“Acting as Heroic: Creativity and Political Violence in Tamajaq (Tuareg) Theater in Northern Mali”

by Susan Rasmussen
Department of Anthropology
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-5020
713-743-3787
srasmussen@uh.edu
                       
Abstract:

            How do African theatrical performers cope, through their creativity, with recurring political violence, in alternations between armed conflict and peace mediations? How do their performances express the cultural consequences of war? The proposed paper, based on anthropological field research in Tamajaq-speaking Tuareg communities of northern Mali, explores these issues in plays called des sketches and actors called ibaraden, a Tamajaq term denoting “courageous (brave) people.” These performances have historically taken place in contexts of alternating peace negotiations, repatriation and sedentization of nomadic refugees, and sporadic armed conflict with French colonial and post-colonial governments: most recently, the Tuareg separatist rebellion against the central governments of Mali and Niger. The proposed essay explores how these performances and their actors convey historical memory and contemporary social commentary on the causes and effects of political violence, and how these experiences shape their aesthetic creativity. In some respects, I argue, these performances become therapeutic; in other respects, they become appropriated by the central state and NGO agencies.The essay draws from approaches to African theater as crisis management (Cole 2001; Bourgault 2003) and as historically-situated in wider power systems (Arnoldi 1995; Barber 1987; Drewal 1991).

Thematic issues:  i (heroes and heroines in conflict); x (cultural consequences of wars)