Le fakamisimisi de Futuna ou l’esthétique du travail quotidien
Abstracts
The aim of this article is to analyse a text of the rich and lively oral tradition of East Futuna, which has never been the object of an anthropological or linguistic study: the fakamisimisi. This text is pronounced by a chief in the village plaza (mala’e) where local «richness» is displayed during the redistributive ceremonies named katoaga. Unlike mio¯, fakamatalaand other kinds of Futunan oral performances, the fakamisimisiis not dealing with heroes (to’a), chiefs (aliki) or divinities (atua) of the pre-christian past. It deals with the everyday work of men and women and with the products of this work: kava, yam, taro, pigs etc., which are the central topics of the different stanzas of the poem. Starting out with the translation and interpretation of a fakamisimisiperformed in October 1997 during a katoagain Ono village (chiefdom of Alo), this article reflects upon the aesthetic (or ethno-aesthetic) dimension of human production and of Polynesian redistributive rites. It shows that one has to understand the importance of particular aspects of the «kustom» – such as the contemporary katoagarites in Futuna – not only in the light of the «politics of tradition», or as an efforts to avoid the spread of social and economic inequalities, but as a mean to stress the value of local products and processes against the standardized goods and activities of the globalised market.
Index terms
Top of pageReferences
Bibliographical reference
Adriano Favole, “Le fakamisimisi de Futuna ou l’esthétique du travail quotidien”, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 122-123 | 2006, 123-139.
Electronic reference
Adriano Favole, “Le fakamisimisi de Futuna ou l’esthétique du travail quotidien”, Journal de la Société des Océanistes [Online], 122-123 | Année 2006, Online since 01 December 2009, connection on 17 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jso/593; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/jso.593
Top of pageCopyright
The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
Top of page