First ColumnAuthor(s): NTUSource: Africa Today, Vol. 11, No. 9 (Nov., 1964), p. 2Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184566 .

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first column.

POLITICIANS ARE WISE to forbid humor from intrudirig into their affairs. Should they stop waving the flag even for a moment, they run the risk of turning into vaudevillians. Nothing illustrates this better than candidates on the stump. Do they tell us to vote for them because they are richer, more ambitious, and better organized than we? Of course not. They would rather hint that the Lord has annointed them or that their wives will not embarrass us before foreigners.

But professors . . . why should they take themselves so seriously. Academia, after all, is not a conspiracy. It is only a disease. We know. We have just returned from the annual African Studies Association Conference, this year held in Chicago. And we neither entered nor left laughing.

Take 300 or 400 academicians. Place them in one room, beneath convention hotel chandeliers, seated on lightweight metal chairs. Ask them to discuss: "African Studies-Where Are We Going?"

Result? Instant sleep. No one, it seemed, gave two hoots where African studies were going. More to the point-where was each partici- pant going? On another field trip? Very well, then. This year's foundation fashion calls for the platoon system. Gone are the days of one man and his dog. It's teamwork that counts ... historians, anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, enough wives to go around and five million dollars.

The fad, we concede, has some merit in some cases. But what happens to the man who prefers to spend a year or two abroad, putter- ing as his pleases. He's on his feet, in front of his colleagues, re-wording the case for the inter-disciplinary approach, sounding not unlike a man randomly stringing together phrases from a text-book index.

Then there's the man intent on making a little professional head- way right at home. He's natural-ly writing a book. It's wonderful to go to a conference because one meets so many people writing books. Chances are 10 to 1 that the paper one has just heard read in deadly monotone is a vital chapter from that book. And from the Foreword to Appendix, one can be sure that the book will concede nothing- to style and less to art.

In spite of its pretenses, modern scholarship is a young tree whose roots are in the soil of 19th-century German university tradition. Thus along with their more useful contributions to learning, these teu- tonic savants passed to our own a solemnity, pomposity, and mock- impartiality in which humor could scarce survive.

How much our scholars have missed by immunizing themselves from the Gallic tradition. We recall fondly, for example, the "Souvenir Entomologique" of Henri Fabre, in which he commented on the humble dung-beetle in the following words:

"They are the sedulous guests of our herds, for which reason sev- eral of them emit a mild flavor of benzoic acid, the aromatic of the sheepfolds. Their pastoral habits have impressed the nomenclators, who, too often, alas, careless of euphony, have changed their note this time and headed their descriptions with such names as Meli- baeus, Tityrus, Amyntas, Corydon, Mopsus and Alexis. We have here the whole series of bucolic denominations made famous by the poets of antiquity. Virgil's eclogues have lent their vocabulary for the dung-beetles' glorification."

Messieurs les Africanists, hear us. If dung-beetles once merited such tender words, surely you could use just a little more care when drawing up that paper on "Vengeance Symbols in Certain West African Pot Decorations." And once in a while, smile.

NTU

AFRIC A TODAY

November 1964-Vol. Xl, No. 9 Editor: Collin Gonze Assistant Editor: Catharine Raymond Contributing Editors: Robert Browne, Mary Benson, Mark Cohen, Stanley Diamond, Elizabeth Landis, Hugh H. Smythe, Sheldon Weeks, Peter Weiss.

Accra, An Informal Profile of Ghana's Capital ..................... 4

Martin Legassick Nigeria: Background of a Critical

Election .....................7 Akintunde Emiola

South Africa: ANC Leaders Hanged.... 7 Mary-Louise Hooper

De Gaulle or Mao Tse-tung ................ 10 Simon Malley

POETRY A. C. Jordan

BOOKS The Quiet Liberians .................... 12

Peter Schwab An African Inventory .................... 13

Schofield Coryell Novels From Two Coasts .................... 14

Sheldon G. Weeks Historians With Spade and Ears ........ 15

Hugh H. Smythe

Though the limbo dancer on this month's cover may seem suspiciously West Indian, artist-designer Sylvia Roth insists that the dance is just as popular in Accra clubs.

Published monthly except July and August by the American Committee on Africa, Inc. Subscriptions: One year, $5.00; two years, $9.50; three years, $13.50. Students: one year $2.00. Foreign (except Canada and Pan Amer- ica) add $1.00 per year. Sterling zone checks accepted. Advertising: Rates on request. Change of Address: Notify four weeks in advance, advising old and new address. Un- solicited manuscripts will not be returned un- less requested and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Second class postage paid at New York, NY. Copyright 0 1964 by American Committee on Africa, Inc., 211 East 43rd Street, New York 17. N. Y. TN 7-8733

2 AFRICA TODAY

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