To understand the meanings of masks and masking in different contexts, anthropologists have first had to unlearn or decenter dominant assumptions shaped by modern, globalised worldviews.

For over two centuries, modernity, which in Western Europe is rooted in the Enlightenment and industrialisation, has seen “truth” as hidden beneath surfaces. To get to the “truth” is to move beyond deceitful or misleading appearances. To uncover it is to “unmask” things, to reveal the realities they hide beneath their surfaces.

“Unmasking” thus became the modus operandi of scientific rationality and secularism. It also became a key tactic of governance and surveillance, as state institutions became ever more preoccupied with “unmasking” criminals and illegal networks and revealing their “underground” workings.

Within this framework of modernity, actual ritual masks used in ceremonies and spiritual practices across various cultures, came to be seen as irrational. They were treated as “fetishes” which held magical power only for those people who were not yet “enlightened” by science. In Euro-American museums and art collections, masks have long been displayed not for their magic, but as detached, aesthetic surfaces, disconnected from whatever might have initially given them meaning.

Anthropologists went a step further. By researching masks and masked performances in contexts considered “non-modern”, they went as far as questioning the Western assumptions that people and objects, the ordinary and the extraordinary are separate entities. Indeed, in some cultural contexts, they are continuous with (entangled in) each other.

Contrary to modernist expectations that secular rationalism would triumph over occult logics, colonial modernity and capitalism have prompted the rise of new forms of spirituality, occultism, and witchcraft, to name only a few. Karl Marx noticed this historical twist when he described commodity fetishism: how, in capitalism, the surface of things promises consumers magically transformative power, enticing us with “metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” (163).

We see this everywhere today: in advertising, in branding, in influencer culture. Carefully curated appearances and visual styles often seem to have an almost magical pull. If what we wear, buy, and “show off” can generate real value in society, then the dominant promise of modernity (to unmask the truth beneath surfaces) has been a pretense all along. Anthropologist Sasha Newell (2012) calls this the “modernity bluff”: a pretense so deeply embedded in our common sense that it becomes real in practice.

For historical anthropologists, then, the mask in its relationship to modernity can itself become a “window” into a whole epoch, into its values and dominant orientations. As Newell puts it:

“The mask is … a paradox: at once a figure to be taken literally, and whose powers and identity are believed to be real and to influence the course of society, and at the same time a costume worn by human actors, a performance recognized by its audience as theater. We must then consider the possibility that like the ritual mask that both is and is not the ancestor it represents, the [modernity] bluff has the capacity to conjoin the real and imaginary, illusion and authenticity.” (2012: 21)

This paradox isn’t limited to the rituals where masks appear; it reflects broader cultural and historical tensions. And this ambiguity doesn’t lessen our desire to “unmask” things.

In introductory anthropology classes, students often ask: “Sure, masks are spirits for the people who use them, but what is really behind their power?” Or: “Do you believe that masks bring about or have spirits?”

These seem like perfectly reasonable questions. But what anthropologists of masks and modernity have pointed out is that we need to take a step back and ask why these questions feel obvious or important in the first place. What ways of thinking and what systems of knowledge make us ask them?

In simpler terms, unless we examine (1) the dominant belief that truth lies beneath deceitful appearances, and (2) the ongoing seductiveness of surfaces in consumer culture, we may struggle to grasp what masks actually do. Masks aren’t just about ritual or performance. They open up a way of thinking about a whole cultural and historical Zeitgeist.

Author: George-Paul Meiu

References

Marx, K. (1990). Capital Vol. I. New York: Penguin Books.

Newell, S. (2012). The Modernity Bluff: Crime, Consumption, and Citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.