The intestines of the state : youth, violence, and belated histories in the Cameroon grassfields / Nicolas Argenti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Argenti, Nicolas.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Oku (African people)--History.

Oku (African people).

Oku (African people)--Politics and government.

Oku (African people)--Social life and customs.

Slavery--Cameroon--North-West Province--History.

Slavery.

Marginality, Social--Cameroon--North-West Province--History.

Marginality, Social.

Young men--Cameroon--North-West Province--Attitudes.

Young men.

Young men--Cameroon--North-West Province--Psychology.

Psychology.

History.

Manners and customs.

Politics and government.

North-West Province (Cameroon)--History.

North-West Province (Cameroon).

North-West Province (Cameroon)--Social conditions.

Cameroon--North-West Province.

Physical Description:

xviii, 362 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Summary:

The young people of the Cameroon Grassfields have been subject to a long history of violence and political marginalization. For centuries the main victims of the slave trade, they became prime targets for forced labor campaigns under a series of colonial rulers. Today's youth remain at the bottom of the fiercely hierarchical and polarized societies of the Grassfields, and it is their response to centuries of exploitation that Nicolas Argenti takes up in this absorbing book.

Beginning his study with a political analysis of youth in the Grassfields from the eighteenth century to the present, Argenti pays special attention to the repeated violent revolts staged by young victims of political oppression. He then combines this history with ethnographic fieldwork in the Oku chiefdom, discovering that the specter of past violence lives on in the masked dance performances that have earned intense devotion from today's youth. Argenti contends that by evoking the imagery of past cataclysmic events, these masquerades allow young Oku men and women to address the inequities they face in their relations with elders and state authorities today.

Contents:

Centuries of youth : remembering, incorporation, and the reclamation of history

Kings, slaves, and floating populations : discourses of centrality and marginality in the precolonial era

Masks of terror and the subjection of cadets

Aurora colonialis : German imperialism and the modernity of slavery

Embodied histories : royal investiture, masking, and remembering

From slaves to free boys : cadets' resistance to gerontocratic, colonial, and postcolonial authority

The death of tears : mortuary rites and the indeterminacy of dance

Dancing death : memorial celebrations, the politics of ritual laughter, and the embodied memories of youth

Histories of the present, histories of the future.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [319]-345) and index.

ISBN:

9780226026114

0226026116

9780226026121

0226026124

OCLC:

122525934

Online:

Publisher description