Absconding in plain sight: The Ghanian Receptacles of Proverbs Revisited.

This article discusses the art of concealment in abebuu adekai (literally "receptacles of proverbs"), better known internationally as "fantasy coffins," and the way in which it contributes to shaping political thought and action. Although most literature on abebuu adekai tends to present them as direct symbols of the profession or the aspirations of the deceased, in reality, as fieldwork has revealed, motivations for their production and use appear to be much more complex and articulated. In order to begin to unravel this complexity, in this article I will follow a specific itinerary. First, I will give a brief historical account of the nineteenth century in Ghana, a time in which the political message conveyed by the coffins became instrumental to the preservation and concealment of local funeral practices. I will then explain the ways in which these practices had to be (and still have to be) kept secret and discuss how fantasy coffins contribute to maintaining a certain degree of secrecy. In section three, I will focus on ethnographic cases in which the rich iconography of adekai plays a crucial role in the success of these artifacts and the way they operate in a local context. By examining the "process" of the funerary ritual of which they are part, it is possible to see how particular symbols perform a political function. In this process, coffin images are not isolated from their context, and their meanings emerge as representational acts in motion that often involve substitution and contradiction. In section four, I will present the adeka as a "site of transgression" of social norms. In this case, the coffin can challenge traditional hierarchy, invoking and even helping generate power and authority. Finally, in the last section, I will explain how the adeka itself, as a product of negotiation among family members, conveys complex messages that contribute to the transformation of the social identity of the deceased and his family. I speak of abebuu adeka as an "object-image," because it is through its own materiality and appearance that the object is "celui qui fait image. And if, as Georges Didi-Huberman states, there cannot be an image without imagination, then a process of coalescence is at work among the terms in the field. For Didi-Huberman, visual representation has an "underside" in which seemingly intelligible forms lose their clarity and defy rational understanding (2005). The adeka present in funerary ceremonies indirectly refer back to the economic structure, the sociopolitical history, and the forms of material life of the Ga. These images become essential strategic tools for manipulating life, its codes, and its rules. In many cases they appear to be conditioned more by a popular ideology of death as a means to access productive resources than by the "traditional" and/or Christian religious models with which they are associated.