Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:41:04.110Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Manimory and the Aesthetics of Mimesis: Forest, Islam and State in Ivoirian Dozoya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Joseph Hellweg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the hunting aesthetics of initiated Jula hunters of Côte d'Ivoire who call themselves dozos. It explains how their hunting aesthetic structures their relationship to Islam and the Ivoirian state. Although many Africans approach Islam in the context of tensions between local ritual traditions and modernizing Muslim reform, dozos approach Islam the way they approach the forests where they hunt, assimilating to both in order to tame them. They organize their hunting activities around an aesthetic centred on notions of sweetness and fullness; their contraries, difficulty and emptiness; and the process of mimetic transformation (shape-shifting) that mediates between these extremes. With these categories dozos assimilate themselves to and appropriate power from the forest to kill game. They also link themselves to pre-Qur'anic Muslim figures to legitimize themselves as Muslims. More recently, they tried to assimilate to the Ivoirian state to become a parallel police force. Stories of their tutelary spirit, Manimory, and the texts of their hunting songs, incantations, and epics encode diverse ways for dozos to relate to Islam, leaving room for dozos to eschew it as well. Their texts reveal a dynamic sense of history that defies classification in terms of tradition, modernity or postmodernity.

Résumé

Cet article examine l'esthétique de la chasse chez les chasseurs initiés julas de Côte d'Ivoire, qui se donnent le nom de dozos. Il explique comme leur esthétique de chasse structure leur rapport à l'islametà l'État ivoirien. Alors que de nombreux Africains abordent l'islam dans le contexte de tensions entre traditions rituelles locales et réforme musulmane modernisatrice, les dozos abordent l'islam de la même manière qu'ils abordent les forêts dans lesquelles ils chassent, s'assimilant aux deux pour les maîtriser. Ils organisent leurs activités de chasse autour d'une esthétique centrée sur des notions de douceur et de plénitude, des notions contraires de difficulté et de vide, ainsi que sur le processus de transformation mimétique (métamorphose) qui assure la médiation entre ces extrêmes. Avec ces catégories, les dozos s'assimilent à laforêt et s'en approprient les pouvoirs pour tuer le gibier. Ils s'associent également à des figures musulmanes pré-coraniques pour se justifier en tant que musulmans. Plus récemment, ils ont essayé de s'assimilerà l'état ivoirien pour devenir une force de police parallèle. Les récits de leur esprit tutélaire, Manimory, ainsi que les textes de leurs chants de chasse, incantations et récits épiques codifient les différentes manières qu'ont les dozos de se situer par rapport à l'islam et qui leur laissent également latitude pour l'éviter. Leurs textes révèlent un sens dynamique de l'histoire qui défie la classification en termes de tradition, de modernité ou de postmodernité.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 76 , Issue 4 , November 2006 , pp. 461 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2006

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

Amselle, J.-L. 1985. ‘Le Wahabisme à Bamako (1945–1985)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 10 (2): 345–57.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bassett, T. 2003. ‘Dangerous pursuits: hunter associations (donzo ton)and national politics in Côte d'Ivoire’, Africa 73 (1): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bassett, T. 2004. ‘Containing the Donzow: the politics of scale in Côte d'Ivoire’, Africa Today 50 (04): 31–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, F. 1982. ‘On alternating sounds’, in Stocking, George W. (ed.), A Franz Boas Reader: the shaping of American anthropology, 1883–1911. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boddy, J. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits: women, men, and the zar cult in the Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, L. 1988. ‘Concepts of tarīqa in West Africa: the case of Qādiriyya’, in Cruise O'Brien, Donal B. and Coulon, Christian (eds), Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, L. 1993. ‘Constructing Muslim identities in Mali’, in Brenner, Louis (ed.), Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Cashion, G. A. 1984. ‘Hunters of the Mande: a behavioral code and worldview derived from the study of their folklore, part 1’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Bloomington: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Cissé, Y. T. 1994. La Confrérie des chasseurs Malinké et Bambara: mythes, rites et récits initiatiques. Ivry: Editions Nouvelles du Sud.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: the culture and history of a South African people.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J.. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution: the dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier.Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J.. 1999. ‘Introduction’, in L., John and Comaroff, Jean (eds), Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa.Chicago:University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Conrad, D. 1995. ‘Blind man meets prophet: oral tradition, Islam, and funé identity’, in Conrad, David and Frank, Barbara (eds), Status and Identity in West Africa: nyamakalaw of Mande. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Coote, J. 1996. ‘Aesthetics is a cross-cultural category: for the motion’, in Ingold, Tim (ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crocker, C. 1977. ‘The social functions of rhetorical forms’, in Sapir, J.David and Crocker, J. Christopher (eds), The Social Use of Metaphor: essays on the anthropology of rhetoric. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Derive, M. J. 1978. Bamori et Kowulen: chant de chasseurs de la région d'Odienné. Abidjan: Institut de Linguistique Appliquée.Google Scholar
