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- Title
Reputations at Stake: Positioning Self and Others in Dakar's Colonial Court, 1922-1942.
- Authors
Petrocelli, Rachel M.
- Abstract
During the interwar period in colonial Dakar, Senegal, city dwellers brought matters to the colonial court addressing not only liability but also individual reputations. Plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses all presented narratives about themselves and others that sought to establish reputations in a uniquely public form associated with a new form of authority. Opening claims in Dakar's Tribunal de Première Instance allowed parties to have statements entered into written record and to require others to respond to them. It provided litigants who saw the colonial court as able to affirm or deny individuals' credibility a venue for proposing character portrayals, and the fact that the court existed outside of social, religious, and kin networks made it a separate space for these assertions. An examination of witchcraft, family, and work cases that passed through it from the 1920s through the 1940s permits a view into the approaches some city dwellers took in handling matters of reputation.
- Subjects
DAKAR (Senegal); INTERWAR Period (1918-1939); HISTORY of courts; CITY dwellers; WITCHCRAFT
- Publication
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2020, Vol 53, Issue 3, p315
- ISSN
0361-7882
- Publication type
Article