“Shakespeare in the Bush”
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Wolran Kim
December 2012
The author is Laura Bohannan (1922-2002). She was a cultural anthropologist with a degree from Oxford University who, along with her husband, worked in West Africa (Nigeria) in the 1940s and 50s to understand the Tiv tribal culture. This article, based on her ethnographical research among the Tiv, is her best known article and shows the cultural and language barriers of awareness and cognitions.
The title, Shakespeare in the Bush, has two key words, Shakespeare and bush. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet and playwright who is known as one of the most popular and great writers in the English language of world history. Thus, his name suggests common knowledge, practical sense, and universality to my mind. Bush is the jungle, the hinterland, the up-country, or the back regions. I can imagine that no one would recognize Shakespeare if he went to the jungle. This title gives me a hint that he or his literary works would suffer in some place where no one knows about him. This title is also satirical and witty, associating the scene where Shakespeare gets flustered in a forest. This is a title of tact which makes us expect irony and senseless happenings.
Author Bohannan worked in West Africa (Nigeria) in the 1940s and 50s to understand the Tiv tribal culture. This article is based on her ethnographical research among the Tiv, and appeared in Natural History Magazine in 1966. Shakespeare was a world-class writer of the 16th century and one of the numerous masterpieces of classical figures.
Tiv, a primitive tribe of West Africa, lives on the shores of the Benue River in Nigeria, raising goats and chickens and growing millet sorghum and hemp. They have a paternal lineage and polygamy within the family system, and are composed of kin. The head of the lineage groups is the role of the chiefs, and the British colonial administration created the position of the highest chiefs in 1948.
They exchanged women between the two groups but this marriage custom was abolished in 1927. After that they started to pay for the bride when they marry. Some of them are Christians and small numbers have converted to Islam. But traditional religion is based on supernatural powers and still strongly influences them. They have meetings at night to eliminate the epidemic and dedicate symbolic or human sacrifices. They have a population of around two million people.
A contact between the Tiv tribe is separated by modern civilization and Shakespeare’s works. In the shape of storytelling, it shows conflicts of a timeless culture because social storytelling has the culture, rituals, ethnicities, customs, values and emotions of their community. This article was written half a century ago concerning the conflict between two totally different cultures. Our modern globalized societies and multicultural generations routinely undergo culture shocks all over the world.
This article has often been anthologized because it provides a good example of how different cultural beliefs and perceptions can affect the reception of what we often believe are universal works of art. This article is also introducing one society which is isolated from modern civilization. The author intended the readers to be the ethnic and cultural scholars, anthropologists, humanists, and their students who study history, literature, and culture.
The main argument of this article is culture shock which interprets and understands a literary work totally differently. All natives in jungles that we see in movies or documentary films are living in their own way around the world. They live with nature while maintaining the social and family systems that they had inherited from their ancestors. When they meet modern civilization, they only accept new culture based on their own values and object to new customs.
The author thought Hamlet only had one possible interpretation, but the Tiv tribe constantly raised the issue according to their traditions and did not hesitate in undermining Shakespeare’s masterpiece when they hear Hamlet. They keep asking questions and dramatizing: Why was Hamlet’s father no longer their chief? Who will hoe Hamlet’s farms while his mom has no husband? A chief must have many wives! Dead men cast no shadows.
Culture shock is happening everywhere these days such as in the New Version of Hamlet by Tiv. The boundaries of nations are gradually being destroyed with globalization, and the chaos and acceptance that comes from cultural differences are universal issues. Personally, I also have same culture shock and still experience it in my everyday life ever since I came to the United States from Korea. I still have a language barrier with my husband who immigrated when he was a child. Conflicts and struggles immediately arose if I did not accept the difference of the values and emotions between my husband and me. My husband looks Korean but his mind is American.
The tackling and shock of the Tiv tribe is reminiscent of people fighting with the shadows in Plato’s cave. They are similar with innocent children listening and questioning the stories of adults. It is also reminiscent of the absurd conversations and irrelevant replies between ignorant people and intellectuals. It even overlaps me, who fights with English in studying philosophy, humanities, computers, and even math. It is the same ambiguous feeling I feel when I translate my Korean poems to English. It is the moment of feeling that I cannot think out any word in English or Korean, and I reach a conclusion that I am an UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN philosophically. Stories, ideas, and actions always collide with obstacles when being translated or explained into another culture. They cannot be translated one hundred percent correctly, and require much more annotations than the original copy for readers.
Bohannan’s article is as funny as revues on the stage. Culture shock directed the infinite variety of circumstances from a ridiculous situation like this article to terrible shootings towards unspecified persons. The majority of culture shock stories cover tiger mom, poverty, aftermath of war, and deep sorrow or respect, like Joy Luck Club. I want to read The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang, which was recently published and covered the incident of the Virginia Tech Massacre by the killer Cho who is of Korean nationality. Author Kang said that this book has a traditional detective novel structure and uses satirical techniques. Like this, culture shock has accumulated as oppression and anger engaging with prejudice and discrimination toward many immigrants. Comedy and tragedy coexists where two or more cultures meet.
