Un fil d’Ariane dans le Dendi

Abstract

In 2012, Lucie Smolderen started a study of the textile industry techniques in the Dendi region (North Benin). However, all activity in this domain had been abandoned forty years before. Direct observation of the techniques in their original context was thus impossible and she was obliged to resort to systematic interviews with ex-artisans in order to conduct her study. During these interviews, ex-spinners often proposed demonstrations of their former activity. Considering these technical reconstitutions – and the concrete circumstances in which the interviews themselves took place – led to a rethinking of her fieldwork methodology. The contextualized approach, as it is developed here, changes the epistemological status of the reconstitutions themselves. They are not mere demonstrations of the technical act, but become privileged channels of access to a global social environment that has disappeared. This article proposes to follow the development of these ideas, which like Ariane’s thread guide us through the labyrinth of the fieldwork. Illustrator Romain Minguet’s artwork contributes to a more global and immersive understanding of the complexity of the relationships between the observer and the observed, the present and the past, the technical and the social aspects of this type of study.

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