Eigensinnige Artefakte: Emische und etische Deutungen eines Aschanti-Gelbgussmotivs Durch Künstler und andere Interpreten
Baessler-Archiv XLVI.1998:353-368
Stubborn artifacts: Emic and etic interpretations of an Ashanti motif by artists and other analysts
##The article tries to follow the question, whether or not artifacts speak for themselves, and how we as scientists, collectors of African art or tourists make them speak. By the example of an Asante gold weight motif, which has been published twice, the etic (scientific) interpretation is confronted with an emic interpretation, as given to a collector in the 1960s by two authoritative Asante elders. The comparison shows remarkable differences. While observing the artifact, the scientists interpreted and acquired the motif on the basis of their medical und analytical skills, the local elders on the basis of their cultural knowledge and moral heritage. In a second approach the development of the traditional motif is shown, by comparing five variants, which, due to the growing distance from the original cultural context, loose more and more iconographic detail. People do ascribe sense, where they recognize shape. This accounts for scientific as for nonscientific interpretations. It is one thing to be appealed by an artifact. It"s another thing to make it speak in a way that it gets not stripped off from its original sense. This is a challenging task for the museum ethnographer.##
Keywords: museums, artifacts and interpretation, interpretation of artifacts, Asante art, emic, etic
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