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Book

English

ID: <

20.500.12854/44507

>

Where these data come from
Dahomey 1930: Catholic mission and Vodoun worship: The work of Francis Aupiais (1877-1945), missionary and ethnograph

Abstract

Le Dahomey, in 1930, the Catholic mission, which has been present since 1861, is still confronted with the ubiquitous fervour of the worship Vodoun, in the earth from which it was born. Human sacrifices that had so appalled the first Europeans have disappeared, but those of chickens, cabris and cattle show the strong vitality of the Fetichist religion. His temples everywhere in the dahoméan landscape are perceived by missionaries as challenges and obstacles to the expansion of their faith. Most of them see the work of the Diable with effroi in this harsh worship, at the hijacking fetiches of sacrificial blood. One of them — Francis Aupiais — broke with this vision. He had learned local languages and had a long exchange with animist priests. His conviction and a so deep attachment to the worship Vodoun — far from signifying the Satan kingdom — showed a kind of divine predestination to Christianity. He therefore built his apostolat on the knowledge of the culture of the peoples of daundian, which he further developed by following the teaching of the ethnologists L. Lévy Bruhl and Mr Mauss to forge a singular ‘ethnography’ for his apologetic purposes. His position and his relationship with the dahomeans exposed him to contradictions. He paid the price in the form of disconfessions from his superiors. Thanks to A. Kahn, he made two films in Dahomey in 1930 (with F. Gadmer). Christian Dahomey and religious Dahomey, who can be considered as the first major French ethnographic film. This book is the result of a four-year research carried out in Paris, Lyon, Rome and Benin, leading to the support of a doctoral thesis in December 96 at the University of Perpignan. Part of this work allowed the restoration of the films and a trial of the first exhibitions of the dahomean arts organised by the father: Dahomey 1930 was held at the Albert Kahn Museum in Boulogne from November 96 to December 97. When the book was published, almost 70 years after they had been filmed, these images would return to Benin. The screening of these films to the Beninese descendants of their daundian actors will contribute to the recovery of historical memory in the very places where the colonial company had given rise to negation and amnesia.

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