ORALITY AND LITERACY III: MEMORY
International Conference
Rice University, Houston, Texas
October 10-12, 2003
Please click on the participant's name to read an abstract of his/her talk and a selected bibliography.
Saturday morning - Group 1:
Catherine C. Fourshey
David Gordon
Sheryl A McCurdy
Maria-Regina Kecht
Bertrade
B. Ngo-Ngijol Banoum
Sandra Ott
Saturday morning - Group 2:
Liz Dietz
Gerhard F. Strasser
Hanne Kolind Poulsen
Sabrina Inowlocki
Chris van den Berg
Caroline K. Quenemoen
Saturday morning - Group 3:
Monica Green
Dennis Dewey
Jonathan Draper
Megan Biesele
Gregory H. Maddox
Saturday afternoon:
Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts
Sunday Morning - Group 1:
Pieter J. J. Botha
Richard A. Horsley
J. A. Loubser
Tammy Shapiro
Eliza Slavet
Sunday Morning - Group 2:
Pinelopi Skarsouli
Joachim Lacross
Bernard Collette
Sarah Dugal
David Blaise Ossene
Sunday Morning - Group 3:
Jeff Opland
Meshak Owino
J.K. Ayantayo
Mary Ann Clark
Anne Pym
Sunday Afternoon:
Emevwo Biakolo
Anne C. Klein
John Miles Foley
Catherine Fourshey
Remembering Tanzanias Past through Language
This paper examines the ways in which language and oral tradition serve as a
form of historical memory in southwestern Tanzania, a region where orality has
precedence over literacy. The objective of this paper is to examine the ways
in which language preserves historical memories and at the same time shapes
those memories through oral traditions in southwestern Tanzania. The notion
that memory metaphorically preserves history is explored to demonstrate how
language, vocabulary, historical linguistics, and oral traditions serve as important
tools for historians. From analyses of language and the oral traditions of southwestern
Tanzania we learn that there was a widespread political transformation in the
earlier parts of the second millennium CE when small-scale social and political
organization was supplanted by a system where political authority became increasingly
relevant. For example, Lungu traditions connect their chiefly lines to Sabi
people (Bemba and Bisa), a connection which aggrandizes Chiefship and which
is indirectly supported by historical linguistic evidence. Recurrent themes
in traditions of Tanzanias Corridor revolve around relationships between
migrants and natives, political shifts, marriage alliances, and the pervasive
tension between conflict and peace within these communities in the eras beyond
living memory. Just as what people remember of their history is meaningful,
how people remember and recount their history reveals a great deal about how
they perceive cultural change. Whether myth-encased or true accounts, stories
of ancient and contemporary events are strategically orchestrated in traditions
of any community to disseminate a larger message which is of both historical
and modern importance to that particular community. Thus I explore the recurrent
themes in these traditions compare those themes to linguistic data and ask how
can we make historical sense of both what is remembered and how it is remembered.
Partial bibliography:
1. Cooper, Brenda and Steyn, Andrew (eds.). Transgressing Boundaries: New Directions
in the Study of Culture in Africa Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996.
2. Larson, Pier M. History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina
in Highland Madagascar, 1770-1822 Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000.
3. Petrilli, Susan and Ponzio Augusto. "Telling Stories in the Era of Global
Commnication: Black Writing Oraliture," Research in African Literatures
32, 1 (2001) 98-109.
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David Gordon
Orality, Memory and Historical Time on the Luapula (Zambia)
Based on research conducted in the 1940s, anthropologist Ian Cunnison wrote
a seminal account about the use of history and historical narrative among the
Luapula peoples of Mwata Kazembes Kingdom in Northern Zambia. Cunnison
demonstrated how forms of particularized memory shaped political relationships
between and within lineage groups through the compression of historical time,
the inheritance of ancestral titles (positional succession) and kin relations
(perpetual kinship). Cunnison argued that histories in the Luapula Valley were
particular, relevant to the present, and only known to the appropriate group.
Thus, history was closely linked to collective memories and to particular identities.
Yet since Cunnisons study, through the distribution and performance of
written, printed histories, a universal, general history of Mwata Kazembes
Kingdom has challenged and displaced older conceptions of historical time. They
have inserted history into a fixed chronology that stretches out the compressed
time of Luapulas oral traditions. Collective memories held by distinct
lineages have been subordinated to the universal history of Kazembes Kingdom,
and if they are to survive must locate themselves within this universal history.
By tracing transformations in the historical narrations about and within the
Luapula Valley over the last fifty years, we can explore the impact of literacy,
and especially the spread of printed histories that work within specific notions
of historical time, on the collective memories of non-literate corporate groups.
We are able to trace the transformation from what Pierre Nora termed regimes
of memory to those of history with remarkable detail. Furthermore, I argue that
one aspect of what Richard Werbner terms the "memory crisis" of postcolonial
Africa, results from the disjuncture in notions of historical time that have
surfaced from the engagement of social memories with scripted histories.
The paper is based on intermittent fieldwork in the Luapula Valley over the
last six years in addition to archival records and previous ethnographic accounts.
Partial Bibliography:
1. Cunnison, Ian. History on the Luapula: An Essay in the Historical Notions
of a Central African Tribe. Lusaka: Rhodes-Livingstone Paper 21 (Cape Town:
1951; reprinted Manchester: 1969)
2. Nora, Pierre. "Between History and Memory: Les Lieux de Mémoire,
" Representations 0(26), Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring,
1989): 7-24
3. Werbner, Richard. "Beyond Oblivion: Confronting Memory Crisis,"
in Richard Werbner, ed., Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and
the critique of power (Zed: London and New York, 1998): 1-17.
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Sheryl McCurdy
Healing and memory: Spirit possession performances and nationalist narratives
in Ujiji/Kigoma, Tanzania
During the latter half of the nineteenth century Ujiji was an entrepot through
which Zanzibari traders traveled through and settled as they moved into the
Congo where they ravaged and plundered communities for ivory and slaves. The
memory of the different groups of people who populated Ujiji and their various
practices, relationships, and statuses has been immortalized in a spirit possession
ceremony that mimics and mocks their memory. Relatively recent rural Ha migrants
to Ujiji/Kigoma, Tanganyika have utilized the waungwana/vibaraka/washenzi (gentlefolk/stooges/barbarians)
spirit possession ceremony to claim a Swahili national identity. This three
part performance begins with their possession by spirits who depict Zanzibari
traders from the ivory and slave trade era. The appearance of the male and female
Zanzibari trader spirits is followed by the appearance of spirits who represent
dangerous characters from various places in the interior of Tanzania. Finally
the study ends with a spirit performance that depicts simple people who are
ignorant of and fear other cultures. These last spirits are meant to represent
those African communities that had not yet been acculturated into the Swahili
cultural milieu. Based on research conducted during 1992-93 and the summers
of 1999, 2000, and 2001, this paper examines the ways that women in spirit possession
associations in urban Ujiji/Kigoma, Tanzania embrace and retell a story of the
past to lay claim to a contemporary space in Tanzania.
