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Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Life: Materials, Intimacy and Being Creole in London and Seychelles Mairi O’Gorman PhD Social Anthropology The University of Edinburgh 2019 Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that no part of it has been submitted in any previous application for a degree. Except where I state otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Signature: Mairi O’Gorman July 2019, Edinburgh U.K. 2 Abstract This thesis interrogates discourses of kreolite (Creoleness) in the small island state of Seychelles, and among the Seychellois diaspora in London. While the literature on creolization often treats it as mobile and processual, transgressing the boundaries of the nation-state, for Seychellois in both places being Afro-Creole is underpinned by an idea of rootedness and tradition. Throughout the chapters, the thesis explores how relationships predicated on movement and variation can be accommodated within this understanding of kreolite, and how intersecting scales of national and familial intimacy are constituted by engagements with particular objects and materials. The chapters examine the arborescent imagery central to kreolite at the level of the nation-state, arguing that in Seychelles these must be understood in terms of plantation – as the central institution around which ‘traditional’ Creole life was historically centred, and as a process that implies the rooting of persons in the islands. The legacy of the plantation engenders particular relationships with land and property, the house and its contents, and inside and outside spaces that are understood by Seychellois in terms of a general tendency of living things to regenerate themselves. This regenerative capacity is extended by state actors – especially those working within cultural heritage and adjacent fields – beyond everyday objects, to include the nation. The Creole house, in particular, emerges as a central object of attention for cultural heritage practitioners, bringing together idealised notions of nation, family and gendered behaviour whilst, through its materiality, functioning as a point at which the negative aspects of intimacy (both mundane and occult) are operative. Through engaging the literature on material culture, the chapters show how the racialized notion of property on which the institution of the plantation was based informs present-day encounters with objects and artefacts among Seychellois artists, heritage practitioners, educators, and families. Treating these encounters as intimate ones, I show the ways that objects and materials are unruly, divergent, or accommodate meanings other than those endorsed by state-led conceptions of Seychellois heritage. Together, the chapters argue that it is the specific qualities of particular materials that constitute Creoleness at familial, national and transnational scales. It thus engages broader questions about the material qualities of national and racial imaginaries, and the role of historicity and culture concepts in naturalising them. 3 Lay summary This thesis explores what it means to be Creole in two contexts: the Seychelles islands (a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean), and in the Seychellois community in London. These chapters draw on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in both contexts in order to understand different kinds of intimacy: between individuals in families, between citizens and the state, and between the geographically widespread countries and cultural traditions that contribute to the mixed Creole identity. The thesis argues that being Creole has meant different things in different times and places, and that the shifting properties of materials both stabilise a sense of what it means to be Creole, and accommodate divergence and reinterpretation. In particular, wood and materials derived from trees are significant for Seychellois understandings of Creole identity, as trees and plants are considered to have an innate capacity for regeneration that can be generalised across the natural world, human life, and culture. This ability to regenerate makes particular trees a key part of producing Creoleness in the islands; but traditional wooden houses and the objects in them also have regenerative qualities (both positive and negative). The inside of the house is thus valued positively in state imaginaries of Creoleness, but wild spaces outside the house are also being revalued as sites of national identity – particularly through the musical genre moutya, which is traditionally danced outside. This thesis argues that not only is national identity an intimate and material, rather than abstract, entity, but that the specific qualities of materials and objects are fundamental to understanding how such identities are produced. 4 Table of Contents Declaration .......................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 3 Lay summary .......................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 8 Acronyms (and presidents) ...................................................................................................... 9 Kreol glossary ........................................................................................................................ 10 Table of figures ...................................................................................................................... 12 Passages ........................................................................................................................ 14 Seychelles and West London ............................................................................................. 14 Flux and fixity ..................................................................................................................... 17 Maps and traces ................................................................................................................. 26 Créolité ........................................................................................................................... 26 Creole objects (material and immaterial) ...................................................................... 36 Creole intimacies ............................................................................................................ 46 Map of the thesis ............................................................................................................... 54 Archipelago ........................................................................................................................ 60 One history ......................................................................................................................... 61 Two parallel histories ......................................................................................................... 70 A family history .................................................................................................................. 74 Familiarity and strangeness ............................................................................................... 77 London ........................................................................................................................... 80 Seychelles ....................................................................................................................... 82 A note on languages....................................................................................................... 84 Key people.......................................................................................................................... 88 Chapter 1: Roots: Trees and Genealogies ........................................................................ 90 Arborescence ..................................................................................................................... 91 A history of planting ........................................................................................................... 95 Island-born ....................................................................................................................... 103 Family tree ....................................................................................................................... 111 Lalang perdi ....................................................................................................................