Bouki, the Hyena, in Louisiana and African Tales

Gaudet, Marcia

doi:10.2307/542000

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In modern Louisiana, the word bouki is most commonly translated as hyena. For a more complete exploration of the significance and portrayal of the character of Bouki across Africa, see Marcia Gaudet's article "Bouki, the Hyena, in Louisiana and African Tales" (Gaudet 1992). There, Gaudet highlights the sexually ambivalent nature of the hyena, but she also makes clear Bouki's status as a 'duped trickster.'…”

Section: Bouki In Creole Louisianamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Secret Lives of Bouki: Louisiana’s Creolized Folkloresque

Cooper

2024

Humanities

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This article historicizes the character of Bouki in the context of Creole Louisiana, showing how the story of Bouki has evolved to become the story of Kouri-Vini, Louisiana’s native and endangered Creole language. This historicization takes place in three distinct periods; those periods are defined by their relation to Kouri-Vini. The first period aligns with the Antebellum period; the second aligns with the early 20th century; and the final coincides with the present day. Moving across these periods, Bouki finds himself demoted, at which point he enters the ‘creolized folkloresque.’ The folkloresque is a larger mosaic of folkloric forms detached from the material conditions of their production and available to popular culture; for the folkloresque to be creolized designates the same process but under vastly unequal social and material conditions. In short, Bouki enters the creolized folkloresque, becoming a folkoresque figure available to all who find themselves subject to creolized conditions. In the pre-American part of Louisiana’s history, creolized conditions included slavery and colonization; post-Americanization, linguistic discrimination plays an outsized role. Where such conditions persist in Louisiana, there Bouki can be found.

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Section: Bouki In Creole Louisianamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Secret Lives of Bouki: Louisiana’s Creolized Folkloresque

Cooper

2024

Humanities

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“…Mary Douglas (1966) concurs that the ability of figures like the hyena to defy categorisation imbues them with the power to transgress as well as appropriate these boundaries. Thus, the ambiguity of hyenas mirrors the ambivalence of that status and power that comes with figures like fisi, who are frowned upon and sought after in equal measure in human society (Gaudet, 1992). As the perennially deceptive and yet powerful dupe, the identity of the hyena prefigures an interesting analogy for boundary marking and meaning-making in cross-border movement in the Limpopo Valley.…”

Section: The Disinheritedmentioning

confidence: 99%