A Dahomean novel

Fabio Viti (AMU, IMAf, Société des africanistes) présents and discusses the book of Valérie Perlès (Musée de la Poste) : A Dahomean novel : Francis Aupiais & Bernard Maupiol, two ethnologists on colonial soil. Paris, B42,2023

An analysis of the various methods used to produce ethnographic data in a colonial context, Un roman dahoméen (A Dahomean Novel) looks back at two specific collecting experiences that took place in Dahomey, a former kingdom in what is now southern Benin. Focusing in particular on vodun religious practices (also known as "vodou" and referring to occult practices of a cosmic nature stemming from African animist cults), the author shows that the approaches and views historically brought to bear on this territory have been divergent, and have not always engaged local actors in the same way. Valérie Perlès focuses on the Dahomean careers of two ethnologists, each representative in their own way of the French occupation of this territory: one a missionary, Francis Aupiais (1877-1945), the other an administrator, Bernard Maupoil (1906-1944). Both followed in the footsteps of the Institut d'ethnologie, and worked for different clients - one private, the other public - both of which resonated with the colonial policies of the time. After analyzing the data collected in the context of the professionalization of ethnology, this book looks more closely at the question of the field and the place given or negotiated by local elites. Whether political leaders, religious dignitaries or "literati", most were engaged, if not in the production of a positivist discourse on their own culture, at least in the awareness of the stakes crystallized around this ethnographic material. The text will be accompanied by a selection of iconographic images drawn from two documentary collections, which will be reproduced in color. The first comes from the documentary films and autochromes made by missionary Francis Aupiais for Albert Kahn's Archives de la planète. The second is an analysis of the objects collected by administrator Bernard Maupoil for the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, now housed at the Quai Branly.