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Maria-Regina Kecht
Gendered Narratives of Counter-Memory: Austrian Women Writers Remember National
Socialism
The famous Moscow Declaration of 1943 that recognized Austria as the first
victim of Nazi aggression allowed the Austrian governments of the immediate
post-war years to nurture the development of a very special "Austrian identity"in
clear distinction from a German identityand thus construct a public (collective)
memory that would displace any sense of guilt or responsibility for the horrendous
crimes committed between 1938 and 1945. Collective amnesia, brought about by
decades of systematic self-deception, denial, and finger-pointing (to the "bad"
Germans), has profoundly shaped the communicative, collective, and cultural
memories Austrians share. My paper will explore the role of artistic "remembrancers"
(Peter Burke) that women writers have assumed in this specific context since
Ilse Aichinger wrote her novel Die größere Hoffnung (1948). Their
resistance to national silence and mythificationand thus their literary
creation of alternative memory spaces amidst a well-constructed "master
narrative" carries gendered features that distinguish their representations
of the experience/aftermath of National Socialism from that of their engagés
male colleagues. Of major importance for the selected authors (and their protagonists)
are the issues of intergenerational communication about the past, womens
solidarity in guarding/transmitting their memories, and the physical/bodily
archiving of (fascist and post-fascist) historical experience.
Partial bibliography:
1. Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen
Gedächtnisses. München: Beck, 1999.
2. Sigrid Weigel. Bilder des kulturellen Gedächtnisses: Beiträge zur
Gegenwartsliteratur. Dülmen-Hiddingsel: tende, 1994.
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Bertrade B. Ngo-Ngijol Banoum
African Orality and Social Identity: Imag(in)ing Gender and Womanhood in
Basaá Epic Tradition
As the foremost repository of African worldviews and as a central component
in traditional education, (A. H. Ba 1982, I. Okpewho 1992, M. M. Mugo 1994),
African verbal arts seem key to understanding ancestral traditions and social
constructions, including gender identity. Paradoxically, this critical source
of institutionalized knowledge base has been egregiously neglected, most particularly
the epic, which is one of the richest African oral genres. As a showcase of
customs, values and beliefs, as a virtual social, political and cultural charter
of society embodying deep-rooted aspects of its cosmology and worldview, epic
sources appear as logical starting sites for understanding indigenous gender
construction.
Excavating Africas most notable heroic narratives such as Sundiata (Niane
1965, Johnson 1992) and Chaka (Mofolo 1981), Mwindo (Biebuyck and Mateene 1969),
Ozidi Saga (Clark-Bekederemo 1991), and other epic works representative of the
diverse continent (Okpewho 1979) and (Johnson, Hale, & Belcher 1997) unveils
compelling representations of gender and women. In the introduction to their
anthology Oral Epics from Africa, the co-authors usefully note that, "The
world of the epic appears at first to be dominated by men. One soon discovers,
however, that the heroes of many of these epics . . . depend on women both in
childhood and later at key points in their lives" (9). Yet, Africas
rich oral epic traditions have been unexplored and unexploited in inquiries
of gender and women. This paper is an attempt to fill the gap by examining gender
identities and images of womanhood as represented in the Basaá oral epic
tradition and most particularly in Bon ba Hiton, a chronicle of the Basaá
people of Southern Cameroon. I wish to conduct a gendered review and analysis
of customs, including genealogy, geography, identity, nuptiality, through naming
conventions, marriage practices, bridewealth exchanges, and gender socialization,
in order to elicit indigenous conceptualizations and realizations of gender.
My analysis goes beyond reinforcement of traditional gender conventions, reminiscent
of classical ethnographies (Radcliffe-Brown and Forde 1950, Jomo Kenyatta 1965,
Evans-Pritchard 1959), to capture exceptions that stand as a counterbalance
throughout the epic.
I will focus on resistance to the powerful patriarchal authority by young female
characters such as Kibum, Ngo-Hiton and most interestingly, Ngo-Cenel. I want
to argue that young women like Ngo-Cenel illustrate the ways in which the past
may inform the present. Devising their own contemporary realities, the young
female characters transcend the conventional oppositions of tradition vs. modernity,
precolonial vs. postcolonial, local vs. foreign, to produce new kinds of synthesis
the modernity of tradition. They challenge Western assumptions about
the homogeneity of the category African women and the universality of gender
models. I share the viewpoints of Amadiume1(987); Imam, Mama, and Sow (1997);
Okeke (1997); Hodgson and McCurdy (2001); Oyewumi (1997, 2003), and other scholars,
who are concerned with constructing gender frameworks that draw on specific
historical and cultural locations, constituencies and epistemologies. Accordingly,
I want to address the questions: How can the knowledge base contained in African
epic works inform our reconfiguration of gender, women, and feminism, to avoid
what Olufemi Taiwo calls the "poverty of theory"(45)? How can the
knowledge base contained in African epic traditions sharpen ongoing discourses
and contribute to the growing body of literature on gender?
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Sandra Ott
Remembering the Resistance in Popular Theater: A Basque Controversy
I explore the relationships between history, ethnography, and memory within
the context of a popular play (pastorala) about Resistance to the Occupation
of the French Basque province, Soule. I consider not only how remembrance of
the past is contested and reshaped, but also how an artistic representation
can serve as an idiom for ongoing arbitration over collective memory, which
itself has implications for a national French identity and an ethnic Basque
identity.
Watched by 6,000 people, performed in 2001, and written by a Souletine Basque,
the play depicts the two rival Resistance groups operating in Soule (1942-1944)
as cooperative allies. The playwright described it as "memory work"
in verse, not "a strict lesson in history", not "realist but
symbolic theatre" which sought to celebrate the liberation of Soule. The
pastorala did rekindle animosities between the two Resistance groups (one Gaullist,
Basque and local, the other ex-French Army and "foreign"). Its performance
brought back memories of discord that marked the 20th anniversary of Soules
liberation in 1964, and triggered afresh heated debates about tactical and ethical
issues dividing resisters during the Occupation. Some people boycotted it. Some
praised the play for its classic format with the Good (Resisters) always victorious
over the Bad (Nazis). Others sharply criticized the playwright for distorting
history.
As a lieu de memoire, the play also provides a test case for Fabians model
of academic ethnology/academic historiography/popular historiology.
