ETHIOPIAN MODERNISM: A SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty ...

318 Pages·2010·4.05 MB·English

ETHIOPIAN MODERNISM: A SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE

A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell Univeristy
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

By
Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis
February 2010
© 2010 Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis
ETHIOPIAN MODERNISM: A SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE
Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis, Ph.D.
Cornell University, 2010

Recognizing that the beginning of the discourse of modern Ethiopian history is
of urgent concern, this dissertation examines Ethiopian modernism’s strategy, its limits,
structures of exclusion and the totality of this experience. Focusing on prominent artists
who are widely believed to be the pioneers of Ethiopian modernism, this research
reveals the discursive and philosophical limitations and drawbacks of Ethiopian
modernism, and its interpretation in the Ethiopian imaginary. Engaging with non-
Western contexts of modernity, it interrogates modern Ethiopian art within the debates
and parameters of African modernism, and thus establishes a space to analyze specific
visual languages of Ethiopian modernist expressions. It evaluates how Ethiopian artists
engaged principal questions of the meanings of Ethiopian culture within the matrix of
modern art.
In relation to such imperatives and concerns, this dissertation raises the
following questions: How did the meanings of Ethiopian literary texts and popular
languages perform in articulating Ethiopian modernity and modernism, and how did this
discourse relate to the hegemonic narratives of Western modernity and modernism?
How did these texts and languages manifest themselves in diverse temporal and spatial
situations of Ethiopian modernism? How did power relations condition the production,
dissemination and reception of these texts and linguistic expressions? By positing such
questions, this dissertation not only examines the intellectual and cultural contexts of
the making of Ethiopian modernity, but more importantly, looks at Ethiopian
modernism along with its local and global trajectories and contentions.
This research is also a first attempt in Ethiopian scholarship that historicizes the
making of Ethiopian modernity and modernism from perspectives of discourses and
cultural practices. It investigates the nature and parameters of Ethiopian modernity and
modernism through the linguistic complexities of popular language and literature that
play out in forms of collective expression and performance. Picking up on diverse,
tenuous and culture specific notions of the production of discourse, such as the notion
of the ‘nation’, it examines the texture of the beginning articulation of Ethiopian
modernity and its subsequent trajectory. It explores Ethiopian modernity through a
critical framework that intersects with local and global discourses of modernity.
Consequently, it interrogates the implications of the canonical meaning of Ethiopian
modernity and modernism as it covers the assumptions and heuristics that have shaped
the grand tradition of Ethiopian political thought.
Ultimately, this dissertation argues for an alternative Ethiopian modernism that
critically interrogates how the history and cultures of the non-Western ‘Other’ engage
the larger context of modernism. It emphasizes that the meaning of Ethiopian
modernism can only be consequential if it is examined through changing conditions of
the ideologies of formal and conceptual representations that fortify such changes
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

