Originary syncretism and the construction of Swahili identity, 1890--1964: An experiment in history and theory

Since the eighth century, the East African coast was part of the Indian Ocean system of economic and cultural exchange. The identity of the coastal people was, and still is, comprised of an ambiguous and shifting mix of Arab and African, ex-slave and freeborn. Controversy has surrounded the study of Swahili identity at least since European colonization in the nineteenth century and continues today. This study proposes a problematic for a new approach to examination of Swahili identity based on French anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle's concept of "originary syncretism." Against earlier studies that assumed essential identities---e.g., African or Arab---this approach proposes a process of cultural mixing through ongoing "conflictual and peaceful practices" in which identity is negotiated. Islam, slavery, gender and colonialism each serve as fields within that problematic in which to experiment with postmodern and postcolonial theories of identity construction in late nineteenth and twentieth-century East Africa, especially present-day Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar.