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Elizabeth A. Throop, Psychotherapy, American Culture, and Social Policy: Immoral Individualism Victoria Katherine Burbank, An Ethnography of Stress: The Social Determinants of Health in Aboriginal Australia Karl G. Heider, The Cultural Context of Emotion: Folk Psychology in West Sumatra The Anthropology of Ignorance Jeannette Marie Mageo, Dreaming Culture: Meanings, Models, and Power in U.S. American Dreams Casey High, Ann H. Kelly, and Jonathan Mair, The Anthropology AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ApPROACH Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach Edited by Casey High, Ann H. Kelly, and}onathan Mair palgrave macmillan THE ANTHROPOLOGY Of IGNORANCE * copyright © Casey High, Ann H. Kelly, and jonathan Mair, 2012. All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PAlGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States-a division of St. Martin's Press LlC, Contents 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, List of Tables and Figures vii registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Acknowledgments lX Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. P<'Ilor<'lv",® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, Chapter 1 Introduction: Making Ignorance an Kingdom, Europe Ethnographic Object 1 Figure 8.1 is reproduced with permission of Extend Fertility and Ina lim. Jonathan Mair, Ann H. Kelly, and Casey High Cover image see,hear, speak no evil reproduced with permission of Chris Walkington. Chapter 2 Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous ISBN: 978-{)-230-34082-4 Objects in Dakar, Senegal 33 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gretchen Pfeil The anthropology of ignorance: an ethnographic approach I edited by Chapter 3 Discourses of the Coming: Ignorance, Forgetting, Casey High, Ann Kelly, and jonathan Mair. p. cm,-(Culture, Mind, and Society series) and Prolepsis in Japanese Life-Historiographv 55 Includes bibliographical references. Shunsuke Nozawa ISBN: 978-{)-230-34082-4 (hardback) 1. Ethnology-Philosophy. 2. Ethnopsychology. 3. Ignorance (Theory 4 Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in of knowledge)-Social aspects. I. High, Casey, Ph. 0.11. Kelly, Ann, 1980­ Social Networking'S Ideals of Reciprocity 87 Mair, jonathan, 1977­ David S. Leitner GN345.A642012 306.4'2-<1c23 2011036786 Chapter 5 Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism 119 Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. Casey High First edition: April 2012 Chapter 6 "I Don't Know Why He Did It. It Happened 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 by Itself": Causality and Suicide in Northwest Printed in the United States of America. Greenland 137 Janne 7 Inhabiting the Temporary: Patience and among Urban Squatters in Buenos Aires 163 Valeria Procupez 32 Jonathan Mair, Ann H. Kelly, and High Watson, Rubie S 1999. Memory, History and Opposition under State Socialism. Santa Fe, NM: James Currey Publishers. Alexei 2006. Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. In-Formation Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Chapter 2 Press. Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous Objects in Dakar, Senegal Gretchen Pfeil -Ce matin encore Ie journal en a parle: ces mendiants, ces tallbes, ces physiques, ces loques, comitutent des encombrants humains. II [aut debarrasser la Ville de ces hommes-ombres d' hommes plutat-dechets humans, qui vois assai/ent et vous agressent bartour et n'importe quando Aux carre[ours, c'est asouhaiter que les jamais The newspaper mentioned it again today: the beggars, the disciples, the lepers, the handicapped people, these collapsed men, forming human roadblocks. The City must be rid of people­ rather, shadows of people-human castoffs, who assault you and mug you anytime, anywhere. At intersections you just hope that the light is never red! -Aminata Sow Fall La Greve des ou les humains l Introduction: Not Having and Not Knowing In Dakar, Senegal-and in the African metropolis more generally-a number of potential markers of the state have become conspicuous in their absence: missing persons, missing services, missing supplies. 2 The stuff of urban life is gone: where once there were state services, now there are questions. This absence of needed things demands an explanation (see e.g., Ferguson 2006; Mbembe and Roitman 1995). Indeed, the quotidian challenges of material existence have created equally distressing epistemological challenges, and Dakar residents must manage a complex situation in which not having and not knowing are tightly intertwined. All told, tbe situation literalizes 34 Gretchen Pfeil Sarax and the City 35 Raj's apt definition of ignorance as "the presence of an absence" of as well as a popular ritual means of overcoming potential blocks knowledge (2000). on personal agency and restoring harmony in one's social affairs. Between 2006 and 2008, as economic conditions went from bad The Wolof phrase is literally "to put out alms," the same verb used to worse on a global scale and also in Dakar's markets and house­ for any kind of taking out (e.g., taking out the trash). Here I focus holds, Dakarois worried more than ever about the conspicuous on the specific kind of sarax that follows consultation with a ritual absence of things that the state was supposed to assure: imported specialist to resolve a problem. The problems range from the envy rice and cooking gas in the marketplace, electricity. In doing so, of others to one's own misdeeds, especially sins of improper gain they tried to figure out what larger forces, general patterns, or spe­ or accruaL Once diagnosed, these problems are repaired through agents were behind the movements of goods. These attempts the purchase of elaborately anonymized mass-commodity objects, to diagnose the status of the national economy turned not (or not are then secretly "cast off" to beggars. only) to questions about the global system, but routinely focused on The magic of this process is both real and illusory. Individual the idea that resources were improperly allocated or consumed at private problems are cast off, but they do not truly go away. Rather, levels of influence somewhere just out of the sight of whoever was anonymized sacrificial objects come to be an emblem of social talking. Things were rumored to have gone missing because of the lems and the state of the city as a whole. As a result of accepting secret actions of individual members of the government: misdeeds of the sacrificial