Partial Bibliography:
1. Fabian, J. Anthropology With An Attitude : Critical Essays, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2001.
2. Winter, J. & Sivan, E. War and Remembrance, Cambridge: CUP, 1999
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Liz Dietz
From Classical Memory System to Perspective Device: John Donne's "The
Anniversaries"
The revival of classical memory systems in sixteenth-century England and
their absorption into the scientific methods of the seventeenth-century has
been well documented by Frances Yates, among others. Yet this treatment of memory
as part of an occult philosophical tradition in the renaissance may have suppressed
the degree to which memory was also an established part of early modern visual
culture, and was thus seriously undermined by the growing popularity of single-point
perspective. My paper examines the significance of perspective for understanding
old and new techniques of memorialization in several poems and artifacts by
the seventeenth-century poet John Donne. In these works, Donne anatomizes memory
itself as a way of drawing attention to profound shifts in the experience of
time and of subjectivity. In particular, by incorporating pictorial strategies
into his memorial poem The Anatomy of the World, he seeks to clarify the distinction
between strategies of recollection based on multiple-point perspective and those
based on a more modern single-point perspective which disengages the present
self from its past and future, and from memorys traditionally more fluid
strategies of reassembly. When Donne claims that "the new science calls
all into doubt", he may well be arguing against the advent of history as
a science.
Partial Bibliography:
1.Nora, Pierre. "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire."
Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7-25.
2.Yates, Frances. The Art of Memory. London: Pimlico, 1992.
3.Guibbory, Aschash A Map of Time: Seventeenth-Century English Literature and
Ideas of Pattern in History Chicago: University of Ill
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Gerhard F. Strasser
Mastering World History from Adam to the Year 1670: Johannes Buno's Mnemotechnically
Illustrated Idea Historiae Universalis
The late medieval ars memorativa saw a decline in the north of Europe during
the century of the Reformation, but by 1600 a spate of purportedly new mnemotechnical
methods spread in France and Germany. One important teacher of mnemonics was
Johann Balthasar Schupp (1610-61), professor of history and rhetorics at the
University of Marburg, who in 1639 edited an earlier Theatrum Historicum sive
Chronologiae Systema Novum. Several of his students refined Schupp's mnemotechnical
methods, among them Johannes Buno (1617-97). An early, 1647, publication on
world history for the first time used groups of 10 mnemotechnical illustrations
to be analyzed in a pattern influenced by late medieval memory tracts and purportedly
enhancing retention. In his three major works of the 1670s that were devoted
to the study of history, law, and the Bible, Buno refined his earlier method.
In the first of these publications, the 1672 Idea Historiae Universalis, Buno
subdivided world history into the four Biblical millenia before Christ's birth
and the 17 centuries after that. Each of the four millenia is represented in
a mnemonically relevant visual manner, beginning with the first 100 years that
used "Adam's family tree" as a backdrop on which one event in each
of the "first" 10 centuries is mnemotechnically illustrated--Adam,
sitting on the number 930 (his age), is shown wiping tears from his eyes to
recall the expulsion from Paradise ... . The second millenium uses "Boards"
as a backdrop to recall the building of Noah's ark, the third a "Camel,"
the millenium of Christ's birth a "Dragon" to illustrate the idolatry
of the Israelites (brought upon by a devil in the shape of a dragon ...) before
the arrival of Christ. In each of these four large illustrations, each century
(beginning with the second millenium) is subdivided into 10 smaller frames that
need to be read in a "Z" pattern for the first 5 frames, and an inverted
"Z" pattern for the second group, thus modifying the 1647 system.
Each of the 17 centuries after Christ's birth is awarded a separate illustration
that once again uses a visually relevant detail to help memory recall: Beginning
with the letter "A" all over (since Buno's alphabet of 20 letters
would otherwise not have enough letters to the 17th century), the first century
A.D. is characterized by a giant "Adler/eAgle" to set the frame for
the "Roman monarchy", while the 17th uses a "Rahmen/frAme"
since there were so many diverse occurrences after 1600 that they all needed
to be set in a proper "frame". A necessary refinement of the illustration
of each century is the subdivision of each picture into 10 decades, each of
which has to be analyed according to the "Z/inverted Z system." It
is evident that a presentation would have to include several of these mnemotechnical
illustrations in order to show the wealth of details especially in the centuries
before Buno's life. The author suggested to mount each of these (folio-size)
illustrations on canvas and hang them up as a perpetual reminder (there was
also a quarto-size publication of the illustrations in which each of the individual
occurrences had the size of a finger nail ...); contrary to his 1647 publication,
he now provided a detailed prose explanation of the thousands of individual
illustrations that needed to be read alongside the pictures. Buno's system actually
preceded the "pedagogical realism" of the 18th century and was used
in a number of schools well into the 1720s--at which time mnemonically illustrated
overviews of history had been replaced with "simple," tabular books.
Partial Bibliography:
1. Emblematik und Mnemonik der Frühen Neuzeit im Zusammenspiel: Johannes
Buno und Johann Justus Winckelmann. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung,
36. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000
2. Jean Michel Massing: "From Manuscript to Engravings: Late Medieval Mnemonic
Bibles." In: Berns, Jörg Jochen and Wolfgang Neuber, eds.: Ars memorativa.
Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400-1750. Frühe
Neuzeit, 15. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993, 101-115.
3. Berns, Jörg Jochen and Wolfgang Neuber, eds.: Seelenmaschinen. Gattungstraditionen,
Funktionen und Leistungsgrenzen der Mnemotechniken vom späten Mittelalter
bis zum Beginn der Moderne. Frühneuzeit-Studien, N.S., 2. Wien, Köln,
Weimar: Böhlau, 2000
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Hanne Kolind Poulsen
Images of Memory: Luther, Cranach and the Notion of Merckbilder
During the earliest years of the Reformation and under the pressure of the iconoclastic
riots, Luther developed a radical new concept of images. This concept gave to
the image a quite different role that the one it had occupied in the Catholic
Church. To Luther the image was primarily a mnemotechnical device, whose correct
function was not to represent anything, but as a sign to refer to something,
namely to the Word, and thereby making the spectator remember it. In a sermon
from 1521 Luther mentions the so-called Merckbilder (mass-produced, cheap woodcuts
with roughly drawn motifs). You do not believe in these rough reproductions,
he said, but they remind us of something we already know.This was precisely
what images should.I shall discuss Cranach the Elder's peculiar, simple, anti-realistic
(and often misunderstood) painting style as a visual correlative to Luther's
thoughts on images. Cranach developed, I will argue, a mode of painting that
satisfied Luther's requirements to images as Merckbilder, memory images. Cranach's
method was to balance his works between on the one hand acknowledging their
obligation to be "only" signs (their abstract aspects), but on the
other, after all, to make them able to activate the memory of the spectator
by means of reality effects, clearly referring to a (Lutheran) meaning determined
beforehand.
Partial Bibliography:
1. "Choice and Redemption: On Lucas Cranach the Elder's Melancholia in
Statens Museum for Kunst", Statens Museum for Kunst Journal, 4, 2000, p.
40-75.
2. "Fläche, Blick und Erinnerung. Cranachs Venus und Cupido als Honigdieb
im Licht der Bildtheologie Luthers", in: Lucas Cranach. Glaube, Mythologie
und Moderne, ed. Werner Schade, Hamburg 2003, p. 130-143.
