humans and things: mande fetishes as subjects

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Article

Humans and things: Mande “Fetishes” as Subjects

Agnes Kedzierska Manzon, Centre d’Anthropologie Sociale du Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Solidarités, Societé, Territoire—Université Toulouse 2-le Mirail

ABSTRACT The West African Mande use a wide variety of material artifacts (“fetishes”) to influence their lives. They conceive of such artifacts as partners with whom their users actively engage in genuine relationship. Thus, they treat these objects as subjects. Yet anthropologists have typically interpreted such objects, and similar magical artifacts worldwide, as symbols, that is, material representations reifying social and power structures. This ar-ticle re-examines the traditional anthropological binary and indexical view of the objects in question while exploring these objects’ agency, which I consider as the foundation of their efficacy. [Keywords: Power objects, agency, fetishism, symbolic effectiveness, Mande]

Among the Mande (Mali, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire), the usage of a wide range of material artifacts manipulated on a regular basis to influence

human life is well established. Such artifacts include, on the one hand, Muslim talismans or amulets (the Mande have been Islamicized since the 14th century CE), and on the other hand, non-Islamic objects—primarily plant-based amalgams of various shapes and sizes. Employed within local religious practices known as bamanaya,1 these objects are designated in Mande languages as boliw or basiw (singular boli or basi) and in dictionar-ies and classic ethnographies as “fetish.”2 To avoid “the problem of the

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 4, p. 1119-1152, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2013 by the Institute for Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.

Humans and Things: Mande “Fetishes” as Subjects

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fetish” (Pietz 1985, 1987, 1988)—that is, the methodological complications raised by the usage of this term (with ambiguous denotation and forged in the context of the Western conquest of Africa)—many contemporary scholars (Bazin 2008, Brett-Smith 1983, Colleyn 2004, McNaughton 1982) refer to the objects in question as “power objects” or “ritual objects.”

As with similar objects elsewhere—Congolese “nail fetishes” (nkisi nkondi, for example), Baule “spouse figurines” (blolo bian/bla), or Evhe and Fon vodun, to name only a few—Mande objects are addressed with words and through sacrifices and are asked for help in difficulties. Their “users” seem to conceive of them as a very special category of not en-tirely sentient yet autonomous entities. As I will argue, they treat these objects as subjects with which one may enter into a genuine partnership. Yet, until a current shift in the anthropological thinking about people and things, scholars have typically interpreted such objects as symbols that are material representations devoid of authentic (i.e., not metaphoric) sub-jectivity and conveying some external meaning (for a classic definition of the symbol, see Geertz 1973 and Turner 1974). The profound discrepancy of this scholarly perspective, as compared to the one presented by the objects’ users, is striking, as is the incapacity of classic anthropology to “take power objects seriously.”3

This article aims to convey more adequately than has been done here-tofore the logic of people engaging with objects, while at the same time questioning the logic of people interpreting such a practice. To this effect and following in the footsteps of Bazin (2008) and MacGaffey (1990), it pro-poses to abandon the definition of power objects as representations while also rejecting the standard Western model of subjectivity as an a priori cat-egory. In so doing, it seeks to enhance the research of those anthropolo-gists who have recently critically reexamined the concept of fetishism (in addition to the three articles by Pietz [1985, 1987, 1988], see Graeber 2005, MacGaffey 1994, Holbraad 2007, etc.) and, more generally, who question the relevance of the division between people, concepts, and things as uni-versally axiomatic (Gell 1998; Holbraad 2009, 2011; Holbraad and Pedersen 2009; Ingold 2007; Latour 1993; Miller 2005; Spyer 1998; Strathern 1988, 1999; Wagner 1991; Willerslev 2007). However, my purpose here is not necessarily to elaborate upon the theoretical debate about thing-ness and agency that these scholars have already convincingly reframed. Rather, by sharing the vivid account of my experiences among people who value “fetishes,” I would like to involve the reader in the process of “thinking”

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together “through things” (Henare et al. 2007) in order to achieve through dialogue a more profound understanding of the way in which humans en-gage bodily and emotionally with certain objects.

i. Approaching the ObjectsFabricated by specialists, the most famous of whom live in the regions of Siguiri (Upper Guinea) and Segu (central Mali), Mande power objects are either inherited within the family or purchased by aspiring owners from a craft master at a price that may be quite elevated. In any event, the acquirer pledges to make offerings and to conduct his life in a particular way in relation to the object’s exigencies. Such requirements comprise, on the one hand, specific sacrificial requests—at particular times/spaces and of a particular nature (including substances such as animal blood, cola nuts, and millet beer)—and, on the other hand, more general obliga-tions, usually regulating sexual activity, diet, and social behavior of the owner or tigi.4 disobeying these requirements may result in the loss of the object’s power or, worse, in this power turning against the owner. An owner engages with the object chiefly through sacrifices performed both according to the annual cycle and in the time of need. They begin with formal address—a verbal reminder of the alliance uniting him5 with the object, usually including a thanksgiving for past assistance and a request for future protection. According to my field experience, then, the owner informs the object of his future plans (or of those of the relative, friend, or fellow villager for whom the sacrifice is being performed) to test the object’s view as to the probability of their realization. First the question is asked: “Will the person who promised me money keep the promise?” or “Will I kill some prey today?” The divination with cola nuts or other augurs—such as stones, cowry shells, poultry, or sand—follows, result-ing in what is considered to be the object’s answer to the question. The actual sacrificial act functions within this schema either as the closing stage of the consultation or as the fulfillment of former promises made to the object, and always as a reenactment of the alliance between the object(s) and the human(s). dreams provide another typical channel of communication with objects, which often assume feminine form in these nocturnal visions (see Brett-Smith 1994:54-55). As such, the objects transmit various important messages to their owners, such as where to look for a specific plant needed for a cure or how to avoid an upcoming


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danger. Certain objects are employed to palliate such misfortunes, to as-sure the well-being of the owners, or to protect them against sorcerers and all other enemies. others may have a more precise function (e.g., a guarantee of hunting achievements).

Regardless of its exact purpose, the object’s use is secret—i.e., under customary circumstances, one does not show power objects to others or willingly admit to owning them (although their existence is generally a “public secret”), nor does one publicly discuss their properties. The rea-son—at least the one formulated locally—behind this secrecy consists in a quasi-generalized mistrust that is characteristic of Mande social relations (McNaughton 1995, Kedzierska Manzon 2013). To reveal to someone—per-haps, a potential enemy—an object’s detailed characteristics could possi-bly have harmful consequences. An ill-intentioned individual possessing such information could, resorting to specific procedures, destroy the ob-ject’s efficacy. While this secrecy makes it difficult to assess with certitude the numbers and distribution of such objects, numerous sources suggest that the majority of the Mande population is connected in a systematic fashion to their use (Bazin 2008; Brett-Smith 1983, 1994, 1997; Colleyn 1985, 2001, 2004; McNaugton 1982, 1988; see references in Cissé 1994, Hoffman 2000, Imperato 1977, Kedzierska Manzon 2008, zahan 1960). Thus, far from being a marginal phenomenon, these objects represent a central yet usually discrete element of the Mande religious landscape.

I first encountered boliw in 2001, during my second field trip6 to north-western Côte d’Ivoire. I was able to further interact with them between 2003 and 2007 during seven research trips ranging from one to four months each to rural southwestern Mali and northeastern Guinea.7 Given the primary focus of my research,8 I spent the most substantial part of my field time with hunters (donsow). As members of an initiation or power society—don-soton—the hunters have a well-established reputation as magico-religious specialists. In addition to my participation in many hunters’ collective ac-tivities—trips, gatherings, and rites—allowing me to study their worldview, dances, and oral literature (Kedzierska 2005; Kedzierska Manzon 2008, 2009, 2011), I conducted formal interviews about the power objects with several individual hunters. I was also allowed to witness some of their infor-mal conversations. I complemented these data by discussions with other villagers, as well as sessions with rural and Bamako-based masters (known as folk therapists called furatigiw or basitigiw) who owned the power ob-jects whose functions were unrelated to the hunt.


