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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Celebrity, Violence, and the Mystic Arts in Postwar Sierra Leone Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tm0s48b Author Anderson, Samuel Mark Publication Date 2014 Supplemental Material https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tm0s48b#supplemental Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Celebrity, Violence, and the Mystic Arts In Postwar Sierra Leone A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Samuel Mark Anderson 2014 © Copyright by Samuel Mark Anderson 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Celebrity, Violence, and the Mystic Arts In Postwar Sierra Leone by Samuel Mark Anderson Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Allen F. Roberts, Chair Celebrity, Violence, and the Mystic Arts in Postwar Sierra Leone tracks the operations of Hassan Jalloh, once a commander in Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war, now self-proclaimed “King of West Africa Mystical Power and Culture.” Jalloh served in the Civil Defense Forces, a pro-government militia that mobilized the imagery and practices of village hunter traditions in pursuit of local legitimacy and esoteric defense maneuvers including disappearance, metamorphosis, and bullet-proofing. Faced with disarmament and doubtful reintegration at the end of the decade-long war, Jalloh turned to Allah for guidance, then redeployed his troops as the touring Warrior Cultural and Mystical Power Dance Troupe. Through the virtuosic fusion of acts that might variously appear as fearsome masked dancing, military pageantry, bloody self- mutilation, and sleight-of-hand hocus-pocus, Jalloh publicly demonstrates the abilities he ii acquired in wartime and expounds on themes ranging from Islamic doctrine and cultural reconstruction to nationalism and HIV/AIDS prevention. Building from more than eighteen months of research employing participant observation, oral histories, archival records, and critical videography, I follow Hassan Jalloh’s Warriors and other troupes as they travel throughout the Mende regions of Sierra Leone and across numerous sites at which spectacle is used to manifest, marshal, and mitigate violence. I use Jalloh’s program of acts as a thematic link between performances of militias, herbalists, subcultures, and initiatory societies, bringing their shared logics and aesthetics into focus. Each case exemplifies how Sierra Leonean individuals and institutions currently exploit public spectacle to navigate and influence unstable transitions between physical violence of open conflict, memories of violence, and the structural violence of consolidations of political power. Rather than unidirectional transmission from the spectated to the spectator, these performances hinge on a living interface, a relationship summed up in Jalloh’s onstage axiom, “I am seeing you seeing me.” Spectacles in Sierra Leone are events at which extraordinary visuality conjures crowds for many ends: to judge, to heal, to educate, to manifest invisible forces, and–most importantly in the postwar context–to effect personal and social transformations. iii The dissertation of Samuel Mark Anderson is approved. Donald J. Cosentino Steven Nelson Aparna Sharma Allen F. Roberts, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract of the Dissertation ......................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................. v List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................... viii Note on Orthography .................................................................................................................................. xii Note on Video Materials ............................................................................................................................ xiii Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................... xiv Vita ..................................................................................................................................................................... xv Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Road Map ............................................................................................................................................................................ 8 Preliminary Item: "Let Me Tell You Something About Myself..." ........................................ 18 "You know me. I'm known as Hassan Jalloh." ..................................................................................... 18 "What the eye does not see, the heart cannot admire." .................................................................. 29 Mende spectacle ............................................................................................................................................................ 29 Society and Spectacle ................................................................................................................................................. 33 Spectacle Dismembered ............................................................................................................................................ 38 Spectacle and Transformation ................................................................................................................................ 45 "He who tells you about them will one day tell them about you." ............................................... 47 THIS is Warrior ............................................................................................................................................................. 47 Warrior Territory ......................................................................................................................................................... 52 Ethnography on tour .................................................................................................................................................. 56 Other Methods ............................................................................................................................................................... 59 Ethnographer as celebrity ........................................................................................................................................ 65 Chapter One: Mobilizing Culture .................................................................................................. 70 1.1 "W.A.R. Waste All Resources" ............................................................................................................ 70 War initiated .................................................................................................................................................................. 71 War escalated ................................................................................................................................................................. 75 Mysticism mobilized ................................................................................................................................................... 78 Charisma .......................................................................................................................................................................... 82 Spectacle in war ............................................................................................................................................................ 84 1.2 "Culture Business": Culture as Context .......................................................................................... 88 Postwar ............................................................................................................................................................................. 89 National “Culture”? ...................................................................................................................................................... 94 National Culture ............................................................................................................................................................ 96 Producing Culture ........................................................................................................................................................ 99 1.3 "Culture Business": Culture as Economy ..................................................................................... 102 "I am the only king in my kingdom" ................................................................................................................... 102 Structures of Authority ............................................................................................................................................ 105 "We live on what we create, we don't imitate" ............................................................................................
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