Abstract
Here we withdraw into a poorly-lit political area, an area of potentialities, where new political shapes emerge as the outcome of half-conscious choices made by very large numbers of people.1 Language choices in the first place: the expansion of the Wolof language in Senegal, principally though far from exclusively an urban phenomenon, is to be seen in a context where the individual may speak several languages, switching linguistically from one social situation to another. Such multilingualism is general in Africa2: the particularity of the Wolof case at least in Senegal is the extent to which this language has spread, far beyond the boundaries of core ethnicity, of a historical Wolof zone from the colonial or pre-colonial periods. And diese individual language choices cast their political shadow.
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Notes
Thus Jean-Loup Amselle remarks, with reference to the relation between language and ethnicity in Africa, that the area of linguistic research on this issue is one of “great confusion”. J.-L. Amselle, “Ethnies et Espaces”in J.-L. Amselle and E. M’Bokolo (eds), Au Coeur de l’Ethnie Ethnies, Tribalisme et Etal en Afrique, Paris: La Découverte, 1985, p. 31.
On the “Shadow Theatre of Ethnicity”see J.-E Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993, pp. 41–59.
See G. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, 1959–1994, London: Hurst, 1995.
J. Das Gupta, “Ethnicity, Language Demands and National Development in India”in N. Glazer and D.P. Moynihan (eds), Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975, pp. 466–88.
A.D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 153–73.
J.-F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993
C. Myers-Scotton, “Elite Closure as Boundary Maintenance: The Case of Africa”in B. Weinstein (ed.), Language Policy and Political Development, Norwood, NY: Ablex, 1990.
L. Swigart, “Practice and Perception....”, op. cit,p. 280. See also P. Dumont, Le Français et les Langues Parlées au Sénégal, Paris: Karthala, 1983.
L. Swigart, “Cultural Creolisation and Language Use in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Senegal”, Africa, vol. 64, no. 2, 1994, p. 176.
For a bleak enough assessment see G. Duruflé, Le Senegal Peut-il Sortir de la Crise? Paris: Karthala, 1994.
L.H. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity and the Civic Culture, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1990
A. Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
R. Cruise O’Brien, “Broadcasting for National Development: The Case of Senegal”, London: International Broadcasting Institute, 1975
Cheikh Anta Diop, Nations Mgres et Culture, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1995
For an excellent biography see J. Vaillant, Black, French and African: A Biography of Leopold Sédar Senghor, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
See A. Fall, R. Santos and J. Doneux, Dictionnaire Wolof-Français, suivi d’un Index Français-Wolof, Paris: Karthala, 1990
J.L. Diouf and M. Yaguello, F’apprends le Wobf, Paris: Karthala, 1991
P. Fougeyrollas, “L’Enseignement du Français au Service de la Nation Sénégalaise”, Dakar: Centre de Linguistique Appliquée de Dakar, 1967, p. 32.
C. Young and T. Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian Sate, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, p. 155.
H.B. Hansen and M. Twaddle, “Uganda: The advent of no-party democracy” in J.A. Wiseman (ed.), Democracy and Political Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, London and New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 145–6.
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© 2003 Donal B. Cruise O’Brien
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O’Brien, D.B.C. (2003). The Shadow-Politics of Wolofisation. In: Symbolic Confrontations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05532-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05532-3_6
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