objects cast out by society-and the problems they douaniers (customs officials), covert agreements between syndicates are meant to cure-the city's beggars (as an aggregate) become a of grain merchants, and well-organized networks of retailers medium in which the moral and practical status of the city (as a col­ to create false scarcity in cooking fuel. lectivity) are diagnosed by people who live there. Thus, the elaborate For most people that I talked to-bureaucrats based in the city creation of ignorance in the management of sarax transactions actu­ and migrant workers, students, householders, academics, taxi driv­ ally makes possible certain forms of local knowledge about the city, ers, even religious commentators on television-the national dis­ imagined as a unified moral agent. ease was largely a foregone conclusion. People imagined that others Understanding the mechanism through which beggars seem to hoarded money and goods for their own consumption or as a form have grown rich as the rest of the country has grown ever poorer price speculation. Absences have a shape, though; they are marked requires a rethinking of alms in the city as part of a larger economy by signs. Answers about the locations of the pathology were thus of both material objects and information, an economy in which beg­ sought in the diagnosis of otherwise uninterpretable objects. People gars actually perform a necessary kind of work. This work consists watched the circulation of goods in public as a means of determining of the mediation of knowing and ignorance in transaction. Again, where missing things had gone and how to mange their own affairs. specific forms of sarax create anonymous sacrificial objects interpre­ Discussions focused on things seen in the street as shadows of agents only in the aggregate. No longer signs of individual givers, they behind the scenes, the tinted windows of cars, and closed windows become signs of society. In so doing, sarax practices and the forms of shops functioned as veils marking the presence of things that the of inferential knowledge that they engender link individual actions viewer could not know. to collectivity through a kind of epistemological sleight of hand-a Begging and almsgiving have a specific resonance in urban suspension of knowledge-made possible by sacrifice as a specific Senegal: instead of icons of their own material need, as they might form of transaction. be viewed elsewhere, beggars are read as signs of the problems of This places an accent on a larger question at the intersection of others and of the city as a whole. In Aminata Sow Fall's landmark semiotic anq economic anthropology: the role of knowledge and 1979 novel La Greve des Battu,3 for instance, sacrificial alms and ignorance, respective/y, in exchange and material transaction more the beggars become, over the course of the novel, the indelible mark generally. More the negative space left in communication's wake, of the collective impact of individual hopes and fears that the city nonknowledge-about objects, about states of affairs--'-is actively cannot escape. The difference hinges on the local ritual economy of produced in interactions and transactions. These forms of igno­ almsgiving. Giving sacrificial alms, gene sarax in Wolof4 , is a poly­ rance then become the condition of possibility of further interac- valent practice in Dakar. It is a habitual practice of the virtuous, Objects can thus be said to require epistemological crafting. 36 Gretchen Pfeil Sarax and the City 37 From the completely disavowed objects cast off as garbage to closely way out of the They are gestures that fade from the memory guarded heirloom objects, the construction of ignorance is a means of people who make them-perhaps they never register in the by which people create "the opacity necessary for the production of place. If perfectly accomplished this kind of gift approaches Seneca's reproduction of societies" (Godelier 2002:33). stoic ideal: "The rule for the giver and receiver of a benefit is that In what follows, I examine sacrificial almsgiving in Dakar as two the one should straightaway forget that he has given, and the other distinct practices: the production of objects made anonymous in the should never forget that he has received" (Seneca:10). The given practice of giving, and speculative practices of inference that read object becomes a true "benefit"-better translated as a "kind deed" states of affairs back from aggregates of such objects. The first set of (see Goux 2002)-when the giver can achieve the action without practices, the creation of specific kinds of ignorance, are the condi­ knowing he has done it. As in the habitual and immediately forgot­ tion of the latter, the creation of an otherwise impossible form of ten gifts of writing among Fudangi "friends" discussed in Nozawa's knowledge. I further argue that these practices highlight the work (2007, this volume) it is unclear who, if anyone, will receive tance of the management of ignorance to sociality in Dakar, more and do the remembering. generally. I learned most about these practices from the look of annoyance that followed my questions about them. People responded blandly, "That's what I do," or "It's good to do that." Habitual sarax is com­ Not Knowing about Sarax posed of gestures presented to me as unremarkable, and indeed, as better left unremarked. The practices do not lead to talk; they leave -C'est ~'rai, c'est vrai Serigne . .. Ce n'est meme pas a discuter. almost no trace except as they serve to continue the daily order It's true, it's true Serino It's not even to be mentioned. things. Inasmuch as this kind of sarax leaves a mark, it is a residue of habit. Like the dark patch on the forehead and callus above the Si tu feras l'aumone comme indique, avec trois fois sept metres de big toe that make visible on the body the repetition of sa/at prayer, tissue blanc non soyeux, ainsi que sept cents noix de cola dont trois cents the habit of giving without ever thinking about it leaves an unmen­ rouges et quarter cents blanches ... tionable residue of virtue, a quality that accrues to the practitio­ If you perform the alms indicated (prescribed), with three sets of ner. Such gestures of forgotten alms let life go on without comment, seven-meter lengths of white, non-silky fabric, as well as seven forgotten. hundred cola nuts, of which sum three hundred are red and four My focus here, however, is on a second type of sarax which J hundred are white ... involves the circulation of larger and more valuable objects, a form -Fall 1979:79 of giving both more elaborately created and more elaborately effaced. The offering of these objects is always the result of consultation, Sarax (n. offered object) and gene sarax (to put out such an offering) diagnosis, prescription, and preparation. Much as a prescription pill are Wolof terms derived from the Arabic sadaqa, a subset of the can (in the correct social context) be read as an objectified sign of category of alms (sadaqa is spontaneous, distinguished from zakat disease, diagnosis, and a trip to the pharmacy, sacrificial objects is a calculable annual duty). In Dakar, sarax covers a broad in this context become imbued with a meaning that is a history range of sacrificial offerings united by the requirement that they be of shadow transactions (d. Irvine 1996). As is the case with some forgotten. For the purposes of this chapter it is useful to divide sarax forms of prescription medication, the transactions that have led to into two provisional types. the procurement of the treatment are hidden from public view, and The type first type of sarax is habitual to the point of being over­ largely withheld from discussion outside these contexts. looked: plates of food set out on front steps at night, coins fished A person, suffering from some very private affliction or, alter­ out of pockets and handed over to beggars automatically without nately, hoping for a particular outcome in a complex situation of a break in stride or conversation. Some practices of this kind are chance, goes to see a specialist: a serifi (the title of a Muslim cleric) more like a tic: a drop of yogurt or milk flicked out before drinking or a seetkat (a seer who uses techniques not considered specifically a glass, a cup or handful of water poured out at the doorway on Islamic). News of this visit is not shared with others, and the person 38 Gretchen Pfeil Sarax and the City 39 going tells any number of cover stories to explain the trip without thrown from the windows of stopped buses into the hands of beg­ revealing its purpose. If the person seeking a consultation does refer gars who press close around every vehicle. A taxi suddenly crosses to the specific person to be consulted, he refers to him or her as "an lanes of traffic to stop momentarily in front of a cluster of shabby old man" or "the lady" and only rarely identifies him or her by name children with begging bowls. The tinted window is lowered and or location. s This person is a cleric or diviner who has earned a repu­ a veiled woman in sunglasses is momentarily visible as she hands tation for determining-through one or more means of divination 6 ­ small black bag after small black bag out the window. The moment what needs to be "put out" as a sacrifice to remedy the problem? is finished, but beggars continue to demand, and she dismisses them It is not always necessary for the client to name the particular with the phrase "the sacrifice is out" as the taxi speeds away. problem in question, in in some forms of divination this is Objects given as sarax lose all meaning but this: they point to not allowed. One can even consult someone to find out if one has someone's personal problem or secret, and they suggest, by their a problem and then to cure that problem (without ever knowing size, something about the scale of the problem. And then they disap­ exactly what the problem was). If sacrifices are indicated, the spe­ pear. The objects-including rice and sugar-are quickly fenced in cific problem has been located and given a name (somewhat tauto­ the market and become ordinary commodities once again. The resul­ logically, "the need to make these sacrifices"). The afflicted person tant money mixes with other cash received and is sent to families in listens and makes a list of the objects demanded: one might be areas, or banked in secret banks, only to become visible much as was the protagonist of Sow Fall's novel, to give three seven-meter as something else. At each stage in the process, a new kind of lengths of white 8 , matte-finish cloth and seven hundred kola nuts, is introduced: each portion is a sign of the whole, of three hundred red and four hundred white. Once purchased these which it is a part, but division masks the total size of the whole. The objects become indexical signs of both this moment of consultation kind of each item hints at the kind of the problem, yet it cannot and of the "problem" that led to the consultation. The value and the whole story. Further, the person who hands it out-glanced quantity of the objects requested are understood to reflect the scale fleetingly-might be the person in whose name the sacrifice is made, of the problem, or the stakes of the situation. but it is just as likely to be a messenger. The seriii specifies, too, how these items will be "put out." It appears troubling to argue that almsgiving produces palpa­ Perhaps one of the pieces of fabric will go to an old woman with a bly unknowable-and radically alienated-objects, as if objects child; another to a mother of twins; the kola nuts, in three packages of sarax are more commodities than gifts. The bag of sugar and to three different blind men. The person making the sacrifice might envelope of cash given as sarax appear, if only momentarily, auton­ it is more likely that he or she will send a omous and separate from the history of individual human inter­ gathered objects are hidden in the house actions that have produced them. This is, however, precisely the overnight. They are divided into their prescribed portions and closed result of the practice of alms in Dakar. Sarax transforms the givers' up in opaque bags, or wrapped in brown paper. The next highly personal and private problems into an aggregate and dep­ ideally just before dawn, someone-not necessarily the ersonalized stuff, emblematic of a total social situation: the city. afflicted person-will take the bags and parcels along on the way to The entire process, like the "grazing" practices of Ja'in renounc­ work. Whether they travel by foot, bus, taxi, or private car, people ers (Laidlaw 2000:623), transforms a "personal substance, closely are always carrying neatly wrapped parcels with them when they identified with the donors," into "an anonymous and undifferen­ go out in the morning. The packages might contain work clothes, tiated substance." Laidlaw's argument is different, though, inas­ lunch, a gift for a friend, clothing that needs to go to the cleaner, much as he argues that by causing the object to disappear at the something to take to the tailor. Parcels of