Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:02:04.514Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Performing excess: urban ceremony and the semiotics of precarity in Guinea-Conakry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2019

Adrienne J. Cohen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Conakry, the capital city of the Republic of Guinea, dance ceremonies called sabars, derived from a Senegalese genre of the same name, have become extremely popular for wedding celebrations. Sabar's rise in Guinea coincided with the liberalization of the country's economy and the opening of national borders in the wake of state socialism (1958–84) – events that have produced profound uncertainty for average citizens. This article explores sabar as a practice that grapples affectively with the social and economic changes neoliberal reform has engendered within Guinea. Sabar ceremonies are characterized by instantiations of excess, including hypersexualized dancing, electric amplification and theatrical displays of opulence. By examining excess as an ‘emergent’ quality whose cultural value is undetermined, the article demonstrates how dancers participate in the active constitution and questioning of collective value in Conakry, and how embodiment is central to an anthropology of precarity.

Résumé

À Conakry, la capitale de la République de Guinée, des cérémonies de danse appelées sabars, dérivées d'un genre sénégalais du même nom, étaient extrêmement populaires pour les célébrations de mariage. L'essor des sabars en Guinée a coïncidé avec la libéralisation de l’économie du pays et l'ouverture des frontières nationales dans le sillage du socialisme d’État (1958–1984); des événements qui ont fait naître une profonde incertitude pour les citoyens moyens. Cet article explore le sabar en tant que pratique qui se heurte affectivement aux changements sociaux et économiques qu'a engendrés la réforme néolibérale en Guinée. La cérémonie de sabar se caractérise par des instantiations de l'excès, y compris une danse hypersexualisée, une amplification électrique et une mise en scène de l'opulence. En examinant l'excès en tant que qualité « émergente » dont la valeur culturelle est indéterminée, l'article démontre comment les danseurs participent à la constitution active et au questionnement de la valeur collective à Conakry, et le rôle central de l'incarnation dans une anthropologie de la précarité.

Type
Precarity and sabar in Guinea
Information
Africa , Volume 89 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 718 - 738
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2019 

