AMADOU HAMPÂTÉ BÂ: A TESTIMONY

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-166
Author(s):  
Bintou Sanankoua
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Family Environment ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
French Colonialism ◽  
Amadou Hampate Ba

Amadou Hampâté Bâ was a major African traditionalist and humanist figure of the twentieth century. This article, essentially written from personal memories and direct conversations with him and certain people from his family environment, tells of the unusual journey and secret struggles of an unusual man in search of his roots. Writer, politician, and diplomat, spiritual and religious leader, philosopher, traditionalist; this text shows how Amadou Hampâté Bâ became all of these at once, how he lived through the violence and injustice of French colonialism and how he rediscovered his roots thanks to oral tradition. It was oral tradition that reconciled him with himself and allowed him to reenter Fulani society, from which the violence of colonial wars had expelled him. This article shows how his journey made him into a passionate defender of African cultures, traditions, and languages and someone who admirably knew how to make use of UNESCO as a platform for these causes.

Amkoullel, the Fula Boy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amadou Hampâté Bâ
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Large Family ◽  
Islamic Education ◽  
French Colonialism ◽  
Francophone Africa ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Pivotal Moments ◽  
Amadou Hampate Ba ◽  
French School

Born in 1900 in French West Africa, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ was one of the towering figures in the literature of twentieth-century Francophone Africa. In Amkoullel, the Fula Boy, Bâ tells in striking detail the story of his youth, which was set against the aftermath of war between the Fula and Toucouleur peoples and the installation of French colonialism. A master storyteller, Bâ recounts pivotal moments of his life, and the lives of his powerful and large family, from his first encounter with the white commandant through the torturous imprisonment of his stepfather and to his forced attendance at French school. He also charts a larger story of life prior to and at the height of French colonialism: interethnic conflicts, the clash between colonial schools and Islamic education, and the central role indigenous African intermediaries and interpreters played in the functioning of the colonial administration. Engrossing and novelistic, Amkoullel, the Fula Boy is an unparalleled rendering of an individual and society under transition as they face the upheavals of colonialism.

The Dual Biopolitics in the Cuban Postplantation of Gloria Rolando’s Raíces de mi corazón

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-68
Author(s):  
Sarah Margarita Quesada
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory

This essay focuses on the “dual” biopolitics of Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando’s Raíces de mi corazón (Roots of My Heart, 2001). In her film about an antiblack genocide in early-twentieth-century Cuba, Rolando seeks to recover the suppressed 1912 massacre of members of the black Cuban Partido Independiente de Color (the Independent Party of Color) and thousands of other Afro-Cubans through the plane of the intimate. The author argues that Rolando’s film challenges the myth of racial equality throughout Cuba’s modern history by celebrating Afro-Cuban traditions, from orisha rituals to patakíes (Afro-Cuban oral tradition), over a reappropriated plantational space in which black sensuality contests negative biopolitical forms. Rolando not only draws from transnational critical race theory to address the myth of Latin American exceptionalism, she also challenges Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of biopolitics casting black sensuality over racial violence.

Protecting Her Image

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-23
Author(s):  
Amy Artman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Feminine Body ◽  
Charismatic Christianity ◽  
Visible Body

In the panel article "Beautiful Babies, Hidden Mothers, and Plasticized Prisoners: The Display of Bodies and Theories of American Religion," this paper delves into a study of how the mid-twentieth-century “Miracle Woman,” the televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, used popular media--first radio and then television--to control her own image. The panelist argues that Kuhlman’s deft utilization of television, in particular, enabled her not only to control her own image but also to change the image of charismatic Christianity for postwar American audiences. In addition to crafting an image of herself and charismatic Christianity, Kuhlman also mastered the discourse of elision in order to subordinate her very visible, very feminine body. As a female religious leader, Kuhlman had to contend with the practice of self-negation expected by women in many conservative Christian groups in order to gain any significant degree of power. In other words, Kuhlman had to “disappear” or “die” in order to be a vessel for the Holy Spirit if she was to maintain authority. As an embodied female she could not lead without first subordinating, even denying, her own very visible body.

Desert Oral Traditions

2018 ◽  
pp. 167-203
Author(s):  
Clinton Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Song Of The Sea ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The Bedouin oral literary product—proverbs, genealogies, tribal stories, and poetry—shares many likenesses with these genres as they appear in the Hebrew Bible. This commonality pertains, even though some Bedouin oral traditions survived until the late twentieth century CE, when they were still heard recited, while the biblical traditions existed orally only until their ancient transcription in the Bible. This chapter brings examples from the various genres of oral tradition in both societies, comparing them in form, content, background, and initiative, and offering insights into their use in the biblical texts. Bedouin poetry also sheds light on the Bible’s oldest poems, “The Song of the Sea” and “The Song of Deborah.”

Daniel, the Three Youths fragment and the transmission of Old English verse

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 81-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Remley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Formulaic Language ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Multiple Copies

The theories of oral-formulaic composition advanced by Albert B. Lord, his mentor and collaborator Milman Parry, and their later twentieth-century followers have been adduced frequently in studies of Old English verse, elements of whose language must go back ultimately to an oral tradition. After decades of research, however, scholars have yet to find conclusive answers to some basic questions: did literate Anglo-Saxons continue to practise techniques of extemporaneous versification? If so, did they continue to develop the mnemonic skills attributed to oral poets? It is clear that the monuments of Old English verse reveal many examples of formulaic language (for example, se mæra maga Healfdenes, se mæra mago Healfdenes and se mæra maga Ecgðeowes); but should we regard this language as a reliable witness to oral-formulaic versification or, perhaps, as a hybrid, ‘literary-formulaic’ idiom? Finally, if we accept the synchronic (or achronic) models of the formulaic ‘word-hoard’ that inform many Old English studies, is it pointless even to speculate about poetic influence, direction of borrowing and similar concerns? If so, how should we regard, say, two parallel uses of the unusual phrase enge anpaðas, occurring verbatim in Beowulf and the poetic Exodus but nowhere else among the surviving monuments? Must we view these parallels as isolated outcroppings in the trackless expanse of the Old English poetic corpus? Largely as a result of the scarcity of verse preserved in multiple copies, such questions have remained debatable into the present century.

