PERFORMING CULTURE: A TUAREG ARTISAN AS CULTURAL INTERPRETER

Abstract

A Tuareg smith visited an import shop in Texas to discuss, display, and enact aspects of Tuareg art and culture, and later held informal conversations at a reception. This artisan, at home in Niger, is a member of a social category that manufactures jewelry, tools, and weapons, presides at rites of passage, recites histories, and serves as go-betweens for their aristocratic patrons. This essay describes the artisan’s control over cultural representation in this “border-lands” encounter and analyzes cultural tradition as a multi-mediated process. At the Texas shop, this artist gave a “performance” of cultural intimacy. Notwithstanding his talented presentation, there were struggles over translation and representation which alternately empowered and muted his cultural voice. Like many ethnographers, this “cultural ambassador” must deploy rhetorical strategies to convey his culture, and in that way this essay contributes to studies of negotiation over meaning by mediators between cultures.