Masquerades of Modernity Power & Secrecy in Casamance Senegal

How do those on the margins of modernity face the challenges of globalization? In this provocative and compelling book, Ferdinand de Jong shows that secrecy provides a powerful means of asserting locality against the forces of globalism. Focusing on initiation rituals and masked performances, de Jong shows how the people of the Casamance region of Senegal have used these practices to incorporate Islam, colonialism, capitalism, and contemporary politics into their world. This book will appeal to readers with interests in the making of modernity and the importance of performing secrecy in global contexts.

"... a major contribution to anthropological and art historical literature about rituals, masquerades, and identity in postcolonial West Africa. ... this study represents the very best of cultural anthropological writing informed by postcolonial theory." --Peter Mark, Wesleyan University, AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW, Vol. 52.2 Sept. 2009 Indiana University Press

"The collection provides important insights into the complexity of multiethnic urban cultural developments in the Casamance area of southern Senegal." --International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 43.1, 2010 Indiana University Press

"A masterful analysis of the relationship between ritual and modernity." --Charles Piot, author of Remotely Global, Village Modernity in West Africa

"With a subtlety of thought and a finely tuned awareness of his ethnographic experience, the author provides us with a study of secrecy and the power of tradition that resonates widely with contemporary anthropological studies of heritage, tourism, and the production of locality." --Michael Rowlands, University of London

Explores the place of secret ritual in a globalized world

Ferdinand de Jong is Lecturer in Anthropology at the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom.

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Part 1. Introduction

1. Power of Secrecy

Part 2. Transitions

2. Jola Initiations, Gendered Localities

3. Out of Diaspora into the Forest

4. Politics of the Sacred Forest

Part 3. Trajectories

5. Mandinko Initiation: The Making of an Urban Locality

6. Secrecy, Sacrilege and the State

Part 4. Traces

7. Masquerade of Migration

8. The Art of Tradition

9. Writing Secrecy

Notes

Bibliography

Index