“God speak to us”: performing power and authority in Salale, Ethiopia

Abstract

Using folkloric and historical approaches, this study posits that, in order to understand the choices people make, it is vital to see the world as they see it. In scholarship, I argue, we need to incorporate these perceptions of reality in our interpretations of the actions of those we study. Contrary to the sceptical postmodernist understanding that modernity is a period of decay and a move towards a final collapse and oblivion, traditionalism is revitalized in this article as a strategic primitivism, as a cultural resistance that continues to manifest itself and to relocate the past in the present. In the present study my aim is to examine Salale traditional legal performances as narratives of resistance against domination. Through the three theopolitical counter-discourses identified in this study, that is, guma (blood feud), araara (peace-making), and waadaa (covenant), the interaction between theos (god) and politics is apparent. Hence, the oath ‘God speak to us’ expresses a belief that nagaa (peace) is a presupposed will of God that humanity is privileged and obliged to guard. The study concludes that such oppositional traditional practices constitute the Salale cultural resistance against the mainstream culture and offer more hope for challenging the dominant social discourse and constructing a strong sense of Oromummaa, that is, Oromoness.