Interpreting Androgynous Woman: Female Aging and Personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg

Abstract

In anthropological theory, many scholars argue that older women acquire higher status and greater authority due to their culturally status and the cessation of their sexual reproductive roles upon menopause (Turner 1957:151; Skultans 1970:639-671; Mernissi 1975:72; Fuchs 1977:61; Ortner and Whitehead 1981:8-9; Poole 1981:116-165). I examine these theories against the backdrop of Tuareg concepts of woman as person and female aging. Specifically, I explore ritual events where older women play a central role in symbolic role reversal or inversion at life-crisis rites. At a ceremony called asegherele held at sundown the night preceding a baby's nameday ceremony, old women dance with pestles held lance-like over their heads and motions that resemble those of men's dances at festivals. This dancing of old women stands in stark contrast to their everyday behavior displaying dignity and restraint. Normally, older persons of either sex, and women of all ages, do not dance in this fashion before a gathering. When young women dance their style is markedly different from that of Tuareg men, who dance flamboyantly in public. Young men dance at nightly festivals marking marriages and namedays. They hold a long lance or sword over the head and, in pairs, approach a standing chorus of women. This dance, accompanied by a chorus and a tende drum, is also held occasionally following spirit possession rituals. During the asergherle rite, but at a distance, a gathering of male relatives pound millet for eghajira (an infusion of pounded millet, dates, and goat cheese) to be served at the isem or nameday on the following day. Therefore, elderly women at the prenameday ceremony appear, on the surface, to enact men's roles while the men perform women's tasks. The second event I focus on is the marriage ritual, during which an elderly woman is seated beside the groom as he awaits the bride's arrival in the wedding tent. Tuareg say this enables the old woman to attract all the devils seen as threatening to the bride and groom onto herself. Because she is old, she is not believed to be endangered by them. Elderly women in this context thus appear to act as decoys for devils by virtue of something about their postchildbearing status. The third problem of analysis is the logical fit of these events into a more longterm process; transformations elderly women undergo upon leaving child? hood status, against which theories of androgynous woman may be treated. Old Tuareg women are discouraged from attending musical festivals, playing instru-