Living Language in Kazakhstan: The Dialogic Emergence of an Ancestral Worldview by Eva-Marie Dubuisson (review)

In this compact and teachable book, Eva-Marie Dubuisson offers a refreshing look at cultural and political life in post-Soviet Central Asia. While much of the academic work in the region focuses on state building, “regime” dynamics, or other forms of overt politics, analyses rarely extend beyond current geographical borders largely inherited from the Soviet era. Dubuisson’s Living Language in Kazakhstan: The Dialogic Emergence of an Ancestral Worldview, however, pays close attention to Kazakh ways of belonging that, while unavoidably inflected by the nation-state, simultaneously seek to circumvent it. In doing so, Dubuisson both carefully attends to the specific history of the Republic of Kazakhstan while also revealing cultural similarities between Kazakhs and other Inner Asian (i.e., primarily Turkic and Mongol) peoples living in modern China, Russia, Mongolia, and the five Central Asian “stans.”

Living Language examines the ways ancestors play important roles in Kazakh social life. Dubuisson explores this primarily through an examination of two Kazakh-language linguistic genres, bata and aitys. A bata, which she glosses as a “word-blessing” (25), is a ritualized phrase, a “small act in the world” (25) uttered most notably by respected elders or community members during life-cycle and ritual events. However, its unmarked presence in varying contexts of daily life makes it “so ubiquitous that it acquires a mild invisibility” (25). Aitys, meanwhile, is a performed “verbal duel” (84) between professionalized poets that occurs in front of an audience, often as part of larger regional and even national networks of aitys competition. Though Dubuisson’s main analytic thrust lies in connecting the two genres, she also outlines how her doctoral work on aitys poets included accompanying them on visits to Soviet-era poets’ homes and shrines. Later research helped her contextualize these pilgrimages within a larger cultural practice of sacred site visitation, in which bata is one of the primary ways that ancestors take part in daily life. In return for respect and attention, ancestors provide guidance and help clear and “open” the moral and spiritual lifeways (zhol) of the living.

Along with a comprehensive introduction and conclusion, the book has four chapters, the first two on bata, the second two on aitys. Bolded subsections helpfully divide each chapter into themed chunks (such as “Sacred Geography” or “Kinship and Criticism”) which run no more than a handful of pages, unless transcripts are involved. Chapter 1 details the social contexts and functions of bata use. Dubuisson shows how bata use becomes diagrammatic of the authorized voice of ancestors, creating a temporal analogy between the elder bata “giver” and younger “receiver” in the moment of bata utterance and the greater relation of care between the dead and the living. In classic ritual form, when bata is recited past projects into present, as wishes once uttered by ancestors are delivered once again. “Giving” or “receiving” bata presupposes certain cultural concepts and models of appropriate behavior (they are “words to encourage and caution” [28], in the language of one Kazakh schoolbook) and, much like the use of place names among the Western Apache (Basso 1996), their utterance entails changes in the social world: soothing and calming minds, training youngsters to become proper social persons in the Kazakh normative universe, or protecting the living through transferring spiritual energy.

Chapter 2 concentrates on the more explicitly ritualized use of bata at ancestral shrines and sacred sites. These sites form an “affective landscape” (56) occupied by spirits of the dead to which pilgrims come to receive bata and draw on the energy and guidance of ancestors. This is often mediated through shrine caretakers who feel “called” to serve both the dead ancestors and the living pilgrims by maintaining the site. They tell visitors stories of the ancestor’s deeds and their own calling to care by providing ancestors with the opportunity to “eat” both the recited words of the Koran and the smells of freshly fried bread. Maintaining the cycle...