Reinterpreting Adire Cloth in Northern Nigeria

In the 1930s, the demand for adire cloth led to its subsequent production in northern Nigeria. Yoruba adire cloths were reinterpreted by Hausa adire makers who developed their own attractive, named patterns. When the Nigerian economy improved and industrially-printed cotton textiles became more accessible in the 1970s, Hausa women largely abandoned adire cloths for manufactured cotton prints. However, tourist demand for adire cloths and changing fashion tastes for newer adire styles have supported their continued creation, particularly in Kano. While political and economic circumstances have reduced adire production, these textiles continue to have sociocultural significance in twenty-first-century northern Nigeria.     

Benjamin Franklin,Georges‐louis le rouge and the Franklin/Folger chart of the gulf stream

Abstract: While in Paris as minister to the French court, Benjamin Franklin arranged for the production of a French version of his famous chart of the Gulf Stream, which had been based on a sketch by Timothy Folger and first printed in London c. February, 1769. This paper recounts Franklin's collaboration with the Parisian cartographer Georges‐Louis Le Rouge from their first meeting in 1780, and pieces together the history of the Le Rouge chart. Two open questions have been when the chart was engraved, and whether its purpose was primarily military, commercial or scientific. Evidence suggests that it was produced for French merchant and packet captains in the months following the end of the American War of Independence.     

‘One single ivory cell’: Oscar Wilde and the Brain

This paper considers Oscar Wilde's ongoing interest in the image of a single brain cell as a souvenir of human autonomy in a world of matter. Taking a long view of Wilde's career that demonstrates the relevance to his literary work of his college interests in physiology and philosophy, this paper shows how Wilde's socialism can be explained by his uniquely aesthetic take on the brain. For many late Victorians brain science threatened both the autonomy of human action and the legitimacy of beauty because it had the potential to invalidate conscious experience, but writers whose work Wilde knew, like Ernst Haeckel, W.K. Clifford and John Tyndall, apply aesthetic vocabularies to their own discussions of cells. Their theories illuminate Wilde's representation of the cell as an aesthetic object. Wilde's art collaborates with science to reject action, as action is conventionally understood, without relinquishing beauty as his ultimate value. His discovery of beauty in matter that is beyond the pale of human experience, yet intimately and strangely constitutive of our experience, directs the senses to a new field of experience that values the molecular life the species holds in common, in which individuals and their actions matter less to the possibility of social change than does the necessity of pleasure.     

The motorcycle Sallah durbars of Zaria 2012 (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Social dynamics may be understood more clearly through the analysis of an extraordinary event, which suggests not only a change in cultural practice but which also suggests wider political ramifications. In Zaria City, the old, walled section of the town of Zaria associated with the former Emirate of Zazzau, in northern Nigeria, the Emir's cancellation of the Sallah durbars—elaborate processions of gorgeously dressed men and horses—and their replacement by young men wearing blue jeans and riding motorcycles represents just such an event. Through their actions, these young men motorcyclists questioned the moral authority of those associated with traditional rule in Zaria who are seen as reneging on their duty to intercede for their people in favor of federal largesse. In this sense, the performance of motorcycle Sallah durbars relates to the more violent protests in northern Nigeria against police officers, soldiers, and political leaders (which includes traditional rulers), attributed to the Islamic reformist movement, Jama'atu Ahlis‐Sunnah Lidda'awati Wal Jihad (JASLWJ), popularly known as Boko Haram. The complaints and demands of the young men involved differ; the Sallah motorcyclists are criticizing the behavior of an individual emir, while JASLWJ followers are demanding a state ruled by Shari'a law and a return to Islamic moral order. Yet in both cases, they challenge the prevailing status quo and question the authority of their elders. The significance for the Nigerian state of these conflicts—between those advocating a religious regime and those supporting a secular state, between youth and elders, between rich and poor—may be understood more clearly by examining the micro‐politics of the motorcycle Sallah durbars which took place in Zaria in 2012.