Masquerade as Being, Not Dressing: Re‑thinking “Costume” in African Performance Ontologies

Abstract

This article interrogates the category of "costume" in African performance traditions by arguing that masquerade ensembles function not as external dress but as ontological media through which other-than-human agencies are made present. Focusing on West African cases especially Yoruba Egungun and Epa, Igbo mmanwu, and Dan/Mau stilt spirits, the paper challenges the widely assumed semiotic model in which “costume” merely signifies a character or role. Instead, it proposes that the masquerade complex (mask, textiles, movement, sound, secrecy) effects an ontological shift in which the performer is not perceived as "wearing" a disguise but as becoming, or being displaced by, a spirit presence. Theoretically, the article combines Karin Barber's account of African popular arts and coalescing identities, John Picton's question “what's in a mask?", Victor Turner's social drama, Richard Schechner's restored behaviour, Achille Mbembe's reflections on corporeality and power, and Judith Butler's concept of performativity to analyse masquerade as a practice that exceeds Western costume theory. Methodologically, it reads ethnographic, historical and philosophical materials against performance studies debates on embodiment and representation. The article concludes that the term "costume" is conceptually inadequate for many African performance traditions because it presupposes a subject-object dualism that local ontologies explicitly suspend. It calls for a shift from costume-centred to ontology-centred vocabularies, for instance, from "dressing up" to “becoming otherwise" in order to take seriously African theories of personhood, spirit, and materiality embedded in masquerade practice.