Oral Tradition Volume 21, Number 2
Table of Contents
Throwing Stones in Jest: Kasena Women’s “Proverbial” Revolt
This study is an attempt to document and critically examine what I have called the “proverbial revolt” of Kasena women from northern Ghana, a phenomenon that constitutes, and is constituted by, a subversive and resistive use of a misogynistic oral tradition by traditional women. Kasena women take advantage of a socially sanctioned medium––the joking relationship between a Kasena woman and her husband’s siblings or kin of the same generation––to subvert and contradict Kasem proverbs and the conservative, sexualized local ideology of power therein.
The Devil’s Colors: A Comparative Study of French and Nigerian Folktales
This study, largely based on five separate published collections, compares French and Nigerian folktales––focusing mainly on French Dauphiné and Nigerian Igboland––to consider the role color plays in encounters with supernatural characters from diverse color backgrounds. A study in black, white/red, and green, the paper compares the naming of colors in the two languages and illustrates their usage as a tool to communicate color-coded values. Nigeria’s history, religious beliefs, and language development offer additional clues to what at first appears to be fundamental differences in cultural approach. Attempting to trace the roots of this color-coding, the study also considers the impact of colonization on oral literature and traditional art forms.
A Meme-Based Approach to Oral Traditional Theory
A meme is the simplest unit of cultural replication. This paper adapts meme theory to explain the workings of several aspects of oral traditions––traditional referentiality, anaphora, and the use of repeated metrical patterns. All three of these phenomena can be explained by operations of repetition and pattern-recognition. This paper ultimately illustrates that the development of meme theory is an important first step towards a wholly materialist cultural poetics.
Keeping the Word: On Orality and Literacy (With a Sideways Glance at Navajo)
Taking Walter Ong’s work as a starting point, this paper begins with a brief survey of the literature on orality and literacy and goes on to analyze a number of Ong’s assertions within the framework of Navajo interactions with orality and literacy, thus illustrating that certain foundational concepts––such as that of “kept language”––need to be reconsidered. The paper pays special attention to the emergence of Navajo poetry; rather than “orality” and “literacy” being singular concepts, this analysis argues that these concepts must be understood within the cultural practices and linguistic ideologies from which they emerge.
“Culture Education” and the Challenge of Globalization in Modern Nigeria
This paper has to do with the challenges of globalization in modern Nigeria and the process of “culture education,” a terminology used to emphasize the peculiar means and methods of instruction by which a society imparts its body of values and mores in the pursuance and attainment of the society’s collective vision, aspirations, and goals. Within this framework, this paper examines the legacies of imperialism and colonization within the Nigerian educational system––particularly in reference to the teaching of folklore and oral tradition––including the destruction of indigenous knowledge systems and the continuing lack of adequate resources in African universities. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for a more fully synthesized indigenous and formal Nigerian educational system as a method of addressing postcolonial rupture.
