Marcel Cohen
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League of Nations
LEAGUE OF NATIONS Communicated to C .357.M.182.1935.VII the Council and Members of the Geneva, September 14th,1935 League. DISPUTE BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND ITALY. REQUEST OF THE ETHIOPIAN GOVERNMENT. Note by the Secretary-General, The Secretary-General has the honour to r'-rsmsjiit to the Members of the Council the following communication which he has received from the Ethiopian Government, Geneva, September 4th, 1935 To the Secretary-General. On several occasions the Italian Government has referred in its Memorandum against Ethiopia to the scientific authority of M. Marcel GRIAULE. The Ethiopian Government has already signified its determination to co-operate loyally with the League in the impartial enquiry for which it has asked. It has therefore requested M. Marcel GRIAULE to make an independent and scientifcally impartial survey of the accusations contained in the Italian Memorandum, The Ethiopian delegation sends M. Marcel GRIAULE*s scientific report to your Excellency for communication to the Members of the Council, In a few hours’ time the Ethiopian delegation will hand to you its own reply to the Italian Memorandum. I have the honour, etc. (signed) P, TECLE-HAWARIATE Ethiopian Minister. The map annexed to this Memorandum will be issued as soon as possible. - 2 - COMMENTS 3Y M. MARCEL GRIAULE ON SOME OF THE QUESTIONS DEALT WITH IN "THE ITALIAN GO VERNIRENT S MEMORANDUM ON THE SITUATION IN ETHIOPIA. No te. - These comments relate to the second part of Volume I, "Report", They do not form an exhaustive criticism of the Memorandum. (map annexed.) I. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. (1) The value of the Italian Memorandum as a col lection of documents would have been enhanced had the chapters on ethnography, sociology and legislation been amplified by experts on these subjects s Italy has an Oriental Institute at Naples with trains each year a large number of Distinguished students interested in Ethiopian affairs„ Their assistance would undoubtedly have given a scientific character to a work of this importance- and would have made it clearer end more convincing. -
Picking up the Thread: Recasting Dogon Ideas of Speech in the Work of Geneviève
Picking up the Thread: Recasting Dogon Ideas of Speech in the Work of Geneviève Calame-Griaule Beth Buggenhagen, University of Rochester Introduction Few bodies of ethnographic work have achieved the striking literary prose of Marcel Griaule’s Conversations with Ogotemmêli. Griaule’s volume took the form of 33 conversations through which the Dogon elder, Ogotemmêli, was said to have revealed the esoteric features of Dogon cosmology to him in 1947, the trophy of his doggedness in the face of prolonged attempts by elders to shroud Dogon deep knowledge in secrecy. Through this poetic rendering of Dogon cosmology, the French ethnologist Griaule endeavored to demonstrate the potential for philosophic thought in African societies, a point that was to become the subject of intense debate.1 Griaule’s important text, and his larger oeuvre, came under scrutiny as early as 1967 when Jack Goody wrote that “the reader is uncertain where the conversation ends and the commentary begins” (1967:240). Mary Douglas remarked that it was difficult to distinguish “the voice of the theologian from that of the sacristan” (1968:17). Goody, and later James Clifford (1988), cast a critical eye on the politics and ethics of Griaule’s theoretical findings and ethnographic methods highlighting the slippage between the literary style of Griaule and the written and spoken word of his primary interlocutor, Ogotemmêli. On this latter point Goody, Clifford and more recently Luc de Heusch (1991:436) specifically questioned Griaule’s method of formal interviewing through an interpreter, St. Kogem, a Dogon army sergeant, leading Clifford to charge him of having “perceived fieldwork as a military operation” (Clifford qtd. -
Ethiopian Studies in Poland
ETHIOPIAN STUDIES IN POLAND The study of Ethiopian and African culture in Poland has always been on the margins of the general intellectual current, mostly due to a lack of direct contacts between Poland and Africa. Nevertheless, the Polish interest in Ethiopia can be traced back at least to the 17th century when King Jan III Sobieski (r. 1674-1696) tried to set up an embassy in Ethiopia in hope of establishing an anti-Turkish alliance. In the first half of the 18th century, the Załuski brothers, who were scholars and collectors, managed to acquire some of the important publications devoted to Ethiopia in this epoch, most notably the works by Hiob Ludolf. At the end of the 18th century, Poland lost its political independence for the next 150 years, which greatly afected Polish universities and academic life. The first representative of Ethiopian studies active in Poland was Izaak Wajnberg (1878-1941), who worked in the field of Ge'ez philology and Tigrinya linguistics. Wajnberg, however, never taught Ethiopia-related subjects; therefore, his work related to Ethiopia was not continued by his students. Also a work by a geographer Ludomir Sawicki (1884-1928) Studya nad Abisynią (“Studies on Abyssinia”) should be noted as the first Polish attempt to describe the life and culture of Ethiopia. It is Stefan Strelcyn who should be regarded as the true founder of Ethiopian studies in Poland. Trained by Marcel Cohen, Strelcyn began teaching Ge'ez and Amharic in the 1950s within the framework of Semitic Studies at the University of Warsaw. Semitic Studies were dissolved and the few active Ethiopian studies specialists found their place in the Department of African Languages and Cultures established in 1977 by Joanna Mantel-Niećko. -
Hundert/Ethiopian Studies in the 20Th Century
0993-8_BIOR_2008/1-2_01 21-04-2008 14:39 Pagina 136 267 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXV N° 1-2, januari-april 2008 268 serious, because it eliminates the school Marcel Cohen directly or indirectly created,2) and above all the formida- ble cultural network in which it was inserted. I would like to mention here not only Ethiopicists like Wolf Leslau, Roger Schneider, Stefan Strelcyn, Joseph Tubiana, and Bernard Velat, but also Semitists like David Cohen, Ara- bists like Gérard Troupeau, and Islamicists like Maxime Rodinson. Nor would I like to leave unmentioned the aston- ishing copenetration between Ethiopian studies and national French anthropology, concretized in studies like those of Debora Lifchitz3) or of the same Strelcyn, who began the most important part of his career with the fourth volume of SEMITICA the Catalogue of the Griaule collection.4) This type of stud- ies was, if one may say so, symbolized by the person of Marcel Griaule, editor of Ethiopian texts connected with VOIGT, R. (Ed.) — Die äthiopischen Studien im 20. Jahr- magic,5) and at the same time head of the Mission Dakar- hundert/Ethiopian studies in the 20th century. Akten der Djibouti of the years 1931-1933. This Mission brought rich internationalen äthiopischen Tagung Berlin 22. bis 24. material to the in Paris, and it is well Juli 2000. (Semitica et Semitohamitica Berolinensia, 2). Musée de l’Homme known that some texts collected by that Mission in Gondar Shaker Verlag GmbH, Aachen, 2003. (21 cm, 184). have been the object of the magnificent study by Rodinson ISBN 3-8322-2269-3.