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T E N Conclusion DRESSING AND UNDRESSING: REVEALING MULTIPLE VALUE SYSTEMS “Le Kirdi: Habillez la vérité, l’Histoire la déshabillera.” The homespun cultural journal Le Kirdi, which sought to socially rehabilitate the animist peoples of Cameroon’s Far North Province, asserts in its subtitle “Dress Up the Truth, History Will Undress It.” This jab at “clothedness” and nudity refers to what were marked as “traditional” differences between Muslim and animist northerners in Cameroon. Prior to the Independence era (1960s), animists—the so-called Kirdi1 —wore noncloth body coverings composed of plant leaves, animal skins, or loose strings. In contrast, the invading Muslim Fulbe, who sought to subdue, enslave, and convert the “Kirdi” wore long robes. Amadou Hampaté Bâ encapsulates Fulbe conceptions of nudity: “In Fulbe symbolism ‘to appear naked’ does in fact mean to divest oneself of one’s personality and of all human dignity, and to sell one’s soul to evil powers” (1973/1999, 19). The journal’s slogan asserts that “the truth” about the animist peoples will be revealed by a symbolic “disrobing ”—that is, a revelation of the underlying cultural heritage of people whose value has been obscured by Muslim “clothing”—read, dominance. Self-consciously modeled after the Negritude movement of Leonard Senghor and Aimé Cesaire, Kirditude was a cultural-political movement created by elite northern politicians in the 1990s under the organization Dynamique Culturelle Kirdi (DCK). Its romantic vision of cultural revisioning, nostalgia, and revitalization was inspired by a poem by Jean-Baptiste Baskouda, Kirdi est Mon Nom (1993), published by the Catholic Church in Yaoundé.2 As a cultural-political movement, DCK sought to revalorize the integrity of the cultures of northern animist peoples, which include the Tupuri—and organize these disenfranchised peoples into a more potent political force. Although in its literature DCK was careful to point out its commitment to national integration, its project presupposed a divergence between the political-economic interests of the “Kirdi” from both their former Muslim rivals and the substantial southern Cameroonian bloc (primarily Béti and Bamiléké). However, in Tupuriland, I found very little recognition of this Kirditude movement, even though it sought to speak for the mass of animist 198 Journey of Song peoples. Farmers understandably had little knowledge of these formulations in Yaoundé and at the universities, and intellectuals tended to distrust what other intellectuals were doing cloaked in the mantle of their own “cultural tradition.” I have briefly noted the existence of DCK—and, throughout this study, Tupuri-based cultural-political organizations modeled after the gurna society— in order to point up some of the implications of the initial question that opened the study. I asked: How are alternative moral orders and value systems negotiated in society, both individually and collectively? How does change emerge from the familiar, especially in the realm of dance and oral performance, and its underlying social organizations? For DCK and other cultural-political projects of a modernist neotraditional type, the ostensible project was to negotiate between competing social groups and their respective value systems, which are inevitably marked as either subordinate or hegemonic and are identified by visible cultural traditions (such as clothing, dance, rites, etc.). For example, animist nudity was reformulated from its colonial status as “savage” to that which was “truthful” and “historical,” while Muslim clothedness “dressed up” or obscured the truth. However, as this study has endeavored to show with the gurna, the practice of cultural traditions on the ground is more complex than a dichotomy of hegemony and subordination would allow. I have taken continuity of tradition as inherently problematic; that is, I have not assumed continuity but have asked the data to demonstrate it. Why would the gurna be perpetuated in the village context? Why would it be perpetuated in the city, albeit in a modified form? Approaching the problem in this fashion—as a negotiation of competing value systems on the terrain of tradition—revealed a number of complexities. First, I found that institutions such as the gurna provide opportunities for Tupuri men and women to participate in collectivities that differ radically from forms of social organization sponsored by the nation-state (such as schools, civil service employment, the military, and so on). However, in limited ways, these collectivities can be modified to fit into modern institutional settings. Dance and song perpetuated by gurna members (and other song-genre practitioners ) maintain a discursive space whereby “governing” and “judicial” activities are carried out but in fashions radically different from the state...

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