Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T14:48:20.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The ‘head dance’, contested self, and art as a balancing act in Tuareg spirit possession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Susan J. Rasmussen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Résumé

Parmi les Kel Ewey Touareg du nord-est du Niger, particulièrement dans les cercles de l a noblesse, la possession spirituelle est associée avec les origines culturelles serviles soudanaises; il en est de même pour la danse et le tambourinement. J'affirme qu'en exécutant un mouvement oscillatoire oblique de la tête et des épaules, considéré comme danse localement, les femmes en état de transe transforment la culture soudanaise. La danse de la tête, en tant que mouvement gracieux et contrôlé, et son trope central oscillant comme la branche d'un arbre, encapsulent des symboles culturels essentiels afin de les rendre presque acceptables en termes esthétiques et symboliques parmi les nobles Touareg traditionnels. Cependant, ce mouvement laisse supposer que l'on est malade ou seul ou dans état de sauvagerie ayant besoin d'exorcisme, un exorcisme qui doit être exécuté a la lisière du camp ou du village, à l'extèrieur de la tente, à la nuit tombée, mais en public, devant des spectateurs.

Cet article utilise une approche “synesthétique” pour montrer la connection étroitement liee entre les symboles. Il illustre les tension et les contradictions d'une société stratifée de façon traditionnelle, où les femmes exécutent maintenant une gamme d'activites à moitié serviles, des activités que les musulmans, les nobles, et les hommes en général désapprouvent et parfois contestent. La danse de la tête est un compromis élégant qui brouille la ligne entre la danse et la possession, qui prend des images acceptables dans des chansons et des façons de bouger appropriées, et les greffent sur un rythme particulier du tambourin, l'ensemble se servant de l'homonyme de la chanson/branche en tant qu'image centrale ou métaphore. Les symboles opèrent de manière synergique dans ce processus.

Type
The gendering of space and motion
Information
Africa , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 74 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1994

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

Baxandall, Michael. 1972. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. Oxford, New York and London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1986. Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations, trans. Zohn, Harry. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Bernus, Edmond. 1969. ‘Maladies humaines et animates chez les Touareg sahélien’, Journal de la Société des Africanistes XXXIX (1), 111–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernus, Edmond. 1981. Touaregs nigériens: unité culturelle et diversité d'un peuple pasteur. ParisOrstom.Google Scholar
Boddy, Janice. 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Borel, Francois. 1988. ‘Rhythmes de passage chez les Touaregs de l'Azawagh (Niger), Cahiers de la Musique Traditionnelle I, Ateliers d'Ethnomusicologie, pp. 28–38.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Caroline. 1978. ‘Tuareg Music and Social Identity’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Casajus, Dominique. 1987a. La Tente dans I'Essuf. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, and London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Casajus, Dominique. 1987b. ‘Crafts and ceremonies: the Inadan in Tuareg society’, in Rao, Aparna (ed.), The Other Nomads, pp. 291–310. Wein: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Crapanzano, Vincent. 1973. The Hamadsha: a study in Moroccan ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vincent, Crapanzano, and Garrison, Vivian (eds.). 1977. Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Curley, Richard T. 1973. Elders, Shades, and Women. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danforth, Loring. 1989. Firewalking and Religious Healing: the Anastenaria of Greece and the American fire walking movement. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1978. Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Gabus, Jean. 1958. Au Sahara: arts et symboles. Neuchatel: La Baconniere.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: the meaning of style. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Keenan, Jeremy. 1977. Tuareg: people of Ahaggar. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Kennedy, J. G. 1967. ‘Nubian Zar ceremonies as psychotherapy’, Human Organization XXVI (4).Google Scholar
Kenny, Michael. 1986. The Passion of Ansel Bourne: multiple personality in American culture. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. 1966. ‘Spirit possession and deprivation cults’, Man 1, 306–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, I. M. 1971. Ecstatic Religion. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. 1986. Religion in Context: cults and charisma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lhote, Henri. 1955. Les Touareg du Hoggar. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Lhote, Henri. 1979-1980. ‘Le vêtement de peau chez les Touareg: hypothèse de son origine’, Bulletin d'Archeologie Marocaine 12, 323–54.Google Scholar
Messing, S. 1959. ‘Group therapy and social status in the Zar cult of Ethiopia’, in Opler, M. K. (ed.), Culture and Mental Health. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Metraux, Alfred. 1959. Voudou. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Robert. 1964. ‘Social distance and the veil’, American Anthropologist 66, 1257–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Robert. 1967. ‘Tuareg kinship’, American Anthropologist 69, 163–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicolaisen, Johannes. 1961. ‘L'essai sur la religion et la magie touaregue’, Folk 3, 113–60.Google Scholar
Nicolaisen, Johannes. 1963. Ecology and Culture of the Pastoral Tuareg. Copenhagen: Royal Museum.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1987. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline. Albany, N. Y.: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Opler, Marvin. 1979. ‘Spirit possession in a rural area of northern India’, in McGurdy, David W. and Spradley, James P. (eds.) Issues in Cultural Anthropology, Boston, Mass.: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Oxby, Claire. 1978. ‘Sexual Division and Slavery in a Tuareg Community’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, London: School of Oriental and African Studies.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Susan J. 1987. ‘Interpreting androgynous woman: female ageing and personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg’, Ethnology 26 (1), 17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oxby, Claire. 1990. ‘Ownership at issue: Tuareg myths of separation and metaphors of manipulation’, American Journal of Semiotics 7 (4), 83–108.Google Scholar
Oxby, Claire. 1991a. ‘Modes of persuasion: gossip, song, and divination in Tuareg conflict resolution’, Anthropological Quarterly 64 (1), 30–46.Google Scholar
Oxby, Claire. 1991b. ‘Veiled self, transparent meaning: Tuareg headdress as social expression’, Ethnology, April, 101–17.Google Scholar
Oxby, Claire. 1991c. ‘Lack of prayer: ritual restrictions, social experience, and the anthropology of menstruation among the Tuareg’, American Ethnologist 18 (4), 751–69.Google Scholar
Oxby, Claire. 1992. ‘Reflections on Tamazai, a Tuareg idiom of suffering’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 16 (4), 337–65.Google Scholar
Rennell of Rodd, Francis. 1926. People of the Veil. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rouch, Jean. 1960. La Religion et la magie songhay. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Rouch, Jean. 1978. ‘On the vicissitudes of the self: the possessed dancer, the magician, the sorcerer, the film-maker, and the ethnographer’, Studies of Visual Communication 5 (1), 2–8.Google Scholar
Rouget, Gilbert. 1980. La Musique et la transe. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Shack, W. A. 1966. The Gurage. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Stoller, Paul 1984a. ‘Horrific comedy: cultural resistance and the Hauka movement in Niger’, Ethos 12 (2), 165–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoller, Paul 1984b. ‘Sound in Songhay cultural experience’, American Ethnologist 11 (3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoller, Paul 1989a. The Taste of Ethnographic Things. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Stoller, Paul 1989b. Fusion of the Worlds: an ethnography of possession among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Drums of Affliction. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor W. 1968. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor W. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: anthropological perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor W. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: the human seriousness of play. New York: Performing Arts Publications.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Economic and Social Organization, trans. Henderson, A. H.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. , Parsons. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar