" J'irai avec toi " : désirs et dynamiques du maternel dans les chants et les danses punu (Congo-Brazzaville)

I'll go with you: Desires and dynamics of the maternal in Punu sing ing and dancing (Congo-Brazzaville) The PhD-thesis explores the mainly female songs and dances of the Punu o f Congo-Brazzaville. It develops the potential of these practices to giv e expression to creative impulses and affects and also highlights their regenerative capacity. To this end a double approach is adopted: a pheno menological one that evokes the experience of the participants and a pra xeological one that examines the way these practices actualize the Punu life world. Each approach is realized by a specific method. A precise de scription of concrete events discloses their most striking impulses and inspirations emerging in connection with the pre-established song and da nce structure. An analysis of the different practices in their recurrent schemes and in their socio-cultural context further stresses their capa city to regenerate the physical, social and cosmic body. As the cosmic u niverses towards which these practices are oriented, have a maternal dim ension, the link between the songs, the dances and the maternal is deepe ned in a final part. Firstly, a description of events reveals their recurring dynamics. The e ncounter with the other appears to be constitutive of these events. It i s while encountering other participants or a pre-established structure t hat impulses emerge which sustain their development. The desire to take part in what animates the other in this way creates a collective drive t hat is necessary for the performance to succeed. It is also an emotional experience that inspires the creation of songs. An operation of condens ation transforms this experience into an exemplar one that constitutes t he refrain of the song repeated by the chorus. This refrain, while passi ng from one context to another, gets attached to other experiences and h ence accumulates affective power. The expression of affects is even stro nger in the monodic songs characterized by a free metric development. Th e modulation of sounds is also a modulation of affects, creasing and dec reasing in intensity, passing fluidly from a positive valence to a negat ive one. The outline of these different dynamics leads to the qualificat ion of these events as potential spaces: they open up space for singular contributions that nevertheless stay in close connection with the group and the Punu life world. An analysis examining the song and dance practices from a general point of view and referring back to their socio-cultural context more clearly shows their capacity to regenerate the Punu life world through a resonan ce of the physic, social and cosmic body. The circular and continuous mo tion of the waterspirit dances actualises in the dancing bodies themselv es this universe of cyclic regeneration, guaranteeing the well-being of the community that is linked to the celebrated spirit. In the dances of rejoicing the interactions generate mirror relations between men and wom en facing each other in dancing and between humans and spirits, who are present through the metaphorical linking between dancing and fishing. He nce, the sexuated encounter is evoked in its fecundating potential as a parcel of the larger fertilizing power of the spirits. At funerals, the vigil songs stress the continuity between the human world and the ancest ral one as a condition for communitarian well-being. The lamentation son g, allying adages that evoke the cosmic, social world and the sensitive and affective body, has the same integrative effect. The sung games, on the other hand, reproduce the rupture introduced by death through their anti-social content and their abusive way of associating and dissociatin g things, which is congruent with the action of the sorcerer. The dance of mourning upheaval, with its songs containing sexual insults, manifest s a same taste for transgression and thus restores the normative order i n a negative way. The cosmic universes that are regenerated in the studied practices, i.e. the universes of the waterspirits, the ancestors and the sorcerers, fin ally prove to be maternal ones because of their link with the matriclans and their characteristics of vitality, sensibility and liminality. The waterspirit universe that is more particularly aimed at in the female pr actices, refers more precisely to the intra-uterine space. The dynamics of the dances, in the first place of those that celebrate the waterspiri ts, are also typical of the mother-infant relation. They are ways of tra nsformational borderlinking in a multisensorial encounter that generates shared and diffused affects and that refuses a neat separation or fusio n. In the everyday life of women, the introduction of melodic features i n discourse testifies to the same possibility of connecting with a mater nal dimension. The song and dance practices by their rhythmic nature eve n more make this dimension directly sensible.

Publication year:2010

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