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Sabrina Inowlocki
Rewriting the Bible : Josephus appropriation of the Jewish past in
the Jewish Antiquities
In this paper, I wish to deal with Flavius Josephus, the famous fist-century
Jewish historian, and with his appropriation of the biblical narrative
in his Jewish Antiquities. This work, which he viewed as a translation of the
Bible, is more like a retelling of the Bible and of the Jewish past, aiming
at a non-Jewish audience, even if Jews certainly read it as well. Although he
promises in his work neither to add nor to omit anything from the Scripture,
it is a well-known fact that he modified and changed it on many occasions, mainly
for apologetic purposes. In my paper, I wish to explore the way in which the
Jewish memory as embodied in the Bible is used and appropriated by this author
in order to defend and increase the prestige of the Jewish faith towards a pagan
audience. In particular, I wish to concentrate on the myth of the tower of Babel
(Genesis 11) as used by Josephus in his Antiquities.
Partial bibliography:
1. Th. W. FRANXMAN, Genesis and the « Jewish Antiquities » of Flavius
Josephus, Biblica et Orientalia 35, Rome, 1979.
2. L. H. FELDMAN, Josephus Interpretation of the Bible (Hellenistic Culture
and Society XXXIII), Berkeley - L. A. - London, 1998.
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Caroline Quenemoen
Father, Tyrant, or God?: The Commemoration of Caesar in the Roman
Forum
Recent studies of commemorative monuments have highlighted the integral relation
between the social and political processes of creation and rhetorical effect.
Yet studies of Roman commemoration overlook the forces underlying design, partly
for lack of evidence. The commemoration of Caesar, therefore, offers a valuable
case study. Caesar's assassination and funeral threatened the established social
order. Whether Caesar deserved commemoration and in what manner quickly became
the locus of social tensions, revealing a deep division between the Senate and
plebs and within the senatorial order itself. Between 44 and 42, the debates
played out in meetings of the Senate and in the Roman forum, as competing factions
erected monuments to commemorate Caesar, only to have them torn down and replaced.
At stake were claims to the authentic memory of Caesar. Although
many revered him as a father, many others claimed he was a tyrant. Octavian
and the Senates decision in 42 to deify Caesar and erect a temple on the
site of his funeral pyre proved pivotal for reconciling these debates. Examining
how the design of the temple responded to debates concerning Caesar's commemoration
attributes the buildings ultimate success to its ability to forge consensus
in the fractious years of the triumviral period.
Partial Bibliography:
1. Montagna Pasquinucci, M., La decorazione architettonica del tempio del Divo
Giulio nel foro romano [MonAnt I.4 (Rome 1973)].
2. Weinstock, S., Divus Iulius (Oxford 1971).
3. Nelson, R. ed., Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade (Chicago 2003).
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Monica H. Green
From Memory to Written (Medical) Record: Female Medical Practice and the Transition
to Book-Based Medicine in Medieval Europe
The exclusion of women from virtually all medical practice save midwifery and
nursing in western societies until the late 19th century has been assumed to
be an inevitable process enforced by patriarchal control over the institutions
of higher learning, the universities. Yet the majority of even male medical
practitioners in medieval Europe, when the universities were first founded,
was not university educated. The crucial gender differential in men's and women's
medical learning, and their ability to gain formal approval for their medical
practice, lay instead in differences of basic literacy. This paper, based on
over 15 years of research on medieval women's medicine, will explore how European
women created medical knowledge and transmitted it without the benefit of literacy,
how that orally-transmitted knowledge was first coopted then rejected by male
practitioners, and how European women finally made the transition to literate
medicine from the 16th century on. This study has potential to enlighten other
cultural histories of the relation between women's medical knowledge and book-based
medicine.
Partial bibliography:
1. Clanchy, Michael T. From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307,
2nd rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
2. Miller, Gordon. "Literacy and the Hippocratic Art: Reading, Writing,
and Epistemology in Ancient Greek Medicine," Journal of the History
of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45 (1990), 11-40.
3. Abugideir, Hibba E. "Egyptian Women and the Science Question: Gender
in the Making of Colonized Medicine, 1893-1929," Ph.D. dissertation (Washington,
D.C.: George Washington University, 2001).
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Dennis Dewey
The Mnemonics of the Heart: Marinating in the Stories of Scripture
Modern, scientific thought identifies memory as a function of the head. As a
professional biblical storyteller, who performs the biblical texts close to
verbatim, I am often asked, "How many stories do you have in your head?"
In fact, memory is more anatomically diffuse. The head-memory concept is severely
limiting and constitutes a virtual impediment to the process of learning by
hearta process akin to the ancient practice of "keeping the words."
I suggest that Deuteronomy 6:6 ("Keep these words that I am commanding
you in your heart.") is, as it were, the "first corollary to the Shema"
and the cornerstone of Hebrew spiritualityone which has largely been lost
to generations of literate people for whom "sacred text" has become
external ink on paper rather than sound/image/feeling remembered in the deep,
internal places. This paper will draw on my experience as a performer in whom
some texts of the biblical tradition have lived for over 20 years and my work
on methods for learning texts by heart which I call "the synaesthetic/multiple
intelligences approach" (and only semi-facetiously "St. Ignatius meets
Stanislavsky ") to explore the possibilities of finding elements of a pedagogical
methodology for post-literate post-modernity in the oral spirituality of Jesus
and the tradition in which he was educated.
Partial bibliography:
1. Boomershine, Thomas. Story Journey: An Invitation to the Gospel as Storytelling.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988.
2. Nidtich, Susan. Oral World and Written Word. Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1996.
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Jonathan Draper
The Ritualization of Memory: the interface of written and oral tradition in
Ibandla Labancwele of George Khambule
The Zulu prophet George Khambule founded an indigenous Christian movement in
the early 1920s in the aftermath of the military defeat of the Zulu kingdom.
He wrote the prophecies and experiences he received down in Zulu script in diaries
and hymns. These were performed orally by himself but also incorporated in liturgical
actions, leading to multiple variant written versions. This created a "sacred
history" of the movement embedded in the community long after his death.
This paper explores the interface between the incorporation of oral tradition
in ritual performance as an aspect of and creator of communal memory.
Partial bibliography:
1. Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas 1966. The Social Construction of Reality:
A Treatises in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday [Anchor].
2. Clothier, Norman 1987. Black Valour: The South African Native Labour Contingent,
1916-1918 and the Sinking of the "Mendi". Pietermaritzburg: University
of Natal Press.
3. Gleeson, Ian 1994. The Unknown Force: Black, Indian and Coloured Soldiers
through Two World Wars. Rivonia, Johannesburg: Ashanti.
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Megan Biesele
Re-membering Idioms of the Heart: Nineteenth-Century San Folklore and Twentieth-Century
San Politics
Folklore of /Xam San foragers of South Africa collected prior to 1900 is marked
by a comprehensive idiom of social technology involving powers of the heart.
1970-1990 Namibian Ju/'hoan San folklore and healing texts reveal a similar
emphasis on the heart's transpersonal power. They share a tapestry of such ideas
with neighboring Bantu-speaking Tswana agriculturalists, perhaps upsetting scholarly
paradigms which have stressed cultural isolates and functional coherences. Ju/'hoan
public rhetoric taped since Namibian Independence (1990) uses re-membered heart
idioms in the new multicultural context of nation-state politics.
