Shield Your Eyes Now

A few weeks ago, I remember twitching with annoyance on reading an article about Oxford’s Pitt Rivers’ Museum. It seemed that in accordance with the perceived wishes of a Nigerian tribe, the Igbo, a mask would be removed from the museum’s display. 

                                                                Shield your eyes now

It was an Igbo ceremonial mask that no Igbo woman was allowed to see; reminiscent, I suppose of the Garrick Club’s long-standing preference for a male only space. Three cups of tea later, I was still pondering the issue. To what extent should an alien culture’s preferences be respected a thousand or more miles away and years after those cultural ideas held sway? Do modern Igbos share similar prejudices, and would discrimination be the answer rather than a blanket ban on the female gaze—the solution lying perhaps in preventing Igbo women from seeing said masks instead of women in general?

And how far should respect for other cultures go? A relativist might argue that all cultures should carry equal weight, though, to be honest I was astounded by the apology of certain Anglican clerics for past missionary endeavours. Perhaps Christ had got it wrong in exhorting his followers to preach to the far ends of the world.

Others have more robust views, arguing that some cultures are inherently superior to others. Aztec human sacrifices anyone?And if you want to ignore the relativist arguments, you can cut to the chase ie the Thucydidean observation that ‘Might is Right.’ 

This is beautifully summed up in the British experience in India. Sir Charles James Napier, Commander in Chief of British forces in India (1843-1847) made his views clear to a Hindi priest’s objection to a British law recently imposed upon them. In 1829 the British had outlawed the custom of Sutti, ie the burning to death of a man’s widow.

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them, and confiscate their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national custom.”

And yet, despite all this: the twitch of annoyance and the thoughts that followed, I may have been misled, barking up a tree that didn’t exist. 

Soon after the article was published, the Pitt Rivers’ Museum denied its veracity. 

They claimed the mask in question is in storage and there is no record of it ever having been put on public display. It also denied that it is working with groups to ensure that objects are ‘selectively displayed,’ as the article claimed, though its alternative explanation: “We are working with groups to allow them to decide how their own cultures are represented,” amounts to much the same thing. 

In this age of post truth, it depends upon who to believe, or who you wish to believe. 

Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Display the Igbo Mask and have done with it.