Paper long abstract:

The earth granaries of the Dogon from Mali constitute a prominent characteristic of their built environment. These gendered domestic containers that either form the compound enclosure or stand individually within it, objectify local epistemologies about the self, the society and the environment life cycle. By looking at daily bodily storing practice in millet granaries which are called guyo ana, I examine the dialectic of the 'full' and 'empty' that generates an ontology of hope and scarcity in a particular context of food shortage. Beyond its remarkable conservation capacities, the millet granary as the property of men holds in a manner of a Pandora's box, secret knowledge about its content. Once opened and emptied, fear and despair are released out of the container but hopes for a future harvest of plenty always remain at the bottom. I propose that Dogon earth granaries as symbols of life and death materialise a particular philosophy of containment that is grounded into ambivalent hopes and delusions towards nature as well as expectations towards Western technology to re-fill bodies and containers.