L'identité au forçage de l'histoire. À propos de l'occident Dogon

Abstract

Andre Gache — Identity under the Force of History. How to make the same out of something different? The attempt to answer this is based on a study of the western part of the region inhabited by the Dogon in Mali. Dogon country is an 'inbetween'; around its edges, centralized states have, since the Late Middle Ages, evolved following a process of composition-decompo-sition-recomposition. The people living there originally came from these political formations. These peoples of various origins found, in this region, a location favorable to the defence of small units. Over time, this original plurality took the form of a solid, combative 'ethnie group' with a dual system of discourse. This group immediately produces, for itself and others, an explanatory discourse postu-lating its unity from its very origins. This postulate is a kind of law that is ail the more clearly formulated insofar as the origins are beyond control. During the 'night', the question of origins 'gives birth' to a 'secret' discourse, which, once decoded, helps us see into the obscurity of the social and political processes at work in this region's history.