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Abstract
The study of nsibidi, one of Africa's native writing systems, has mainly taken two routes — the taxonomic, which is concerned with the classification of nsibidi signs, and the genealogical, which attempts to resolve the question of where and how nsibidi originated. This essay undertakes a semiotic and literary analysis of nsibidi as an influential language of the crossroads. In modern Nigerian literature, for instance, the poetics of “nsibidi” may be said to include a weighty concern with cosmologies or trajectories of origin and the representation or renewal of an existential drama rooted in a myth of the crossroads.
Keywords:: nsibidi; Ekpe masquerade cult; the traveling sign; oral performance; modern Nigerian visual arts; modern Nigerian literature
Published Online: 2010-11-04
Published in Print: 2010-October
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
