Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:31:32.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dan and Mende masks: a structural comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

M. C. Jȩdrej
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The masks and associated traditions of the people of the central Guinea coast of West Africa are among the most obvious and well-known features of the contemporary cultural landscape of the region. For some time social anthropologists have described the functions of the masks as social control mechanisms (Horton, 1976). Recently anthropologists have been elucidating these cultural items in terms of symbolic or structural analyses (Fischer and Himmelheber, 1976; Jdrej, 1976; MacCormack, 1980; Phillips, 1978). So far the studies concerned with symbolism, where they have not been explicitly general and theoretical (Jdrej, 1980; Tonkin, 1979), have confined themselves to a particular culture or a particular mask or subset of masks.

Résumé

Les masques Dan et Mende: une comparaison structurelle

Les masques et les mascarades représentent une caractéristique frappante et permanente de la culture traditionelle côtière de la Guinée centrale. Des théories sociologiques sur la nature et la fonction des masques furent éconcées selon des termes de mécanismes de contrôle social allant des ‘masques d'épouvante’ purs et simples contrôlés par les groupes dominants aux raisons plus subtiles telles que le besoin d'anonymité dans l'exécution de fonctions administratives. Malheureusement, rien de cela ne convient véritablement à la diversité des faits et, récemment, les anthropologues sociaux tentèrent d'aborder ces institutions en utilisant des idées provenant de l'analyse du symbolisme. La difficulté, dans ce cas, est les exégèses indigènes peu développées et cet article offre done au moyen d'exemples une avancée possible. L'idée fondamentale est relativement simple et selon laquelle un masque ne constitue pas une entité mais une relation ambivalente entre les deux composants, à savoir la masque lui-même et ce qu'il dissimule. L'évaluation et l'élaboration concrète des termes de cette relation, les masques eux-mêmes, varieront selon le système cosmologique général dans lequel ils se trouvent et leur fonction au sein de ce système. La méthode est celle de l'analyse transformationnelle qui rend intelligibles de telles structures à l'aide d'une comparaison qui retient les différences entre elles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 71 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1986

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Abraham, A. 1972. Review of The Springs of Mende Belief and Custom by Harris, W. T. and Sawyerr, H., Africana Research Bulletin, 3, 50–61.Google Scholar
Abraham, A. 1976. Topics in Sierra Leone History: a counter-colonial interpretation. Freetown: Leone Publishers.Google Scholar
Alldridge, T. J. 1910. A Transformed Colony. London: Seeley & Co.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cosentino, D. 1982. Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers: tradition and invention in Mende story-telling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
d'Azevedo, W. 1962. ‘Some historical problems in the delineation of a Central West Atlantic Region’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 96, 512–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dieterlen, G., and Cisse, Y. 1972. Les fondements de la société Komo. Paris: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberl-Elber, R. 1936. Westafrikas Letztes Rätsel. Salzburg: Verlag ‘Das Bergland-Buch’.Google Scholar
Eberl-Elber, R. 1937. ‘Die Masken der Männerbunde in Sierra Leone’, Ethnos, 2 (1), 38–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, E. 1967. ‘Erzahlgut der Westlichen Dan in Liberia’, Anthropos, 62, 686–744.Google Scholar
Fischer, E. 1978. ‘Dan forest spirits: masks in Dan villages’, African Arts, 11 (1), 16–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, E. and Himmelheber, H. 1976. Die Kunst der Dan. Zürich: Museum Reitberg.Google Scholar
Griaule, M. 1963. Masques Dogon. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.Google Scholar
Harley, G. 1950. Masks as Agents of Social Control in Northeast Liberia, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeoloy and Ethnology, vol. 22, no. 2. Cambridge: Peabody Museum.Google Scholar
Himmelheber, H. 1964a. ‘Sculptors and sculpture of the Dan’, in Bown, L. and Crowder, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Congress of Africanists, pp. 243–55. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Himmelheber, H. 1964b. ‘Die Geister und ihre irdischen Verkorperungen als Grundverstellung in der Religion der Dan’, Baessler-Archiv, N.F., 12 (1), 1–88.Google Scholar
Himmelheber, H. 1975. ‘Afrikanische kunsthandler an der Elfenbeinkunste’, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, 100, 16–26.Google Scholar
Himmelheber, H. and Himmelheber, U. 1959. Die Dan: Ein Bauervolk in West Afrikanische Urwald. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.Google Scholar
Horton, R. 1976. ‘Stateless societies in the history of West Africa’, in Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Crowder, M., (eds.), History of West Africa, pp. 78–119. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Jędrej, M. C. 1976. ‘Structural aspects of a West African secret society’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 32 (3), 234–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jędrej, M. C. 1980. ‘A comparison of some masks from North America, Africa and Melanesia’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 36 (2), 220–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilson, M. 1975. Royal Antelope and Spider: West African Mende tales. Boston: Press of the Langdon Associates.Google Scholar
Leach, E. R. 1961. Rethinking Anthropology. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
MacCormack, C. P. 1980. ‘Proto-social to adult: a Sherbro transformation’, in MacCormack, C. and Strathearn, M. (eds.), Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Migeod, F. W. 1926. A View of Sierra Leone. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner.Google Scholar
Person, Y. 1964. ‘Enquête d'une chronologie ivoirienne’, in Vansina, J., Mauny, R. and Thomas, L. V. (eds.), The Historian in Tropical Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Person, Y. 1971. ‘Ethnic movements and acculturation in upper Guinea since the fifteenth century’, African Historical Studies, 4, 669–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, R..1978. ‘Masking in Mende Sande society initiation rituals’, Africa, 48, 265–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, R. 1980. ‘The iconography of the Mende sowei mask’, Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zürich, 1, 113–32.Google Scholar
Rigby, P.. 1968. ‘Some Gogo rituals of “purification”: an essay on social and moral categories’, in Leach, E. R. (ed.), Dialectic in Practical Religion, pp. 153–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rodney, W. 1970. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545–1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Schwab, G. 1947. Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 31. Cambridge: Peabody Museum.Google Scholar
Siegman, W. 1980. ‘Spirit manifestation and the Poro society’, Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zürich, 1, 25–34.Google Scholar
Siegman, W. and Perani, J. 1976.‘“Men” masquerades of Sierra Leone and Liberia’, African Arts, 9 (3), 42–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tahmen, G. W. 1974. ‘Death (“ga”) in Dan culture: concepts, ceremonies and folklore concerning death in northeast Liberia’, Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zürich, 2, 159–83.Google Scholar
Tonkin, E..1979. ‘Masks and powers’, Man (n.s.), 14, 237–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vandenhoute, P. J. 1948. Classification stylistique du masque Dan et Guéréde la Côte d'Ivoire Occidentale (A.O.F.). Leiden: E. J. BrillCrossRefGoogle Scholar