Stories of ‘Militant Theatre’ in the Guinean forest: ‘demystifying’ the motives and moralities of a revolutionary nation-state

Straker, Jay

doi:10.1080/13696810701760484

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Alpha Condé, too, refers to Guinea's first President in his speeches and actions. The legacy of Touré does not only live on in memories, it still strongly shapes the country and is, for example, detectable in present administrative practices as various authors demonstrate again and again Straker 2007aStraker , 2008Straker , 2009Engeler 2019;. Sékou Touré's main preoccupations were state and nation-building.…”

Section: Gender In the Postcolonial Eramentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Coast covers (parts of) the following countries: Gambia, (southern) Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (Knörr and Filho 2010, 2). 3 See, for example, Claude Rivière (1971), Adamoleku Ladipo (1976), Lansiné Kaba (1976aKaba ( , 1976bKaba ( , 1977, Ibrahima Baba Kaké (1987), Alpha Ousmane Barry (2002), Mike McGovern (2002, Mohamed Saliou Camara (2005, Jay Straker (2007aStraker ( , 2007bStraker ( , 2009, Christian Højbjerg (2010), André Lewin (2010), Alexis Arieff and Mike McGovern (2013), Céline Pauthier (2013), Michelle Engeler (2019), and Anita Schroven (2019). 4 One of the MDG's eight primary goals was to promote gender equality and empower women, cf.…”

Section: Women and The Guinean State Since The Mid-1980smentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea

Ammann¹

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This book examines how women in Guinea articulate themselves politically within and outside institutional politics. It documents the everyday practices that local female actors adopt to deal with the continuous economic, political, and social insecurities that emerge in times of political transformations. Carole Ammann argues that women's political articulations in Muslim Guinea do not primarily take place within women's associations or institutional politics such as political parties; but instead women's silent forms of politics manifest in their daily agency, that is, when they make a living, study, marry, meet friends, raise their children, and do household chores. The book also analyses the relationship between the female population and the local authorities, and discusses when and why women's claim making enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of other men and women, as well as representatives of 'traditional' authorities and the local government. Paying particular attention to intersectional perspectives, this book will be of interest to scholars of African studies, social anthropology, political anthropology, the anthropology of gender, urban anthropology, gender studies, and Islamic studies.

show abstract

Section: Gender In the Postcolonial Eramentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women and The Guinean State Since The Mid-1980smentioning

confidence: 99%

Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea

Ammann¹

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Guinea's socialist state promoted and subsidized an art form called militant theater, of which ballet—staged folkloric dance and percussion—was the paradigmatic form (cf. Straker ; , 88, 95). There was an elaborate, hierarchical system of training companies from which national artists were selected .…”

Section: Socialism: Demystification and The Nation‐state's Appropriatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Launched in 1959, the state's violent, iconoclastic Demystification campaign aimed to eradicate the indigenous religions and accompanying masquerades of Guinean ethnic minorities, especially in the forest region in the country's southeast (cf. Højbjerg ; McGovern ; Straker , ; Rivière ) . The state always pronounced these efforts successful, according to Mike McGovern (, 175), but they were renewed constantly throughout the First Republic.…”

Section: Socialism: Demystification and The Nation‐state's Appropriatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Demystification involved destroying masks and symbolic practices of local power associations, publicly humiliating elders responsible for initiations and other rituals (Straker , 216), and forcibly exposing dances, songs, and rhythms that were not meant for public performance. Many of these symbolically potent art forms were then appropriated by ballets for the stage.…”

Section: Socialism: Demystification and The Nation‐state's Appropriatmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Inalienable performances, mutable heirlooms: Dance, cultural inheritance, and political transformation in the Republic of Guinea

Cohen

2016

American Ethnologist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Dance in the Republic of Guinea is an object of cultural transmission that magnifies the inherent contingency of social reproduction and the plasticity of the heirloom. Long connected to the vicissitudes of Guinean politics, dance was violently appropriated by the postindependence socialist state (1958–84) as a tool of nation building. In postsocialist Guinea, where the nation‐state has relinquished its stake in the performing arts, young practitioners create new improvisational forms that emblematize shifting models of ideal personhood. Novel dance forms incite tension about intergenerational trust and cultural inheritance in a social context in which neither the heirloom nor the cultural identity it signals remains stable. [dance, inheritance, inalienability, personhood, postsocialism, Republic of Guinea, West Africa] La danse en République de Guinée sert de véhicule de transmission culturelle qui démontre la nature contingente de la reproduction sociale et la nature plastique de l'héritage culturelle. Longtemps liée aux vicissitudes de la politique guinéenne, la danse fut violemment appropriée par l’état socialiste pendant la période qui suivit l'indépendance (1958–84) comme outil pour la construction de la nation. En Guinée postsocialiste, où l′État‐nation a abandonné son mécénat des arts du spectacle, de jeunes danseurs créent des nouvelles formes d'improvisation qui révèlent des chagemements dans la conceptualisation de l'identité individuelle. Ces nouvelles formes de danse suscitent des problèmes de confiance entre les générations par rapport à la succession culturelle, dans un contexte où ni l'héritage ni l'identité culturelle sont stables. [danse, héritage culturel, inaliénabilité, notion de personne, postsocialisme, République de Guinée, Afrique de l'Ouest] Kabi a rakuya, fare nun mangɛya nu e boore malima la République de Guinée bɔxi ma. Première République waxati (1958–1984), La Guinée mangasanyi nu fare xa fe rawalima alako ɲama xa lan e boore ma, mangasanyi xa nɔ mixie mafa a mabiri. Kabi Sékou Touré xa waxati raɲɔnyi, mangasanyi mu artistya tide to alɔ singe ra. Kɔnɔ mixi wuyaxie bara naatɛ tongo fare xa fe ma, alako e xa nɔ masenyi tife ɲama ma duniɲɛigiri xa fe ma. Artiste tagi, lanlanteya mu na temui birin mixi mɔxie nun mixi mɔxitaree tagi. Naamunyie na masarafe; to maɲɔxunyi mu lanxi xɔrɔ maɲɔxunyi ma. Ɲama ki fan masarafe. Birin xa na kolon fare saabui ra. [fare, kɛɛ, lanyi, mixiya, postsocialisme, République de Guinée, Afrique de l'Ouest]

show abstract

Deliberations in Dance: Affecting Publics and the Politics of Ethnicity in Guinea’s Nascent Democracy

Cohen¹

2022

Afr. Stud. Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Guinea’s postindependence state (1958-84) discouraged ethnic identification in favor of national solidarity. In the decades since, ethnic groups have increasingly been mobilized as political interest groups in Guinea, a phenomenon that has been especially visible in recent multiparty elections. At the same time as ethnicity resurfaced as an explicit political force, young performing artists in Guinea’s capital city Conakry were inventing genres of dance and urban ceremony that de-emphasize ethnicity as a marker of belonging. Cohen engages with an interdisciplinary literature on publics to describe how the aesthetic practices of non-elite African youth constitute a crucial form of political engagement.

show abstract

Stories of ‘Militant Theatre’ in the Guinean forest: ‘demystifying’ the motives and moralities of a revolutionary nation-state

Cited by 6 publications

References 19 publications

Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea

Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea

Inalienable performances, mutable heirlooms: Dance, cultural inheritance, and political transformation in the Republic of Guinea

Deliberations in Dance: Affecting Publics and the Politics of Ethnicity in Guinea’s Nascent Democracy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About