Inalienable performances, mutable heirlooms: Dance, cultural inheritance, and political transformation in the Republic of Guinea

Abstract

Dance in the Republic of Guinea is an object of cultural transmission that magnifies the inherent contingency of social reproduction and the plasticity of the heirloom. Long connected to the vicissitudes of Guinean politics, dance was violently appropriated by the postindependence socialist state (1958–84) as a tool of nation building. In postsocialist Guinea, where the nation‐state has relinquished its stake in the performing arts, young practitioners create new improvisational forms that emblematize shifting models of ideal personhood. Novel dance forms incite tension about intergenerational trust and cultural inheritance in a social context in which neither the heirloom nor the cultural identity it signals remains stable. [dance, inheritance, inalienability, personhood, postsocialism, Republic of Guinea, West Africa] La danse en République de Guinée sert de véhicule de transmission culturelle qui démontre la nature contingente de la reproduction sociale et la nature plastique de l'héritage culturelle. Longtemps liée aux vicissitudes de la politique guinéenne, la danse fut violemment appropriée par l’état socialiste pendant la période qui suivit l'indépendance (1958–84) comme outil pour la construction de la nation. En Guinée postsocialiste, où l′État‐nation a abandonné son mécénat des arts du spectacle, de jeunes danseurs créent des nouvelles formes d'improvisation qui révèlent des chagemements dans la conceptualisation de l'identité individuelle. Ces nouvelles formes de danse suscitent des problèmes de confiance entre les générations par rapport à la succession culturelle, dans un contexte où ni l'héritage ni l'identité culturelle sont stables. [danse, héritage culturel, inaliénabilité, notion de personne, postsocialisme, République de Guinée, Afrique de l'Ouest] Kabi a rakuya, fare nun mangɛya nu e boore malima la République de Guinée bɔxi ma. Première République waxati (1958–1984), La Guinée mangasanyi nu fare xa fe rawalima alako ɲama xa lan e boore ma, mangasanyi xa nɔ mixie mafa a mabiri. Kabi Sékou Touré xa waxati raɲɔnyi, mangasanyi mu artistya tide to alɔ singe ra. Kɔnɔ mixi wuyaxie bara naatɛ tongo fare xa fe ma, alako e xa nɔ masenyi tife ɲama ma duniɲɛigiri xa fe ma. Artiste tagi, lanlanteya mu na temui birin mixi mɔxie nun mixi mɔxitaree tagi. Naamunyie na masarafe; to maɲɔxunyi mu lanxi xɔrɔ maɲɔxunyi ma. Ɲama ki fan masarafe. Birin xa na kolon fare saabui ra. [fare, kɛɛ, lanyi, mixiya, postsocialisme, République de Guinée, Afrique de l'Ouest]

Performing excess: urban ceremony and the semiotics of precarity in Guinea-Conakry

“…Conakry sabar is not exclusive to professional artists, but a detailed analysis of its production must be rooted in an ethnographic understanding of the ballet scene. Ballet in Conakry emerged out of a complicated political history, which I and others explain elsewhere (Straker 2009; Cohen 2016a; 2016b; Dave 2019) but that I will outline briefly here. Guinean dance troupes from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s were part of the state's apparatus for communicating both subtle and didactic messages to the population, and for producing embodied orientations to the world that have endured long after the end of socialism (see McGovern 2017).…”

“…For artists, dundunba ideally connotes respect, dignity and social unity. The means for signalling these virtues are contested in dundunba circles, especially between generations trained in the socialist and post-socialist eras (see Cohen 2016b). The ideal typical virtues associated with the dance, however, remain central to both cohorts.…”

Occult return, divine grace, and saabui: practising transnational kinship in postsocialist Guinea

“…During the socialist period in Guinea, dance was engineered by the state as an embodiment of the national collective. Today, by contrast, cultivating individual distinction has become important for artists trying to make names for themselves and ultimately travel abroad, and individualism is increasingly being built into new improvisational forms (see A. Cohen ) . Soloists in the capital who can differentiate themselves through creative dance are often hired by touring companies or foreign dance students visiting Conakry, who then sponsor their migration to Western countries (where they are legally and culturally constructed as autonomous individuals).…”

“…88The individualistic dance practices that young practitioners in Conakry's solo circles cultivate to mark virtuosity do not index a critical break with the past or with older models of reckoning kinship, as I have argued elsewhere (A. Cohen ). They are rather a product of artists’ abandonment by the state in the postsocialist period, as individual practitioners have increasingly become accountable for the production and viability of the ballet genre.…”

“…I mother, instead of my mother). While grammatical marking is but one mechanism for signalling inalienability, inalienable possessions are deeply connected to personhood in anthropological theory (see, e.g., A. Cohen ; Kockelman ).…”