Ramon Sarró, Inventing an Alphabet: Writing, Art, and Kongo Culture in the DRC.

Abstract

This is a truly innovative ethnography about writing; a worthy anthropological response to Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion. It centers on the encounter between two marginal creators: a brilliant geometrician from Africa, and a seasoned ethnographer who moves way beyond the safe reaches of common anthropological theory to deal with one of the world’s largest questions: what does writing do