sacrificial goods-and moment of transaction, the renouncers' means of consump­ the problems of which they are signs-disappear into the melee creates a gift: "Here, the gift as object is made to disap­ commuting and rushing. pear once it has been given, so there is no longer the same 'it' Then, as the taxis and buses pass a major crossroads-near a to speak." (2000:623) Alms in Dakar achieve a slightly major post office, for example-the problems become visible for magic. By making the unique origins of each object a moment, because of the traffic disruptions they cause. Bags are disappear by creating a tightly worked veil of ignorance around 40 Gretchen Sarax and the City 41 them, almsgiving creates the possibility of knowledge on a differ­ cartoons, "Goorgoorlu"-the popular term for the hardworking ent scale. No longer closely linked to their donors, these objects everyman-was depicted limp on his sofa or floor at home. The (dechets, "castoffs") and the people who consume them (Sow Fall's housewife, however, took to the streets herself: the street vendors' dechets humains) become productive of potential knowledge about riots were followed by a series of marches and protests by mothers society as a whole. of families, who decorated themselves in empty oil bottles and rice The number of sacrifices grew over 2007-2008, a growth visible sacks. in the increase in the number of beggars and traffic problems at cer­ Even before the outbreaks of protest, everyday activity on the tain intersections. At the same time, people began to speculate more street and in the market was a site for the diagnosis of the city and and more openly about where all of these gifts were coming from, nation. Conversation often centered on discussion of the number what kinds of private problems, exactly, could lead to the need to of new SUVs on the street as a possible sign of where the government give so much? Who was giving? And, as individual portions of alms was spending its money. Those with tinted windows were appeared to increase in size people began to see the edges of govern­ ered especially significant. Tinting requires a special permit ment problems: a cure this big surely pointed to a big disease, what lead to a police stop for those without one. Not appearing-being had the afflicted done, and where had the money come from? able to hide behind tinted glass, for example-is thus a sign of privi­ lege, and much is vested in the possibility of acting without being seen. Similarly, obscured moments in a chain of transactions are Knowing about the City read as the work of those who can travel behind tinted glass. Visible effacements or absences that create certain kinds of knowable - C'est etonnant, la Ville . .. La vie va de complications en complication < ignorance-things one knows one can't know-are similarly viewed The City is astonishing . .. Life goes from complication to complication. as potential signs of the acts of people in power. The absence of rice in shops was read as a sign ot actiVities at a - C'est certain . . .les choses sont de plus en plus difficiles. level of organization opaque to the average consumer (e.g., merchants That's true . .. things are getting harder and harder. withholding goods from market in anticipation of the next govern­ -Fall 1979:13 ment announcement of price increase). The movements of natural gas cylinders (in lamentably short supply)12 were a key topic of con­ By late 2008, the street and the city had become the most impor­ versation. When a shortage was coming, where the canisters could tant subjects of conversation, both public and private, and for good be found, how many of them might be at a given location, and in reason. Violent riots broke out when street vendors were forcibly what sizes: all were taken as possible means by which to gauge removed from streets near the city's largest market. Young street prepare for) the short-term situation. Often secretive conversations vendors alternated interviews with journalists with torching cars on between female kin, office-mates, and friends centered on timing the the main boulevards. 9 At the same time people watched prices in the purchase of household staples and monthly supplies of food, affect­ market, particularly government regulated prices of staples of city- ing decisions about the scale of purchase of individual staple foods.13 cooking, which increased vertiginously. to The price of a sack of Similarly, the search for a needed commodity led to secretive actions rice jumped 150 percent in a few months (apparently between sets of within hidden social networks, as adult sisters patrilocally dispersed shipments). Cooking oil increased in price several times for an over- throughout the city sent text messages to each other's cell phones: rise of about 50 percent. Powdered milk nearly doubled in price. ll "Are there gas cylinders in your neighborhood?" "Yes. My shop­ At the moment prices were spiking, staple goods disappeared from keeper will hold a small one for you. I put down a deposit. Don't the marketplace: one might spend a full day visiting markets and anyone." shops all over the city to purchase enough rice to prepare food for Understanding the circulation of rice and fuel had practical a funeral. Even purchasing the household's monthly ration of rice cations for the short term, at the same time, attempting to know at the end of the month became an ordeal, the cost of the search where they could get rice and gas also required that people attempt for rice itself becoming an additional major expense. In political to find a larger order behind their movement. Thus, tracking rice 42 Gretchen Pfeil Sarax and the City 43 and fuel became an occasion for explicitly political speculation as to other forms of talk. The topic of the population of beggars was people attempted to discern the agents behind these fluctuations.1 4 picked up and dropped during women's daylong visiting sessions, Speculative talk about the general movements of commodities as 'hispered as people walked down the street, mentioned between signs of the actions of government occupied conversation, patrons at the corner shop, and the topic of debate in taxis. The tone shows, and the pages of news dailies. of these conversations was always astonishment: an observation on the street led to a moment of shock and then reconsideration. The action of one anonymous beggar could suddenly attract a person's "These Human Castoffs" attention, and in discussing his or her surprise the observer would seem suddenly to glimpse a new view of the city as a