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My affiliation with the hunters and their acceptance of my presence were nevertheless decisive for the success of the investigation presented here. In fact, among the Mande, under traditional circumstances young women9 are not supposed to explore matters related to so-called occult knowledge or daliluw (McNaughton 1982): power objects, magical for-mulae (kilisi) (Kedzierska Manzon 2008, McNaugton 1995), and divining practices (Colleyn 2004). Why then, apparently, was I given access to such occult knowledge? In the local opinion, I surmise, my inquiry about the objects complemented my investigation of the other elements of the hunters’ knowledge, such as hunting strategies and songs. As a hunter-apprentice (karanden or kalanden), I was able to establish a trusting rela-tionship with my master (karamogo) and a few of his close hunter-friends. Based on practical engagement—that is, a personal involvement in the physically demanding activities of daily and nightly hunting trips—this relationship provided an appropriate framework for sharing our experi-ences. In disclosing what I learned, I do not believe I am disloyal vis-à-vis my local collaborators: from their viewpoint, my description would seem meaningless. As McNaughton put it in his account of the secret knowl-edge of blacksmiths, it contains “nothing of the context or background that endows these data with the potential for usefulness” (McNaughton 1982:494). Suiting the theoretical purpose of my text, it would appear to them too abstract to put anyone at risk. However, it must be emphasized that the fact that a few details may be missing from such an abstract description does not critically undermine the validity of my hypotheses presented here as far as the internal logic of the practice under question is correctly reconstructed.

My field observations have convinced me that this logic is quite dif-ferent from the logic regulating most human interactions with objects in my own contemporary Western setting—or more precisely, from the logic ascribed to such interactions within the Western conceptual paradigm. It is precisely because of this discrepancy and of the omnipresence of power objects that I started my investigation. In short, I wanted to understand why reasonable humans, such as my Mande friends, believed in what my own experience and culture deemed impossible: that they do communicate or engage with things. For me, any relationship necessarily implies the exis-tence of separate partners. None of the objects in question, however, were presented to me as the incarnation of some invisible partner or as an altar hosting it. My informants did not consider these objects as representations


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of a presence, but as presences outright. This puzzled my Western sensi-bility. Thus, on the one hand, I suspected that the interpretation of objects as symbols seemed problematic, given the previously mentioned definition of symbol as basically indexical, i.e., pointing toward something other than itself. But, on the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling confused by local ex-planations. In search for a solution that satisfied my need for clarity while also conforming to my field data, I conducted many intellectually discon-certing conversations. In order to make my experience more intelligible to the reader, I will quote here a lengthy excerpt of a conversation that took place in the early stages of my research10 and illustrates particularly well the clash of the two logics in play; let’s call them, in a provisory manner, “Mande” and “Western.”

Dia: A person takes cola nuts and the rooster to the object and re-ceives the response here on earth from their positions. If your object is a stool, for example, it does not have consciousness11; so it is the person consulting it, who formulates a question. And it’s not the ob-ject that gives an answer, but the cola nuts and the rooster.Madi: Thus, you proceed by saying, for example, that you wish to become a policeman and in order to verify if your desire will come true, you throw the cola nut. You may say something like: if I really will become a policeman, the cola nut will fall open.12

Agnes: But, if the answer to the question is known through the cola nuts and the rooster, why do I have to throw them in relation to the object?D: You have to address something. You can choose a tree, a stool, even an old bag. It thus becomes your power object and it acts.A: How so?M: It’s the same thing as if you were praying to God. does God an-swer your prayers? Even though the stool is an object and doesn’t answer, doesn’t breathe, once it’s venerated, it becomes important.D: The cola nuts and the rooster constitute the consciousness of the object.A: But who or what determines their position?M: The person who comes to consult the object. D: Each power object is made from a base of selected plants; one gathers these plants while reciting appropriate formulae and while holding a certain intention in mind. But the most important thing is


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that you love13 what you are doing. You need to feel love for the ob-ject, to really venerate the object from which you ask for help. A: I admit that if I feel a lot of affection for a person, that person has the capacity to demonstrably love me back. Nevertheless, even if I were to express all of the affection that I could posses towards my moped, I would never be able to repair it just by loving it, were it to break down. The dead batteries of my tape recorder still will not work even if I offer them a rooster. My affection for an object doesn’t nec-essarily entail reciprocal action from the object. It doesn’t entail any action at all, because objects can neither hear me nor respond to me.M: But the power object is created in a certain way, with a certain purpose. Mine cost 5,000 CFA francs.14 I wouldn’t have spent so much money if I didn’t think that this object would solve my prob-lems. It doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, but at the same time it is not like everyday objects.A: So, can I really choose, then, an old backpack as my power ob-ject, as you said?M: You can try. If you offer cola nuts and a rooster, from that moment forward, the bag will no longer be just a bag, but will become your power object. D: do you want to try?

I did not want to try. I did not feel one shred of desire to turn my old back-pack into an object of this type. I could not understand the necessity of possessing such an object to exercise power or influence my life. Even so, I gathered from this conversation that a special kind of relationship needed to be established between an object and its owner in order to render the object effective. And, if such a relationship were established, it necessarily excluded the object from the category of “ordinary object” no matter its shape, origin, or components.

This discovery challenges many well-known interpretations of ritual ob-jects which I had so far taken for granted. In these interpretations, the ob-jects’ effectiveness has usually been linked to their specific material proper-ties as embedded with symbolic value and thus locally attributed potency. This view prompted scholars to engage in the dialectics of forms versus meaning, that is, to question the exact mechanism of the attribution of such symbolic value to certain material artifacts by the search for, and elabora-tion of, the codes according to which each culture presumably associated


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concrete substances and shapes with more or less abstract referents. Eventually, it triggered reflection upon the (spiritual, mental, or social) con-tent of these referents. despite their striking importance as evidenced in the quoted conversation, two other issues usually escaped the attention of scholars: the problem of embodiment (i.e., why, in the first place, do humans need to turn to material artifacts to acquire and exercise power?); and the object’s status in respect to humans (i.e., how is it possible that so numerous societies seem seriously and not metaphorically to conceive of some objects as inanimate, yet autonomous agents with whom humans engage in relationship?). only recently have a few scholars (Taussig 1993, Moisseeff 1994) explicitly addressed this first question—and the second, introduced at the turn of our century by the anthropological current preoc-cupied with materiality and agency (Henare et al. 2007, Keane 1997, Ingold 2007, Spyer 1998), still needs a more serious consideration, one which I shall propose after presenting the Mande data in more in detail.

ii. Dialectics of Form and MeaningThe dialectics of form versus meaning are not completely irrelevant to the Mande, who would certainly agree that an object’s material properties—its ingredients or makeup—are important. What are these ingredients? According to the specialists whom I interviewed, the objects’ fabrication clearly rests on the “knowledge of trees” (jiridon)—i.e., the ability to appro-priately choose, prepare (dry, reduce to pulp or powder, boil, etc.), and com-bine (specific dosage, specific time and place, etc.) vegetable substances (bark, leaves, or roots of various trees and bushes). This information is well-documented in the research to date (Bazin 2008, Colleyn 1985, Jonckers 1993, McNaughton 1982, zahan 1960). dependent on the “knowledge of trees,” Mande power objects frequently contain certain animal and min-eral elements (powdered parts of animal bodies, talons, feathers, horns, crushed stones, or some metal). Crafts or other handwork may be added as well. Based on older sources (Henry 1910, Monteil 1924), Brett-Smith in 1983 postulated that the objects revolve around a few recurrent elements, both in terms of shapes (bovine, humanoid, and spherical) and ingredients (in addition to vegetable substances: cotton cloth, human and animal feces, and even a child’s skeleton). Bazin (2008), conforming to the research of zahan (1960), emphasized instead the variety of the possible components and forms of the objects, which he grossly divided into three categories:


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small-size amalgams formed around a seed, receptacles of diverse types (animal horns, animal skulls, or clay pots) filled with a composite matter, and assemblages of various, sometimes sizeable, parts (animal tails, bird beaks, etc.). My field experience echoes Bazin’s findings. Among the ob-jects I documented were, for example: kontoron, a medium-sized ring with a hole in its center; dibilan and komo, small-sized cones; togofebila, a small horn; and jaferen, a table-sized amalgam of horns, round balls, and cowry shells adorned with wooden or metal figurines in anthropoid form and con-taining many unidentifiable elements united on a horizontal plane. The only common characteristic of all these objects consisted in their muddy aspect and uneven surface and not in any finite list of their shapes or ingredients. In fact, Brett-Smith (2001:107) recently reiterated some of her initial argu-ments and agreed that the objects may be of “non-specific shapes” and “without any noticeable sculpture presence.” Thus, truly, it seems that the only consensus in the research to date, including my own, regards the ob-jects’ almost infinite variety of sizes, shapes, and components.

