Synopses & Reviews
In Cand#244;te dand#8217;Ivoire, appearing modern is so important for success that many young men deplete their already meager resources to project an illusion of wealth in a fantastic display of Western imitation, spending far more than they can afford on brand name clothing, accessories, technology, and a robust nightlife. Such imitation, however, is not primarily meant to deceiveand#8212;rather, as Sasha Newell argues inand#160;The Modernity Bluff, it is an explicit performance so valued in Cand#244;te dand#8217;Ivoire it has become a matter of national pride.
Called bluffeurs, these young urban men operate in a system of cultural economy where reputation is essential for financial success. That reputation is measured by familiarity with and access to the fashionable and expensive, which leads to a paradoxical state of affairs in which the wasting of wealth is essential to its accumulation. Using the consumption of Western goods to express their cultural mastery over Western taste, Newell argues, bluffeurs engage a global hierarchy that is profoundly modern, one that values performance over authenticityandshy;and#8212;highlighting the counterfeit nature of modernity itself.
Synopsis
Contemporary urban youth culture around the world is thoroughly shaped by film, television, and brand fashion. The youth in Tamil Nadu, anthropologist Costas Nakassis finds, give their own twist to this nearly universal phenomenon through their concept of andldquo;style.andrdquo; Nakassis lived in college dorms, attended classes, participated in film and television production, and conducted interviews with students, college teachers and administrators, film actors, producers and directors, television videojockeys and producers, and (counterfeit) garment producers, distributors, and retailers. He focuses on andldquo;style,andrdquo; a uniquely Tamil youth notion that captions the playful transgressions and inversions through which youthandmdash;and young men in particularandmdash;create their own space in the world around them. A concept of status and cool, style is performed in multiform ways; for example, through wearing flashy and eyecatching (counterfeit) brand apparel like a andldquo;foreigner,andrdquo; speaking hybridized Tamil-English (andldquo;Tanglishandrdquo;) like a music television video-jockey, or combing your hair like a film star. Style is done through acts which explicitly transgress adult notions of propriety and respect, like drinking and smoking in public, flirting with and teasing the opposite sex, riding the bus on the footboard or roof, or jumping over the dormitoryandrsquo;s walls after curfew to catch a late-night film. It is the form and content of these youthandrsquo;s daily lives. Through intimate ethnographic descriptions of the high jinks and pranksterism of life in a Tamil college, the book brings out the complex ways that acts of style express the multiple desires and anxieties of this generation.
About the Author
Sasha Newell teaches at the College of the Holy Cross.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
Ivoirian Nationalism and Urban Popular Culture
Yere and Gaou: Authenticity and the Cosmology of Modernity
Sapeurs and Bluffeurs: Discourses on African Mimesis
Mimesis and Masking: Real Fakes and the Elusive Illusion of Modernity
Abidjan: The Urban Setting
Methodology
Outline of the Argument
ONE / Enregistering Modernity, Bluffing Criminality: How Nouchi Speech Reinvented the Nation
Les Nouchisand#8212;Speaking of and#8220;Gangstersand#8221;
Loubard, Boss, and Bakroman: Further Stereotypes
Yere and Gaou: Nouchi Hierarchy and Modernity
Ivoirian Language Policy and the French Model of National Identity
Urban Cultural Integration and the Ivoirianization of French
The Emergence of Nouchi and the Self-Recognition of Ivoirian Popular Culture
Vicarious Banditry: The Mediation of Nouchi
Purity and the Perils of Degeneration: Anxious Interpretations of Nouchi
Nouchi and National Identity
TWO / Bizness and and#8220;Blood Brothersand#8221;: The Moral Economy of Crime
The Infamy of Treichville
The Economic Underpinnings of the Bluff: Illicit yet Moral Economies
The Illegitimacy of Labor
Kinship, Economy, and Gendered Sociality
Bizness
The Productivity of Social Networks
The Normative Network
State Intervention/State Cooperation
Hierarchical Relations
Social Accumulation
THREE / Faire le show: Maquis Masculinity and the Performative Success of Waste
The Maquis: Public Space Par Excellence
Imbibing Differentiation: Drinking Establishments and Disdain
and#8220;Gand#226;te, on est ensembleand#8221;: The Trope of Waste
and#8220;Go Waste It, We are Watchingand#8221;: Dance and Display
The Gift of Bluffing: Exchanges Underlying the and#8220;Showand#8221;
Out on and#8220;La Rueand#8221;
The Dangers of Display
Street Rituals: Urban Life Cycle Ceremonies and the Maquis
Potlatch and the Production of Audience
Masculinity and the Dangerous Consumption of Women
Gender and the Performativity of the Bluff
FOUR / Fashioning Alterity: Masking, Metonymy, and Otherworld Origins
The Centrality of the Sartorial
The Bluff: Appearance and Economy
Elite Consumption: Following the French
Yere Consumers and Urban Symbols of Modernity
Suits versus Hip-Hop: Taste and Social Hierarchy
Whiteness and the Otherworld: A Local Cosmology of Externality
Evaluating Objects: The Modernity of Brands
Authentic Imitations, Metonymic Transformations
Ivoirian Masquerades and Yere Vision
FIVE / Paris Is Hard like a Rock: Migration and the Spatial Hierarchy of Global Relations
Urban-Village Migration
Migrating Dreams
Migratory Practicalities
The Descent and the Bluff
Bengiste Networks, Migrant Economies
Demystification and Remythologizing Discourses
The Mediation of the Otherworld: Migration as a Form of Consumption
Migration and National Identity
SIX / Counterfeit Belongings: Branding the Ivoirian Political Crisis
Ethnicity, Postcoloniality, and National Identity
Ivoirian Models of Nationality: French versus Nouchi
The Death of Houphouand#235;t and the Emergence of Ivoiritand#233;
Boubous and the Politics of Exclusion
The Structure of the North-South Divide in Popular Culture
Branding the Nation: Cultural Mastery and the Unstable Signification of Authenticity
CONCLUSION / Modernity as Bluff
On the Nature of and#8220;Westernand#8221; Imitation
On the Character of (Alternative?) Modernity
Postcolonial Mimesis and the Crisis of Signification
Incommensurability: Fetishes, Doubles, and the Fake
Notes
Glossary
References
Index