BBC World Histories - 08.2019 - 09.2019

75

Æ

they hadn’t seen anything like it before. So there are quite a lot

of descriptions of hair.

The accounts of Alvise Cadamosto, a Venetian explorer

who visited west Africa in 1455 and 1456 on behalf of

Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator, include the oldest

extant European references to African hair. Describing the

Jalofs of the south side of the Senegal river, he wrote that:

“Both sexes go bare-footed and uncovered, but weave their hair

with beautiful tresses, which they tie in various knots.”

That ornate hairstyling is an interesting facet in those

African cultures, because it can be a time-consuming process.

In your book, you explore the ways in which that process led

to time being seen in a different way from in western societies.

This is an important point, and I’ve dedicated a chapter to

talking about time. There’s a pretty strongly held concept that

caring for black hair in its natural state is too time-consuming,

so people straighten their hair because that makes it more

‘manageable’ and less burdensome.

That attitude was really interesting to me, because it seems

to suggest that black hair is deviant in some way. What I think

is actually going on, though, is that the society in which we

live is underpinned by the logic of capitalism in which time

has been repurposed for the maximisation of profit. So

anything that isn’t seen as productive in that specific sense

is seen as unnecessarily time-consuming or as a burden.

I looked at how different African groups organised time

before the imposition of wage labour, capitalism and colonial-

ism. [Kenyan philosopher] John Mbiti said that “man is not a

slave of time; instead, he ‘makes’ as much time as he wants” –

the idea being that people have enough time for whatever they

want to prioritise, including hairstyling. It’s only in a different

system, created with different standards and norms, that hair

and its management has been reimagined as burdensome.

Were traditional methods of hairstyling, such as braiding

and twisting, ways for societies and communities to bond?

Definitely. Rather than being seen as a time-consuming

burden, the hours spent in grooming and doing one another’s

Emma Dabiri photographed

in London. “The hours spent

grooming hair were important

social time during which

information was exchanged

and the bonds of a community

strengthened,” she says

FRAN MONKS

hair were seen as important social time during which informa-

tion was exchanged and the bonds of a community strength-

ened. The physical proximity involved in hairstyling was

important in developing intimacy between a parent and child

or two members of that community, too.

What were some of the reasons why later colonisers of

Africa came to regard hair in a less positive way?

There was a shift in attitudes that happened once slavery and,

later, colonialism become the primary reasons Europeans were

in the continent. The more complimentary descriptions were

quite drastically replaced by far more negative ones, and the

idea was introduced that Africans are incredibly idle and that

they weren’t using their time productively – in other words,

for the maximisation of profit.

Part of the justification for slavery and other oppressive

systems of extraction was that African people were not seen as

fully human. One of the ways in which this idea was advanced

was that, unlike European people, Africans didn’t even have

hair – they had wool, like livestock. Because they were seen as

being like animals, that became one of the justifications for

enslavement and for colonialism: it was a ‘civilising mission’,

bringing the light of civilisation to this dark continent.

This view was hugely toxic. What is its legacy today?

Because these narratives were so powerful, because the power

dynamic was so balanced in favour of white European norms,

and because these norms were extracted from Africa and the

Americas to other parts of the world, the idea developed that

Afro-textured hair was inadequate, inferior and associated

with a kind of non-humanity. These ideas were internalised,

and hair began to be seen as deviant and problematic. That

led to the birth of hair straightening and attempts to make

African hair resemble European hair.

What techniques have people – perhaps even you – used

to achieve this throughout the 20th and 21st centuries?

The first hot combs were in use by the early 20th century.

The most permanent method, though, uses ‘relaxer’, in

ИЗП

ОДГ

ОТО

ВИЛ

АГР

УППППFRAN MONKSFRAN MONKSFRAN MONKSFRAN MONKS

ААFRAN MONKSFRAN MONKS

"What's

News"

VK.COM/WSNWS