Given this observation, why pay any attention at all to what composes these objects? Why bother meticulously listing all the existing shapes? Bazin (2008) proposes that such an enumeration, often solicited by the ethnographer in the field, is less a transmission of the fixed recipe (linking given substances with their referents) than it is a narration of the object’s history. This story seems important if we conceive of the object in terms of an individual entity with its own qualities and character. From this perspec-tive, the symbolic value of each ingredient is of less significance than their unique composition providing the given object’s “biography” (2008:509). Bazin further indicates that if we think of the boli as a strange thing found rather than made, this biography is necessary to elucidate its origins.

All sources present such origins as mythical. Two main narratives are usually evoked. According to the first, recurrent in hunters’ epics (Cashion 1984; Coulibaly 1985:22, 96; Cissé 1994:77-89; Thoyer 1995:153-158), the original place where humans found power objects lies “deep in the bush.”15 The hero of the narrative, the hunter, penetrates into this space in search of game and encounters non-human beings there—the first owners of the power objects. In the beginning, he accepts the terms of the pact they propose to him—in exchange for secret knowledge, he promises them his own life. Yet, as the story goes on, he usually tricks his debtors and comes back home safely with the power objects at his dis-posal. Thus, as the typical trickster-cultural hero, he is able to appropriate


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for himself, and ultimately bequeaths to others, the knowledge and power first inaccessible to humans. According to the second narrative, N’Fa Jigi was responsible for bringing the first power objects from Mecca. despite the lack of consensus among scholars as to N’Fa Jigi’s identity or histori-cal existence, he is consistently presented in the Mande oral tradition as the founder of the secret associations—the collective cults of specific power objects likely originating in the pre-Islamic era (Brett-Smith 1996, Colleyn 2001, Conrad 1995, McNaughton 1988, zahan 1960). It may seem ironic, then, that the narrative associates the origins of these cults and objects with the Islamic holy city.16 The value of the association lies, in my opinion, in the equation of Mecca with the powerful and the extra-ordinary. Thus, in both scenarios evoked above, the mythical origins of power objects are located in a symbolically charged space, distinct and difficult to access.17

These mythical origins are actualized through the modes of creation/acquisition of these objects within the contemporary context. First, the future owner usually travels to a rather distant place to meet with one of the renowned masters from whom he obtains the object. Second, as I was told in the field, the master—subject to sexual and other behavioral strictures—fabricates the objects only in the deep bush, within a restricted period of the year, utilizing water and fire. during this fabrication, specific magic formulae (kilisi) must be recited. Their role consists of putting into play or activating the object, and defining the field of its future actions. once the words are pronounced, the objects automatically possess pow-er outside of the will of the speaker.18 The necessity to render the object functional by using appropriate words is, in addition to its composition, a second distinctive feature differentiating it from other traditional “medi-cines.” The third characteristic consists in a need, in order to complete the object’s activation, for blood sacrifice. on this subject, Colleyn remarks:

Everything happens as if the sacrificial killing was meant to retain, fix, and accumulate the force released by the “liquidation” of the living being. By its death, the animal discharges its nyama, which can only be stored up within an object specifically meant to absorb it. (2004:70)

The term nyama designates “vital energy” in Mande languages (for a discussion of the term, see Brett-Smith 2001). Human beings, animals,


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and plants, as well as certain inanimate objects (power objects, ritual masks, etc.) all possess various quantities of it, and may therefore be clas-sified in accordance to their potency. Thus, nyama may be understood as the usually invisible force representing the real measure of each being, or, to put it differently, each being’s “defensive and offensive capacity” (Bazin 2008:514). In fact, nyama also designates the harmful effects of its own discharge. organic waste or, one could put it, exuviae (hair, urine, fecal matter, sperm, vaginal fluids, and menstrual and sacrificial blood) as well as body parts are considered the vehicles par excellence of this vital ener-gy, all the more virulent if the death of their host occurred violently. Hence, as Colleyn (2004) states, the fundamental motivation behind all sacrificial practices is the accumulation and storage of the nyama within the objects specially conceived for it. In other words, the purpose of these sacrifices is to “feed” the objects (Brett-Smith 1983:51-53) through transmission or “injection” into them (Bazin 2008:518) of the active material (blood) con-taining the initial force (nyama) of the sacrificed beings and thus, one could add, indexing their agency (see Gell 1998).

As is evident from this brief ethnographic description, specific logic in-spires the choice of substances composing the objects, considered par-ticularly active since they condense the nyama of their original vegetable, animal, or mineral “hosts,” which are selected in the first place on the basis of their energy, and then “liquidated” in a particular, nyama-preserving way. This same logic also motivates the words said during the fabrication of power objects—the power words or formulae full of nyama—as well as the initial and subsequent sacrifices. Expanding on the observations of Brett-Smith and Colleyn, should we then conclude that all practices with objects conform to the general principle of the handling and accumula-tion of nyama? If so, how to interpret nyama and what kind of agency this term denotes exactly? More importantly, if, as suggested so far, the list of potentially active (nyama-laden) substances, procedures, and forms is infinite, why precisely are certain ones, and not others, chosen? How are the ones selected linked with what they index? Is their choice systematic or accidental? does it consist of a more or less haphazard selection judged satisfactory as long as it is made among the variables recognized as suit-able? Are the ingredients or procedures interchangeable? Should they be interpreted as a symbolic system à la Lévi-Strauss in which the meaning is the function of the position of each element in respect to the others, and in which the relation between the objects and their referent is arbitrary while


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appearing to the objects’ users as natural? This would perhaps account for certain inconsistencies in local thought and the failure of ethnographers to enumerate with precision the connections between meanings and forms.

Alas, this explanation does not seem to correspond to the field data. The people engaging with objects—and not only among the Mande (cf. Holbraad 2007:195-196)—do not act as if the exact composition of these objects was meaningful by convention. They do not treat the effectiveness of objects as a projection or expression of their owners’ social power. To assert that they do, one would need to demonstrate first that they differen-tiate the social, natural, and supernatural as parallel yet distinct spheres of the universe, and therefore may project one onto the other—a rather ambi-tious task in respect to many indigenous cultures (Willerslev 2007:17-19). Should we assume, then, as many anthropologists have, that understand-ing objects’ users is actually of minor importance because we know that objects signify based on social conventions and that their formal char-acteristics are accidental since the relation between a sign (object) and its referent is by definition arbitrary? Would such an assumption help to explain the possibility that almost any object could eventually become a power object? I intend to propose an alternative interpretation of this and other unexplained issues in the last part of the text. In order to render it intelligible, however, I will move at present to a critical analysis of the on-tological premise, common in most of the studies of objects and not yet deconstructed: the assumption of their indexical character.

