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Bridging the Archival-Ethnographic Divide: Gender, Kinship, and Seniority in the Study of Yoruba Masquerade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

John Thabiti Willis
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Abstract:

This study juxtaposes the observations and interpretations of a twenty-first-century ethnographer with those of nineteenth-century Christian missionaries to rethink interpretations of the practice of gender in precolonial West Africa. The article uses the evolving relationship between an ethnographic researcher and a group of contemporary female ancestral masquerade chiefs to reflect on the ways in which generations of missionaries and scholars have interpreted the gendered construction of power. It critiques previous writers for assuming sex and gender in Yoruba culture to be fixed, and argues for a more fluid interpretation of the gendered identities of the observer and subject being observed.

Résumé:

Cette étude juxtapose les observations et interprétations d’un ethno-graphe du XXIe siècle avec celles de missionnaires chrétiens du XIXe siècle afin de repenser les interprétations de la pratique du genre en Afrique de l’Ouest précoloniale. En utilisant l’évolution contemporaine de la relation entre un ethnographe et un groupe de femmes-chefs de masques ancestraux, cet article réfléchit à la façon dont des générations de missionnaires et d’érudits ont interprété la construction sexuée du pouvoir. Ce papier critique ainsi les auteurs précédents qui supposaient que le sexe et le genre etaient figés dans la culture yorouba. Cet article défend une interprétation plus fluide des identités genrées de l’observateur et de l’objet observé.

Type
Critical Historiography
Information
History in Africa , Volume 44 , June 2017 , pp. 63 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2016 

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