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Becoming militant: embodying the Guinean revolution and Guinea–China relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2020

Nomi Dave
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Abstract

This article considers the role of embodied experience in promoting revolutionary ideology in Guinea. The Republic of Guinea has long held close ties with China, and in the 1960s and 1970s the country pursued its own Cultural Revolution. While Chinese songs and aesthetics had little direct artistic influence, the Guinean state embraced Maoist ideals of social and self-transformation and discipline. Such ideals were translated into daily life through the regulation of bodies, including practices of dance, movement and physical gesture that sought to create revolutionary subjects. I show here how embodied practices, including the circulation of dancers and official delegations, cultivated Guinea's relationship with China; and how practices of movement and dance were inwardly experienced within Guinea during its own Cultural Revolution. In so doing, I address some of the contradictions of the Revolution and of Guinea–China relations. While the regime pursued its goals through violence and brutality, former revolutionary subjects today remember the moment for both its pain and its pleasures – for the hardships the body had to endure and for the nationalist pride that many still feel today.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article s'intéresse au rôle de l'expérience incarnée dans la promotion de l'idéologie révolutionnaire en Guinée. La République de Guinée entretient depuis longtemps des liens étroits avec la Chine et, dans les années 1960 et 1970, le pays a poursuivi sa propre Révolution culturelle. Alors que les chants et l'esthétique chinois n'ont eu que peu d'influence artistique directe, l’État guinéen a adopté les idéaux maoïstes d'auto-transformation et de discipline sociales. Ces idéaux se sont traduits dans la vie quotidienne par la réglementation du corps, y compris les pratiques de danse, de mouvement et de geste physique qui visaient à construire le sujet révolutionnaire. L'auteur montre ici comment les pratiques incarnées, y compris la circulation des danseurs et des délégations officielles, ont cultivé la relation de la Guinée avec la Chine, et comment les pratiques de mouvement et de danse ont été vécues intérieurement au Guinée durant sa propre Révolution culturelle. Ce faisant, il aborde un certain nombre des contradictions de la Révolution et des relations sino-guinéennes. Alors que le régime cherchait à atteindre ses objectifs par la violence et la brutalité, les sujets révolutionnaires d'alors se souviennent aujourd'hui de cette période pour ses souffrances et ses plaisirs, pour les épreuves que le corps avait dû endurer et pour la fierté nationaliste que beaucoup ressentent encore aujourd'hui.

Type
Dance and revolution in Guinea
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 4 , August 2020 , pp. 721 - 745
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

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