iii. the “copy that is Not a copy”This assumption of the indexical character of the objects should be con-sidered within a larger context, in relation to the historical evolution of the concept of representation within the Western episteme. The binary view of the representation (as unifying the signifier and the signified), implies the separation of truth from appearances and essence from external shape. Foucault (1970:42) associates classicism precisely with the consolida-tion of such a separation and the completion of the transformation of the definition of sign from the Stoic tertiary (the signifier, the signified, and the “conjuncture”) to the modern binary (a signifier and a signified). This new definition, as he demonstrates, nullifies the question of the affinity between a sign and its signification, focusing instead on the nature of the relationship of both:


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This new arrangement brought about the appearance of a new prob-lem, unknown until then: in the sixteenth century one asked oneself how it was possible to know that the sign did in fact designate what it signified; from the seventeenth century, one began to ask how a sign could be linked to what it signified. A question to which the Classical period was to reply by the analysis of representation and to which modern thought was to reply by the analysis of meaning and signifi-cation. (Foucault 1970:43)

“Thinking through difference” instead of “thinking through likeness,” corollary to this transformation, laid the foundations for modern science, which, to the binary definition of the sign (“rediscovered” by de Saussure in linguistics and subsequently developed by Lévi-Strauss), added the as-sertion that this relationship is completely arbitrary (Foucault 1970:119). Both claims represent the conceptual heritage and context within which early anthropological interpretations of magic were elaborated at the end of the 19th century. It should not surprise us then that these theories applied the aforementioned binary definition of sign to non-Western re-ligious artifacts. In his study, Sir James Frazer (1981:6-13) considers the principle of magic as the (mis)interpretation of the actual arbitrary rela-tion between a person and his/her representation as motivated or causal. He describes how, within the magical perspective, actions performed on such a representation (effigy, person’s body parts) are supposed to af-fect the person because of the (mistakenly) assumed sympathy between both. From this viewpoint, magic relies on an invalid logical operation searching for continuity in what is objectively unrelated. This theory is ob-viously considered obsolete today (Mauss and Hubert 1950, Lévi-Strauss 1958, Wittgenstein 1979). Yet, some of its elements may in fact merit a closer examination.

Taussig (1993), who critically analyzes it, does not disagree completely with Frazer’s claim that imitation (mimesis in his own words)—an attempt to obtain a copy that is somehow like the original—represents the very principle of magic. He provides, instead, a more nuanced view of the prob-lem. He observes that most of the magical objects worldwide are not life-like representations of an original since they lack any strict resemblance to such an original, whatever it may be. These replicas are often the crude outline of a human or an animal, schematic rather than naturalistic. The research on Australian churinga by Marika Moisseeff (1994), who insists


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on the aniconic character of such objects, seems to resonate with his findings. To further demonstrate his point, Taussig discusses the example of Cuna (Panama, Colombia) healing figurines (nuchus), which may be used in shamanic curing like that analyzed by Lévi-Strauss (1958:213-234). These figurines, enhancing the power of the shaman (nele), repre-sent tutelary spirits and depict simplified non-Indian (European) types. Yet, the way they do so seems somehow fantastical: with no respect to the original colors of the military uniform or even the proportion and “correct” (naturalistic) representation of the body parts. Taussig (1993:51) therefore suggests that the figurine, in terms borrowed from Mauss and Hubert, is a “poorly executed ideogram.” Moisseeff (1994) would probably identify it as “a pure form.” Taussig (1993:52) coins the expression: “the Copy that is not a Copy.” His observations and terminology definitely apply also to Mande power objects. To sum up, in Cuna, Australian Arunda, and Mande examples, as well as in many other cases worldwide, imperfect and some-how uncanny artifacts are used in order to obtain power.

The question remains: if magical replicas are indeed copies that are not copies, then why are they believed to be effective? How are they sup-posed to materialize or affect an original that they do not resemble? For Moisseeff (1994:15), the objects do so precisely because they do not re-semble—through their virtue as pure signifiers—a self-referential or ordi-nary signified. As such, she argues they disturb and consequently redefine the relations between all other signifiers and signified, allowing their mu-tual changes and transformation in general; an answer subscribing obvi-ously to the binary and arbitrary definition of the sign. For Taussig, “[i]n some way or another the making and existence of the artifact that por-trays something gives one power over that which is portrayed” (1993:13). How to understand this appealing but unintelligible answer? Let’s try by reviewing the available interpretative options, starting with a brief return to the analysis of Marxist theory so dear to Taussig. For Marx, fetishes are human-made things, which, to their own makers, “appear as independent beings endowed with life and entering into relationship both with one an-other and with the human race” (1906:83). Like commodities, they are rei-fications of social relations. It follows that the rapport between them and what they represent, which appears natural to their users, is, in fact, arbi-trary. An object’s value and effectiveness are not related to the eventual similitude (or lack thereof) between it and something external to it, but to the social mechanics of its use and creation (largely ignored by members


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of society). Such a viewpoint is also shared by durkheim (1965) and many scholars whom he inspired.

despite my conviction that the objects I analyze are frequently involved in the negotiations of power within the society and that they may indeed materialize that power, I feel somewhat uneasy in considering all of the men-tioned approaches as definitive since, as aptly formulated by Willerslev, “the analyst finds it necessary to replace the indigenous peoples’ own animistic explanation of relevant occurrences with his own, because the natives, it is assumed, do not speak the literal truth in their statement” (2007:18). By recurring to the “metaphor model” (in which the human so-cial domain is considered the primary reality projected symbolically onto material or physical phenomena; 2007:15-19), this analyst relegates these indigenous people to ignorance, presupposing that they are unaware of the reification that they perform and are incapable of recognizing the true nature of the material world around them (either natural or produced by themselves). In fact, then, the durkheimian or Marxist propositions are not as distant as they may appear from the conception articulated earlier by Hegel, for whom the fetish does not objectify the relations between humans but instantiates, as aptly summarized by de Surgy (1985:10), “the proper power of the individual.” Without undermining this difference, one cannot help but observe that all three theories, as well as to some degree the structural approach advanced by Moisseeff,19 remain parallel in logic to the Frazerian view, which is founded upon the assumption that illusion or ignorance lies at the very heart of the engagement with objects.

This assumption seems to prevent the formulation of the question: why must one use any objects at all? Is it not redundant indeed to employ sym-bols and metaphors to materialize or assume power “objectively” pos-sessed by certain individuals or groups? Why then do various indigenous peoples worldwide apparently indulge in such metaphors and articulate their power—illusory or actual, individual or collective—under the form of objects specifically conceived for this purpose? To answer, scholars studying performance and ritual point toward the human need for physi-cal interaction, for the concrete embodiment of abstract ideas render-ing these ideas operational (Geertz 1973:109-119, Myerhoff 1993). This would ultimately indicate why representation should give us power over the represented, or why, in other words, unfaithful copies may be effective: they help to transform abstract concepts into experience. That symbols, when manipulated in a series of ritual actions, are capable of provoking


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in humans such intimate experiences, has been known at least since the publication by Lévi-Strauss (1958) of his study of the effectiveness of sym-bols. As for the reasons of their “inductive property,” i.e., their capacity to affect humans, the theories may vary. Yet, the materiality of symbols is, un-doubtedly, the initial condition of such capacity. This explanation, proper to symbolic anthropology, addresses as we see the problem left aside by social constructivism: why is embodiment necessary?

