I found todays lecture really interesting. i wish it was a 2 hour lecture because i feel there could have been more content which was skimmed over. the hauka cult is what we read about in week 4 (Horrific Comedy: cultural resistance in the Hauka Movement in Niger, By Paul Stoller). i felt that they mocked the colonial powers as a form of resistance. its like the example in given in anth 201 about a man in the army who continued to wear his favourite shirt under his uniform to keep a part of his identity because everything else was stripped away from him. the hauka may be the same. its a personal resistance so that mentally they can feel strengthened that the colonial powers can control most things but this they can still call their own.
the struggle between resisting colonialism and wanting to be part of it was also intriguing. the africans did not want to be thought of as savages and unable to cope with the colonial way of life but in the same way they did not want to lose their traditional customs. i think both go hand in hand and neither is lost by the other.
Esther01's Blog 