Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
The argument that a process of “making tribes” has invested Africa from early colonial times has been used to explain the emergence of some ethnicities which appear not to have existed before colonialism. This emergence was often accompanied by the creation of written records of male historical discourse, thus not only giving them undue prominence but also suppressing female historical discourses which were not considered pertinent to “history.”
Yet whenever history is recounted orally by either men or women, it contains messages directed to a “gendered” audience (i.e., an audience composed of people of both genders) whose participants perceive messages differently and reproduce separate but interacting discourses. Such diverse perceptions result from certain aspects in oral genres as well as small, coded markers which can evoke immensely potent but gender-specific experiences. Such instances may become public symbols and, along with more obviously historical narratives, greatly influence how people relate to their past. Thus men and women in the same audience, hearing the same story, can make connections between elements of a narrative which are obscure to outside researchers.
Recently, it has become quite common for historians of Africa to deconstruct written historical sources on the basis of the agendas of both the original writer and his informants. These agendas are rarely explicit and thus hiddenly selective. Such deconstruction is a legitimate scholarly procedure; however, as female voices have rarely been recorded—the resulting analysis reinforces the omission of women's roles in the process of remaking history and creating identity.
This paper was first presented in May 1993 at the History of Africa Seminar at SOAS. I would like to thank David Anderson, Humphrey Fisher, J.D.Y. Peel, and Andrew Roberts for their comments. Generous finances from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche allowed part of my fieldwork, the Istituto Universitario Orientale supported me with a scholarship for three years, and a grant from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, together with the British Academy, was very welcomed when writing this paper.
Fieldnotes were accumulated during two years of fieldwork carried out in 1985-86, 1987, and 1988, and contain both ethnographic data and oral historical sources. The latter are mainly personal reminiscences, some gathered from individuals and some from groups. Given the scarce codification of oral traditions in the area under study, some interviews have been conducted as autobiographical in order to grasp historical evidence from personal experiences. Interviews cover historical information about the early migration from east Africa and escape from slavery, the free republic of slaves along the Juba river before the turn of the century, Italian and British colonial vicissitudes, forced labor, and resistance to European power. Many of the historical interviews about events that occurred at the turn of the century and before contain words of songs because this was one of the narrative devices used by informants. Fieldnotes include ethnographic data on genealogies and kinship system, local Islamic practices and brotherhoods, traditional rituals, marriage, traditional medicine, social organization, and inheritance. All material is in my possession in handwritten files and available to interested researchers. Files contain fiche marked by date, informant, and topic. Fourteen files include transcriptions in Chizigula from recordings of autobiographical interviews comprising 27 cassettes and their annotated translation into Italian. Only personal reminiscences and documentation on mviko rituals and versions of songs have been indexed through a DBase3+ package. The indexed data are contained in seven handwritten files whose pages are numbered and marked as above. Much of this information has also been tape recorded on 25 cassettes. Samples of most daylight mviko performances have been video recorded using a VHS Compact non-professional video camera. My notes are in Italian.
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