Description
Book SynopsisPersons of Courage and Renown is theoretically-engaged ethnography by a social/cultural anthropologist that explores issues of culture, memory, creativity, and power by analyzing beloved, but also vulnerable, actors, acting, and play performances in Tamajaq-speaking, predominantly Muslim, traditionally stratified, and semi-nomadic Tuareg communities in northern Mali. The town and region of Kidal are the primary sites of field research. This book traces how Tuareg actors powerfully negotiate cultural memory and encounters in communities caught historically and currently between political violence and peacekeeping efforts in northern Mali. There, urban, state, and non-governmental bureaucracies seek to re-shape Tuareg verbal art performances to comply with official agendas aimed at transforming local culture. This book shows how acting and plays are crucial in continuing, but also debating and re-defining the meanings of older verbal art performances of Tuareg tales, songs, and epics, as
Trade Review“Rasmussen has written a richly detailed and compelling study of Tuareg theater in northern Mali and Niger. She skillfully weaves together the aesthetic, social, and political dimensions of these performances and gives us a rare insight into the lives and artistic practices of the actors who bring the plays to life.” -- Mary Jo Arnoldi, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Table of ContentsChapter 1 General Background on the Tuareg, the Kel Adagh, and the Town and Region of Kidal Chapter 2 Situating Acting and Creativity in Culture, Place, and Memory Chapter 3 The Poetics and Politics of Aesthetic Style and Genre and The Ibaraden Actors Chapter 4 Acting and Cultural Translation: Actors and Audiences as Interpreters and Mediators in Reformulating “Traditional” and “Modern” Chapter 5 Rural-Urban and Nomadic-Sedentarized Encounters Chapter 6 Disputed Gender, Relations Between the Sexes, and Embodied Performance Chapter 7 Youths and Elders: Resistance and Healing in Intergenerational Ambivalence Chapter 8 Religious Reflections and Social Dissonance Conclusions Nostalgic Yearning and Cultural Critique
