Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T17:12:18.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Lost Origins: Women and Spiritual Equality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2009

Sean Hanretta
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Get access

Summary

Moodinun ni yaxarin soron ya yi.

“Marabouts” are female persons.

– Soninke adage reported by Mamadou Diawara

The origins of social or religious movements are often elusive. Indeed, the question of origins in general typically leads to a misty terrain where it becomes difficult to determine precisely who did what, exactly which actions were decisive and where one phenomenon shades into another. Walter Benjamin went so far as to assert that while origin was “an entirely historical category,” origins could not be “discovered by the examination of actual findings” for they depended rather on the “subsequent development” of events and represented a rupture in that development rather than a smooth process of coming into being. Looked at this way, origins thwart standard methodologies; they are only constituted retrospectively, so contemporaneous sources are generally useful only as unconscious witnesses at best, and posterior sources are overdetermined by the ideological value representations of origins often attain. These problems are compounded greatly when the movement in question is small, so that the “quantum” effects of microhistorical forces amplify the usual uncertainty. Origins may thus be a matter of empirical facts, but they are not the object of positive knowledge.

These dangers notwithstanding, venturing into such uncertain realms can bring substantial rewards by offering new perspectives on presumably well-understood events, by forcing an examination of accepted standards of explanation and, not least, by heightening awareness of the operation of our methods.

Type
Chapter
Information
Islam and Social Change in French West Africa
History of an Emancipatory Community
, pp. 189 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×