16 african appropriations
performances by actors embodying fictitious people), therefore ignoring
the mimesis of the first degree. As if attesting to the Platonian critique of
mimesis, Nigerian audiences of Indian films also tend to ignore the medi-
ated nature of such films, despite being well aware that they are watching
per for ma nces by ac tors. These fi l ms a re i n fac t concept ua l i zed a s w i ndow s
permitting views onto a foreign “culture.” The play of Indian actors thus
appears to be synonymous with “Indian culture,” which Hausa directors
and actors in Nigeria then copy in their own films.
A ll case studies in this book involve copies that are not really faithful,
in a conventional sense, compared to their originals. Just like the copies
Taussig (1993: 17) discusses in Mimesis and Alterity, my own examples,
too, slide “between photographic fidelity and fantasy, between iconicity
and arbitrariness, wholeness and fragmentation.” W hile I do not use the
word copy purely metaphorically, I do not take it at face value, either—that
is, assigning its narrowest meaning. This would imply faithfulness to an
original, matching it as closely as possible, in the way a medieval transcript
matches its script or a photomechanical reproduction its original docu-
ment (Schwartz 2000). The mediations of cultural difference I am inter-
ested in are most often based on selective copying. The fragments copied
from another life-world are elements perceived as different, in comparison
with the appropriator’s own life-world. For example, a certain style of
dress, way of talking, type of food is copied—and in the eyes of the copi-
ers, these fragments are sensed as emblematic, if not essential, features of
those other life-worlds. W hat unites the copies I discuss is the fact that
they do not deny their origins but seek to establish or maintain contact
with their respective originals.
AFRICAN APPROPRIATIONSThe African cultural producers whose works we encounter in subse-
quent chapters appropriate alien cultural forms, which are also often com-
modities, and repurpose them for their own ends. The term appropria-
tion, which derives from the Latin verb appropriare, “to make one’s own,”
has currency in debates about ownership on various scales (Strang and
Busse 2011). It is frequently evoked in studies about authorship, copyright,