Cosmologies, Opacity and Inventions: Notes on Sela Adjei and the Ewe Vodu Art

How do we know? This essay considers how we know Art (or think we know Art) and our evaluation of it. In our positivist mode, we look for patterns, paint broadly and impose totalising deductions. What sort of epistemic violence do we commit? How do we theorise traditions, even those that do not appear to have genealogies? Rather, how do we render genealogies illegible to theory? How do we theorise a tradition on its own terms, in spite and despite of others? Using a deconstructionist approach, this essay considers the aforementioned questions.