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13 Things 2008
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
When I began researching, I was immediately stuck. I took out piles of books on Voodoo religion from the library, and turned page after page with insatisfaction. No references to Voodoo dolls were made. After turning to wikipedia for answers (it had come to that) I realized the proper term for the popular conception of a Voodoo doll was a gris-gris. Next I realized that pins meant to harm a targetted person were not part of real Voodoo. In a couple of clicks, my whole focus seemed to crumble; the thing I had chosen hardly existed. I was thus forced to reconsider my approach, which was ultimately beneficial, because the 'real' Voodoo doll is more complex than its Hollywoodized counterpart. Furthermore, the Voodoo doll, which developed in African populations in the Americas, has clear links to Africa. This in turn opened the possibility of comparing it to the Nkisi of the Kingdom of Kongo.
Although my project is still titled the Voodoo doll, I have begun to question this title of the course of this unusual journey. The word doll, especially, is demeaning and understates the complexity of the figurine. While it is true that its materiality is often completely confusable with one of a child's toy, its purpose and agency is not. I ordered the Sarkozy Voodoo doll on e-bay in October, and received a package in late November. Under content, the person I bought the Voodoo doll from had written "toy stuff." At first I was puzzled: had I inadvertently ordered a tricycle off ebay? Of course, the sender had deemed the Sarkozy puppet a sort of toy; he did not see any spiritual force contained within the doll. Who can blame him? It is a mass produced figurine devoid of any religious grounding which aims at ridiculing the president.
While I have continued to use the word 'doll' throughout this project, for clarity's sake, I no longer feel it is sufficient to encompass the vast social norms, religious beliefs and usages of the doll. In the Nkisi's case, the word doll is not used, because its materiality is far removed from that of a doll. Few children would enjoy cuddling with a nail-filled wood sculpture resembling a monster. Renee Stout, the American artist who studies and creates Minkisi wrote that "it would be a significant misrepresentation to call this object, a 'voodoo doll'." The Minkisi are so much more than a doll, they are not portraits of spirits but representations of the relation between social and physical problems and the forces invoked to solve them.
If the world encouraged unaesthetic, unlimited and only semi-grammatical titles, this would be mine:
Things containing spirits that are designed to change things: the Voodoo gris-gris and the BaKongo Nkisi.
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