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- Convenor:
-
Sara Marzagora
(SOAS, University of London)
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- Location:
- C2.01
- Start time:
- 28 June, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel aims at analysing the evolution, in terms of literary structure and social function, of African oral literatures, and ultimately aims at exploring the role they can play in the development of African states and communities.
Long Abstract:
For a long time African oral traditions were considered residuals of a pre-modern past. They were mostly analysed from an anthropological point of view, as disclosing a communal cultural imagination. From the 1970s onwards scholars have called for a deep reconsideration of such early assumptions. Anthropologists started advocating an interpretation of oral tradition as individual artistic creations, rather than reflections of a homogeneous collective culture. Similarly, scholars of literature have started questioning the conception of literature as eminently written (and Western), and began acknowledging the high level of literary accomplishment of certain oral traditions.
Recent studies all highlight the dynamism of these traditions. Far from succumbing to the cultural alienation instilled by Western colonialism, many African oral traditions have adapted to the new social environment of the colonial state first, and the independent state afterwards. Many genres incorporated exogenous elements without losing their traditional artistic identity. And not only have they adapted: they have often retained a very strong social function. From time to time, oral literature proved able to influence the people's political opinions, to voice the people's views and grievances, to support one or the other leader, to reinforce or negotiate the cultural features of their communities, to define the social identity of the individual.
This panel explores how artists renegotiated their own social function in 21st century African societies, and how they creatively reinvented their literary traditions in order to adapt them to mutated historical circumstances.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sara Marzagora (SOAS, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
The paper maps out the status of Amharic oral literature research, and analyses the challenges and opportunities faced by Amharic oral literature in 21st century Ethiopia. The focus will be on two genres of praise poetry (fukkära and qärärto) and on the figure of Ethiopian professional singers (azmari).
Paper long abstract:
Throughout the continent, debates around the fate of oral literature are extensive; pessimistic positions coexist with more optimistic ones. The paper relates these pan-continental debates on the future of African oral traditions to the case study of Amharic oral literature. Most genres of oral poetry in Amharic have non-professional performers alongside professional ones, azmaris. Azmaris are specialised singers, experts in various types of songs (work songs, funeral songs, wedding songs) and able to immediately “apply gə’təm [poetic verses] to a melody and sing or recite a song on a given subject” (Lykowska, 2005:778). Azmaris are commonly described as the main repositories of the Amharic oral heritage and they are generally recognized to have played a significant role in the history of the country. Among the genres performed by azmaris, two appear to be the most prestigious, popular and liked by the public: fukkära (heroic recitals) and qärärto (war songs). They are two forms of praise poetry, which the azmari usually performed in times of political or military conflict. Both the genres of fukkära and qärärto and the figure of the azmari have underwent significal changes in the last decades. The paper will assess these changes, mapping out sociological aspects of Amharic oral literature and their evolution in history.
Jonathon Repinecz (George Mason University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes how the work of Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop mobilizes the potential of oral traditions to be self-reflexive, dynamic, and critical of the modern world.
Paper long abstract:
Outside of anthropology, the place of oral traditions in West African cultural inspiration is often either neglected or flattened. This is especially true in scholarly discussions of written literature. "Traditionality" is construed as an object of wistful reminiscence, the authentic but dying remedy for modernity's discontents, or as the proof of Africa's specifity. Far from embracing these views, contemporary practitioners of written literature in West Africa explore, question, and adapt the relevance of oral narrative traditions in particular, and the category of "traditionality" more generally. Rather than framing this category as a "new nativism" (Mbembe) or a return to authenticity, the goal of writers like Boubacar Boris Diop of Senegal is to show that such a source of cultural inspiration has always been capable of change, social and political criticism, and self-reflexivity, while mobilizing its often subversive potential in their writing. Diop aligns the critical power of Senegalese oral epics and folktales with that of the written novel genre, long associated with a certain literary modernity because of its power to challenge dominant cultural discourses, practices, and regimes of knowledge. This paper proposes to identify a "modernist" literary approach to traditionality, exemplified by Diop, which draws inspiration from anthropological insights into the dynamism of oral narrative traditions. In this aesthetic, tradition and modernity become not polarized opposites, but mutually constitutive terms. Examples from Diop's Wolof-language novel Doomi Golo [The Monkey's Offspring] (2003) and French-language novel Le Cavalier et son ombre [The Knight and his Shadow] (1997) will illuminate this analysis.
Samuel Ndogo (Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I analyse Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Dreams in a Time of War to demonstrate how autobiographical writings employ memory—individual and communal—as narrative strategies in the reconstruction of the history of postcolonial Kenya.
Paper long abstract:
Starting from the premise that the genre of the autobiography is part and parcel of the cultural imagination in the postcolonial discourses, this paper explores the various ways through which Maathai and Ngugi utilise memory not only in remembering the past, but also as a trope in narrating the story of the self as well as that of the postcolonial Kenyan nation.
Drawing from Ngugi's concept of memory as advanced in Re-membering Africa (2009), I show how the two writers variously appropriate the oral history in telling their personal as well as communal experiences. Finally, I discuss specific aspects of the oral tradition such as myths, legends, songs, the epic, characterisation, and how they are integrated as modes of narration in the respective memoirs.