Yet, this view seems unsatisfying to me as it maintains the binary and indexical definition of the representation onto magical artifacts without veri-fying that such a definition applies to them—which my own field experience prompted me to doubt. This doubt, regarding the representational status of power objects, is not mine alone. Following the theses of Pietz (1985, 1987, 1988) regarding the irreducible materiality of the fetish, many scholars (cf. Greaber 2005, Holbraad 2007, etc.) have voiced recently in a more system-atic manner their reluctance to consider the objects under question as rep-resentational. others have even been advancing these concerns for the last three decades. Thus, de Surgy, for example, affirms resolutely that “fetishes are not destined to represent something other than themselves” (1993:113). As early as 1986, Bazin asserted that Mande power objects are not sup-posed to represent. In another text, about Congolese objects, in which he responds to the observations of MacGaffey (1990), he explains that:

The question is not to imitate the world but to call into existence a new thing manifesting itself and exercising its power through its appearance or rather apparition. For the principle of likeness in the organization of the visual sphere is substituted the principle of what could be called containedness [English in original]. The fetish con-tains. It contains and contents itself by containing, thus it does not stand in reference to anything else than itself…This visual impres-sion of containedness is the major effect provoked by nkondi. The seemingly random accumulation of the ingredients added to those which we can only imagine and which are hidden, suggest the mul-tiplicity of “forces” that, as evident, were collected and are kept and preserved by this thing. Because, to borrow the essential conceptual distinction elaborated by Nelson Gordon, the fetish does not repre-sent, it expresses. (Bazin 2008:535-537, translated by the author)


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Such a formulation seems to resonate somehow with the Mande view as well: McNaughton, after being instructed by one of his informants that “[t]he Komo mask is made to look as an animal. But it is not an animal; it is a secret” (1988:129), arrives indeed at the conclusion that ritual objects do not imitate any existing reality but rather create a novel one. Thus, per-haps Taussig’s formulation (that the copy is not a copy) should be taken in a more literal and radical sense? Maybe, among the Mande as elsewhere, the magical Copy is not a Copy not because it is a very imperfect repre-sentation of an original, but simply because it is not a representation? So, possibly the first commentators were, after all, right when suspecting that “there is nothing behind a fetish which would be symbolized by it” (de Brosses as quoted in Pouillon 1970:109)? But, if the object contains rather than symbolizes, what could be said about its ontological status?

iV. the Objects as SubjectsIn the conversation quoted earlier, my rural interlocutors did not insist upon the form of power objects, their composition, or their mythical ori-gins. Instead, to explain the effectiveness of these objects, they empha-sized the practical engagement of humans with them. They suggested that I test how such an engagement affects the performance of objects by choosing an example at hand—my old backpack—and executing sacrific-es in its honor. Albeit amusing, this anecdote merits serious consideration. First, there are known instances of some rather mundane items—a kettle, a piece of canoe, a leather bag, etc.—that have been turned into power objects (Colleyn 2004:67). Second, the association of the effectiveness of objects with human action is actually quite common. Another of my infor-mants, a Bamako-based specialist, while performing the annual sacrifices (san yelema) on his family altar, declared:

Whatever you have, you must venerate20 it. I swear it: a simple stone, a power object, a simple plant. I swear: you must venerate it. If there exists, somewhere, someplace, a simple stone in the mountains, and you sit down near it, I swear, by the name of God, if you pour blood on it, if you pour blood on it, if you pour blood on it, even a simple rock, something, will one day at last speak back to you.


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The engagement of owners with their power objects is for the Mande, as Colleyn (2004:73) and Brett-Smith (1994:87) observe, equivalent to a marriage. The object’s acquisition places the object’s giver and receiver in a relationship similar to the one of father-in-law to son-in-law. Thus, the master providing the object, in the role of “father of the bride,” must be paid a sum of money, called laada (“regulation,” “ritual payment,” literally “tradition” and by extension “goods prescribed by tradition,” not to be confounded with goods that can be obtained through a commercial trans-action: Brett-Smith 1994:87). one also offers the master, as in the case of the marriage, ten cola nuts. To celebrate the alliance, several sacrifices are typically made and subsequently re-enacted. According to my informa-tion, the words of address to the object(s) uttered at such occasions and preceding the sacrificial act itself contain the expression ka furu, which literally means “to wed,” “to take in marriage.” The same verbal construc-tion is also widely used to describe the process of acquiring objects.

The similarities between an object’s acquisition/usage and a marriage seems further confirmed by several sexual restrictions to be respected by the owners. Such owners should, as I learned in the field, keep themselves away from women (and especially menstruating women) on the days on which they approach their objects (see also Brett-Smith 1994:84-85, Colleyn 2008). Frequently, the owner’s second or third possible marriage needs to receive the object’s approval before it can take place. Fidelity remains an indispensable quality for the owner: if he were to commit adul-tery, he could be severely punished by the object. This set of strictures reinforces the image of the owner-object relationship as a matrimonial or sexual union excluding or rendering conditional other such unions.

The interpretation of the object as equivalent to a woman finds an ad-ditional corroboration in Mande oral literature and specifically in the song, translated and annotated by Camara (1980), regarding the origins of Mande kingship. This song narrates the story of two male protagonists aspiring to political leadership and therefore in search of the secret means: a drum hidden in the bush. The two heroes find the drum and, following the advice of the Little old Woman (Musokoronin), cover it with her loin-cloth. This enactment of the wedding ceremony allows them to realize their aspira-tions. As is evident, the song symbolically equates the power object (drum) with woman (bride) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the object and access to the high political office (kingship). Additionally, it presents marriage—the capture of the bride and not the union of two consenting


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partners—as the template for any acquisition of the object(s) of man’s de-sire. The equation it suggests (magical object = woman = power) is, in fact, common to a much larger corpus of texts. As Conrad (1999) demonstrates, in Mande oral literature practically any empowerment of the hero passes through his relationship with women. This literature abounds in influential female characters acting as indispensable allies, without whom the male protagonists could never achieve their destiny (Conrad 1999). As promi-nent as they are, however, these female characters never assume the con-trol themselves (see also Colleyn 2008:85). They are used and abused in the men’s struggle for power. Though considered crucial to attain victory, they are mistrusted as potential traitors. Their portrayal in all literary genres is instrumental and ambivalent, not unlike the portrayal of power objects (Camara 1980, Traoré 1999). For Camara (1980), such artistic representa-tions reflect the guilty consciences of men. He observes that despite being depicted as powerful in the narratives—even at the origins of all creation, as the ones who give life—Mande women do not possess elementary polit-ical rights and traditionally do not exercise any institutional power (Camara 1980; see also Couloubaly 1990, Colleyn 2008, derive 1987). Thus, he in-terprets the attribution of some ritual/symbolic authority to them as a sort of compensation or recognition—latent, because of its unsettling effect on men—of their potential (Camara 1980:130, Traoré 1999:95). He identifies the uneasy feelings such recognition inspires in those in power as the pre-cise reason behind the aforementioned ambivalence.

Camara’s claims seem, in my opinion, supported by literary and ethno-graphic evidence (Kedzierska Manzon 2013, Couloubaly 2001). In respect to women, a mixture of reverence and fear is also noticeable in Mande ritual imagery, for instance, in the revered mask of the men’s secret associ-ation: the Komo. Considered particularly horrifying, this mask represents, according to Brett-Smith (1997),21 the female genitalia. To explain the awe that it inspires, Brett-Smith clarifies that among the Mande:

Men not only think of the female genitals as erotically exciting but as sacred and terrifying. The female sex itself is a ritual tool, and every woman carries within her own body a weapon capable of destroying the most powerful man…Because of its uncanny power, young men are taught that they must never approach the female sex casually. (1997:83-84)


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This is also how Cuna seem to feel about the female genitalia. It is why they consider them frightening, explains Taussig (1993:115). In this re-spect, his interpretation of the shamanic song and of the effectiveness of symbols diverges from that of Lévi-Strauss. For the French structuralist, this effectiveness is due to the song’s narrative structure, which, through the constant oscillation between evocations of the organic and mythical planes, induces in the patient a healing experience (a sort of abreaction). For Taussig though, in analyzing this song, as for Brett-Smith in respect to the Mande sculptures, symbolic forms are effective due to the transgres-sion they perform by referring to the female genitalia. In so doing, they point toward the secret core of the local cosmogonies: by evoking the individual’s origins, they actually bring into light the odd question of the genesis of the universe (1993:116). It is because of their exchangeabil-ity and because of their somehow radical character that both questions provoke uncanny feelings, or, as Bataille (1987:57) would put it, nausea. Bataille insisted long ago on the strange closeness of eroticism and reli-gion (1987:221-251). For him, sexuality, as well as decay (excreta, cadav-er, etc.), renders the fragility of life immediate and palpable. Confronted with this fragility and therefore their discontinuity, human beings feel at once repulsion and attraction, fear and fascination, and react by desper-ately trying to deny their mortal condition. According to Bataille, there are three main forms of such a denial: eroticism, love, and religion. None of them permit a long-lasting escape, since the community they institute—either the one of lovers or the one of adherents—cannot truly palliate the fact that we are born and die alone. Yet, each form provides a temporary dissolution of loneliness through the experience of what Turner (1974:231) would call communitas.

