The Red Fez Art and Spirit Possession in Africa Kramer, Fritz

This remarkable and controversial book exploresmthe wazs in which colonial Europeans have been represented in African ritual art and drama. Through a profound re-examination of Western concepts of otherness and mimesis, the antropologist and art historian Fritz Krammer shows that African images of Europeans - insculpture, masquerades and - above all- spirit possession - are the reverse and also the counterpart of European images of the Other as savage, whether noble or ignoble. For Africans, Europeans belonged to the realm of nature, to a state of innocence.