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Gregory H. Maddox
Transcribing Memory: Writing Oral Traditions in Central Tanzania
This paper will examine the work of a local historian of the Gogo people
of central Tanzania. Ernest Musa Kongola has devoted his last two decades to
writing histories of his community. He has recorded clan histories, written
biographies (including his autobiography), produced commentaries on changes
that have occurred among his community over the twentieth century, and worked
with two "guild" historians. This paper will examine Kongolas
quest for history. It will argue that in producing his volumes, Kongola is defining
a moral order for his community and placing himself in the center of his community
and that order. Such a presentation is of course contested and indeed transitory.
His writings rather than defining a history by reducing it writing, serve as
another argument in an ongoing dialogue about the past.
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Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts
'Between Memory and History': Visual Hagiographies and Lieux de Memoire in
Congo and Senegal
Culture heroes and saints exact devotion through hagiographic images, oral
narratives, and written texts. Hagiography is an active process of identity
formation located in a conceptual space somewhere between memory and history.
Rather than mere description, hagiography sweeps up the viewer, listener or
reader so that his/her life becomes an extension of the saint's. Hagiography
is explicitly interactive and intersubjective, for as Edith Wyschograd asserts,
saints' lives do not merely exist, they are endlessly refabulated. In this way,
hagiography possesses its own vitality, ensuring that the life of a hero or
saint is forever perpetuated in a "sacred present" that is continuously
grafted onto the pure potentiality of a remembered past. At issue is what Johannes
Fabian calls a "way with time" driven more by consequences than sequence,
so that instead of a Western-style historiography, there results a "historiology:
the shared memories of colonial and postcolonial history objectified in written
texts, oral accounts, and visual images." The grafting processes of visual
hagiography take place in tensely creative interstices between memory and history,
for imagery stimulates and is stimulated by both oral narratives and written
texts.
This presentation will consider the visual hagiographies of Luba people of Congo/Kinshasa
and of the Mouride Sufi movement in Senegal. The writings of Edward Casey and
Pierre Nora on memory, history, and lieux de memoire will be considered in the
context of these two case studies. Among Luba people of central Africa, complex
mnemonic devices reflect Luba concepts and practices of memory. Luba perceive
memory as a "string of beads," whose contingent elements are the people,
places, and events of the past, to be endlessly reconfigured in narrative combinations.
Mary Nooter Roberts will demonstrate how the culture heroes of Luba kingship
are embodied and reborn through chiefs, kings, and female spirit mediums in
the present, and how an understanding of "place memory" and
"body memory" offer new perspectives on Luba historical consciousness.
The second case examines the life of a Senegalese saint, Sheikh Amadou Bamba
(1853-1927), a mystic, poet, and pacifist colonial resister who founded the
influential Sufi movement known as the Mouride Way. A single photograph of the
Saint taken by colonial authorities in 1913 has become a palimpsest for the
myriad interpretations of the Saint's life, and the catalyst for an explosion
of artistic imagery produced over the past twenty-five years. As the Mouride
diaspora expands around the world, Bamba is being reinvented as an "alternative
figure in nationalist memory" standing for and promoting "a rupture
in postcolonial memory and a new modernity," in the words of the historian
Mamadou Diouf. Allen F. Roberts will consider the role of baraka and batin,
two Sufi principles that activate and empower the image to stimulate memory
and to ensure that history is forever perpetuated in the present.
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Pieter J.J. Botha
Memory and Orality in the Jesus Traditions
John Dominic Crossan, most prominent historical Jesus researcher of the
past few decades, emphatically denies the importance of the oral tradition with
regard to the historical Jesus. He points to research showing how memory is
a creative act, even when or especially when sincerity and conviction are present.
He (1998a:60) reminds us, correctly, how much fact and fiction, memory and fantasy,
recollection and fabrication are intertwined in remembering. And how nobody,
including ourselves, can be absolutely certain which is which, apart from independent
and documented verifications. Hence his emphasis on written tradition. However,
even superficial familiarity with non-Western cultures should make anyone aware
of how dangerous it would be to deny the role and importance of oral tradition
and "living memory" (i.e., face-to-face history) with regard to social
institutions, authority, daily life, and especially religion. Consequently,
historical research relating to the Jesus movement must take into account a
combination of social-scientific with historical and literary criticism to discipline
claims about the intersection of memory, orality and literacy. Before reconstructing
the "sources" underlying the gospels, we need to understand the socio-cultural
processes involved with what we call "traditions": (1) How was (popular)
historical information perceived by its culture? (2) How was communicative events
relating to "tradition" taught and learned, and by whom? (3) How was
"tradition" described by contemporary transmitters (writers)? (4)
How was the relationship between oral, traditional material and audiences understood?
Partial bibliography:
1. Bloch, M. E. F. (1998). How we think they think: anthropological approaches
to cognition, memory and literacy. Boulder: Westview Press.
2. Rubin, D. C. (1995). Memory in oral traditions: the cognitive psychology
of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Richard A. Horsley
A Prophet Like Moses/ Joshua/ Elijah: Israelite Cultural 'Scripts' Underlying
and Adapted in the Gospel of Mark
In a recent book on the Gospel of Mark I argued that Mark's story of Jesus'
mission of the renewal of Israel versus the Roman and Jerusalem rulers is informed
by and creatively adapts the central Israelite cultural "script" of
a popular prophetic movement. That suggestion builds on previous work that detects
such a distinctively Israelite cultural memory underlying and informing the
many popular movements among the Judean and Samaritan peasantries that take
the form of prophets leading their followers in antipation of new diving acts
of deliverance patterned after God's great acts of deliverance through the leadership
of Moses, Joshua, Elijah and other prophets that were formative of Israel as
a people and its cultural memory. The groundbreaking work of Werner Kelber on
the interface of orality and literacy in the synoptic Gospel tradition and his
work on the "biosphere" of cultural tradition in which continuing
oral performance of Jesus-traditions and Jesus-stories were embedded, and the
richly synthetic theory of John Miles Foley on imminant art and oral performance
have stimulated and informed my previous reflection on the importance and adaptation
of such cultural "scripts." I would now like to bring two additional
perspectives into the analysis of the "popular prophetic script" adapted
in Mark's Gospel: Jan and Aleida Assmann's sophisticated theory of cultural
memory (as supplemented by critical attention to possible differences between
emphases in the cultural "great tradition" and those in the "little
tradition," with few leaves from the notebook of James C. Scott's work)
and the cross-cultural studies of social memory by James Fentress and Chris
Wickham, and in particular Phillipe Joutard's studies of the legends of the
Camisards among the peasants in the Cevennes mountains of southern France. Further
analysis of and reflection on Mark as an orally derived text drawing upon the
work of these theorists should shed further light on the operation of the popular
prophet and prophetic movement in Mark's story and the historical situation
in which it originated.
