology) of the individuals studied and the effects of techno-economic and environmental factors on culture. Each author recognizes that neither cultural relativism nor "totalizing" reductionist paradigms are sufficiently able to explain human behavior, however, this can hardly be considered a "new direction" in the study of culture in Africa or anywhere else. American anthropology has been fraught with variations of the "idealist" v. "materialist" debate for decades.

The second and largest section is comprised of a diverse collection of what the editors call "case studies." The material presented here includes two examples of colonial discourse analysis on descriptions of indigenous South African poison, as well as an informative discussion and debate about the symbolic significance of the Lydenburg heads (South African terracotta sculptures from the sixth century AD, one of which is depicted on the University of Cape Town's Centre for African Studies letter-head). The latter involves an archaeologist (Martin Hall), a museum curator (Patricia Davison), and an artist (Malcolm Payne), all of whom have worked with the sculptures. This is "Transgressing Boundaries" at its best: the debate between these three contributors elucidates some of the conflicts and the benefits that result from cross-disciplinary studies. Furthermore, the authors explicitly place the subject in the context of contemporary South Africa.

Other case-studies have little to do with the status of African studies in South Africa, except insofar as they apply to African studies undertaken anywhere. These include a personal statement from Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, two reviews of his film about slavery, "Sankofa", and an essay about the depiction of Africa's slave past in contemporary West African literature. Among other things, these articles delve into essentialist approaches to African studies, approaches that the editors' clearly reject. Apparently, the focus on the subject of slavery and the subsequent discussion of African essentialism were unintended consequences of a screening of "Sankofa" at the 1993 conference (p. 164). Despite the interesting subject matter, this group of case studies seems inappropriate for the collection, as they contribute almost nothing to the reader's understanding of the state of African studies in South Africa.

The final section is intended to tie some of the book's loose ends together, and to present possible future directions for African Studies. In a concluding article, Brenda Cooper discusses the representation of slavery in the fiction of Sierra-Leonian author Syl Cheney-Coker in the context of "the theoretical paradigm of the reconstituted Marxism, as proposed by Bundy [in Part One] (p. 11)." She proposes an approach to African studies that she summarizes as follows: "...it investigates Africa's position globally; it is both interdisciplinary but also takes as its boundary of investigation a broadly defined cultural studies; it is standpoint knowledge, committed politically to the oppressed; in an African environment where cultural nationalism that relies on myths of origins and essences is very powerful, the history of iniquities of racism has to be formulated in terms of a reconstituted Marxism that can think structurally and globally. It must, however, in speaking holistically, deal with global realities and totalities, while not marginalising non-class realities and while recognizing and celebrating, humour, magic, the unpredictable and idiosyncratic, all of which holistic thinking demands (p.183)" What Cooper is describing here is a platonic concept that exists only in the realm of ideas. She does not disclose the means by which one can expect to achieve this perfect result, nor do either of the other two concluding essays contain a proposed solution to the problem of African cultural studies as outlined in the introduction. As a result, Cooper and Steyn's main achievement in presenting these essays as a collection is that to expose the utter confusion and directionlessness that pervades contemporary cultural studies.