‘Society’ and Struggle in the Early Twentieth Century: The Vietnamese neologistic project and French colonialism

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1994-2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE DUTTON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
French Colonialism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
New Concepts

AbstractAt the beginning of the twentieth century, the Vietnamese were confronted with the harsh realities of French colonialism, while simultaneously engaging with a flood of new concepts and the language that came with them. Among these concepts was that of ‘society’, whose import was enhanced by its linkages with the discourse of social Darwinism. This article explores the Vietnamese neologistic project of the early twentieth century through a close examination of the ways in which the concept and labels for ‘society’ were brought in and understood. I argue that the arrival of ‘society’ in conjunction with social Darwinism profoundly shaped the Vietnamese understanding of the term, implicating it in a notion of struggle and contestation. By illustrating the introduction of ‘society’ through early modernist school textbooks I suggest the ways in which Vietnamese conceptualized it as they embarked on their own struggle with the threats posed by colonialism.

scholarly journals SONGS ABOUT A DISGUISED GIRL IN BOSNIAK ORAL TRADITION

2019 ◽  
pp. 433-451
Author(s):  
Ibnel Ramić
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Theoretical Determination ◽  
Female Relationships ◽  
History Of ◽  
Folk Tradition ◽  
Made In

We encounter songs about a disguised girl in our oral tradition throughout the history of its recording – from Erlangen Manuscript, over Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic's collection, to the collections made in the second half of the twentieth century. In those songs a girl disguises as a man in most cases to replace her aged father in a battle. She fights and lives a life of a warrior side by side with men, but manages to keep her female identity hidden from male comrades, going wisely and skillfully through all ordeals by which they try to uncover her. In the end she reveals her identity in order to mock them and escape as a winner. The paper presents such songs included in the collection by Alija Nametak Od bešike do motike. Narodne lirske i pripovijedne pjesme bosansko-hercegovačkih Muslimana published in 1970. In addition to comparing them with songs from other collections we will discuss a literary-theoretical determination of these songs. We will also point to the picture of male-female relationships in them, which differs from the well-known stereotypes present in our oral literature and our folk tradition in general.

scholarly journals REAL FORTE PRÍNCIPE DA BEIRA EM COSTA MARQUES – RO: UMA PERSPECTIVA ARQUEOLÓGICA PARA SUA PRESERVAÇÃO

2020 ◽  
Vol II (5) ◽  
pp. 03-42
Author(s):  
Marcos Antonio Gomes de de Albuquerque ◽  
Veleda Christina de Albuquerque
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Military Installations ◽  
The Real ◽  
Popular Memory ◽  
Western Border ◽  
Military Mission ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Republic

The Real Forte Príncipe da Beira, in Rondônia, is one of the largest forts ever built in Brazil. It was abandoned after the establishment of the Republic, it entered in process of destruction possibly accelerated by actions of looting as it says oral tradition. Located in the western border of the country, in the midst of Amazon jungle, it practically disappeared of popular memory, until a military mission that crossed the area, in the twentieth century, discovered it. It remained abandoned until, in 1930, with the creation of Contingentes de Fronteiras, the Brazilian Army started to build military installations near the fort. Listed by IPHAN in 1950, nowadays the fort is under the protection of 1º Pelotão Especial de Fronteira “Real Forte Príncipe da Beira” of Brazilian Army, which is responsible for its preservation. Several actions and studies have been carried out aiming the preservation of that monument. This work is a result of a technical visit, an invitation of Diretoria do Patrimônio Histórico e Cultural do Exército, which included several specialists of different areas. Our observations, expressed here, addressed the issue from an archaeological point of view.

The Epic as Nation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
El Cid ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
Different Sources

A full translation of the Iberian epic, El Cid, remained one of Herder’s most ambitious project throughout his life. Herder drew from several different sources, both Spanish and French, to create an expansive work of 70 cantos, which reflect the transmission in the smaller narrative forms of the Spanish romance and their realization in German through the line-by-line decasyllabic forms of epic, thereby representing its singability in oral tradition. The Cid’s story of encounter between religions in medieval Al-Andalus was widely known already in eighteenth-century Europe, but Herder’s translation, which would appear in hundreds of versions into the twentieth century, became one of the most sweepingly influential texts of epic nationalism.

“The Frog’s Courtship” and Other Sources

Sweet Thing ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 79-134
Author(s):  
Nicholas Stoia
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
Major Branch ◽  
Textual Content

The stanzaic form of “The Frog’s Courtship” represents a second major branch in the lineage of the “Sweet Thing” scheme. Chapter 2 concerns its progress from Elizabethan England all the way to late nineteenth-century ragtime and early twentieth-century blues and country music. The stanzaic form appears in the United States by the early nineteenth century and then largely disappears from print until reemerging in several songs collected by folklorists in the early twentieth century, demonstrating its strong endurance in oral tradition. More often than “Captain Kidd,” this second stanzaic form appears in extensively abbreviated versions, reflecting its oral mode of transmission, which allows for more flexibility in length of bars. In early ragtime, the form unites with the harmonic language of contemporaneous popular music and acquires melodic and textual content that subsequently imbues early blues and country music as pervasive elements of the twentieth-century “Sweet Thing” scheme.

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