How legitimate is my voice? A rejoinder

Jan Blommaert

Institute of Education, University of London & Ghent University

Table of contents

0.Introduction
1.Translating orders of indexicality
2.Language, repertoires and audiences
3.Two problems
4.Whose hybridity?
Notes
References
Address for correspondence

Johannes Fabian’s (1990) celebrated Power and performance tells the story of how an inquiry into the meaning of a proverb led to the development and performance of a piece of theatre. During a meal with some of his local friends and informants in Shaba, Congo, Fabian was offered a piece of chicken; when he insisted that it should be divided and shared with others, the answer he got was “le pouvoir se mange entier”. Sensing that he picked up a proverb—something articulating a deep cultural semantics—Fabian shifted into his anthropologist mode and asked what the proverb actually meant. The answer could not be given in simple conversation, and his friends/informants (members of a local theatre troupe) argued that the best way of explaining the complex sociocultural meanings of the saying would be a play, with a plot and characters, various scenes and storylines, and a punchline. The play was developed, staged, and eventually even broadcasted on TV. Power and performance tells the story of how theatre emerged out of an inquiry into sociocultural meaning.

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