Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek

Abstract

Reviewed by: Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte by Michael Lambek Claudy Delné Lambek, Michael. Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte. UP of Toronto, 2018. 978-1-4875-2299-5. Pp. 338. Island in the Stream is neither the title of a song by Dolly Parton or Kenny Rogers nor a posthumous text by Hemingway. This ethnographic work by Lambek is part of a long-term perspective with regard to the field of research to which he has devoted himself for many decades. This text is timely in that it culminates in a series of research projects undertaken since 1991 under the name of Anthropological Horizons Series. Given the political status of Mayotte, well-informed readers will soon be disappointed if they seek to inquire into any political history of the island. The decision of the Mahorais people to remain in the bosom of the French Republic by opting for the status of overseas department validates the epistemological position of Aimé Césaire and Leopold Sédar Senghor—national liberation does not necessarily favor human emancipation. Similarly, self-determination does not always result in the sovereignty of the state as the antinomies of freedom. Lambek shows once again, through the various essays that form the frame of this book, that Mayotte has chosen to live its emancipation under horizons other than national sovereignty. Drawing from a genre he calls an ethnographic history that is to be dissociated from historical ethnography, Lambek's work is a biography of a community that takes shape in "successive portraits or analyses written at different times in a series of ethnographic presents, each with their changing horizons of future and past" (xxi). The book focuses on two Mahorais villages, with a set of topics such as historicity, ethical life, sociality, marriage, and exchanges that transcend them considerably. What seems original in this research is the methodological rigor with which Lambek approaches these different themes by drawing inspiration from the history of German thought from Husserl, via Heidegger, to arrive at Gadamer and Koselleck so as to better apprehend his object. The author demonstrates a great deal of objectivity for not highlighting the return of the ethnographer with his intermittent visits to the detriment of the progress of the community studied within these forty years of his field of research. Gadamer's introductory thought establishes the direction of this work: "Historical thinking has its dignity and values as truth in the acknowledgment that there is no present, but rather constantly changing horizons of future and past" (xxi). Lambek's series of essays captures the essence of the metaphor of Heraclitus—one never bathes twice in the same river—to emphasize the tension between identity understood as constancy and as movement (xxvii). Readers will appreciate the importance that the ethnographer devotes to the dream narrative as a form of historical consciousness and as an object of anthropological study (184). Lambek's case study is an original work of epistemological exploration that challenges all of us. [End Page 239] Claudy Delné Independent Scholar Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French