Bahari yetu (Our Ocean/Genre) - A matrifocal anthropological study of oral archives and embodied knowledge practices along the Swahili coast
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Final Report Abstract
This research project took as a point of departure the Swahili concept of “bahari”, which means “genre” and “ocean” at the same time, in order to explore knowledge practices on the northern Swahili coast through a matrifocal ethnographic lens. The project examined oral art, i.e. music and dance performances, called ngoma, as sites of knowledge. Ngoma performances are not only sites for cultural, political, religious and historical cognition, but are, in the first place, sites of social, ethical, philosophical, linguistic and rhetorical education. In the pursuit of understanding Swahili notions and concepts of knowledge, I proposed to unravel how ideas of oral literary genres shed light on the specific ways of becoming, being and moving in this part of the Western Indian Ocean. I achieved this through an in-depth analysis of the ways in which local experts and specialists, such as poets, oral art performers and curators collect, preserve, transmit, utilize, produce and perform various oral and textual Swahili knowledge genres (bahari). As in pre-dominantly oral societies, theoretical and practical knowledge are closely intertwined, this inquiry included the study of original Swahili occupations such as composing, drum making and mat weaving. My utilized matrifocal lens served to center female-generated moral and political philosophy and to contribute to an active non-Eurocentric recognition of other ways of knowing and perceiving reality (i.e. time, history, space and place). As had been hypothesized, Swahili understanding of “knowledge” is, at its core, matriphilosophical. The investigation of ngoma music and dance performances as intergenerational sites of knowledge has shown how the usage and the ways of transmission of oral knowledge has imbued in the learning practitioner a particular understanding of the past (history) and, at the same time, of one’s present and immediate being in the world. It has shown how matriphilosophical values, such as empathy and equity, are manifested in a person who learns within a mimetic, performative, musical and oral setting. The investigation has shown that matrifocal knowledge practices manage to dis-personify, spread and multiply intangible and ephemeral knowledge content to create particular communities of practice (Wissensgemeinschaft), instead of culminating in one renowned knowledge expert, single author or immortalized (mainly male) philosopher, as has been common in hierarchized Western and academic knowledge traditions. By engaging in collaboration, interdisciplinary knowledge production and adopting other ways of knowing, this project succeeded in kindling a little community that engages in an inter-epistemic dialogue. Thus, by having included local experts and actors as collaborative colleagues in the project evolvement, this research project has also contributed to an empirically-grounded conceptualisation of knowledge that thinks across traditions and is able to heal historical epistemic wounds.
Publications
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Shaping and Being Shaped by Lamu Society: Ustadh Mau’s Poetry in the Context of Swahili Poetic Practice. In This Fragile World, 30-40. BRILL.
Mahazi, Jasmin Anna-Karima
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16th-17th Nov. 2023 at the “Lineage and Gender in Islam: Perspectives from the Indian Ocean World” conference at Leiden University, the Netherlands. “Ichumbo la Yaye, AvuTila na mamake (Elder sister’s womb, mother’s brother and his mother) – Matrifocal affiliation and lineage among the Bajuni/Swahili of the Western Indian Ocean”
Mahazi, Jasmin Anna-Karima
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“In Search of Truth and Justice” in: Thinking through Translocal Entanglements, New Directions in Research 2020-2022, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
Mahazi, Jasmin Anna-Karima
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“Silence, secrecy, ignorance, and the making of class and status across generations.” ZMO Programmatic Texts 15.
Becker, Johannes; Bromber, Katrin; Chavoshian, Sana; Moradi, Ahmad; Ferrand, Antoinette; Ismailbekova, Aksana; Mahazi, Jasmin Anna-Karima; Scharrer, Tabea & Schielke, Samuli
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“Uncle Abudis Truhe” in: Gedächtnis 02/2023 issue of the Leibniz Magazin
Mahazi, Jasmin Anna-Karima
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“Mwanati – Child of this Soil: Vave and Political Commentary”, in Bajuni Land, Language and Orature, eds. Kimani Njogu and Athman Lali Omar, Twaweza Communications, Nairobi
Mahazi, Jasmin Anna-Karima
