Cross Cultural Encounters - Essay Example

Part option B – Carefully read the following piece of text. What can it tell us about cross cultural encounters? As the passage from Bacon relates, cross-cultural encounters are not always pleasant, and are not always approached with open-mindedness and a desire to learn. This short passage shows us several things about this kind of encounter. First, it shows the way the Benin people reacted to contact with the West, and the consequences of that. Second, it shows the way someone from the West viewed Benin culture. By exploring these two ideas, we can see the ways in which the technologically advanced West took advantage of the Benin people during the cross-cultural encounters that took place there. More generally, we can see that cross-cultural encounters do not always end well for everybody involved. Before understanding what a cross-cultural encounter can do, it is important to understand what one is. In the broadest meaning, such an encounter could be described as any in which two different cultures meet. More specifically, it is one in which ideas that are different between cultures are exchanged, with varying results. In the case of Benin, one of the exchanges was “the discovery of Benin art by Europeans”. (Mackie 16) This can be seen in the last paragraph of the passage from Bacon, which states that some of the things found in the houses were “castings of wonderful delicacy of detail, and some magnificently carved tusks”. In the background, we can see that the Benin were perhaps initially pleased by contact with the West. Presumably, they happily traded for the “glass walking sticks, old uniforms, absurd umbrellas” and so on that Bacon describes as being in most of the warehouses. However, the exchange obviously did not go well for the Benin. In the context Mackie gives us, we know that Bacon is an invader trying to bring Benin “firmly under British control”. (Mackie 17) Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the passage, some sense of this chilling reason behind the cross-cultural encounter can be seen in the way Bacon describes the Benin people. Bacon was largely unimpressed with what he found, and so the cultural exchange which could have taken place was limited by the Europeans existing prejudices about the Benin people. The way the passage describes the Benin as “natives” who were tricked by “the usual cheap finery” reinforces the idea that the Europeans only wanted to manipulate this different culture for their own ends. The fact that the passage describes the Benin in very negative tones elsewhere, such as explaining the “ruined and uninhabited houses” as being “probably … burial-places for men of note” further suggests that the Europeans are not interested in learning about other cultures. Obviously from this passage, a cross-cultural encounter is not always a good thing. Although the Europeans came out well, the Benin suffered greatly. In fact, this particular cross-cultural encounter was “a traumatic break in the history of the Benin, which brought to a sudden end the independence of the centuries-old kingdom”. (Mackie 16) Part 2 – What artistic and cultural challenges did the art of Benin present to the West from 1897 to the present day? As seen in part 1, cross-cultural encounters do not always have good consequences for all those involved. Although the British arguably came out well from the exchange of art that they looted from the Benin, even this caused considerable consternation back in Europe, and continues to have troubling implications for traditional European understandings of cultural values. The art of Benin, especially the bronze plaques that were uncovered, challenged the West from their discovery up until today by calling into question the Western view of African cultures. The most important challenge that Benin art, and especially the bronzes looted by the British in 1897, brought to the West was a challenge against the accepted cultural value of African civilization in Europe. Many nations in Europe at the time—and arguably still today—were highly negative of the idea that any good could come out of Africa. Therefore, the discovery of the bronzes, which clearly went against that idea, was troubling to Europeans because it meant they had to re-evaluate their preconceptions of African civilization. As Loftus and Wood point out, many travel accounts of the time “emphasised the moment of encounter between white European civilised culture and the dark, dangerous people and places of Africa”. (Loftus and Wood, 45) The discovery of these “magnificent works of craftsmanship and art” which the British found in Benin (Loftus and Wood, 45) clearly posed problems for fitting the African civilisation into “the established theories of progress” which were used by the British to “justify hierarchies and legitimise imperial power”. (Loftus and Wood, 49) One solution to this problem was to label the art works—magnificent as they undeniably were—as relics left over from the ancient past. That way the Benin could be explained away as a fallen race, and current British power could be properly continued. This can be seen in the snippet from Bacon in chapter 1, where he tries to downplay the importance of the found artwork by the way he describes its being uncovered. While the cheap junk was apparently littered throughout the compound, the items of artistic value were “buried in the dirt of ages, in one house”. (Bacon) The way he sets up the items here is an obvious attempt to make our reading of his history as biased as his writing of it was. The idea that the bronzes were hidden in the “dirt of ages” suggests that they are “relics and antiquities, objects that demonstrated an African civilisation now long gone”, (Loftus and Wood 52) which allowed European readers to continue to justify their prejudices. Furthermore, the statement that they were only to be found in one house implies that not only did the magnificent artwork come from a long time ago, but that the Benin people themselves did not know its significance. This is a very interesting implication, because it suggests that the Benin were complete savages, but this version of events depends upon the evidence that they were, in fact, at quite a high level of artistic and social culture. So this evidence of artistic ability ironically becomes used to suggest ignorance and stupidity. These are exactly the reasons that Mackie suggests that we need to make “a careful reading of the evidence” when dealing with texts that represent “a biased history”. (Mackie 30) If we simply took Bacons word for it we would not be able to use his piece to get a clear view of what happened, and furthermore it would not be able to show us anything about how the discovery of the Benin bronzes during the looting of the city provided a challenge to traditional European cultural ideas. However, by closely examining Bacons words we can see both of these things. As time went by, these views obviously changed as people became more and more accepting of cultures outside of the ones in which they were brought up or chose to love. African art in general also became more well known, and the style had “a profound effect on Modern Art” including such well-known figures as “Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and the sculptor Constantin Brancusi”. (Loftus and Wood 59) What is really interesting, though, is that the Benin bronzes were not influential on these artists. The reason for that is that they went against the stereotype of Africa as a haven of “simplicity, timelessness, and an absence of civilising decorum”. (Loftus and Wood 63) In other words, “the avant-garde were in effect working within the stereotype of the empire builders, for all that they were turning it upside-down”. (Loftus and Wood 63) Basically, because Modern artists were interested in so-called primitive art, they only selected artworks from Africa and other non-European cultures which exhibited supposedly primitive features. Since the Benin bronzes “were anything but primitive”, they were ignored. In fact, the Benin bronzes were so sophisticated that “they shared more with academic sculpture than with the values of the modernists”. (Loftus and Wood 68) Even though over 100 years have gone by since the bronzes were stolen from the African nation, its art still presents cultural challenges to Europe. Although the works of great artists like Picasso did much to help people see how wonderful African art could be, it did not necessarily do much to change peoples views on race and skin colour. In fact, it almost did the opposite, since it reinforced European stereotypes of Africa as uncivilised. In order to really move beyond this dark phase of European history, it could be argued that one necessary step would be to make amends to Nigeria by returning their priceless artistic artifacts to the country instead of keeping them in British museums. The argument against this would probably be that many African nations are less stable than European nations, but that argument would in itself show us the same kind of biased cultural reasoning that led to their being stolen in the first place. Bibliography Loftus, D. & Wood, P. (2008) ‘The Art of Benin: Changing relation Between Europe and African II’ in Brown, R.D (ed.) Cultural Encounters, Milton Keynes, The Open University Mackie, R. (2008) The Art of Benin: Changing relation Between Europe and African I’ in Brown, R.D (ed.) Cultural Encounters, Milton Keynes, The Open University Read More