Thus, perhaps it is not a coincidence that Taussig and Brett-Smith both use the same term, “uncanny,” to describe the strange entanglement of the religious and corporeal in the cultures they study, both observing that the ritual and sexual spheres mirror each other. Perhaps, the human experience of the erotic and of the sacred is indeed somehow parallel? Turner would probably identify such experience as liminal, that is, in short, ambivalent, transitory, intense, inspiring deep emotions, and prompting transformations of all kinds (1974:232). Maybe, then, the erotic sphere may serve as the elementary source of images for any liminal experience? If so, isn’t Taussig (1993:112-128) right when he speculates that birthing constitutes the template for all magical transformations/creation (thus, the


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womb as the primordial matrix, “a basis of all simulacra”)? It should not come as a surprise then that the Mande conceive of power objects as female and that these objects—which permit various transformations and prove to be unsettling—provoke uncanny feelings. Before analyzing these feelings more in depth, let’s summarize the argument presented so far.

The analysis of my field data and Mande oral literature substantiates the idea, suggested in recent ethnographies (Bazin 2008; Brett-Smith 1983, 1994; Colleyn 2004), that power objects are somehow like persons (spe-cifically like women). It, therefore, resonates with Bazin’s definition of the Mande power object. For Bazin, as aptly summarized by Colleyn, such an object is “a material individual, each of extraordinary complexity and specificity, to whom one would talk as if it were a person, not an object” (Colleyn 2004:68). My only reservation in respect to Colleyn’s formulation regards the use of the subjunctive mode (“as if it were a person”). In light of my observations and against the main interpretative tradition (which draws heavily on the “metaphor model”), I would claim that the objects’ subjectivity should be understood literally: not as a rhetorical figure, but as a lived experience. In other words, that in praxis the objects function as subjects and are not merely metaphorically referred to as such. Therefore, their effectiveness is not, as has been traditionally assumed, due to the force of the social; it is not the imaginary transformed by society into a kind of factual occurrence. If, as I propose, we take a close look at these objects and their owners, then it may well appear that their relationship is—for all intents and purposes—a mutual partnership.

To support this claim, I turn to the affective dimension of the human-object relationship. This dimension is, as evident from its prior descrip-tion as uncanny, twofold. First, the objects inspire reverential fear. No Mande individual would deny that they are dangerous and must be treat-ed with caution. Yet, while frightening, they are also, according to my interviews, conceived of as appealing. The objects’ owners emphasized, for instance, that they sought after these objects because they felt at-tracted to them. They regularly returned to the issue of love or affection (kanu) that connected them to their objects. As one of my friends sum-marized in the conversation quoted earlier, this affection even represents the condition sine qua non of the objects’ proper use. What should we understand here by affection? The verbal construct ([basi] ka di n ye) that my interlocutors employed literally means “[power object] pleases me” or “I like [power object].” The same construction may be used to express


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the sentiment of a man for a woman or to evoke a positive reaction to tasting some food, as well as by the hunter to describe his passion for his quarry (Kedzierska Manzon 2009:284-286). It does not necessarily imply any reciprocal communication between the lover and the object of the affection. Rather, it is a projection of pleasure from us to it, the desire to renew an experience with it. often, such ephemeral desire can possess long term consequences, as the following confidence of the previously quoted Bamako-based specialist suggests22:

Seydou: Me, for example, I have a spirit-woman.23 Even when I’m sleeping, she is watching over me. I do not live with women. I’ve di-vorced 24 wives. It’s too much.Agnes: Why? Is she jealous, your spirit-woman?Seydou: By the name of God, I swear she is.

Influenced probably more heavily by Islam than many of my rural inter-locutors, this man explicitly equates his object with a “spirit” with whom he is engaged in an emotional relationship, putting his other such rela-tionships at risk. His formulation calls to mind Brett-Smith’s observations regarding sculptors’ relationship with their spirits-allies and its impact on their marital and sexual life. Brett-Smith remarks:

It is extremely unusual to find a renowned sculptor who has a normal sexual life. We have already seen that “things from the bush” [spirits] tend to be female and that fidelity to one’s djinn three nights a week is the minimum requirement for maintaining a good spirit relation-ship. This requirement is stringent enough that it prevents important artists from having many wives. (1994:74)

What is to be emphasized is that neither the Bamako-based specialist I interviewed nor the sculptors, who among the Mande are, in fact, the ritual specialists (see Colleyn 2008:98), seem to treat their love-affairs with spirits as metaphors or mere stylistic figures (Brett-Smith 1994:54 advances the same view). From their perspective, these relationships (as well as the spirits/objects themselves) appear to possess the status of an affective yet genuine reality importantly affecting their habits, moods, and decisions. My interlocutors in the field complained many times, for ex-ample, about the financial burden of the sacrifices “imposed upon them”


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by their objects, or about the necessity to remain sexually abstinent and obedient to their objects’ rules. They also emphasized the joy that the objects provided them and the respect (bonya), an expression also used in reference to humans, in which they hold them. They spoke about their objects as they would of dear relatives rather than as remote principles embodied in material form. A warm note and liveliness to their tone, sug-gesting some intimacy between them and their objects, led me to infer that, in terms of practical engagement, these objects are experienced as liminal yet familiar presences. In their quality as thing-beings, they inspire deep and contradictory emotions proper for any experience of the sacred. These emotions are, I believe, fundamental in establishing the objects’ subjectivity.

Let’s first observe that the above conclusion matches up well with the modalities of the objects’ use—the fact that the objects’ owners speak and act toward their objects as toward revered individuals. So, why not take seriously what these owners do and tell? Why assume that they speak in metaphors while referring to the objects as persons? Wouldn’t our skepti-cism be related to our reticence towards the extension of the category of “person” (or of the category of “sacred,” or both?) to these inanimate things? Entrenched in still powerful (even if nowaday much problematized) reluctance to redefine personhood, we have found comfortable shelter in invoking metaphors. Let us therefore begin anew, or, more precisely, re-examine the problem in the light of the recent anthropological debate about agency. We may start with the question: are power objects, in the view of their users, subjects in the fullest sense of this term? How does their personhood differ (if it does at all) from personhood in general, as the Mande (and other people) conceive of it?

