Maran Among the Anthropologists: The Banda Rituals of Circumcision and Excision in Batouala

Abstract

After providing the colonial and anthropological context for the Bandas’ Ga’nza rituals of male circumcision and female excision and commenting on the “excision” of such rituals from the first (1922) translation of Batouala (1921), the article analyses Maran’s partial rendition of the rites, while pitting it against two later anthropological texts, published in the same year (1938), i. e. Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya and A. M. Vergiat’s Les rites secrets des primitifs de l’Oubangui. References are to the Black Orpheus edition of Batouala: A True Black Novel (1972).