whole. In these The streets of Dakar are full of beggars, a fact that has attracted contexts people consistently talked about the (purportedly) grow­ substantial foreign attention, and a number of unsuccessful inter­ ing number of their growing audacity, and their (supposed) ventions by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), humanitarian increase in wealth as signs of pathology of a different order. A curi­ agencies, and foreign missionary groups. The large number of beg­ ous explanation was often given: the changes in the beggar popula­ gars is often understood by outside observers as a transparent sign tion reflected the growing number and amount of sacrificial alms pathologies. Because a large number of beggars are tal­ that support them. This, many concluded, was a sign of the growing ibe or child Qur'anic disciples drawn from across the region, some number of reasons to make sacrifices, the increase in size of indi­ believe it points to forced child labor and abuse (Sengupta 2004). vidual alms, a sign of escalating stakes of sacrificial practice. Others conclude that the streets are crowded with beggars because Examples of speculative interpretation of alms mounted over the people give, making the beggars a sign of the city's benevolence, not course of my fieldwork. Most occasions were overheard and its moral turpitude (Dickenson 2006). and thus difficult to capture. In one instance, though, I was able During my preliminary fieldwork in Dakar in 2005, I studied to observe an entire conversation, which perfectly encapsulated the personal and mass-media interpretations of beggars. People living in many aspects of the genre that I had come to recognize. It took the city acknowledged and at times agreed with outsider interpreta­ place in late 2008 during a weeklong strike by garbage workers 15 , but often framed the situation in very different terms. In for­ in response to government's nonpayment of salary. The follow­ mal interviews about the meaning of beggars on the street, Dakarois ing narrative is adapted from field notes that I made immediately suggested that this was a symptom of pathology on two scales. First, afterwards: the growing presence of beggars was ascribed to desertification and deepening poverty in the rural areas, as labor-intensive farm­ I am in a taxi with an older woman I know well, we are going to ing methods no longer yielded sufficient millet and peanut crops the dentist because I need a root canal. She is with me because (see also Perry 2004). Second, the growing beggar population was I am scared of the dentist, and this makes a good excuse to take the said to reflect the deepening of longstanding political and economic afternoon off from her busy office. Before we got in the taxi she had problems in Senegambia and the surrounding area also Antoine a quick and sharp talk with him about how much we'd pay to go et al. 1995). Many suggested that instabilities in Guinea, Burkina from Ouakam to Place de l'lndependance: 2,000 francs CFA (-$4). Faso, Mali, and other countries in the region had sent a flood of While she is settling into the back seat the conversation continues. migrants to Dakar. This movement reflected both contemporary When she talks with taxi drivers, I always listen. This driver is a man who could be much older than her. He has workedjn the city for over distribution of resources and the residues of colonial administra­ thirty years; she has worked in a major national office in Dakar for tion; Dakar is relatively rich in both commerce and infrastructure, the same length of time. He is her favorite type of taxi driver, and so and is the former capital of Afrique Occidentale Fran<;aise (French the two of them begin a heated discussion of the changes the city has West Africa). to various things in the landscape as signs of The interpretations that I heard in 2005 recurred in change, as signs of the problems of this regime. interviews during 2006 and through the difficulties of 2007-2008. We pass the new overpass,16 just before the Poste Fann and the period, however, greater familiarity gave me access driver tells us that he saw a woman and her child hit here the other 44 Gretchen Sarax and the City 45 day-beggars of course. My companion leans in, "oh there are so envelope money contained an equal portion of some larger many of them! We used to see prostitutes here [she gestures towards amount. an infamous bar on the corner before the Postel but now it's all beg­ Having arrived at this size of the gars!" They nod in agreement. Talk turns to a beggar both knew, they begin to discuss what a sacrifice of this scale but who no longer works this corner (he's built his house back in donor. They reason that no one gives away $4,Ovv his home village, apparently, and has retired). (Ndeeysan!17 The has earned, no matter what he wants or what he is trying to escape. lady says.) Though both know him, they do not call him by name. Therefore, this money could only mean one thing: the $4,000 Rather, they describe him as "the old man in the wheelchair, from Kolda." (remember, this is the estimated "total" of alms that they believe The two of them are enjoying the conversation immensely. This were given out) was possibly itself only a smaller portion of a much talk is fresh and off the cuff, the subject of new construc­ larger sum, embezzled or stolen. Alternately, they suggest, this sum tion and its new consequences. The are standard. The image of money had been called for as alms, and the person thus directed of the beggar killed in traffic in front of this hospital was already a was then compelled to procure the money to meet this request: "In commonplace when Aminata Sow Fall composed La Greve des Ratti! which case he must surely have a serious problem!" the taxi driver The house that alms built is also a common theme of talk says. and think of the problems that he'll have to fix now that about beggars, and a similar house is the setting: of half of the action he's done this!" The lady agrees; a sad look briefly crosses her face. in Sow Fall's novel. 