L'objectif de cet article est de connecter deux concepts qui ont été déterminants pour le développement des études de la culture matérielle, en particulier dans la déconstruction de l'idée selon laquelle les objets seraient statiques et passifs. Il s'agit de la sémiotique de l'espace et des biographies sociales de l'objet. Si le premier concept a été usité par plusieurs chercheurs africanistes (Griaule, Blier, Malaquais, etc.), le second n'a pas encore fait l'objet d'une théorisation mis à part les travaux de l'anthropologue allemand Hans Peter Hahn. Dans ce travail, la mise en relation de la sémiotique de l'espace et la méthode biographique permet d'étudier le rapport réciproque entre individus et maisons dans les Monts Mandara du Cameroun, rapport dans lequel les individus construisent les maisons en même temps qu'ils sont construits par elles.
This article explores the different ways in which new houses built by migrants from the Mandara Mountains to bigger cities in Cameroon function as an important site for studying their relations within the cities and within their communities of origin. I argue that these new houses constitute both a powerful resource for addressing migrants’ stories about their migratory experiences and a constituent element of these experiences. In many circumstances, the migrants interviewed were unable to speak separately of their migratory experiences and their homes. Thus, the impact of their mobility to cities goes far beyond the mere ownership of the houses; they also manage to change their perceptions of themselves, to restructure their models of social interaction with other migrants, and to change the balance of their relations with the village. The article ends by proposing to connect the two sides of the village/city duality to find out how the local is a product of the global and how the local has reappropriated the global, giving it a meaning.
Based on long-term oral historical research in the Mandara Mountains, this article traces the ways in which memories of slavery have been preserved in songs which are usually not part of the more formal oral historical narratives. It historicizes this process by focusing on the selective memories of different generations as well as on the influence of colonial and post-colonial politics, particularly post-1990 democratic politics in Cameroon. The major change over time is the shift from the shameful memory of slavery to be repressed – or treated only obliquely – to its public claim as a political resource after the democratic transition of the 1990s. In retelling the history of being sold as slaves, the residents of the Mandara Mountains reversed the negative meaning of slavery to use it to celebrate their resistance to Islam and to voice political claims. This new narrative congeals around being kirdi, a new regional and trans-religious identity claimed by Christians and pagans in the mountains.
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