A comparative study of expressive cultures in the Indian Ocean: belonging, kinship, and cultural heritage in Banaadiri poetry and Indian Ocean texts

Abstract

In this project, I compare the ways that an Indian Ocean cultural identity emerges from the oral poetry of the Banaadiri people, a coastal community in southern Somalia and Indian Ocean prose and novels. In particular, I explore the ways that this Indian Ocean identity is co-constitutive with local kinship identities. This project works with oral and written literature; literature in Somali, English and Italian literature in translation. Working with anthropology, theories around material culture and writings about Islands, Oceans and coasts allows me draw on the interactions between these different oral and written literatures. Throughout the thesis, I use a comparative methodology where I contrast Banaadiri oral songs with globally circulating Indian Ocean novels and other fiction to explore ideas around belonging, kinship and cultural heritage. I break down the barriers between orality and literacy and explore ideas around reception culture, performance, delivery and meaning. I use a range of approaches including close reading, close listening, textual and performance analysis. An emphasis on listening and on voice is a way of refreshing attention to the works from this region, both those that are oral but also scribal texts that seek to allow the expression of certain voices. I interrogate what constitutes belonging and community in different forms of literature in the context of the Indian Ocean. I explore how selected poets and writers who deal with these concepts, which are usually linked to the idea of nationhood, importantly focus on different forms of ‘belonging’ which are not framed around patriotism and nationalism but rather around kinship, relationships, vocation and craft.

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