18 turn to the physical qualities of the notes, which they Then the driver points to parking lot near a large grocery store read as a further source of information about the situation that led (frequented by the cream of Dakar society). He begins to tell a this money to appear on the street: crisp sequential 10,000 francs story: "You know, I was stopped there, a few weeks ago, praying, and CFA notes must, they reason, come from a brick of notes at the someone told me to go over to a private car, a black Escalade. So I bank. Banknotes do not stay crisp long. Therefore, this money could went, out of curiosity, you know, people were teIling me to go. There not possibly be the result of an accumulation of money hoarded over was someone inside the car with its tinted windows." time. Nor could this be a large sum collected through an aggrega­ The woman interrupts: tion of money from smaller transactions (in neither case would the "Oh you have to KNOW someone to have those on a private bills be sequential, nor would they be uncreased). Finally, and for car ... " similar reasons, the bills could not come from a payout from a ton­ They nod and cluck in agreement. He continues: tine or rotating credit union (for classic descriptions see Ardener "This hand is passing out of the skinny little space at 1964; Geertz 1962).This particular group of notes-the taxi driver the top of the window. So I mine, turn back towards my taxi, and the lady decided-must be the result of a division of a larger set it open, I see white fabric. I put it in the trunk and forget it. It's of bills drawn new from the bank. They are therefore understood, as when I get home that I remember it, thinking I could maybe make some clothing for the kids out of it, if it was enough, I open are the tinted windows of the black SUV from which they emerged, the package. Well fa sigh] I unfold the fabric and I see red paper as signs that this event of almsgiving is closely linked to high-level highest denomination of banknotes, each worth about $201. It was a government or financial agents. sum of [about $200 USD]." pause for a minute and pick up a new conversational thread: the current garbage workers strike. I write a few notes down on a From here the conversation takes a turn that surprises me. The of paper. Then, just as we are preparing to out of the taxi, two work together to read an agent or source back from this enve­ the talk takes a final turn: lope of money, a relationship they treat as one of simple part­ whole metonymy. First they follow this line of speculation through "The thing is, 1 pity [the man in of quantity: it was determined that more than $4,000 must have been sanitation workers]." The taxi driver continues, visibly saddened, "I given away. They calculate this sum based on an estimate of the sympathize with all of them [yerem naa teen, iioom iiepp]. 1 know number of packets handed out, and the assumption-grounded in that there is nothing you can do in that situation, you want to do the their own broader experience of almsgiving practice-that each right thing and then you have some kind of other need ... " 46 Gretchen Pfeil Sarax and the City 47 "Or someone comes into your office and tells you he has another Notwithstanding the potlatch-style qualities of the donor in the need ... " the lady says, "And what can you do? You have no choice taxi driver's story, sarax remains a form of sacrifice, not gifting. at all. These people higher up in the government can make things Dakarois have an elaborate register for the latter, which is much so complicated." She turns her eyes to me, "Pay the driver." We've nearer to the classic form of the Maussian prestation. The circu­ pulled over as far as possible from one of the giant, stinking piles of lation of gift objects in the city and beyond expands the fame of trash. And while she is pulling herself out of the seat, I quickly hand individuals and households. While alms are hidden from view and him the money. protected from talk at the moment they are given away, gifts are staged as the condition of possibility of forms of talk, focused on the Ideally, almsgiving of the sort described in this conversation is com­ identity and character of the donor as a specific, named, individual pletely anonymous: both donors and the objects they give are gen­ representative of a lineage or other corporate group. eral and are intended to efface all knowledge about the history of the For example, griots produce praise for the individual character transaction. They are interpretable precisely because of the attempt and noble ancestry of donors in response to (or anticipation of) to remove or obscure marks that would identify their history. The transfers of wealth from their patrons (Irvine 1989). Discussions ritual is effective-and the objects meaningful-in proportion to of proper women's clothing-assumed to be given to them by their the complete anonymity of the objects it produces. The most generic husbands-lead to knowledge, and talk, about their husbands' token of a particular commodity makes the best sacrificial "victim" virtue and social status (Heath 1994). Womens magazines' gossip in this case. But this anonymity-the ignorance surrounding the columns and features take up the same verbal work: interpreting object-is also the key to its productivity and meaningfulness. As objects given publicly-presented at ceremonies or displayed in pub­ the story makes clear, though, this anonymization allows people lic as the results of gifts intended to be publicized-as rich signs of in the city to begin to track and to comment on the scale of gov­ the character of the giver, positive or negative. Thus when a well­ ernment corruption, something that is otherwise difficult. In this known singer (a griotte) gave away several SUVs on her birthday, or case, it was precisely the lack of marks of past transaction on the when another upended a 50 kg rice sack of US dollar bills over her bills-their newness-that was seen as significant. Moreover, the husband's head before a live audience, the meanings of these actions very act of giving was itself visible. Like the garbage that crowded attached to each individual's social person, and to hers alone. the streets, aggregate alms and the beggars that partially embody Still, these publicized forms of giving also rely on practices that them-seemingly useless and unproductive in themselves-pointed create and capitalize on partial ignorance. As Deborah Heath (1994) to the money and services that had disappeared. has shown, it is common knowledge among Senegalese women that their peers secretly "sponsor" each other's role as donor in public gifts; the secret sponsor effaces her own role and allows her friend Ignorance and Sacrificial to engage in remarkable displays of generosity. Similarly, it is an Objects as Medium open secret that the gold jewelry that a bride wears in her wedding photos-seen as a mere fraction of a sizable transfer of bridewealth - Qu'est-ce qui te pousse vers les mendiants? given by her new husband's family-is