The Mande term mↄgↄya (literally: mↄgↄ [person] + ya [abstraction suf-fix]) may also be translated as “human condition,” “way of life,” “human-ity,” and “adulthood” (Vydrine 1999:276, Bailleul 2004:312). Brett-Smith (1983:47) explains that all the mentioned notions are semantically close for the Mande, who conceive of personhood as the living of one’s life with dignity and in a humane manner, thanks to personal maturity. Whether they attribute personhood to an individual depends upon this individual’s (proper) conduct and (harmonious) relations with others (1983:47). Such a “relational” conception of personhood seems widespread in Africa. In his text about the Mande’s southern neighbors and linguistic cousins, the Kuranko, Jackson enumerates its key elements:


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In the Kuranko worldview it is axiomatic that persons exist only in relation to one another. The concept of morgoye, personhood, re-flects the ontological priority of social relationships over individual identity. Although the word morgo denotes the living person, the em-pirical subject of speech, thought, will and action that is recognized in all societies, the concept morgoye is at once more abstract and more far-reaching. Morgoye, personhood, connotes ideal qualities of proper social relationships, and the word can be variously translated as mindfulness of others, generosity of spirit, magnanimity and altru-ism…Another fundamental assumption in the Kuranko worldview is that Being is not necessarily limited to human beings. Thus, morgoye though a quality of social being, is not necessarily or merely found in relationship between persons. Put another way, the field of social relationship may include ancestors, fetishes, bush spirits, a divine creator, and totemic animals as well as persons. (1990:63)

It seems probable that the Mande, like the Kuranko, extend the field of social relationships to certain non-humans since this extension and the “relational” view which they held, are complementary. Jackson explains that both rely on the tendency to “interpret changes in experience as evi-dence of changes in the external world,” and thus to “exteriorize events which we would assign to interiority” (1990:73). This tendency to blur the distinction between (what we consider as) objective and subjective enables a view of consciousness as residing in the social field external to self and not as a part of the individual psyche (1990:73). The percep-tion of the relationships between humans and animals or humans and power objects as objective and social—i.e., unifying distinct autonomous agents—is, for him, a consequence of such an external-to-self concep-tion of consciousness.

That the Mande share this conception seems likely if we remember that my interlocutors in the conversation quoted earlier identified the power object’s consciousness as the cola nuts and the rooster, i.e., divinatory tools used to relate to it. Certain linguistic and literary cues further confirm that they conceive of some non-humans as persons (mↄgↄw). Though this term is usually reserved for humankind, it may be indeed applied to non-humans in certain circumstances.24 The very words (and not any gram-matical particle composing or preceding them!) for, respectively, “man” (cɛ or kɛ) and “woman” (muso) may be used as suffixes in reference to


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male and female animals or spirits. In the oral literature, and particularly in the hunters’ song, the portrayal of animals as endowed with agency is widespread (Kedzierska Manzon 2014). These portrayals are not mere stylistic figures since, as I was told in the field, both domesticated and wild animals are thought to be potentially (i.e., allowing for individual variations) sentient. To evaluate the extent to which a given creature (for example, my village host’s cow) possessed a consciousness (hakili), my respondents advised me to test it (just as they previously recommended testing the agency of objects) by personally interacting with this creature.

As startling as this proposition may seem to a Westerner, such a broad, relational, and “fractal” view of subjectivity is common in traditional soci-eties not only in Africa. Marilyn Strathern (1988, 1999) and Roy Wagner (1991) observe it in Melanesia. Viveiros de Castro reports that Amerindians consider personhood/humanity, understood “as the general form taken by the Subject” (1998:477), as the initial condition of all beings, including hu-mans, animals, spirits, and certain artifacts, and that they do not interpret differences between humans and other animal species as differences of subjectivity/agency (often objectified as a soul), but as the difference of habitus or of viewpoint. descola (2005), comparing a number of cultures, arrives at a similar conclusion, i.e., that the limitation of subjectivity to humankind is a rather rare and unusual attitude among the indigenous people worldwide. He indicates how such a paradigm—which does not imply any ontological rupture or fundamental unlikeness of different sorts of beings—diverges from Western naturalism, which reserves personhood for humans alone. He does not, however, seem inclined to question how, if at all, both conceptual models relate to everyday human experience(s).

This last issue attracts the attention of Willerslev (2007) who, after dem-onstrating that the above model of personhood also applies to the Siberian Yukaghirs, wonders about its experiential background. drawing on his field research, he observes that the hunters interact with their prey daily by assuming its viewpoint through behavioral mimesis in order to effectively chase it. He argues that by doing so, the hunters start to genuinely perceive such prey as the subject. Thus, he postulates, the potential subjectivity of an entity emerges in and is corollary to our experience(s) with this entity. In other words, it is actualized within the experience of mimetic empathy, i.e., the temporary or partial adoption of the perspective of one being by another while the two engage bodily and mentally in a relationship. Would this explanation account for the necessity, voiced by the Mande, to engage


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with a being in order to apprehend its agency? There are no reasons to limit Willerslev’s reasoning to the Yukaghirs. Heavily inspired by phenomenol-ogy, with its emphasis on human connectedness to the world rather than isolation from it, Willerslev actually claims universality for his theory. For him, the meaning is always “given in engagement” since:

The basic state of human existence is not that of a contemplating subject making abstract assertions about the world, but of being immersed from the beginning in active perceptual engagement with others, humans as well as nonhumans, in the practical business of life. (2007:185)

This viewpoint, confirmed by recent developments within the study of cognition,25 seems to be shared by many contemporary thinkers, notably derrida, who defines the subject as capable of relating to the other and answering his call (1991:100, 2004:106). Should we then conclude that the Mande, as many other people, also share this viewpoint and thus conceive of some artifacts, animals, or elements of the landscape as subjects? And that, further, they do not differentiate at all between humans and objects? I would advocate a slightly distinct stance.

For Willerslev, interpreting the Siberian animal master-spirits, these spir-its are “generic persons” (hypostases of the given species) whose sub-jectivity reveals itself “depending on the context in which it is placed and represented” (2007:117). Not fully autonomous or objective, they are also not totally dependent creations of the human imagination. Willerslev writes:

Spirits are thus both “found in the world” and “created” by the peo-ple in the course of their active involvement with it. This may sound contradictory, but…it is no more contradictory than saying that my computer’s being depends not only on its essential properties but also on how it is put to use as a computer. So, although both spirits and computers may well belong to the real world, they are constitu-ent of that world according to their engagement in the activities of people. (2007:185)

This view seems close to the relational and context-dependent con-cept of the agency advanced by Gell (1998:22 and passim), who consid-ers art objects as (potential) agents with respect to humans within the


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agent-patient-index-artist nexus of relationships. By adopting such a view, we could definitely conclude that the Mande power objects pos-sess (as art objects analyzed by Gell or spirit-masters which pre-occupy Willerslev) the delegated or “secondary” agency. How does such agency differ from the primary agency of humans? Gell clearly distinguishes be-tween these two (1998:17-22; see also Milller 2005, Holbraad 2011), allo-cating intentionality to humans alone and thus, in fact, restituting the clas-sical Western division between them and things. Willerslev, too, seems to be inclined to consider the spirits’ or computers’ agency as somehow derived from “the activities of people.”

Among the Mande, however, such a division between primary and secondary agency (personhood) remains less clearly demarcated in my opinion. In taking such a stance, I partly subscribe to the interpretative anthropological current identified recently by Martin Holbraad (2011) as “posthumanist” or even “post-posthumanist,” that is, going beyond the ontological division between humans and things, and any other ontologi-cal determination for that matter. I would argue that these divisions did not seem persistent to my field interlocutors. Their practical understanding of agency, as determined through interactions with a given being, pre-vailed in the statements about things but also humans, as if there were not substantial or absolute differences between these two kinds of agents. Whenever I inquired, for example, what could be said about the conscious-ness/agency (hakili) of a given category of persons (i.e., children, women, hunters), my respondents pointed toward the necessity to engage with these persons first in order to assess anything about their minds. This is not to suggest that the Mande have any doubts as to the human species’ sentience. But, it seems to me, they are far from according agency to humans alone or indiscriminately and without the distinction of degree to all humans (including, for example, newborns). Rather, they assume that in order to actually know what kind of “person” a given entity is and what could be said about its agency, one must interact bodily with this entity, whether it is a human, an animal, or an object. Thus, I surmise that they not only perceive the difference between objects and humans but also the myriad of tiny dissimilarities separating each particular character from all others, humans or non-humans. These dissimilarities are, as suggested by Viveiros de Castro (1998), located within the individual body of each being perceived as the locus of individual agency. This provides a final explanation as to the rationale behind the importance of the components


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of the Mande power objects: since the body matters deeply, its shape and its composition matter as well.