For many Ethiopians who escaped the Marxist junta’s slaughter of thousands of
young people and settled in the West, the notion of citizenship and belonging to their
country had permeated itself in an unstable and paradoxical identity. On the one hand,
they could not escape recalling their nation’s recent past of trauma and anguish and on
the other they wanted to deny this contemporary tragedy to give order and structure to
the place they have imagined at a distance. The terms and conditions of their identity
required an imaginative way of dealing with loss. Conceptions were made and remade
with unremitting rupture and continuation, and they constantly negotiated a way
through varieties of memory, only to end up creating an even more increasingly
fragmented and fractured identity.
While their idealistic dreams faded at a young age as purges, torture and witch
hunts forced them to find refuge elsewhere, most of them struggled not to be reminded
of the cause of their predicament and instead found refuge in a romanticized memory of
the past that gave them temporary solace from their quandary. For many of them, this
was the only way they could sustain citizenship and belonging to a nation that in reality
they no longer knew. Many guarded these memories with silence. Elizabeth Giorgis
was a product of this displaced generation of young Ethiopians who immigrated to the
United States at a young age fearing persecution, genocide and torture.
Although her adopted homeland gave her sanctuary and protection, she lived as
a dislocated soul for twenty-seven years remembering and at the same time denying the
trauma and genocide of her past. Her birth place was hence imagined and frozen in
time. This conflict prevented her from seeing the actual dynamics that had shaped her
country during her long absence. 1995 was her first attempt to return to Ethiopia after
twenty years of absence. She went to Ethiopia to be confronted by a nation’s reality that
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had gone through detrimental transformations. She went back three times after that and
with each visit she managed to shatter the fantasies of a romanticized past that had
burdened her for so long. Each visit removed the ambiguous experiences of diaspora
and instilled in her that she could actually contribute to the well being of her country if
she returned. September 11 also became a decisive factor. It was a day that forced her
to deploy herself to explicit and instrumental purposes that could serve her country. She
was one of those people who worked at the World Trade Center and was in the building
on that day of mayhem. She was one of the fortunate ones who escaped but not without
witnessing the loss of many colleagues and along with their loss, a déjà’s vu reminder
of the ultimate cruelty of mankind. She left Ethiopia during the time of the ‘Red Terror’
of the military junta. The ‘Red Terror’ of the Marxist junta lasted throughout the 1970s
and human rights group say that 50,000 people were killed. Indeed, September 11
brought back many painful memories, but this time memory desired to be instrumental
for change. She decided to embark on a profession that would enhance social change
through creativity and cultural discourse.
She had finished both her undergraduate and graduate studies in the United
States. She had worked as a banker for over seventeen years in the United States; as an
Assistant Vice President for Bank of America in Northern California and as Assistant
Vice President Loan trader for Mizuho Corporate Bank (Japan’s largest bank and the
world’s largest bank) in New York. She abandoned banking after September 11 and
acknowledging that cultural and political identity were intricately connected in the part
of the world that she came from, decided to pursue a graduate degree in Museum
Studies at New York University, hoping to manage a cultural institution in Ethiopia.
She realized that the production of institutions that engaged in discourses of culture and
history were crucial not only to positive progress against violence which still engulfs
Ethiopia, but also to the political health and development process of her country. After
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graduation, she was offered a job to head the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis
Ababa University, the premiere research center, museum and art gallery of the country.
She moved back to Ethiopia in 2004. Indeed, she could not reconcile the
massive poverty and the breakdown of communities that had in the main formed the
context of her country during her long absence. Her move nevertheless made her realize
the ironies of the diasporic self that entangled itself with a romanticized notion of the
past and that consistently failed to recognize a recent history of debt, mass migration
and civil war. During her three years tenure at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, she
had turned the institute from being a purely academic center to a vibrant venue of
dialogue.
She again returned to school, this time to Cornell University to pursue her PhD
in History of Art and to consequently fill a gap in the scholarship of Ethiopian art
history. She returned to the institute after two years academic leave and currently serves
as its director. She hopes to publish the outcome of this dissertation to serve as an ideal
supplement to her dream of cultural discourse and dialogue, which she believes can
significantly contribute to the challenges facing peace, cooperation and stability.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I will always be proud of being a student of Cornell University’s History of Art
and Visual Studies graduate program, and I appreciate the financial support of the
University that funded my graduate study. I owe gratitude to many people who
involved themselves in helping me undertake this dissertation. I wish to thank
Professors Salah Hassan, Susan Buck-Morss and Iftikhar Dadi for supervising my
graduate work. This dissertation would not have been possible without the expert
guidance of their advice. I particularly want to thank Professor Salah Hassan, the chair
of my dissertation committee, for his encouragement and trust in me. His never ending
support has been there since the early 1990s when I started to write about Ethiopian art.
Had I not made the acquaintance of Professor Salah Hassan, I would not have pursued
my graduate study. It was he who persuaded me to advance my studies, and I cannot
thank him enough for his friendship, trust and support.
My field work could not have been possible without the support of the staff of
the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. I am thankful for having received much assistance
from the librarians of this esteemed institute where I was fortunate enough to be its
director during the course of this research. Many people on the faculty and staff of
Addis Ababa University assisted and encouraged me in various ways during the course
of this project. I am especially grateful to Professors Andreas Eshete and Yonas
Admassu for all that they have taught me. Finally, this dissertation would not have been
possible without the support and encouragement of my brother Getinet W Giorgis who
has been my enduring source of strength throughout the frustration and loneliness that
has at times accompanied this research. Despite his grim battle with cancer, my
brother’s care helped me overcome many setbacks and stay focused on my graduate
study. He has been a constant source of love and concern, and I devote this dissertation
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to him. Notwithstanding all the assistance provided by my dissertation committee
members, I alone remain responsible for the content of this work including any errors
or omissions which may unwittingly remain.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biographical Sketch iii
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 20
Earlier Articulations of Modernity:
Emperor Haile Selassie’s Education Policy and The Fine Art School
Earlier Articulations of Modernity:
Proclamations of War (ketet), Berhanena Selam and Gebre Hiwot Baykedagn
The Space of Modernity in Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia
Scholarship, Education and the Rhetoric of Modernity
Chapter 2 75
Modernist Spirits: The Images of Skunder Boghossian
The Paris Years
Ethiopian Christian Traditional Art
The Ethiopia Years (1963-1969)
The United States Years (1969-2003)
Chapter 3 131
Between the Visual and the Text:
Ethiopian Modernity and Modernism, an Alternative Reading
Gebre Kristos Desta: The Painter Poet
Wossene Kosrof
Abdurahman Sheriff
Chapter 4 185
The Allegory of ‘Kitsch’: Artistic Production in Ethiopia (1974-1991)
Ethiopian Artistic Production from 1974-1991: Socialist Realism?
‘Kitsch’ and Modernism
Ethiopian Kitsch: 1974-1991
Chapter 5 231
Contemporary Ethiopian Art:
The Dimension Group, the Ras Mekonnen Group, and the Works of Bisrat
Shebabaw, Bekele Mekonnen, Behailu Bezabih, Salem Mekuria and Michael Tsegaye
The Dimension and Ras Mekonnen Group
Bisrat Shedder
Bekele Mekonnen
Behailu Bezabih
New Media Works:
The Works of Salem Mekuria: Deluge and Ruptures: A Many Sided Story
The Photographic Images of Michael Tsegaye

Conclusion 294
Appendix 296
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