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3. Convergent Suspicions
- Indiana University Press
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36 3 convergent Suspicions Palabre exorcises, channels, and sometimes authorizes the use of social violence. its function is to stage public confrontation, a spectacle in which the self grapples with its other. and yet, there are institutions in africa competing equally with palabre in the project of reducing alterity. These include traditional powers, colonization, singleparties , and the false pluralism of present-day regimes. Traditional Powers and Palabre The primary competitor to palabre is found in traditional societies’ existing forms of domination. we are not talking about one group’s submission to another after a military victory, where an essentially physical form of domination is founded exclusively on force. rather, we are interested in forms of domination whose foundation is metaphysical and on whose popular support authorities can rely without needing constraint: in other words, those forms originating in myths, symbols, and customs. These forms of authority are derived from genealogy and sexual difference, aristocratic systems, secret societies, age classes, and age hierarchy. These factors can govern palabres but are never vulnerable to their judgment. The Order of Generations and Sexes Let us take the example of matriarchy and the valorization of masculinity. Matriarchal regimes vary because relations to the land, to time, to the subject, and to action depend on myths as well as on the particular history of each ethnicity. however, what Convergent Suspicions | 37 unites the different matriarchal systems is the recognized power of femininity rather than that of woman as such. This becomes the source of the right of life and death over men. among the Makhuwa of Mozambique, women “control access to sex, progeniture , the production and the distribution of food.”1 The Makhuwa accept exogamy: a man leaves his clan to reside with his wife. a foreigner to his wife’s clan, he is rented a plot of land for cultivation. and before being accepted by his future wife, he must prove his docility and his competence through work. in this way he will be “assessed” by his mother-in-law. even when married, the produce of his fields does not belong to him, since, according to customary law, this cultivated plot does not belong to his clan: just as the seed is given by the mother-in-law, the harvest also escapes him. contributing economically , but also making their wives fertile, men lack authority over the children, which belong either to the wife’s brother if he is not yet married, or to the older women (ashi maama). Given that among the Makhuwa, the one who has rights over the children is the one who feeds them, and since the wife controls access to the granary, children consequently belong to her. as for access to sex, men are refused mere sexual pleasure: “foreigners’ access to women is not tolerated for mere sex. what one expects from sexual union is a child. Men must make fertile, and if they do not, they are excluded.”2 The man has therefore neither a right to land ownership, nor to parental authority, nor to sexual pleasure. being the object of exchange, of production and reproduction, the man has no rights but only duties. This domination is legitimated by a mythical image of woman. in her role as producer of milk and children, she transmits life, and in transferring all one’s rights to her, one acquires life. everyone accepts a certain degree of domination by women, which is why no palabre would be allowed on this subject. Such a force is propped up by a metaphysical menace: every infraction of the maternal order is paid for through an interruption of the lineage, because only the mother assures the continuity of generations . To generate, to leave a trace, a name, is to inscribe oneself in being. one does not negotiate this inscription in being: we are there, and that suffices. Secret Societies: The Invisible and Consensus Secret societies rest on a consensus that no palabre can break. even if, in certain aristocratic societies, the secret societies act as a counterpower, they generally confer a recognition that no palabre can disturb. Their influence is of a symbolic nature and is usually based on myths and sacrifices. Secret societies may call for and lead a palabre but do not tolerate palabres pertaining to themselves. one cannot convoke a palabre over those who convoke the palabre, since they represent tutelary powers, not simple individuals charged with maintaining the social order. in the Gabonese secret society ndjobi, one says that “the ndjobi sees...