Leaving the philosophical question of the degrees or nuances of sub-jectivity on the side, we must admit that the theory of engagement ought to be the ultimate answer to the thorny question regarding the effective-ness of objects. Assuming that the personhood of an entity correlates with the practical involvement with this entity, it makes perfect sense to expect, as do my Mande friends, that power objects are effective as a result of their interactions with them. If the interaction is what calls things into being or makes the agent act, then, truly, it is the condition sine qua non of the object’s efficacy. Instituting its ability to operate, it enables the object to act on behalf of its human partner. This premise elucidates the convictions that were initially confusing for me, voiced both by my urban and rural interlocutors cited earlier, regarding the necessity of human action and af-fection rather than merely the object’s particular shape or components to render it truly useful. Indeed, it seems fully established that by engaging in a relationship with a powerful thing, humans open the possibility for it to affect their lives and destiny. The only question left is whether and under which conditions they really want to engage in such an ambiguous and constraining relationship in order to, as Greaber (2005) would put it, pos-sibly create new arrangements. n

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s :

I warmly thank Catherine J. Allen, Sarah C. Brett-Smith, Jean derive, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, as well as Jonathan Frederick Walz for assistance with the editing.

e n d n o t e s :

1Bamanaya is the plurality of the non-Islamic religious practices based on initiation societies—such as komo, kono, ci-wara, nya, etc., as well as the hunter’s society, donsoton—all masculine, and which num-ber and internal organization vary regionally and historically even if all of them are centered on the use of power objects, ritual masks, and dances. These practices defined in Islam are in reality deeply influenced by it, as both have co-existed for centuries (Colleyn 2001, Tamari 2001).

2Also idol, remedy, poison (Vydrine 1999:105).

3This is a paraphrase of the original expression by Willerslev:

This book is, in part, an extended reflection on the limitations of contemporary theories on animism and the inadequacy of the theoretical tool kit available to anthropologists who want to take seriously the attitudes and beliefs that indigenous people have about the nature of such beings as spirits, souls, and animal persons and their relationship to them. By “taking seriously” I simply mean taking seri-ously what the people themselves take seriously. This is not usually done in anthropology. (2007:181)

4Also (fetish) guardian (Vydrine 1999:159).


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5In the field, I worked with men possessing such objects; men also officiate at the most important collec-tive cults. Thus, in the present text, I employ the masculine grammatical forms.

6Sponsored through a grant from the Centre Etudes Africaines l’EHESS Paris.

7Sponsored through grants from LLACAN CNRS, France. Administrative and logistical assistance from the Institut de Recherche pour le developpement, and Representation in Bamako, as well as the subsidies from l’Ecole doctorale de l’INALCo, Paris, were also a valuable help.

8Pre-doctoral research resulting in my dissertation (Kedzierska Manzon 2006).

9The Mande are traditionally patriarchal; gerontocracy is still very much the current form of political orga-nization on the village and family level. Many authors have demonstrated that the subordinate members of the society (women, youth, former slaves), in fact, possess some—often ritual—power allowing them to challenge the official structures (Conrad 1999, derive 1987). Yet, to have access to such anti-power, one usually needs to occupy a specific position within the social system (mother, older sister, member of the specific endogamous group, etc.), which obviously was not my case.

10This conversation took place in spring 2004 in the village where I resided. My interlocutors were my master-hunter and my local host (jatigi), both middle-aged men and close friends. our conversation was informal, held with no other witnesses inside the house. We spoke in the local variant of French with some terms in Bamanankan. I have reconstructed this dialogue from my handwritten notes.

11hakili: consciousness, vigilance, reason, agency.

12The practice always consists of the separation of the two halves of the cola nut that the practitioner then throws on the ground, subsequently verifying the manner in which the two halves landed.

13The conversation being held in French, my interlocutors used the French verb aimer, as well as, when switching to Bamanankan, the term kanu, when speaking of love or affection toward the objects. Although this last term, kanu, in a contemporary setting often means a sexual relationship (cf. as in the widely-criticized position published by dumestre and Toure 1998), in the Mande oral tradition and especially in many ancient songs, its attested usage was not limited to such a signification but included more generally a powerful affection, which could hardly be classified primarily as physical passion, between, for example, an animal and a human or between two men (as in the song “dakouda” interpreted recently by Bala Jimba Jakite or “Mali Sajio” re-interpreted by Toumani diabate). Thus, the choice of this term as an adequate descriptor of the relation between a power object and its user does not appear particularly surprising. I further discuss this issue later in the text while analyzing the affective dimension of the human-object rela-tionship; there is also a passage devoted to it in my doctoral dissertation (Kedzierska Manzon 2006:132-135), as well as in a recent article (Kedzierska Manzon 2009:284-286).

145,000 CFA (circa $10 USd) corresponds to 15 percent of the monthly salary of a school teacher.

15For the complex connotations of the terms kungo and dan (synonymous terms, designating the forest, far from the village—potentially dangerous but also abundant in game—and, by extension, the mythical universe), see Kedzierska Manzon (2009:277).

16According to some accounts, the journey of N’fa Jigi took place when Mecca was still a pagan sanctuary.

17This interpretation seems even more plausible given that in some accounts N’Fa Jigi is presented as a son of the hunter, which put both spatial references in parallel (Traoré 1999:91).

18This conforms to the Mande conception of powerful speech: the words of the griots (jelikan), the lan-guage of divination (dibikan), and magic formulae (kilisi) (Hoffman 2000, Kedzierska Manzon 2008).

19Her view parallels the analysis of the mana by Lévi-Strauss (1950) as signifiant flottant, that is, a signifier devoid of signified. The main weakness of such an approach is that it maintains the dualistic opposition between a material form and its symbolic referent, and presents the signifier as totally empty of content and liable, therefore, to take any content whatsoever—a stance that clearly does not correspond to the viewpoint of the power objects’ users, as Holbraad also observes (2007:192-200).

20ka bato: to worship (a fetish), to adore (a woman), to respect (one’s parents) (Vydrine 1999:108).

21This interpretation is critically discussed by Colleyn (2008:98).

22This conversation took place with the specialist in his house in September 2004.

23He speaks Malian French and the conversation was conducted in this language, thus, “spirit-woman” is a translation of the French “diablesse” that he used, probably corresponding to the Bamanankan jina-musso, meaning “spirit-female.”

24Personal communication with Valentin Vydrine (2011).


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25According to cognitive psychologists, children tend to treat some inanimate objects as entities endowed with agency, since they see the world in general as populated by intentional agents and are innately equipped to infer and predict the goals of such agents. Self-propulsion, i.e., the ability to move by one’s own force, which these inanimate objects may lack, is neither sufficient nor necessary for attributing agency. Additionally, studies clearly indicate that recognizing and representing an object as an agent and attributing a goal to its action is a consequence and not a pre-condition of perceptual and interpretative experience. In other words, agency emerges in interaction (see Gergely 2010, Tomasello 1999).

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F o r e i g n l a n g u a g e tr a n s l a t i o n s :

Humans and Things: Mande “Fetishes” as Subjects [Keywords: Power objects, agency, fetishism, symbolic effectiveness, Mande]

Les humains et les choses: les ‘fétiches’ mandingues comme personnes [Mots-clés: Mandé, fétiche, personne, objet]

Adamadenw ani fεnw: Manden basiw ko mᴐgᴐw [boli/basi, mᴐgᴐ, fεn, boliya/ basiya, Manden]

Humanos e objectos: “Fetiches” Mandé Como Sujeitos [Palavras-chave: objectos de poder, agência, fetichismo, eficácia simbólica, Mandé]

人类和物件：论西非曼德族物神之主体性关键词：权力的对象物，能动作用，物化恋，象征性效能，曼德族

Люди и вещи: «Фетиши» народа манде как предметы изучения [Ключевые слова: предметы власти, агентство, фетишизм, символическая эффективность, народ манде]

البرش واألشياء: ماندى “األوثان” كرعاياكلامت البحث: كائنات السلطة، الوكالة، اشتهاء املعبودات الوثنية، فعالية رمزية، ماندى

humans and things: mande fetishes as subjects

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