ABSTRACT
The periodic renovation of Abakua altar objects maintains their beauty and spiritual radiance. Renovation may also include the "recharging" of the contents of some objects with spiritually imbued substances. The altar objects are considered to be the permanent living repositories of ancestral presences; the quality and effect of adornment indexes their spiritual force, radiating "the light inside." The Abakua plante ceremony appears as a "theatrical" representation or "commemoration" of the founding myth, cast against the scrim of a light historical backdrop. African Diaspora studies of "syncretism" or "creolization" might benefit from some writings in historical anthropology. The social and cultural productions, or "symbolic practices," of subaltern groups within hegemony, are, in effect, "struggles for possession of the sign." Many Abakua objects and beliefs have been individually illustrated, analyzed, and interpreted in several classic studies. Abakua things and meanings putatively derive from the Ngbe/Ekpe societies of the Cross River Delta region of West Africa.
