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RECONSTRUCTING ORAL TRADITION: SOULEYMANE KANTE'S APPROACH TO WRITING MANDE HISTORY

2001; Indiana University Press; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/mnd.2001.a873349

2379-5506

David C. Conrad,

African Studies and Ethnography

RECONSTRUCTING ORAL TRADITION: SOULEYMANE KANTE'S APPROACH TO WRITING MANDE HISTORY1 David C. Conrad "I have related all the anecdotes and historical narratives which he related ' without applying myself to investigate their truthfulness or to test them. " Ibn Juzayy2 Introduction: Drifting into the World of N'ko In 1994 during an extended research trip to Guinée on which I had no plans to do anything involving Souleymane Kanté or N'ko (with which I first became acquainted in Macenta in 1991), I happened to acquire a copy of one of the N'ko books to which the publisher had attached a partially French title, Précis de I ' Histoire de I ' Empire Soso 993-1 235. Curious to learn the source of the author' s information and if the slim volume contained anything about Sumanguru's Soso that I had not heard before, I arranged to have a translation made by two of my research assistants in Siguiri. The Soso book proved sufficiently interesting that I began to collect copies of Souleymane Kanté's books on Sunjata and related periods of the Mande past, with the intention of continuing with the translation project. Several years later, Jean-Loup Amselle would write that attempts to have some of Souleymane Kanté' s works translated into European languages had "collided with his disciples' refusal, as they suspected western scholars of profiting from their master's knowledge through the publication of works dealing with his body of work" (Amselle, 1997: 43). If similar attitudes existed in northeastern Guinée in 1994, I was entirely unaware of them. Indeed, several of the Mande histoiy volumes were scarce at the time, and I only succeeded in acquiring them with the help of some cooperative elders of Kankan, who knew that my intention was to have them translated.3 During the final six months of that year's sojourn in Guinée while continuing to employ a translation team on the N'ko books,4 1 was fully occupied with my original research project and so was unable to monitor their work closely, aside from brief daily checks on their progress. It became clear that the work was flawed, so once the first draft of the translations was finished, one assistant continued to be employed correcting the manuscripts. I left Guinée that year with translations that were not perfect and which were missing some lines here and there,5 but which still were good enough to reveal what Souleymane Kanté had to say about the Mande past. I made those materials available to Dianne Oyler and, a few years later, to Jean-Loup Amselle when I learned of his interest.6 Valentin Vydrine and I have also shared some of the N'ko material. The long-range goal has been to eventually acquire sufficiently accurate and complete translations that could be made available in print. Several years ago Valentin Vydrine accepted my invitation to join in preparing these editions, but our busy schedules have prevented rapid progress on the project. In 1999 JeanLoup Amselle and I discussed the possibility of preparing a French language edition, Mande Studies 3 (2001) pp. 147-200 148 David e. Conrad but that idea has so far not moved into an determined assistant in Kankan is still w translations, and sending periodic up-date The burgeoning interest in the life of influence on West African intellectual lif organizations devoted to his memory and a body of published literature on those subj among non-readers of N'ko, the actual cont script have not been readily available. Idea the Mande "history" books in translation contents. However, it will probably be a l largely because of a lack of funding. This general idea of the contents of Souleyman history. However, as the work progress impossible. For one thing there is far too m and also it seemed increasingly important with extensive quoting ofkey passages. The here, with more to follow in one or more treatment, it will not be possible to menti outlines offered will include many exemp possible the narrative sequence establishe far from exhaustive, limited to general rem of his sources, his approach to chronolo mission in writing the books...