Ellis, S. 1999. The Mask of Anarchy: the destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, S. 2003. ‘International elements of West Africa's wars: the role of sub-regional and non-African actors’. Unpublished paper from the OECD conference, ‘Conflict and development policy in the Mano River region and Côte d'Ivoire: “The regional stakes for stability and reconstruction”’. Paris, 13–14 May. <<http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/19/0733904967.pdf>> accessed 14 November 2005.> accessed 14 November 2005.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ellis,+S.2003.+‘International+elements+of+West+Africa's+wars:+the+role+of+sub-regional+and+non-African+actors’.+Unpublished+paper+from+the+OECD+conference,+‘Conflict+and+development+policy+in+the+Mano+River+region+and+Côte+d'Ivoire:+“The+regional+stakes+for+stability+and+reconstruction”’.+Paris,+13–14+May.+<>+accessed+14+November+2005.>Google Scholar
Ferme, M. 2001. ‘La Figure du chasseur et les chasseurs – miliciens dans le conflit sierra-léonais’, Politique africaine 82: 119–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferme, M. 2001. The Underneath of Things: violence, history, and the everyday in Sierra Leone. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferme, M. and Hoffman, D.. 2004. ‘Hunter militias and the international human rights discourse in Sierra Leone and beyond’, Africa Today 50 (04): 73–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gausset, Q. 1999. ‘Islam or Christianity? The choices of the Wawa and the Kwanja of Cameroon’, Africa 69 (2): 257–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geurts, K. L. 2003. Culture and the Senses: bodily ways of knowing in an African community. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibb, H. A. R. 1982. Mohammedanism: an historical survey. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gow, P. 1996. ‘Aesthetics is a cross-cultural category: against the motion’, in Ingold, Tim (ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grosz-Ngaté, M. 2002. ‘Memory, power, and performance in the construction of Muslim identity’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review 25 (2): 5–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagberg, S. 1998. Between Peace and Justice: dispute settlement between Karaboro agriculturalists and Fulbe agro-pastoralists in Burkina Faso. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Hagberg, S. 2004. ‘Political decentralization and traditional leadership in the Benkadi hunters' association in western Burkina Faso’, Africa Today 50 (04): 51–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, T. 1998. Griots and Griottes: masters of words and music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hardin, K. L. 1993. The Aesthetics ofAction: continuity and change in a West African town. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Hellweg, J. 1997. ‘Like the Leaves of the Trees: hunters stalk security in urban Côte d'Ivoire’, Anthropology Newsletter 38 (5): 61–2.Google Scholar
Hellweg, J. 2001. ‘The Mande hunters’ movement of Côte d'Ivoire: ritual, ethics, and performance in the transformation of civil society, 1990–1997’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Charlottesville: University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Hellweg, J. 2004. ‘Encompassing the state: sacrifice and security in the hunters’ movement of Côte d'Ivoire’, Africa Today 50 (04): 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibn ‘Abd al Wahhāb, M. 1992. Kitāb al Tawhīd. Riyadh: International Islamic Publishing House.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. 1990. ‘The man who could turn into an elephant: shape-shifting among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone’, in Jackson, Michael and Karp, Ivan (eds), Personhood and Agency: the experience of self and other in African cultures. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Johnson, J. W. 1992. The Epic of Son-Jara: a west African tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kaba, L. 1974. The Wahhabiyya. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Lambek, M. 1990. ‘Certain knowledge, contestable authority: power and practice on the Islamic periphery’, American Ethnologist 17 (1): 23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambek, M. 2002. ‘Nuriaty, the saint and the sultan: virtuous subject and subjective virtuoso of the postmodern colony’, in Werbner, Richard (ed.), Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Lanternari, V. 1963. The Religions of the Oppressed: a study of modern messianic cults. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.Google Scholar
