MoMA Displays Ingenious African Alphabet Designed To Prevent Environmental Crisis

Frdric Bruly Boubabr, a 1952 visitor to a small Cte dIvoire village, discovered some pebbles that transformed his view of the history and culture of his people. After being enlightened about the African origins and history of Egyptian civilization, Bouabr noticed the strangely shaped stones looked like hieroglyphics. He realized that he had found fossilized remains from an ancient script and set out to find out what they meant.

Bouabr, a clerk in the French colonial administration was exposed to ethnography. This led him to believe that the stones could have been deciphered by studying the traditional lifeways of his West African Bt. He was a self-taught artist and could depict the Bt environment from animals and plants to farming implements to musical instruments. Each subject was assigned a different sound based on its name in Bt. Bouabr was inspired to create a method to write down Bt legends, proverbs, and proverbs from oral tradition.

Bouabr’s life was occupied by the effort. The result was a set 449 hand-drawn pitograms that are the central point of a fascinating, inspiring story. Bouabr retrospectiveThe Museum of Modern Art. The museum was completed in 1991. Alphabet BtThis is a masterpiece in draftsmanship. The artist created a remote society that felt familiar to non-indigenous persons using only colored pencil and a ballpoint pen on scavenged cardsstock. At the same time, he brought numinousness into the African quotidian. These qualities, which are deeply informed and free from ethnographic exoticism, also inspire his depictions and illustrations of Bt people. His work is so captivating that it is easy to forget his larger ambitions.

Bouabr was however clear about the purpose of his syllabary. This is evident in his first description of it, which he sent in a 1957 letter to the head of French Institute of Black Africa. He wrote: I have found signs that strike me to be useful. The signs are easy to read, and the signs can be used to write in my language. He could also use it for writing in other languages of his own ken.

Thodore Monod, a French scholar, was the director of the institutes. He wrote Bouabr back to request more information. Bouabr was presented with a thick notebook that contained 401 symbols. Each symbol was a simplified version of one of Bouabr’s drawings. They represented all of the Sounds of Bt speechEach is based on the principle rebus as demonstrated by Bouabrs meticulous transcriptions of Bt aphorisms. The work of Bouabr was published in Monod’s institutes bulletin the year following. This publication was used to promote Bouabr’s writing system as he refined it and applied it to oral traditions.

Bouabr’s lifetime was not the best time for the syllabary to be used. People wondered why he needed to create a system when they could learn hundreds of characters. Bouabr had a convincing answer. It was almost fifty years after their correspondence began. I would lie if I said that the white male does not rule the world. I am a black male, I was born into the world. However, there is a dominant race in the field culture, science. You have travelled the globe because of writing. Writing is what made you who you are.

The Bt syllabary served two purposes. It was a tool to accurately capture the sounds of the Bt language and for recording oral traditions with phonetic precision. It also served as an expression for linguistic autonomy that countered colonial rule over Bt culture. Other indigenous peoples have also created writing systems with similar motivations in an effort to claim orthographic sovereignty. Some of these writing systems include OsageThey are still widely used today. The world is finally getting to Bouabr’s sociopolitical insights.

Bouabrs system also serves another purpose, something he may not have fully understood, but which is becoming more apparent in today’s environment, where humans are increasingly disconnected from nature. Each sign in his Syllabary is filled with traditional ecological knowledge. Bouabr’s system of writing was developed from careful observation of his surroundings. This allows him to preserve and recall that world each time someone writes, whether it is recording an old story or communicating a new idea.

Consider the concerns Plato had back in 370 BCE about writing to understand the significance of Bouabrs accomplishment. The following is the PhaedrusPlato tells the story about Theuth, an Egyptian god who was believed to have invented letters. Theuth, the Egyptian god Thamus, showed his creation to Thamus, the divine ruler of Egypt. He claimed that letters would make Egyptians more intelligent and better remember things. Thamus was skeptical. He replied that this discovery of yours would cause forgetfulness in the minds of the learners. They will believe in external written characters, and forget about themselves.

As technology has made writing more efficient over the past two millennia, Thamuss perspective is more apparent. We are ever more able store what we see for later recollection. This means that we lose direct contact with our knowledge of this world. We lose the ability react to changing circumstances in the moment and respond with the wisdom of lived experiences. This responsiveness is possible in oral culture such as Bt because the minds of the people have the memories from the past.

Because each Bt icon is a memoronic, Bouabrs characters stand out from the alphabets that have alienated our environment. When a character appears on the page it evokes a particular aspect of the West African landscape, or the Bt way to live. Every word is a reflection of the world. Parallels might be drawn between the twofold meanings of proverbs found within many oral traditions. These proverbs use traditional ecological knowledge allegorically and metaphorically to comment upon everyday concerns, rehearsing this knowledge whenever commonplace social circumstances arise.

Literacy in Bouabrs’ syllabary, like the meanings of these proverbs is dependent on ecological literacy and cultural literacy. Each rebus represents an animal and implement that must be known for the rebus itself to be understandable. Writing is a way to reinforce traditional knowledge and it also helps you retain it. This perspective makes the abundance of Bt characters an asset, rather than a problem.

Bouabr once said writing fights against forgetting. Plato might have agreed to see writing as Bouabr intended. On the other hand, Plato might not have realized the mnemonic significance of Theuths letters. These would presumably have been hieroglyphics evoking the Nile. The Egyptians were ahead their time. Problems arise when symbols replace experience and format it to be archived.

To counteract this tendency and to reactivate the memory for ecological responsiveness, each population needs a set similar to what Bouabr provided to Bt. Bouabr was generous in offering his symbols to humankind in other languages. But each community must discover its signs by careful observation of the surrounding landscape in order to have full power. This collective composition can help contribute to ecological knowledge in this moment by all keeping up with climate change and investing in its dissemination as informed participants. The symbolisms can be used in everyday living to help reestablish the memory of the past, inside our own minds.

The scripts that emerge may be integrated into digital space by making Unicode characters accessible to the public, as Bouabrs intellectual descendants are. Strive to be a Bt.. Digitalization opens up new avenues for sharing that can surpass the cloudy mnemonic haze. Imagine an atlas full of proverbs and allegories written in the local language of nature. Imagine a planetary dictionary that allows local ecological insights to be translated and cross-referenced. The wisdom can travel with the environment and peoples as they migrate with climate change. The mnemonic vocabulary can be transformed into a Rosetta for global survival.