Browse Items · Reframing Archives: Equatorial Guinea's Colonial Library

Introductory Remarks

The digital exhibit "Reframing the Colonial Library: Equatorial Guinea Archives in the Museum" engages with the country's colonial library. Following the approach of Benita Sampedro Vizcaya, the re-evaluation of the colonial library demands “dislocating the traditionally central and privileged role of metropolitan texts and neo-colonial discourses in order to engage, instead, with the cultural and intellectual production of Guinean intellectuals themselves (341).” The project embraces her emphasis on re-locating canonical texts and privileged categories of analysis such as race, capitalism, empire, or nation. This way, the exhibit attempts to reconfigure, appropriate, transform, and transgress the colonial, historical, and linguistic inheritance of which 'the local' is also a conduit, as explained by Sampedro Vizcaya. The revision of the colonial library requires “awareness of the power of those sites, not only in terms of the day-to-day functioning of the empire-colony relationship but also in regard to the epistemic and representational weight they carry in broader cultural and political practices and projects, both colonial and neocolonial (343).” This way, the exhibit turns “to the potential of the archive and the colonial library as sites from which the seemingly irreversible power of colonialism can simultaneously be enacted and contested (343).”

This exhibit is divided into three parts, chronologically interconnected, that cover Equatorial Guinean colonial and neocolonial history. The sections are: "The Temptation of Empire", “Neocolonial Politics in the Museum and Conflicting Identities in Eguatorial Guinea" and “Alternative Conservation and Heritage Practices in Equatorial Guinea. The Case of the Museum Felipe Osá Angüé." This organization aims to deconstruct visitors' perception of the colonial archive and its uses from a transhistorical and global angle. Each section addresses the ideological uses of the archive both in the metropolis and the former colony, questioning the Spanish civilizational mission that still persists beneath the language of institutional collaboration and modernization in cultural spaces.

The completion of this digital project has been made possible through the 2024 Mellon Doctoral Summer Fellowship awarded by the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. The exhibition portal will be available indefinitely thanks to the support of Van Pelt Libraries.

Bibliography:

Sampedro-Vizcaya, Benita. "Rethinking the Archive and the Colonial Library: Equatorial Guinea." Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, 2008, pp. 341-363.

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El laberinto guineano

Emiliano Buale Borikó, a prominent Bubi nationalist from Equatorial Guinea, critically challenges the notion of Bantu unity in his work "El laberinto guineano" (The Guinean Labyrinth). Borikó's argument, grounded in historical and cultural analysis, emphasizes the distinctiveness and incompatibility between the Bubi people of Bioko Island and the Fang people from the mainland.

Borikó rejects the idea that the Bubi and Fang share common origins or a unified Bantu identity. He contends that such notions are mythologized and fail to reflect the true historical and cultural realities of these groups. Instead of accepting a romanticized view of a harmonious pre-colonial period where different ethnic groups coexisted peacefully, Borikó posits that the Bubi had a distinct and advanced civilization on Bioko Island, separate from the Fang and other mainland groups.

According to Borikó, the Fang people originated from the savannah regions and migrated to their current locations. This migration narrative underscores the differences between the Fang and the indigenous Bubi of Bioko Island. To support his claims, Borikó draws on the writings of Spanish colonial figures, such as Luis Trujera Incera. These sources often contain ethnographic and administrative observations that highlight the distinctions and perceived incompatibilities between the Bubi and Fang.

However, the reliance on colonial sources like those of Trujera Incera can be problematic. Colonial administrators and ethnographers, including Trujera Incera, often had biased views shaped by the colonial agenda. Their writings frequently depicted African societies in ways that justified colonial rule and presented the colonizers as superior. These sources relied on stereotypes and broad generalizations, leading to misrepresentations of ethnic groups. Utilizing these sources without critical analysis risks perpetuating these biases.

While Borikó's challenge to the myth of Bantu unity offers a valuable critique, his conclusions require cautious consideration due to the reliance on potentially biased colonial sources. A more balanced perspective necessitates cross-verifying colonial accounts with other types of evidence, including oral traditions, archaeological findings, and contemporary ethnographic studies conducted by independent researchers. Incorporating the voices and narratives of the Bubi and Fang people themselves can provide insights that colonial sources might overlook or misrepresent.