often worn on loan from What draws you to the beggars? a maternal aunt or one of the bride's own close friends. Singers report in magazine interviews that the fancy items they are associ­ - Ce qui me pousse vers les mendiants! Tu te trompes, Sagar, tu ne vois ated with in public are returned after the cameras and reporters are jamais rien! Tu ne discernes jamais rien! Ne sais-tu pas que tout gone. The creation of partial ignorance is thus an irreducible aspect m' eloigne d'eux! of the semiotic work of all kinds of material transaction, not just What draws me to the beggars! You're mistaken, Sagar, you never almsgiving. see anything! You never understand anything! Don't you know that In other ethnographic contexts the creation of ignorance about everything distances me from them! aspects of an object's history-the epistemological rather than -Fall 1979:60-61 material crafting of objects-has been shown to create boundaries 48 Gretchen Pfeil Sarax and the City 49 exchange. Gershon (2000) notes that "tra­ The ignorance created in sacrificial practice in Dakar is therefore spheres of exchange in Samoa involve crucially different from the epistemological work accomplished in imported mass commodities similar to those employed in Dakar's making good Kula valuables or Haya heirlooms. Rather than forget­ sarax. In preparing objects of traditional ritual exchange Samoans ting aspects of the objects in question in order to use them as signs are "not terribly concerned about purifying or re-contextualizing or lineages (as in heirlooms), Dakarois the indexes of capitalisms in order to make these objects ... Samoan" that symbolically separate problems-and (2000:89). Rather, the intimate worlds in which these problems originate-from their original loci. They are anti heirlooms-separating information the shift that occurs when moving resources locally from one arena to certain groups of people. Moreover, inasmuch as Kula another is a different one, epistemological rather than material. For desire for things to come back, focusing attention away from the people to move resources between two different kinds of exchange, larger system in which those things will move, the objects of sarax they must invoke certain forms of ignorance, which both serve to create a system that is also an anti-Kula, because sarax is predicated create the exchange perspectives' boundaries and to encourage the flow of money, cloth, food, and fine mats on the desire that things will never come back, in so doing, casting a larger social totality into relief. Two other examples are worth recalling. in his discussion of The role of ignorance in almsgiving in Dakar thus points to Haya inheritance practices, Weiss argues that heirlooms are complex larger questions of the role of mediation, especially semiotic epistemological objects "in which the relation of remembering and In one sense, alms are a differ­ forgetting are dynamically interrelated" (1997:164). Here knowledge terms the "problem of pres­ is ritually managed to create objects as signs of a specific group of thought to involve attempts people. Similarly, the "fame" of Gawans, famously explicated by at making present that which is irreducibly absent. For instance, Munn (1986), requires that some aspects of the history of objects at it may bridge the gap between a physically absent God and a times disappear from view, and become opaque to participants in tern of thought that asserts God's intimate co-presence with the current transaction. believer. By manipulating objects, practitioners are able to close In contrast to these, the practices of anonymization that consti­ a social gap. Almsgiving practices in Dakar, however, engage a tute objects as sacrifices in Dakar allow each object to become a problem of too much presence. They attempt to defer or obscure only of "problems": needs, lacks, and potentially, things sto­ aspects of the social world that are present, albeit not always visible. len. Ignorance is neither incidental to the process nor an Ironically, it is this that allows them to discuss and diagnose society able byproduct; it is the point. The personal identity of donors is When they are embodied in beggars, individual private obscured early so as to be irrecoverable from the objects themselves. problems become nameable as the social ill of corruption, which is Dakar's sarax is, in this way, a demonstration of Joel Robbins's a disease of the whole city, no longer tied to individual attempts to recent observation (n.d.)-harkening back to Hubert and Mauss get by. (1964)-that sacrifice employs mediating objects to create, rather This management of presence and absence to create an aggregate than to close, distance. Rituals of communion (Silverstein 2(04) unity through distance is just as fraught, hypothetical, and tempo­ bring people and divinities (or divine orders) into states of (near-) rary as are those concerned with creating presence. Not co-presence to affect changes on participants; sacrifice creates dis­ your neighbor may be as difficult to achieve for Dakarois Muslims tance between practitioners and nonembodied others. In this case, as knowing God is for Protestants worldwide. Still, when people is owed to an effacement of the intimate aspects of manage to hold them at an objectifying distance, the objects of sarax objects' histories; put simply, people create distance provide an astonishing view of the city. The vision of the city as a ignorance. By casting a veil of ignorance over the private whole may actually be possible only in the momentary reflection of individuals, sarax creates, maintains, and restores the discrete­ shape of alms and beggars in the street, that is, via ness of those individuals as social agents. an aggregate of unknowable others. 50 Gretchen Sarax and the City 51 9. On street vendors in Dakar and their relation to recent IMF/World Notes Bank-led economic reforms, see Scheid 2007. On the role of street violence in Dakar, see Diouf 1996. 1. My three years of fieldwork in Dakar, Senegal in 2005, and 2006-2009 10. The relationship between price of basic commodities and the power were facilitated by the West African Research Center and funded by and authority of the Senegalese state, closely tied to French means of the West African Research Association Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, the colonial dominion in the AOF, is the subject of an extensive literature University of Chicago African Language Fund and Leiffer Fellowship, (e.g., Boone 1992; Roitman 2004). the P.E.O. of Pennsylvania, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for 11. The scale of these price increases, which occurred in the space of Anthropological Research. My research in 2008-2009 was made possible a few months, make most sense in the context of the increase in _ a teaching appointment at Suffolk University in Dakar, and enriched of basic staples caused by the two devaluations in the CFA in 1983 and discussion with my students in Sociology 101 and Globalization. 