Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 38
This sentence inspired me to be more confident about my approach and to take a closer look
at what a fragment is. I also realised that my Dghweɗe notes were not potential elements of an
incomplete whole – and that they were not static either, but rather incomplete by their very
nature. I became aware that as a result of my processing them in the way I did they already
had my intellectual fingerprints all over them. This insight was reinforced by the violent
circumstances in which the Dghweɗe culture was disappearing in front of my eyes.
It is therefore important for me to treat my Dghweɗe notes with the greatest respect, while we
continue to reshape them into a Dghweɗe oral history retold. This also includes resisting the
temptation to fill local knowledge gaps with comparative ethnographic material from other
groups. As a result of this approach, the concept of the Dghweɗe as being survivors receives
an additional dimension, since we do not want them to fall victim to ethnographic
comparison, but to retain their originality.
It is of the utmost importance to acknowledge the fragmentary nature of any historical
discourse, and the incompleteness it produces in the form of an informed scholarly discourse
can only be laid open but cannot be avoided. I experienced this and freely admit that I have
been hypothesising and speculating, the more I thought an underlying conclusive narrative of
who the Dghweɗe were was coming out of my writing process. I have therefore tried to keep
the presentation of my Dghweɗe notes and their discussion separate, especially when it comes
to any conclusive suggestions from my side. I do use the fieldnotes I collected over the years
among the neighbouring Mafa and also the neighbours of the Dghweɗe in the Gwoza hills
themselves, but am very selective when I do. The reason for that is the intention to create an
image of the late pre-colonial Dghweɗe in their subregional embeddedness, but at the same
time to preserve from the oral sources what it is that gives the oral history authenticity.
It is that striving for ethnographic authenticity, which cannot come out of comparison but
only from presenting and attempting to transmit the circumstantial background sound of our
oral protagonists, to present their views not just as responses to my questions, but rather as
voices from the past. It is in that sense that we see the qualifying expression 'A history from
the grassroots' in the context of our fragmentary history of the Dghweɗe as a precondition,
namely not to forget that here the oral came before the written. This circumstance is also
expressed in the title of Part Three when speaking of a Dghweɗe oral history retold.
It is a typical dilemma we find ourselves in because we are translating oral into written and
are retelling in writing what was once only retold by word of mouth. To only compare
ethnographic data with other ethnographic data would be comparing already written
ethnographic data. We see ourselves as a primary source of historical fragments of an oral
culture that lost its original voice. This brings us to our next section where we explain why in
our main title we are pretending to be them, what we are not, but we want them to be heard!
Azaghvana - 'I say'
Before going through the three parts of our fragmentary history of the Dghweɗe in greater
detail, it is necessary to briefly introduce the reader to the meaning of the main title of this
book. After what is stated above, it sounds presumptuous to entitle it Azaghvana, meaning 'I
say', and pretend that I speak for the Dghweɗe. After all, I am a complete outsider, not even a
local outsider but an outsider from Europe. However, if we look at the history of the
Dghweɗe, the integration of outsiders always played a role, as described in the chapter
‘About outsiders as founders’. Now, I am certainly not a founder in that sense, but in another
odd way I am, because if I did not write the oral history of the Dghweɗe, those grassroots
fragments I collected and processed into writing would disappear from history. The
expression 'I say' as the main title is a literary device to emphasise our desire for ethnographic
authenticity in the face of violent loss. It is the presenting style I chose, and using an inclusive
'we' when describing and interpreting our Dghweɗe notes is also a indirect reference to John
Zakariya as my research assistant and local translator.
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