Text and performance in Africa

Abstract

If written texts usually involve some kind of performative dimension, oral performances also entail the constitution of a text. American linguistic anthropology uses the term ‘entextualization’ for the process by which stretches of spoken discourse are detached from their immediate context and rendered repeatable and thus transmissible. In African oral poetry there are entextualizing strategies which involve rendering discourse object-like: by making it the focus of exegesis, or by presenting it as quotable, thus foregrounding the perception that these words pre-existed their present moment of utterance and could continue to exist after it. However, African oral praise poetry is also highly dynamic. Text is not consolidated in order to constitute it as an unchanging monument, but rather so that it can be re-activated in a new context of utterance, where it has an effectual engagement and dialogic force. Thus the performative and the entextualizing dimension can be seen to be inseparable and mutually dependent.