The Undefining of Oral Tradition

Abstract

This paper points to flaws in formalist definitions of which have the capacity to affect reconstructions of the African past. Historical knowledge in regions such as Busoga, Uganda, is not lodged in a distinctive series of texts read as but is engaged in and derives from the everyday critical, lively intelligence which surrounds status, activities, gestures, and speech. Reflections on the organization of knowledge of past in Busoga may help scholars overcome a rigidity of thinking about the pasts of oral societies which the attempts to formalize definitions of oral have produced. African historiography has made great leaps forward in the past twentyfive years, and much of the progress rests on the extensive incorporation of oral material into the reconstruction of the African past. has become the tag of the enterprise, and with two meanings: one referencing the material available and one the process by which such material came into our present. Over time, oral has been privileged as some specific, distinctive cultural form and process within African society past and present. Oral has been taken as having specialized characteristics and its own separate processual and cultural life. A reified oral tradition, whether explicitly defined or consensually understood, has become a part of the conceptual equipment of African historians. And it has become so at a heavy cost. In a paper published in I980, David Henige (I980: 240-42) takes to task historians of the interlacustrine region of eastern Africa who treat materials as tradition when they do not formally qualify as such. In his guide to research, Oral Historiography, published in I982, Henige (I982a: z) insists on a proper, fixed and formal definition of tradition. He writes, Strictly speaking, oral traditions are those recollections of the past that are commonly or universally known in a given culture. Versions that are not widely known should rightfully be considered as Ethnohistory 36:1 (Winter I989). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc 0014-1801/89/$I.SO. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.181 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 06:09:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms