Vous consultezLa chorégraphie du bâton divinatoire comme écriture sonore au Burkina Faso

Through the analysis of a Western African divinatory practice called “divination by the stick”, this paper addresses the question of the respective part of technical gestures and of language in the creation of a prophetic statement. Is there a relationship of mutual implication between the hand which produces visual and acoustic perceptions and the discursive sequences where the words of the oracle are expressed? The author tests the hypothesis that the divinatory practices expressed by the strange hand-to-hand gestures performed together by the soothsayer and the consultant, implement some form of writing through acts, as defined by Roland Barthes, as well as facts of reading. What is accomplished by this kind of divinatory techniques is as much the transposition of obtuse signs that emerge from the place of origin into a clear language, as the construction of a text of which neither the diviner nor the consultant are, properly speaking, the author.

Keywords


divination by the stick, Western Africa, voltaic area, signs language, dance, writing, body, text