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J A Loubser
Memory and Oral Intertext in Matthew
This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of Indigenous Knowledge
Systems and how such knowledge can be applied fruitfully in our search for understanding
the interface between developed nations and developing nations where traditional
oral culture plays a formative role. Especially in South Africa, where modern
and traditional cultural strategies meet in all walks of life and interact in
a dramatic fashion, such studies are of great importance for mutual understanding
in the fields of economy, religion, education, jurisdiction and politics. The
paper shows the inadequacies of modern interpretations of a first century text
of the Gospel according to Matthew by drawing on present knowledge of the psychodynamics
of oral traditions. A comparison with the oral trajectories within the contemporary
Shembe tradition in South Africa will serve as an illustration of the processes
involved. Western scholarship of the Matthean text rests on "the assumption
that
the Synoptic traditions have to be analysed in terms of a linear
sequence of literary editions, where each successive version is an editing of
its predecessor". According to Dunn this "simply distorts critical
perception and skews the resultant analysis" (James G. D. Dunn 2000:306).
This statement can be corroborated by a typological comparison of the manner
in which the oral tradition around the person of the Zululand prophet Isaiah
Shembe developed over a period of sixty years. The manner in which narratives
of Isaiah Shembe are generated to suit the context and the historical consciousness
of its audience show structural similarities to similar processes in the gospel
traditions. The written text of the Gospel according to Matthew shows a rich
inter-textuality. It may have incorporated some written texts that are now lost
to us, but in general it is woven from the fabric of oral texts that have been
honed and polished through infinite repetition from memory. This memory is not
only the memory of cognitive elements, but also of extra-textual elements such
as sound patterns. Scholars have also for a long time been intrigued by the
closeness of Matthew to Aramaic-Hebrew linguistic features. A detailed analysis
of selected passages will show that some cohesive links of the Koine Greek text
derive from the sound patterns of the Aramaic-Hebrew tradition that preceded
it. Even though we only have the written text today, it will serve scholars
well to learn to "read the text not only with their minds but also with
their ears". An understanding of such processes involving indigenous knowledge
structures will not only provide Africans from traditional backgrounds with
a tool to clarify their own positions with confidence, but also allow them to
make their unique contribution to international scholarship. This will also
enable Western scholars a new understanding of variant forms of Christianity
and cultural expression in Africa.
OUTLINE
The true gospel is an oral narrative proclaimed from memory to a responsive
audience.
There is no other access to the text of the NT apart from entering it through
the experience of the first audiences.
One can observe patterns, determine the semantic components of words and concepts,
but the text is only comprehended when the rhetoric of the text is comprehended.
What the text does to the first audiences.
This poses a first question for exegesis: What does the text do to a responsive
audience?
This sheds new light on the audience receptions reported in the written gospel.
The first audiences were amazed, bewildered, provoked, moved to faith and manifestations
of the Spirit.
Gerhardssons distinction between the Evangelium and the Apostolos applies.
The latter was a second reflection on the first.
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Tammy Shapiro
From Contestation to Attestation: Fostering Exchange of Memories in Debates
over the Multicultural Content of U.S. History Textbooks
In this paper I draw upon Ricoeurs notions of attestation and testimony
to explore the interplay of personal identity, collective identity, and political
action in a public debate over the content of U.S. history textbooks submitted
by publishers for adoption in Texas. During the hearings, participants contest
the meaning of the American past and others representations
of that past through testimonies that draw upon differing narrative configurations
of American history and differing refigurations of narratives presented in textbooks.
Through these narrative mediations, participants attribute intent, action, and
responsibility to themselves and others, constructing personal and collective
American character and imbuing it with historical depth. I describe
how the adversarial structuring of the hearings and the textbook adoption process
reinforces participants assumption of a single authoritative representation
of American history and identity. The hearings serve as forums in which participants
contest the accuracy of historical representations rather than as spaces in
which multiple stories or voices can be attended to and learned from. Understanding
participants narrative figurations as attestations of self, identity and
experience (as well as claims to epistemic truth) reveals possibilities for
designing institutional processes that support mutual attentiveness and recognition,
and thereby an exchange of memories among participants.
Selected bibliography:
1. Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1992.
2. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol. III. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and
David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.
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Eliza Slavet
Mediating Memory: 'Tradition' in Freud's Moses and Monotheism
In theorizing memory, Freud poses the stability of textual and biological inscription
against the ephemerality of oral communication and childhood experience. In
this paper, I argue that in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, Freud inserts
a third term-- tradition-- which mediates between the two communicative processes,
allowing a complete transference of memory-materials to future generations.
Central to my argument is a close reading of a long passage from Freud's Moses
in which he explains the phenomenon of Jewish collective memory by reconstructing
the numerous ways that the original traumatic memory of the murder of Moses
was transferred from generation to generation through a curious chain of oral
and textual transmission. Freud had earlier explained how memory-traces result
not only from a person's individual childhood experiences, but rather also from
various original traumatic events (such as Oedipus or in this case, the murder
of Moses) experienced by the individual's ancestors. Here, however, with tradition
as the key term, Freud historicizes the transmission of memory and its transformation
into permanent traces.
Partial bibliography:
1. Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism. (1939).
2. Yerushalmi, Hayim Yosef. Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable
(New Haven: Yale University, 1991).
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Pinelopi Skarsouli
The proem of Hesiods Theogony and the tradition of memory as a vehicle
of oral justice
In the beginning of his Theogony, Hesiod tells us that Earth lies with Heaven
and from this union were born Theia, Rea, Themis and Mnemosyne. The inclusion
of Memory as one of the most ancient deities marks her importance among pre-literate
Greeks. In the same proem, Memory lies with Zeus and gives birth to the nine
Muses. The poets dependence on the Muses is a common theme in epic poetry,
as is the kings dependence on Zeus. But, at the same time, Hesiod demonstrates
the relationship between singer and king, and especially the king as judge.
Havelock argues that Hesiod means to say that the king must be able to frame
decisions and judgments in verse because, when speech is metrical and formulaic,
only then it can reflect the voice of the Muse. In the same way, the Muses,
thanks to laws in verse form, help the judge to remember; furthermore, in some
Greek cities the judicial officials were called mnemones, rememberers.
This association, which places poetry and the royal art of persuasion under
the protection of Muses, especially Kalliope, of beautiful voice,
forms the centre of my problematic. My aim is to demonstrate the meaning and
the prolongations of this Muses connection not only with poetry but also
with justice. In this scope, I am examining the invocation to the Muses of the
legislator Solon and of the philosopher Empedocles, who from this point of view,
I argue they belong in the same tradition.
Some bibliographical items:
1. J. Duban, «Poets and Kings in the Theogony Invocation», Quaderni
Urbinati di Cultura Classica 33, 1980, p. 7-20.
2. E. A. Havelock, Preface to Plato, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963.
3. J. A. Notopoulos, «Mnemosyne in Oral Literature», Transactions
of the American Philological Association 69, 1938, p. 465-493.
