Paper short abstract:

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Paper long abstract:

Much favoured by french africanist anthropologists, the Dogon people of Mali are one of the most famous ethnic groups in West Africa and represent for the tourists the model of an ideal culture, miraculously sheltered in the faults of vast cliffs from any outside influence. This renown mainly derives from the discourse of researchers, who tirelessly upkeep the idea of an immutable society, using generic terms and the ethnographic present tense. But it derives equally from the spectacular masked dances which, since the investigations first carried out between 1931 and 1938 until the present day, have continuously drawn the attraction of white people, and more particularly of ethnologists and tourists who nowadays invade the village of Sangha to watch the masked dances. By studying how masks are modified, we are able to show to which extent ethnography and tourism might affect the meaning and the shape of objects in site. Some masks that can be termed ancient, as opposed to those which have only recently appeared in the dances, mimic mythical events, conjuring up the beginnings of creation. However, while calling to mind the basic cultural change values through the repetition of ancestral gestures, the masks dances present a constant renewal as much in their themes as in their forms. The various cultural contacts experienced by the Dogon people have left their mark, from the earlier contacts with neighbouring populations (the Peuhl masks, the muslim marabout…) to the more recent one with white people (policemen, tourist and anthropologist). This cultural evolution not only affects the shapes of the masks, but also their dramatic representation. Far from being fixed, the highly dynamic nature of masks allows a continuous negociation of tradition, whereas the conception that Westerners have of these objects is radically opposed to this vitality. The essential argument of French anthropology presented mythology as the key to understand any cultural component of dogon society. Seen as illustrations of myths, the masks constituted a coherent system inferring the idea of immutability. In the light of an unchanging mythology, they lost their living historical reality and became a timeless object. It is from this perspective that it was displayed in french museums, ethnographers and curators having worked closely together. Subsequently, tourists went to look at masks at work on site. Promoters of tourism have reprocessed the archetypical image modelled by anthropologists. Thus, the Sangha villagers have to produce dances adapted for the visitor's expectations, where every trace of European influence is eliminated, and no "new" mask is displayed. However, this process of erasing cultural evolution, self-evident when the villagers dance for the tourist, is becoming distinctive of the ritual dances currently performed in Sangha. Effectively, in various ceremonies performed in the last years, the masks did not display any new innovations, rather they nowadays reproduced the earliest models. Yet, in the field of sculpture, artistic expressions is full of life. Compared with this formal innovations, the evolution of mask-making seems to be jammed. The financial impact of the tourism, added to the inscription of the Dogon country on the list of the Heritage of Humanity in 1993, quickly led the villagers to create spaces of authenticity. By building socially their authenticity, Dogon fed the patrimonialization of their culture and favored the transformation in emblems of certain behavior or certain objects. Throughout the tourist ways, the anthropological research was translated in a scenic representation of the culture. It thus opened spaces of patrimonialization invested by the foreigners as by the Dogon. Ritual and tourist stages feed mutually. Without claiming thus that Dogon would have absorbed the ethnological image and would passively have become identified with it, we can show that this last one drove the perception and the construction of their own heritage, notably by means of the tourist activities.