As Peter Robertshaw establishes, historians have largely depended upon written history to chronicle an African past—an element that remains challenging in that many repositories of knowledge are transmitted orally in Africa. The hierarchizing of methods in recording history has resulted in a debasing of other narrative structures, as Robertshaw notes, “The first generation of African historians tended to assume that oral traditions were relatively uncomplicated accounts of what had happened in the past…” (273). He goes on to stress the importance of alternate methods of chronicling history, and in reading Schmidt and Walz’s work, we begin to explore how the past is just as much assembled as it is experienced. That is to say, historians determine what is included in a community’s historical narrative, raising the question of responsibility for the representation of any given demographic. If African scholars began to narrate historical trajectories then, would they rely any more upon local oral histories than European and Islamic historians? Or would the tension in balancing the role of material and oral histories persist in the methodology?
Another element to consider in the importance of historical materiality is what classifies exactly as “material”? Much of the African artwork made of wood, shells, cloth will not have survived decades, much less centuries of weather conditions, which does not leave behind a great deal of resources to study. Does this imply that oral histories serve as the only method of recording a history for African art? Or is it possible to consider newer, more contemporary artworks and trace the legacy of the pieces through conversations with local historians? If we are consider how to re-represent African history, is it enough to challenge methodological training in the discipline of history? Will new modalities of research reconceptualize African histories altogether?
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