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- Convenors:
-
Doseline Kiguru
(University of Bristol)
Kimingichi Wabende (University of Nairobi)
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- Stream:
- Social Anthropology
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.04
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The performance space of a ritual provides an avenue to transcend cultural boundaries, giving space to taboo topics. This panel looks at language use in rituals surrounding sex and sexualities exploring how ritual spaces provide a platform for reading changing forms of gender and power identities.
Long Abstract:
Rituals serve as a means of initiating different members of the society into the secrets of the community. They focus on various subject matters deemed important and they serve to play different social roles in the community. Mostly, they serve as markers that allow members to transit from one stage to another, they prepare members with requisite skills, vocabulary and values that go alongside the new obligation arising from their positions at different stages of life. In many African communities, the major rituals include initiation/circumcision rituals, marriage rituals, death rituals, among others. In different communities, the performance space of a ritual provides an avenue to transcend cultural boundaries and this is usually achieved through verbalisation of taboo topics such as sex and sexualities. However, the rituals take place within a gendered space and the verbalisation of the taboo topics also become gendered. This panel looks at such platforms, paying a particular interest to language use in rituals surrounding sex and sexualities, the changing nature of different cultures and their rituals, focusing not only on the traditional rituals but also looking at other emerging rituals and their spaces of performance to explore how verbalisation of taboo topics within the ritual space provides a platform for reading changing forms of gender and power identities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Important to any ritual is dance performance. This take the form of staged and sometimes erratic movements that complements a ritual event, helping to heighten the atmosphere before an actual ritual ceremony. Ugie-Olokun and Egwu Okuma dance are two of such ritual events that are highly performative
Paper long abstract:
Important to any ritual is dance performance. This takes the form of staged and sometimes erratic movements that complements a ritual event, helping to heighten the atmosphere before the actual ritual ceremony. Ugie-Olokun is performed to appreciate Olokun support in support of a successful ritual year. When the year ends well for priests and their clients, Olokun is deserving of the Ugie performances that follow. In the course of the performance, these priests occasion various movements and sounds. There is also the stewing of substances and the speaking in tensed voices, said to come with trance possession. Egwu-okuma dance performance is carried out to commemorate the founding fathers (ancestors) of the community. It is a mimicry of a war dance, and symbolize how their ancestors secured for them the community, while capturing and decapitating enemies from within and externally. The highlight of this dance performance is the display of canine jaws that symbolize the jaws and sometimes skulls of defeated enemies during the battle to secure the community.
This paper will analyze both performances as they pertain to the enactment of rituals within each community. It is the thinking that both performances culminate in a significant ritual that rejuvenate worshippers resolve to continue the veneration of Olokun, and traditional Ukwuani peoples resolve to commemorate the role their ancestors played to securing the community they now call home. In doing this, we hope to articulate the importance of performance in ritual enactment within both cultures and many other cultures in Africa.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes how Ablebe ("mature pineapple") was changed to Kusakokor ("a given cloth") in Avatime female initiation culture and compares with the Ganda Okukyalira ensiko ("visiting the bush") through the prism of changing female gender identity.
Paper long abstract:
According to African demographers and sociologists, adolescents are becoming the most vulnerable part of the society in Africa. They are increasingly exposed to opposing tendencies: tradition and modernization, involvement in the adult life of parents and the need to combine it with responsibilities in school, preserving authentic beliefs and participating in the religious life of a local church or mosque, etc. Attitudes toward puberty rites and the form of their realisation are markers of the transformation of society and the change of the gender paradigm.
In the pre-colonial time, it was the rite of passage that served as the main institution of socialisation, but since colonial times, identity issues have become more complex.
Using the examples of the Avatime and Ganda peoples in our study we describe and analyse the transformation of attitudes towards the female puberty rite, today's motivation, new spaces for performing and the forms of its conduct.
Paper short abstract:
Ritual is the mainstay of traditional African Society. The space of ritual practice is constructed in the language of maleness, thus typifying a gendered preference to the macho. Ironically, the Osiezi ritual of Nigerian Ika people is suspended for nearly forty years because the King is unmarried.
Paper long abstract:
The space of ritual in any African society is both religious and cultural. It is defined by the power and intensity of actions that is generated before, during and after a ritual performance. In the Osiezi ritual performance of the Ika people of Nigeria for instance, it is a taboo to construct the ritualised space of performance with inclusive sexuality. The language, action and practice of the ritual are bound in an exclusive masculine space that exclude any form of gendered role. Whereas, the ritual ceremony function to connect and maintain a peaceful relationship between the natural world of man/woman and the spiritual world of the ancestors for the peace and unity of Agbor people and their kingdom. This paper adopts the theory of Structural Functionalism in interrogating the sexuality clause that grounded the ritual ceremony of Osiezi for almost forty years. This research therefore questions the authenticity of biased sexuality in the ritual practice of Osiezi. It finds that even though taboo is ascribed to the issue of ritual sexuality; the space of ritual practice is only complete with the presence of both genders against the known practice of masculinity in the space of ritual.
Paper short abstract:
We explore how the Bukusu circumcision ritual influences sexuality and gender relations by examining performances associated with the ceremony. We look at the dance and the lyrical content of the music and chants to analyse the changing aspect of socialization, sexuality, and gender relations.
Paper long abstract:
Circumcision initiation rituals provide both a physical and symbolic space for transformation of the initiate from childhood to adulthood. The communal expectations of the initiate to twofold: to provide security to family and community, and on the other hand, they were also expected to join the league of those who would sire the new members of the community. As the protection role has diminished, more emphasis has been placed on the reproductive role. In this regard, the circumcision ceremonies and rituals have also evolved to pay more emphasis on the reproductive role and have become a space of enactment and representation of sexuality. This is achieved mainly through music and dance rich in different levels of sexual vocabulary in a platform that becomes temporary exempted from the society's strict moral standards regarding sex and sexuality, a subject that is traditionally considered taboo. In this ritual space, the circumcision ceremony becomes an arena for the young to be initiated into secrets of society through a performance of sexuality in a ritualized ceremony. This paper explores how the circumcision ritual among the Bukusu influences sexuality and gender relations by examining the dances, music and chants that are traditionally associated with this ceremony. It pays attention to the performance aspect of the dance and the lyrical content of the music and chants to analyse the changing aspect of socialization, sexuality, and gender relations in the community. As a transformative ritual, the paper seeks to reveal the agent of change within the ritual performance.