==========================
Wolran Kim
December 2012
The author is Laura Bohannan (1922-2002). She was a cultural anthropologist with a degree from Oxford University who, along with her husband, worked in West Africa (Nigeria) in the 1940s and 50s to understand the Tiv tribal culture. This article, based on her ethnographical research among the Tiv, is her best known article and shows the cultural and language barriers of awareness and cognitions.
The title, Shakespeare in the Bush, has two key words, Shakespeare and bush. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet and playwright who is known as one of the most popular and great writers in the English language of world history. Thus, his name suggests common knowledge, practical sense, and universality to my mind. Bush is the jungle, the hinterland, the up-country, or the back regions. I can imagine that no one would recognize Shakespeare if he went to the jungle. This title gives me a hint that he or his literary works would suffer in some place where no one knows about him. This title is also satirical and witty, associating the scene where Shakespeare gets flustered in a forest. This is a title of tact which makes us expect irony and senseless happenings.
Author Bohannan worked in West Africa (Nigeria) in the 1940s and 50s to understand the Tiv tribal culture. This article is based on her ethnographical research among the Tiv, and appeared in Natural History Magazine in 1966. Shakespeare was a world-class writer of the 16th century and one of the numerous masterpieces of classical figures.
Tiv, a primitive tribe of West Africa, lives on the shores of the Benue River in Nigeria, raising goats and chickens and growing millet sorghum and hemp. They have a paternal lineage and polygamy within the family system, and are composed of kin. The head of the lineage groups is the role of the chiefs, and the British colonial administration created the position of the highest chiefs in 1948.
They exchanged women between the two groups but this marriage custom was abolished in 1927. After that they started to pay for the bride when they marry. Some of them are Christians and small numbers have converted to Islam. But traditional religion is based on supernatural powers and still strongly influences them. They have meetings at night to eliminate the epidemic and dedicate symbolic or human sacrifices. They have a population of around two million people.
A contact between the Tiv tribe is separated by modern civilization and Shakespeare’s works. In the shape of storytelling, it shows conflicts of a timeless culture because social storytelling has the culture, rituals, ethnicities, customs, values and emotions of their community. This article was written half a century ago concerning the conflict between two totally different cultures. Our modern globalized societies and multicultural generations routinely undergo culture shocks all over the world.
This article has often been anthologized because it provides a good example of how different cultural beliefs and perceptions can affect the reception of what we often believe are universal works of art. This article is also introducing one society which is isolated from modern civilization. The author intended the readers to be the ethnic and cultural scholars, anthropologists, humanists, and their students who study history, literature, and culture.
The main argument of this article is culture shock which interprets and understands a literary work totally differently. All natives in jungles that we see in movies or documentary films are living in their own way around the world. They live with nature while maintaining the social and family systems that they had inherited from their ancestors. When they meet modern civilization, they only accept new culture based on their own values and object to new customs.
The author thought Hamlet only had one possible interpretation, but the Tiv tribe constantly raised the issue according to their traditions and did not hesitate in undermining Shakespeare’s masterpiece when they hear Hamlet. They keep asking questions and dramatizing: Why was Hamlet’s father no longer their chief? Who will hoe Hamlet’s farms while his mom has no husband? A chief must have many wives! Dead men cast no shadows.
Culture shock is happening everywhere these days such as in the New Version of Hamlet by Tiv. The boundaries of nations are gradually being destroyed with globalization, and the chaos and acceptance that comes from cultural differences are universal issues. Personally, I also have same culture shock and still experience it in my everyday life ever since I came to the United States from Korea. I still have a language barrier with my husband who immigrated when he was a child. Conflicts and struggles immediately arose if I did not accept the difference of the values and emotions between my husband and me. My husband looks Korean but his mind is American.
The tackling and shock of the Tiv tribe is reminiscent of people fighting with the shadows in Plato’s cave. They are similar with innocent children listening and questioning the stories of adults. It is also reminiscent of the absurd conversations and irrelevant replies between ignorant people and intellectuals. It even overlaps me, who fights with English in studying philosophy, humanities, computers, and even math. It is the same ambiguous feeling I feel when I translate my Korean poems to English. It is the moment of feeling that I cannot think out any word in English or Korean, and I reach a conclusion that I am an UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN philosophically. Stories, ideas, and actions always collide with obstacles when being translated or explained into another culture. They cannot be translated one hundred percent correctly, and require much more annotations than the original copy for readers.
Bohannan’s article is as funny as revues on the stage. Culture shock directed the infinite variety of circumstances from a ridiculous situation like this article to terrible shootings towards unspecified persons. The majority of culture shock stories cover tiger mom, poverty, aftermath of war, and deep sorrow or respect, like Joy Luck Club. I want to read The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang, which was recently published and covered the incident of the Virginia Tech Massacre by the killer Cho who is of Korean nationality. Author Kang said that this book has a traditional detective novel structure and uses satirical techniques. Like this, culture shock has accumulated as oppression and anger engaging with prejudice and discrimination toward many immigrants. Comedy and tragedy coexists where two or more cultures meet.