The anthropologist and history

The introduction to the file consists of a review of existing literature on the relationships between history and anthropology. Michel Naepels displays his desire to historicize the discipline, while recalling that such a company is not new, and that it can take different directions. The four articles that the file includes are presented as concrete attempts to renew anthropological writing by history. Eric Jolly’s article focuses on the uses of two Guinea-Malian epics, the Dogon story of Yakoro Baji and the Kurukan Fuga Charter, taken from the gesture of Sunjata. He analyzes their variability by connecting their literary content, their methods of enunciation and their challenges of power. Depending on the context, the story of Yakoro Baji conveys different conceptions of politics which are reaffirmed by the way it is recited. Michel Naepels intends to grasp the way in which the colonial definitions of the “ chiefdom And his powers have helped shape what the chiefs are today in New Caledonia. He analyzes the case of the chiefdom installed in the coastal area of ​​Houaïlou by revealing competition between chiefs for the recognition of colonial power. This historical approach makes it possible to shed light on the “ Disagreements »Contemporary on what the chiefdom is. The article by Luc Bellon covers a period from 1947 to 2009, punctuated by five Balouthes insurrections against the Pakistani state. Balouthes nationalists can claim to be tribal belonging (several representatives of the movement are themselves tribal leaders) while castigating the aspect “ reactionary ” of “ tribalism ». Luc Bellon analyzes this contradiction less as the product of irreconcilable world conceptions than “ the fruit of an ambivalence inherent in a particular configuration of social relationships (P. 961). Sylvain Perdigon analyzes the martyrdom project entrusted to him by one of his interlocutors in a Palestinian refugee camp in Tyr and tries to “ intrigue In writing. Based on the cross reading of the work of Elizabeth Povinelli, Veena Das and Talal Asad on social suffering, he explores the possibility that martyrdom, Al-Shahādamay be a “ name for the desire to provoke (or impose) recognition (P. 976).

The pluralism of research operations

The articles implement the proposal made in the introduction by Michel Naepels, according to which the historicization of the discipline has the consequence of “ Questle the centrality, or at least exclusivity, of the ethnographic survey as a place of production of the materials that anthropologists use (…) (P. 882). Each of the contributions to the file deploys a plurality of materials and research operations. In Eric Jolly’s article, the variety of stories by Yakoro Baji is linked to the multiplicity of political points of view and identity claims. These stories are not understood as historical sources but as constructions of ideological models on the origin of power. Eric Jolly combines the collection and analysis of the content of these stories with the ethnographic observation of their methods of enunciation.

This same process of crossing materials is found in the article by Michel Naepels. He draws from the family archives of Maurice Leenhardt to reconstruct the genealogy of the Népöro clan, and confronts it with colonial sources, thus clarifying the rivalry between chiefs by updating a conflict of succession. When he emphasizes that this genealogy should therefore not be understood in terms of kinship but as “ a language of social expression of political legitimacy (P. 934), his conclusions join those of anthropologists such as Barth or Bailey. They stressed that factions are not the product of genealogical cracks but that they are attached to it (and the genealogies rebuilt accordingly). However, wouldn’t it have been necessary, rather than retaining the only pragmatic rules, putting them in relation to the normative rules of the political game-the conflict appearing in this specific case exacerbated by their disjunction ? The conclusion of the article is that the task of the anthropologist is not to state the historical truth (which is the “ true »Customary chief) but to tension the justifying statements on the chiefdom.

Luc Bellon’s article mixes scenes descriptions, maintenance extracts and diachronic analysis of the career of a Baloutche chief whose constant displacement he shows inside and outside state cogs. Taking into account the critical meaning of the actors, he argues that these conceive of these contradictions in terms of an opposition, not between two social systems, but between two politico-administrative systems, the “ tribal system As a form of administration imposed by the colonial state then Pakistani and the alternative political order (not yet defined) that the Balouthes nationalists wish to establish.

Sylvain Perdigon analyzes the report held his interlocutor Husayn to a sum of religious texts, a report which prohibits accounting for his martyrdom project by subliminal and profane reasons that would be the distress and melancholy of the life of refugee. His detours by Wittgenstein (taken up by Veena Das) on the expressions of pain as indexes rather than symbols, although interesting in themselves, appear a little distant from the object of the analysis. At the end of the article, the subject is more convincing, and less abstruse, when the texts to which Husayn “ strives to give daily a substantial presence (Although the ethnography appears on this too elliptical point) are analyzed as an object the ethical transformation of the subject.

What historicization of anthropology ?

Let us now examine what becomes effectively, in each of the texts, the objective, announced in the introduction to the file, to renew the project of Marshall Sahlins. This one aims to historicization of anthropology by the systematic examination of the way in which “ The rules imposed by the colonial state have been sabotaged by culture ».

Eric Jolly’s article points the paradox according to which the Baji Kanthe song of Yakoro Baji, is considered immutable and “ historical “While it allows the greatest margin of creation and improvisation. This reflection leads to a questioning on variable plasticity during the historical time of these stories, which, unlike others, hardly seem to evolve during the XX^e century. The explanatory hypothesis issued by Eric Jolly is that opposition, rivalry and alliance relationships between local or regional groups have essentially been built and transformed at the pre -colonial period.

This periodization problem is found in Michel Naepels, who stresses that the work of Sahlins and Alban Bensa has placed the emphasis on the very first period of colonization, that when the fluidity of social organizations is particularly notable. The work of tensioning the statements present on the chiefdom with the changes linked to colonization leads Michel Naepels to question further “ subsequent developments in forms of social organization as well as the ability to act they cover (P. 920). He thus criticizes dualism, inherent in the subordinate principle of Sahlins, between the imperial history and the perspective of the colonized, dualism “ that the real historicization of anthropological knowledge leads to abandon ».

The perspective of Michel Naepels is therefore not that of Sahlins (and is it really a ?): “ (…) The challenge is not to make a reduced voice heard in silence “, But” grasp the reality of social dynamics that have made “ Kanake chiefdom »A reality that is both changing, disputed and structuring of local social relationships (P. 943). Michel Naepels shows how the colonial state has become a component of a segmental political functioning which he transformed at the same time. Is thus avoided dualism, central to Sahlins, between the “ structure “And the” conjuncture “, Which amounts to considering that” the event “(Colonial contact) changes a” order “Pre -existing in another” order ». It is this same opposition between two social structures, posed as incompatible in the linguistic models of structural and post-structural analyzes, that Luc Bellon surmounts. Rather than analyzing the contradictions of actors as resulting from a moment of mutation between these two structures, they are thought of as the fruit of an ambivalence inherent in a particular configuration of social relationships. “” The actors (…) distinguish fields of relations which do not imply the same expectations (P. 961).

Sylvain Perdigon takes a different path of reflection, since he intends to relate the notion of “ Historicity regime “By François Hartog with” Variable body provisions ». Perhaps he could have associated him more with his reflection on the “ words »Who say suffering, and in particular with the notion of martyrdom, Al-Shahādawhich he says is etymologically a form of testimony. It would have been interesting to link his doubts more in the face of resurfaced by the great sharing that may cause an analysis of the different “ historicity regimes And his questioning of modern historicity. This would have made it possible to engage further the debate on historicization, which some anthropologists reject precisely because it is, in their eyes, a prospect “ Western ». With this last article, the file concludes on new but irresolues. If, as a whole, he puts new ways of linking anthropology and history into acts, he also poses the need to think about what to be understood by the “ historicization ».