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Babies' Baths, Babies' Remembrances: A Beng Theory of Development, History and Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Alma Gottlieb
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Abstract

Memory is often considered a monopoly of adults and older children: the younger the child, the less significant the capacity for recollecting. In Côte d'Ivoire, the Beng posit a radically different theory of cognitive development: adults say that the younger the child, the keener the memory. Moreover, such recall is of a specific sort – infants allegedly hold strong memories of a previous existence before birth (wrugbe), where people reportedly live harmoniously and there is never material want. Nevertheless, remembering this space of plenitude can prove agonizing for babies, making their hold on life precarious, and a distressing array of culturally shaped diseases threaten their survival. Protecting against illness requires an elaborate bathing, jewellery and make-up routine twice daily that begins at birth and continues for the first year. All this somatic activity is meant to lure the child fully and definitively into this world, and to counteract the strong call of the afterlife that adults say is created by the infant's own memories. Why is wrugbe, as purportedly remembered by infants, envisaged as a place of plenitude? And why is it located in an historically identified past? In this essay – which is necessarily to some extent speculative given its subject of infant memory – I explore the allegorical implications of the Beng afterlife, suggesting that the attribution of heightened infant memory of an idyllic wrugbe serves as an indirect critique of French colonialism and its aftermath. I conclude by discussing the ways in which memory and forgetting are mutually constructed, with the Beng model offering substantial support for the contention that reproduction in general – and babies in particular – are crucial to this intertwined process.

Résumé

La mémoire est souvent considérée comme le monopole des adultes et des enfants plus âgés: plus l'enfant est jeune, plus sa capacité à se souvenir diminue. En Côte d'Ivoire, les Beng avancent une théorie radicalement différente du développement cognitif: les adultes affirment que plus l'enfant est jeune, plus la mémoire est vive. De plus, ce souvenir est de type spe'cifique; les jeunes enfants ont prétendument des souvenirs forts d'une existence antérieure à leur naissance (wrugbe), dans laquelle les personnes vivraient en harmonie et ne manqueraient jamais de rien sur le plan matériel. Néanmoins, le souvenir de cet espace de plénitude peut être cause de tourment chez les bébés, alors qu'ils exercent leur emprise sur le pre'caire de la vie et que tout un éventail de maladies culturellement formées menace leur survie. Pour protéger le bébé contre la maladie, on le soumet á une routine faite de bains élaborés, de bijoux et de maquillage deux fois par jour, pendant un an dés la naissance. Toute cette activité somatique est censée attirer pleinement et définitivement l'enfant dans ce monde, et contrer l'appel fort de la vie aprés la mort que les adultes disent créé par les souvenirs de l'enfant. Pourquoi wrugbe, tel que s'en souviennent prétendument les jeunes enfants, est-il envisagé comme un lieu de plénitude? Et pourquoi se situe-t-il dans un passé historiquement identifié? Cet article, nécessairement spéculatif puisque traitant de la mémoire des jeunes enfants, examine les implications allégoriques de la vie aprés la mort chez les Beng, en suggérant que l'attribution du souvenir accentué d'un wrugbe idyllique chez les jeunes enfants sert de critique indirecte du colonialisme français et de ses conséquences. Il conclut en évoquant les modes de construction mutuelle de la mémoire et de l'oubli, le modéle beng servant á appuyer l'affirmation selon laquelle la reproduction en général et les bébés en particulier jouent un rôle essentiel dans ce processus interdépendant.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 75 , Issue 1: Collective Memory, Reproduction and Generation in Africa , February 2005 , pp. 105 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2005

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