Launay, R. 1992. Beyond the Stream: Islam and society in a west African town. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Leach, M. 2000. ‘New Shapes to Shift: war, parks and the hunting person in modern West Africa’, Journal ofthe Royal Anthropological Institute 6(04): 577–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeBlanc, M. N. 2000. ‘Versioning Womanhood and Muslimhood: “fashion” and the life course in contemporary Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire’, Africa 70 (3): 442–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. 1989. Ecstatic Religion: a study of shamanism and spirit possession. Second edition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. 1996. Religion in Context: cults and charisma. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Makarius, L. 1969. ‘Observations sur la légende des griots malinké’, Cahiers d'études africaines 4 (04): 626–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masquelier, A. 2001. Prayer Has Spoiled Everything: possession, power, and identity in an Islamic town of Niger. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McNaughton, P. 1982. ‘The shirts that Mande hunters wear’, African Arts 12 (2): 65–71, 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNaughton, P. 1988. The Mande Blacksmiths: knowledge, power, and art in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Morphy, H. 1996. ‘Aesthetics is a cross-cultural category: for the motion’, in Ingold, Tim (ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Niane, D. T. 1965. Sundiata: an epic of old Mali. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Niezen, R. W. 1990. ‘The “Community of Helpers of the Sunna”: Islamic reform among the Songhay of Gao (Mali)’, Africa 60 (3): 399–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyamnjoh, F. B. 2002. ‘A child is one person's only in the womb: domestication, agency and subjectivity in the Cameroonian Grassfields’, in Werbner, Richard (ed.), Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Overing, J. 1996. ‘Aesthetics is a cross-cultural category: against the motion’, in Ingold, Tim (ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Person, Y. 1968. Samori, une revolution dyula.Volume I. Dakar: IFAN.Google Scholar
Piot, C. 1999. Remotely Global: village modernity in West Africa.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, D. 2003. Dan Ge Performance: masks and music in contemporary Côte d'Ivoire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricœur, P. 1981. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, Thompson, John B. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, D. 2004. Muslim Societies in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahlins, M. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: structure in the early history of the Sandwich Islands kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanneh, L. 1994. ‘Translatability in Islam and in Christianity in Africa: a thematic approach’, in Blakely, Thomas, Beek, Walter van, and Thomson, Dennis (eds), Religion in Africa: experience and expression. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Sapir, J. D. 1977. ‘The anatomy of metaphor’, in Sapir, J. David and Crocker, J. Christopher (eds), The Social Use of Metaphor: essays on the anthropology of rhetoric. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoller, P. 1989. Fusion ofthe Worlds: an ethnography of possession among the Songhay of Niger.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoller, P. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: the senses in anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Stoller, P. 1995. Embodying Colonial Memories: spirit possession, power, and the hauka in West Africa. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Taussig, M. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: a particular history of the senses.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. C. 1999. Sacrifice as Terror: the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Oxford: Berg Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. C. 2004. ‘Deadly images: king sacrifice, President Habyarimana, and the iconography of pregenocidal Rwanda’, in Whitehead, Neil (ed.), Violence. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Thoyer, A. 1995. Recits epiques des chasseurs bamanan du Mali. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Traoré, K. 2004. ‘The intellectuals and the hunters: reflections on the conference, “La Rencontre des Chasseurs de l'Afrique de l'Ouest”’, Africa Today 50 (04): 97–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trimingham, J. S. 1959. Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Trimingham, J. S. 1962. A History of Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Triaud, J.-L. 1986. ‘Abd al-Rahman l'Africain (1908–1957), pionnier et précurseur du Wahhabisme au Mali’, in Carré, Olivier and Dumont, Paul (eds), Radicalismes islamiques II: Maroc, Pakistan, Inde, Yougoslavie, Mali. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
van Binsbergen, W. 1981. Religious Change in Zambia. London: Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Wagner, R. 1978. Lethal Speech: Daribi myth as symbolic obviation.Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, R. 1991. ‘The fractal person’, in Godelier, Maurice and Strathern, Marilyn (eds), Big Men and Great Men. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zemp, H. 1968. ‘La legende des griots malinké’, Cahiers d'études africaines 6 (04): 611–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zobel, C. 1996. ‘Les génies du Kòma: identités locales, logiques religieuses et enjeux socio-politiques dans les monts Manding du Mali’, Cahiers d'études africaines 144: 625–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar