Research seminar with Jesse Weaver Shipley: "Routes of Rebellion: The Aesthetics of Revolution"

Abstract:

This talk explores how sonic and embodied aesthetics shape political power. On June 4, 1979 radical soldiers took over Ghana in a coup d’etat and installed the populist Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. It ruled the country for three months with a revolutionary mandate to cleanse the nation of endemic corruption and indiscipline. I show that this uprising succeeded not primarily through military tactics or propaganda but by reshaping aesthetics. Sound, in particular, was crucial to victory. The rebellion was launched by a barrage of sound across the capital Accra. At dawn, condemned rebel leader Flight Lieutenant J.J. Rawlings shocked listeners by proclaiming on the national radio he had been freed from jail and soldiers had launched a rebellion. Fighter jets roaring over the city and intermittent gunfire, fracturing normal social rhythms. Ghanaians heard and felt—rather than saw—that the country was in a moment of crisis and potential rebirth. The sounds of revolution resonated in their bodies. This coup exemplifies how contemporary politics foreground performance and haptic forms of attunement in remaking sovereignty. Power is not contested or remade through force or rational discourse but in embodied sensory modes where aesthetic positions stand for moral and legal ones.

Bio:

Jesse Weaver Shipley is an anthropologist and artist who explores the links between aesthetics and power. He is the John D. Willard Professor of African and African American Studies and Oratory at Dartmouth College in the United States. His work examines both spectacular multi-media events and mundane daily life in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Britain, and North America. His films, images, and multi-media installations experiment with storytelling and portraiture, drawing on a variety of phenomena, including analogue and digital technology, popular culture, music, theatre, urban design, labor, race, gender, and mobility. His work has shown across Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. He is the author of various articles and books including Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music and Trickster Theatre: The Poetics of Freedom in Urban Africa. He is completing a film on global fashion and book on aesthetics and revolution.