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Joachim Lacross
The Platonic Myth of Theuth and Electronic Media
In the Phaedrus, Plato creates the Myth of Theuth to claim that the transition
from orality to literacy also generated an important loss of memory for mankind.
We shall examine how the Myth of Theuth is relevant to explain the links between
orality, literacy and memory, and how it can be applied to the contemporary
transition between typography and electronic media. In other words, which Myth
of Theuth shall we create today, to understand how the "computerisation"
of the human logos does affect the memory of mankind ?
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Bernard Collette
Memory, Imprint of the Soul
Memory and writing are intimately connected in philosophy. In the Philebus (39a),
Plato already tells us that memory, when coinciding with sense-perception, "writes
discourses in our souls". In general, from Plato to Aristotle, and from
the Stoics to Plotinus, many philosophers resort to the theme of inscription
the imprint in wax to account for memory. In the Theaetetus (191c),
Plato makes use for the first time of the image of wax and imprint to account
for memory: "the wax inside our souls", gift of Mnemosyne, mother
of the Muses, could explain how we remember "what we have seen, heard or
conceived by ourselves". What was only a working hypothesis for Plato becomes
the model of analysis of memory for Aristotle: the imprint, because it can be
taken in itself or in relation to the seal which informed it, can explain both
the reactivation of the original affection and the relationship to the event,
now past, which imprinted it. With the Stoics, the image of the imprint is taken
over by Zeno, founder of the school, in order to define phantasia, i.e. the
affection left by sensitive or intellectual perception. Cleanthes interprets
Zenos position literally, while Chrysippus rather considers the imprints
as a kind of modification or alteration of the soul. Finally, Plotinus calls
into question the metaphor of the imprint in wax: such a metaphor, he explains,
treats the soul as if it were only passive, whereas memory, like the other psychical
powers, is an act. However, this criticism does not prevent him from appropriating
the notion of imprint, which he understands as an intermediate representation
between the soul and the intelligibles, representation from which we must distance
ourselves if we want to reach true knowledge.
Partial bibliography:
1. G. WATSON, Phantasia in Classical Thought, Galway University Press, Galway,
1988.
2. H. J. BLUMENTHAL, Plotinus Psychology, His Doctrine of the Embodied
Soul, Martinus Nijhof, The Hague, 1971.
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Sarah Dugal
Founder's Myth in Highland Madagascar: The Case of the Vazimba
According to the Merina, the ethnic group currently dominating the central highlands
of Madagascar, the Vazimba were the region's original inhabitants, chased away
or killed off by early Merina, newly arrived from Indonesia. Though Merina have
occupied the region for several hundred years, the story of Vazimba continues
to be of central importance to Merina collective memory. As masters of the land,
Vazimba have a natural power yet were unable to defeat their aggressors. Ideas
about what happened to the Vazimba sporadically surface in the scholarly literature.
Rather than adding to that discussion, this paper takes the position that the
historical reality of Vazimba is perhaps less significant than the role their
story plays in forming Merina identity. Drawing on the theory of precedence
established for Austronesian cultures, this paper begins with the notion that
the Vazimba story represents an important variant of the typical founder's myth
and that its continued importance in oral tradition serves to both assert the
Malagasy-ness of the Merina and justify their claims to the territory. Finally,
perceiving the story as a functional tool consistent with Austronesian ideas
of order truncates the scholarly discussion, which has focused on proving or
disproving the reality of Vazimba.
Partial bibliography:
1. McWilliam, Andrew. 2002. Paths of Origin, Gates of Life: A study of place
and precedence in southwest Timor. Verhandelingen Van Het Koninklijk Instituut
voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 202. Leiden: KITLV Press.
2. Rakotomalala, M., S. Blanchy, and Francoise Raison-Jourde. (2001). Madagascar:
Les Ancetres au Quotidien. Paris, L'Harmattan.
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Jeff Opland
What is remembered in Xhosa izibongo
The Xhosa praise poet (imbongi) in South Africa draws on the past to affirm
the identity of the audiences present before him. It seems reasonable to suppose
that as the audience changes, and as his conception of that audience likewise
changes, so too will the images of the past in the imbongi's poetry (izibongo).
To test this hypothesis, the oral poems of three iimbongi from the same ethnic
cluster will be examined: D.L.P. Yali-Manisi, who produced his last oral poem
in 1988 towards the end of the apartheid era; Bongani Sitole, whose career spans
the transition to democracy in South Africa; and Zolani Mkiva, who rises to
prominence as an imbongi on the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as President.
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Meshak Owino
Bridging Orality and literacy: Letter Writing Schemes in War-time Colonial Kenya
The paper examines how African soldiers communicated with their largely illiterate,
rural relatives in colonial Kenya during the Second World War. Introduced by
the colonial government to sustain the morale of their troops on the war-front,
letter writing schemes forced many African soldiers and their civilian counterparts
at home to learn how to write because that was largely the only way of communicating
with one another. Letter writing schemes tried to brige the gap between orality
and literacy, as African civilians and African soldiers were forced to learn
how to write letters to communicate with one another. Problems that the scheme
encountered, and how the government, African soldiers, and civilians tried to
resolve them are examined. The paper also looks at the contents of some of the
letters, revealing issues that upper-most in the minds of African soldiers and
civilians during the war.
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J. K. Ayantayo
The Ethics of Remembering, Memorizing, and Documentation of IFA Divination
System Among Yoruba People, Nigeria
Since memory relates to knowledge, hence the study of the Ifa divination
system, which has been scholarly proved to be a body of knowledge and an academic
discipline. It involves impartation of general knowledge of Ifa orality and
literature which include memorization of hundreds of ese (verse)
in each odu (chapter) about histories and myths, regarding the foundation
of particular Yoruba towns and villages; it also includes having knowledge about
oral and written literature dealing with magic, incantation and healing by the
power of words. These are always accompanied with chanting of Ifa poems which
are mathematical in outlook. In all, knowledge about Ifa involves didactic training
which usually begins with memorization, cramming, and permutation; the period
of training ranges between 8 - 10 years. It is important to note that Ifa memorization
goes with observance of certain ethical principles such as discipline, faithfulness,
perseverance, endurance, dedication, self denial and cooperation. These will
be discussed in this paper in relation to why, how, when the ethical principles
are directly important in the articulation of Ifa knowledge to the trainees.
Ethical issues also come into play regarding the translation of Ifa oratory
to Ifa corpus as will be demonstrated in the work. For example, morality demands
that the ese which is memorized should be faithfully imparted without
distortion of facts so that not a single word is missed out and such should
be faithfully documented without adding or subtracting anything from it. The
study concludes that ethics is indispensable in Ifa memorization as related
to remembering cognitive knowledge about Ifa which is regarded as Yoruba god
of wisdom. On this note the study creates an impression that the application
of morality to the memorization of Ifa orality and corpus would make the study
about Ifa relevant and to be in consonance with globally approved research ethics;
this is the application of moral rules and professional codes of conduct to
the collection, analysis, reporting, and publication of information about research
subjects.
