GERMAN philosopher Georg Hegel’s dismissal of Africa as a continent not worth reflecting upon has clung like an ineradicable stain.There “is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character” he says of the African subject. “This continent is no historical part of the world.”Hegel’s insistence in removing Africa from consideration is rather like the rapist denying the existence of his rape victim, because of course Africa — purportedly without substance and value — was and remains an object of exploitation.By selecting the words of Hegel to conclude her film entitled Original Sin, Ayana V Jackson forcefully returns us to a primal scene of repression. In concluding his vile and toxically prejudicial position, Hegel states: “At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again.” But as Sigmund Freud has reminded us, whatever is repressed has the uncanny ability to resume centre stage, and so it does in Jackson’s mini-retrospective at Gallery Momo in Cape Town.Th...
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