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

African Energy (2018) ‘All bets on Souapiti dam as Guinea struggles to overcome supply shortfalls’, African Energy Live Data, 15 February <https://www.africa-energy.com/live-data/article/all-bets-souapiti-dam-guinea-struggles-overcome-supply-shortfalls>, accessed 4 October 2019.,+accessed+4+October+2019.>Google Scholar
Allison, A. (2012) ‘Ordinary refugees: social precarity and soul in 21st century Japan’, Anthropological Quarterly 85 (2): 345–70.Google Scholar
Allison, A. (2013) Precarious Japan. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Azarya, V. and Chazan, N. (1987) ‘Disengagement from the state in Africa: reflections on the experience of Ghana and Guinea’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1): 106–31.Google Scholar
Bâ, A. O. (1986) Camp Boiro, sinistre geôle de Sékou Touré. Vol. 4. Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Barber, K. (1995) ‘Money, self-realization and the person in Yorùbá texts’ in Guyer, J. I. (ed.), Money Matters: instability, values and social payments in the modern history of West African communities. Portsmouth NH and London: Heinemann and James Currey.Google Scholar
Barry, J. Y. (2018) ‘In Guinea, wave of protests leaves at least 11 dead’, New York Times, 14 March <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/world/africa/guinea-protests-killed.html>, accessed 4 January 2019.,+accessed+4+January+2019.>Google Scholar
Barry, M. A. (2017) ‘Banlieue de Conakry: des femmes manifestent contre le manque d’électricité’, Aminata.com, 8 June <http://aminata.com/banlieue-de-conakry-femmes-manifestent-contre-manque-delectricite/>, accessed 7 October 2017.,+accessed+7+October+2017.>Google Scholar
Berlant, L. G. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bizas, E. (2014) Learning Senegalese Sabar: dancers and embodiment in New York and Dakar. New York NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Braun, L. N. (2014) ‘Trading virtue for virtuosity: the artistry of Kinshasa's concert danseuses’, African Arts 47 (4): 48–57.Google Scholar
Campbell, B. and Clapp, J. (1995) ‘Guinea's economic performance under structural adjustment: importance of mining and agriculture’, Journal of Modern African Studies 33 (3): 425–49.Google Scholar
Castaldi, F. (2006) Choreographies of African Identities: Negritude, dance, and the National Ballet of Senegal. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Chumley, L. H. and Harkness, N. (2013) ‘Introduction: qualia’, Anthropological Theory 13 (1–2): 3–11.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. (2016a.) ‘Improvising the urban: dance, mobility, and political transformation in the Republic of Guinea’. PhD thesis, Yale University.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. (2016b) ‘Inalienable performances, mutable heirlooms: dance, cultural inheritance, and political transformation in the Republic of Guinea’, American Ethnologist 43 (4): 650–62.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (2012) ‘Stages in transition: Les Ballets Africains and independence, 1959–1960’, Journal of Black Studies 43 (1): 11–48.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (1999) ‘Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony’, American Ethnologist 26 (2): 279–303.Google Scholar
Conrad, D. and Frank, B. (eds) (1995) Status and Identity in West Africa: Nyamakalaw of Mande. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Counsel, G. (2009) Mande Popular Music and Cultural Policies in West Africa: griots and government policy since independence. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag.Google Scholar
Creed, G. (2011) Masquerade and Postsocialism: ritual and cultural dispossession in Bulgaria. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, A. (2007) ‘Public feelings’, South Atlantic Quarterly 106 (3): 459–68.Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, A. (2012) Depression: a public feeling. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Daniel, Y. (1995) Rumba: dance and social change in contemporary Cuba. Bloomington and Indianapolis IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Dave, N. (2019) The Revolution's Echoes: music, politics, and pleasure in Guinea. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Degani, M. (2017) ‘Modal reasoning in Dar es Salaam's power network’, American Ethnologist 44 (2): 1–15.Google Scholar
Dessertine, A. (2010) ‘Une initiation diffuse à la sexualité: le “sabar” des Wolof du Sénégal’, Civilisations 59 (1): 89–108.Google Scholar
Diallo, B. (2016) ‘Electricité: les aveux d'Alpha Condé sur Kaléta …’, Africaguinee.com, 22 December <https://dev.africaguinee.com/articles/2016/12/22/electricite-les-aveux-d-alpha-conde-sur-kaleta>, accessed 11 July 2017.,+accessed+11+July+2017.>Google Scholar
Diallo, F. L. (2017) ‘Délestage électrique: des citoyens de Conakry se plaignent’, Aminata.com, 7 February <https://aminata.com/delestage-electrique-des-citoyens-de-conakry-se-plaignent/>, accessed 7 October 2017.,+accessed+7+October+2017.>Google Scholar
Durkheim, E. (2001 [1912]) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Economist (2013) ‘More electricity riots in Conakry’, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 9 August <http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1910822575&Country=Guinea&topic=Politics&subtopic=Forecast&subsubtopic=Political+stability>, accessed 7 October 2017.,+accessed+7+October+2017.>Google Scholar
Engeler, M. (2008) ‘Guinea in 2008: the unfinished revolution’, Politique Africaine 4: 87–98.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. (2006) Global Shadows: Africa in the neoliberal economy. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ferme, M. C. (2001) The Underneath of Things: violence, history, and the everyday in Sierra Leone. Berkeley and Los Angeles CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Foster, S. L. (1996) ‘Introduction’ in Foster, S. L. (ed.), Corporealities: dancing knowledge, culture and power. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ganti, T. (2014) ‘Neoliberalism’, Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 89–104.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. (2009) The Perils of Belonging: autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ghodsee, K. (2017) Red Hangover: legacies of twentieth-century communism. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, A. F. (1997) Ghostly Matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2001) Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: the false coin of our own dreams. New York NY: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Harkness, N. (2015) ‘The pragmatics of qualia in practice’, Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 573–89.Google Scholar
Harrison, S. (1999) ‘Cultural boundaries’, Anthropology Today 15 (5): 10–13.Google Scholar
Heath, D. (1994) ‘The politics of appropriateness and appropriation: recontextualizing women's dance in urban Senegal’, American Ethnologist 21 (1): 88–103.Google Scholar