1994, during which period sugar, rice and cooking oil had increased in This chapter has benefited immensely from the comments and encour­ 500 percent from their prices in 1965 (Somerville 1991:156). agement of the editors of this volume, and the participants of the session 12. All cooking, a long process of boiling rich sauces and steaming is of the 2009 American Anthropological Association session where this normally accomplished on a gas flame. In the absence of gas, one can material first appeared. I am especially indebted to Thomas Strong for use charcoal, but, like gas, this is also imported and in short his comments as discussant of that session, and Erin Debenport, Jeremy Charcoal is not suited to local cooking styles. Thus a lack of gas Jones, Paul Manning, Shunsuke Nozawa, and Stephan Palmie for their to, among other issues, absenteeism in government offices, as women comments and suggestions. Above all, I would like to thank Ousseynou leave their jobs early to search for fuel and to begin cooking. Dia, Rokhaya Diop, Fatou Kandji, wa Diopbene, maa teen gerem di 13. This creates another possible domain of inference and set of signs to be teen santo Menuma teen fay. All translations are my own. manipulated. The scale of purchases of staple in a household is 2. Indeed, these questions came to a head in late June 2011, as this piece a meaningful of available resources, leading to strategic conceal­ was going to press. The popular movement named "yen a marre" ment and revelation of sacks of rice, containers of instant coffee, and (roughly, "enough is enough") took to the streets in weeks of violent boxes of sugar cubes. protests demanding government accountability, continuing well into 14. Price fluctuation and the spatial and temporal distribution of fuel is the autumn. One thing is clear about this movement as it unfolds: it is a medium of parallel forms of local judgment about the state in other framed specifically in terms of transparency and visibility, a areas of the region as well Guyer 2004: 101-114, Roitman 2004: making present on the street of the frustrations of a generation until 23-47). now sentenced to lack in silence. 15. For more on the local meanings of garbage and the garbage strike dur­ 3. Although translated as The Beggars Strike, the title literally means "The this same period, see Fredericks 2009. begging-bowl strike: or the human castoffs/garbage." This novel fea­ 16. The president is very excited about the overpass project, which is her­ tures prominently in the national school curriculum, and 1 was immedi­ alded as an example of the yet-to-come in his regime. He even refers to ately directed to it when I began fieldwork on child beggars in Dakar. men and women in their early 40s as the "concrete generation." 4. Wolof is Dakar's lingua franca, and its use does not mark ethnicity 17. An exclamation, indicating that one is emotionally touched by a sight, (Swigart 2000). There is also a variety specific to "Dakarois" cosmo­ urban identity (see McLaughlin 2001). story, or memory. 18. Completing-or even beginning-the construction of one's own house 5. These references are either quite oblique and bleached reference to is the ultimate goal for many working in Dakar and many in the places, or the formula "old man SURNAME." diaspora. Physical houses are also interpreted as signs of their sources, 6. I encountered several different means of divination: from longstanding and of the moral status of their owners. Discussion of a house leads to practices involving the use of the text of the Qur'an, a bowl of water, discussion of the source of the funds, the length of time the construc­ or casting cowries, to more recent innovations like photos and text messages. tion took, and how the land itself was secured. Each of these aspects of building is a unique accomplishment, as none of them is currently 7. The person consulted is given a nominal fee for this service, under­ stood as an honorarium. attainable through any process fixed by consistently applied state regu­ lation. Thus a house, too, is a sign of an aggregation of nontranspar­ 8. The use of this measure of fabric as a standard unit of value and ent actions. Here, however they can all be assigned to one agent: the exchange apparently predates the adoption of European-style money objects in the region (Ames 1955). house's owner. 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This chapter explores a genre of autobiographical historiography Somerville, Carolyn known in contemporary Japan as jibunshi, or "personal history" 1991. "The Impact of the Reforms on the Urban Population: How the (literally, "I-history'V The genre specifically refers to "ordinary Dakarois View the Crisis." In Christopher Delgado and Sidi people's" history, that is, the amateur practice of history writing (Eds.), The Political Economy ofSenegal Under Structural Adjustment, outside the institutional loci of knowledge such as academia and the 151-173. New York; Praeger. media, centering on narratives of everyday life. It has been popular Sow Fall, Aminata 1979. La Greve des Battu: ou les deschets humains. Dakar: Les Nouvelles since the late 1980s, especially among the elderly population, giving Editions Africaines. rise to a culture of amateur publishing. The genre has provided its Swigart, Leigh practitioners with a means of retrospective examination of personal 2000 "The Limits of Legitimacy: Ideology and Shift in life through literacy practice, the concrete material practice of mak­ Contemporary Senegal." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, ing textual objects. At this intersection of textuality and personal 90-130. life we may be tempted to observe, as Kobayashi (2006) suggests, Weiss, Brad what Foucault called a "technology of the self" (1988). 1997. "Forgetting Your Dead: Alienable and Inalienable Objects in argument, however, revolves around a different set of inquiries Northwest Tanzania." Anthropological Quarterly, 70(4): 164-172. informed by jibunshi practitioners' own concern: Is my everyday life worth a of history at all? Is it worthwhile to make my personal