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Mary Ann Clark
Unraveling the Memorative Web of the Santera Altar Display
Every year on the anniversary of their initiation into the priesthood, practitioners
of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santera build elaborate altar displays for
their deities, the Orisha. This paper uses the work of Mary Carruthers and other
scholars of memory to explore the ways that the historical and mythological
past is memorialized on these so-called birthday displays. Like the world of
medieval scholars, their world sits on the cusp between orality and textuality
and like the medieval world, it is symbolic, concrete and experiential. Thus
philosophical and theological concepts are based not on printed materials but
on personal experiences and verbal explanations. Although there are several
ãpastsä that could be explored in an analysis of these displays
in this paper I will specifically investigate the ways that the food placed
on and around the altars and served to participants not only weaves together
information about the different Orisha for those who enjoy it but also embeds
memories about the slave trade and the sugar culture that brought the original
devotees of the Orisha to the Americas.
Partial bibliography:
1. Carruthers, Mary J. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval
Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
2. Brown, David H. "Toward an Ethnoaesthetics of Santera Ritual Arts:
The Practice of Altar-Making and Gift Exchange." In Santera Aesthetics
in Contemporary Latin American Art, edited by Lindsay, Arturo, 77-146. Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
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Anne Pym
Memory as Practice of Sustenance
Thinking about memory from the point of view of oral mind/practice requires
we shift attention from the literate discipline of recorded history to practices
of sustenance. To develop this claim, I will address the ways in which practices
of memory, located within the body, earth, ancestors, muses, and stories, work
together to sustain a people. Briefly, aural, interactive, embodied speech sustains
memory through repetition, rhythm, and imitation, in concert with imagery and
metaphor, sustaining tradition by keeping it ringing in our ears. Second, events
happen in a time and place, in an interactive dance of human and non-human beings,
such that the roar of the waterfall or swoop of the eagle re-minds the people
of their shared experiences and responsibilities. Third, lines remain thin between
ordinary and non-ordinary (physical and spiritual) reality, sustaining the presence
of ancestors not only in the past but as participants in the present, providing
an ongoing retrieval. Fourth, offspring of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the muses serve,
as Hesiod explains, to inspire orators and bards from the fountains of spirit,
"a state in which the ears have opened to the song of the universe"
(Campbell, Power 25). Fifth, tellings of sacred stories of beginningsmythssustains
memory of who the people are, where they come from, and how to act as real human
beings to elicit cooperation from spirits, plants, animals, and humans.
It would, of course, be a mistake to take these practices to stand apart from
one another. Fundamental to oral memory is actioninteraction. Interactive,
memory is not cumulative, as Goody explains, but wrapped with experiences, leaving
behind what no longer serves as it sustains that which does. Forgetting is part
of remembering! Overall, it is the embodied interaction of people with ancestors,
muses, and earth, through tellings of stories and daily experiences, and through
re-memberings and forgettings that sustains a peopleand a planet.
Partial bibliography:
1. Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. B. S. Flowers,
Ed. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
2. Jack Goody. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. New York: Cambridge
UP, 1995.
3. Hesiod. Theogony. Trans. Norman O. Brown. New York: Liberal Arts P,
1953.
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Emevwo Biakolo
Between Memory and Consciousness: Orality, Literacy and Scientific Underdevelopment
in Africa
From the point of view of Eric Havelock (1991), literacy ( as a mnemonic
device) is the single most important cause of scientific and technological development
in the West. This view is not only shared by Walter Ong in several of his earlier
works, but in Orality and Literacy (1982), he extended the dimension of Havelock's
thesis by arguing that literacy led to alterations of the human sensorium, that
is, the human psyche and consciousness itself. The corollary of this as I have
shown in two earlier papers (Biakolo, 1999 and 2002) is that African underdevelopment
in science and technology can be attributed to its largely oral communicative
cultures. On the other hand, in a 1997 essay where he concerns himself with
the implication of Akan causality for science and technology, the African philosopher,
Kwame Gyekye, says that the main reason for the scientific and technological
backwardness of Africa is the hegemony of the mystical over empirical explanations
in the minds and social processes of traditional and even postcolonial Africa.
The upshot of all this is that the condition of science and technology in Africa
is the consequence of certain essentialist properties of the African mind. What
is disregarded is a range of historical elements that have kept Africa where
she is today, elements of a political and economic nature which indeed can themselves
be held to account for Western science and technology. The main objective of
this paper is to analyze these historical factors.
Partial bibliography:
1. Biakolo, E. (2002) 'Categories of Cross-cultural Cognition and the African
Condition' in PHILOSOPHY FROM AFRICA: A TEXT WITH READINGS. 2nd Edition. Eds.
P.H Coetzee and A. P. J Roux. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. 9-19
2. ------------------(1999) 'On the Theoretical Foundations of Orality and Literacy'.
Research in African Literatures. Volume 30, Number 2 (Summer).42-65.
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Anne C. Klein
The Land Remembers: Living Landscape and
Soulful Spirits of the Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan landscape is famous for its dramatic mountains and endlessly open
vistas. For Tibetans however it is not simply a thing of beauty, but an expression
and thus a memory of their own past. What constructs from the tradition itself
will provide coherent meaning to this powerful narrative of ground and the grounded?
. What kind of interiority would look out at the world in this particular way.
Is there a logic to those aspects of the Tibetan cultural imagination? I propose
that there is such a logic and explore it by investigating several native categories
of thought that pertain to the larger category of dynamic energies--the energies
of expression and memory. Categories such as life-vitality (la) and wind (rlung)
are as important across a wide variety of Tibetan fields of practice and inquiry
as they are unlikely up in the mind of a typical Western adventurer in those
same fields. I see these as belonging to a larger, overarching category I can
refer to as dynamism. This multifaceted dynamism assumes that the relationship
of human minds, bodies and cultures, to their landscapes is memorable in ways
that writing alone cannot record. Land holds memory because it itself is dynamic
and alive; rituals celebrating this aspect of the environment are themselves
memories of an ancient culture now in danger of extinction, of being forgotten.
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John M. Foley
Memory and Oral Tradition
In this presentation I propose to consider perspectives on memory within and
in regard to three oral poetic traditions: ancient Greek, medieval English,
and South Slavic. For the two oral-derived traditions, the investigation will
consist chiefly of what can be unearthed from within the surviving documents
(the poems as they exist in manuscript and the few shards of external commentary
that bear on this question). For the modern oral traditions of the Former Yugoslavia
I will draw both internal and external insights, depending on the poets' own
words both within the actual performances and within conversations held with
intermediaries. Instead of the mechanical process of memory envisioned by the
Oral-Formulaic Theory, this evidence indicates a reconstructive, malleable process
that meshes individual with tradition, idiolect with overall language, and unique
expressivity with the resources of a shared, idiomatic register.
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