Hoffman, B. (2000) Griots at War: conflict, conciliation, and caste in Mande. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch (2018) ‘Guinea: deaths, criminality in post-election violence, credible evidence security forces implicated in excessive use of force’. New York NY: Human Rights Watch <https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/07/24/guinea-deaths-criminality-post-election-violence>, accessed 4 January 2019.,+accessed+4+January+2019.>Google Scholar
Humphrey, C. (2002) The Unmaking of Soviet Life: everyday economies after socialism. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. T. (2011) ‘Leaky registers and eight-hundred-pound gorillas’, Anthropological Quarterly 84 (1): 15–39.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. (2011) Life Within Limits: well-being in a world of want. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kaké, I. B. (1987) Sékou Touré: le héros et le tyran. Volume 3. Paris: Groupe Jeune Afrique.Google Scholar
Keane, W. (2003) ‘Semiotics and the social analysis of material things’, Language and Communication 23 (3): 409–25.Google Scholar
Larkin, B. (2002) ‘Bandiri music, globalization, and urban experience in Nigeria’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 42 (168): 739–62.Google Scholar
Larkin, B. (2004) ‘Degraded images, distorted sounds: Nigerian video and the infrastructure of piracy’, Public Culture 16 (2): 289–314.Google Scholar
Lock, M. (1993) ‘Cultivating the body: anthropology and epistemologies of bodily practice and knowledge’, Annual Review of Anthropology 22: 133–55.Google Scholar
Mains, D. (2007) ‘Neoliberal times: progress, boredom, and shame among young men in urban Ethiopia’, American Ethnologist 34 (4):659–73.Google Scholar
Mains, D. (2012) ‘Blackouts and progress: privatization, infrastructure, and a developmentalist state in Jimma, Ethiopia’, Cultural Anthropology 27 (1): 3–27.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (1979 [1934]) ‘The techniques of the body’ in Mauss, M., Sociology and Psychology: essays. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mazzarella, W. (2017a) ‘Sense out of sense: notes on the affect/ethics impasse’, Cultural Anthropology 32 (2): 199–208.Google Scholar
Mazzarella, W. (2017b) The Mana of Mass Society. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McGovern, M. (2013) Unmasking the State: making Guinea modern. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McGovern, M. (2015) ‘Liberty and moral ambivalence: postsocialist transitions, refugee hosting, and bodily comportment in the Republic of Guinea’, American Ethnologist 42 (2): 247–61.Google Scholar
McGovern, M. (2017) A Socialist Peace? Explaining the absence of war in an out-of-the-way place. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McNaughton, P. (1988) The Mande Blacksmiths: knowledge, power, and art in West Africa. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Millar, K. (2014) ‘The precarious present: wageless labor and disrupted life in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’, Cultural Anthropology 29 (1): 32–53.Google Scholar
Munn, N. (1986) The Fame of Gawa: a symbolic study of value transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Neveu Kringelbach, H. (2013) Dance Circles: movement, morality and self-fashioning in urban Senegal. New York NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Newell, S. (2005) ‘Migratory modernity and the cosmology of consumption in Côte d'Ivoire’ in Trager, L. (ed.), Migration and Economy: global and local dynamics. New York NY: Alta Mira Press.Google Scholar
Newell, S. (2012) The Modernity Bluff: crime, consumption, and citizenship in Côte d'Ivoire. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ngai, S. (2009) Ugly Feelings. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
O'Neill, B. (2014) ‘Cast aside: boredom, downward mobility, and homelessness in post-communist Bucharest’, Cultural Anthropology 29 (1): 8–31.Google Scholar
Ong, A. and Roy, A. (eds) (2011) Worlding Cities: Asian experiments and the art of being global. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
O'Toole, T. and Baker, J. (2005) Historical Dictionary of Guinea. Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
PDG-RDA (n.d.) La Révolution et la Culture. Volume 35. Conakry: Parti Démocratique de Guinée-Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (PDG-RDA).Google Scholar
Polak, R. (2012) ‘Urban drumming: traditional Jembe celebration music in a West African City’ in Charry, E. (ed.), Hip Hop Africa: new African music in a globalizing world. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Rivière, C. (1977) Guinea: the mobilization of a people. Translated by Thompson, Virginia and Adloff, Richard. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Samb, S. (2017) ‘Thousands protest against Guinea's Conde over election delays, insecurity’, Reuters, 2 August <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-guinea-politics/thousands-protest-against-guineas-conde-over-election-delays-insecurity-idUSKBN1AI2GJ>, accessed 4 January 2019.,+accessed+4+January+2019.>Google Scholar
Schmidt, E. (2007) Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea 1946–1958. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Shay, A. (2002) Choreographic Politics: state folk dance companies, representation, and power. Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Silverman, C. (2012) Romani Routes: cultural politics and Balkan music in diaspora. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Simone, A. (2001) ‘On the worlding of African cities’, African Studies Review 44 (2): 15–41.Google Scholar
Smith, D. J. (2017) To Be a Man is Not a One-day Job: masculinity, money, and intimacy in Nigeria. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Straker, J. (2009) Youth, Nationalism, and the Guinean Revolution. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Tang, P. (2007) Masters of the Sabar: Wolof griot percussionists of Senegal. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, M. (2008) ‘The politics of culture: folk critique and transformation of the state in Hungary’. PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, City University of New York.Google Scholar
Tsing, A. (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
USAID (2017) ‘Guinea energy sector overview’ <https://2012-2017.usaid.gov/powerafrica/guinea>, accessed 10 July 2017.,+accessed+10+July+2017.>Google Scholar
Verdery, K. (1996) What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Volkov, V. (2002) Violent Entrepreneurs: the use of force in the making of Russian capitalism. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wallach, J., Harris, B. and Greene, P. (2014) ‘Affective overdrive, scene dynamics, and identity in the global metal scene’ in Wallach, J., Berger, H. and Greene, P. (eds), Metal Rules the Globe: heavy metal music around the world. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
White, B. (2008) Rumba Rules: the politics of dance music in Mobutu's Zaire. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford and New York NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar