Configurations of the African Mask: Forms, Functions and the Transcendental
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper discusses forms, functions and the phenomenon of the transcendental as configurations of the African mask. In the discourse, it has been argued that stylistic nuances determined by cultural beliefs of the producing community and the individual vision of the artist give rise to forms, which have variously been described as grotesque, refined, abstract and realistic. The paper insists that in appreciating the African mask, its physical properties are essential and help to a large extent to explain their meaning and significance. A relationship, therefore, exists between the exterior forms and the inner contents and meaning within a cultural context. Beyond the superficial elements, the study acknowledges the problem of apprehending the transcendental reality of African mask in the spiritual context and suggests that the cultural sources of the transcendental potentialities, being what the people hold as beliefs should engage scholars. The paper opines that it may be better to lower scientific guards and to adopt African cultural principles, values and belief systems. It is only in this intrinsic sociological context that the supernatural potentialities inherent in African masks can be appreciated. The final submission is that the phenomenal spirituality ascribed to African masks lies within a triangulated framework boarded by form, function and the performative context. To extend the relevance of masks as treasured cultural objects in an age of globalization, the paper calls for the consideration of not only the ‘scientific’, but also cultural logic to be able to appreciate the supernatural potentialities that may be inherent in African masks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.043 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".