History, Memory and Victimhood among the Kumpal Agäw in Northwest Ethiopia
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Date
2016-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
How the past is commemorated and memorialized in a negative way and defines
identity of a particular ethnic group as such is one of the least studied and explored
topics in social and cultural anthropology. This dissertation studies what appears to
be a mesmerizing but disempowering relationship between the past and the present
among the Kumpal-Agäw. It does so through qualitative methods of interviews,
observation, focused group discussion, case studies and written sources.
The Kumpal-Agäw today believe throughout history, and in some respect until
today, their ancestors and they themselves have successively lived under oppressive
rulers. The ancestors of today’s Kumpal used to pay tax in every kind and received
every form of punishment if they “disobeyed”. Once upon a time, under one of the
cruelest rulers, they were asked to give tax of beautiful young daughters. However,
they found the demand too harsh to comply with. They took consul among each
other to decide on the right course of action. Accordingly, they came up with an
elaborate plan on how to successfully defy the plan and get away with their action.
They decided to kill the tax collectors when they come to their village and to avoid
retaliation, they would go on exile leaving behind their home and villages. To make
sure that there would be no traitors from their midst who would compromise and
frustrate the plan, they entered solemn oath under pain of perpetual curse. At long
last the plan was successfully executed. They killed the tax collectors when they
arrived to the village to take away the girls as a form of tax, and then the people
evacuated the village at once to avoid retaliation. Unfortunately, as they made little
progress with the voyage, they found a river bursting to its bank because the exodus
was made during a rainy season. Worse, information was leaked and the enemy
soldiers were approaching them from behind. Some prayed to the river; and the
river was kind enough to split into two and allow them to pass safely. Others had
absconded into the bush. Consequently, the absconders were cursed for breaking
the oath they took to act in a collective determination. The curse is believed to be
perpetual/eternal passing from generation to generations. Today’s Kumpal believe
themselves to be descendants of the “cursed” absconders. Thus they believe they are
cursed too. They are cursed to be poor and not capable of getting rich. They are
cursed to remain “uneducated” and not capable of education. They are also cursed
not to have rulers from their own community and, thus, despite today’s ethnic
federalism, they still live under the domination of highlanders. The curse is a
comprehensive one which addresses almost all aspects of the Kumpal life. This story
of oppression and curse is interpreted into the everyday life and almost every
failure in life today is attributed to this curse. This memory is also elaborately
reproduced by oral narratives and annual commemorative ritual of Fifi To interpret this collective memory, the dissertation entered into the thrust of the
following theoretical questions. Is this Kumpal memory a myth or something which
has a historical reality? How does “history” make its way into collective memory?
Since the memory of the Kumpal is the memory of victimhood, how can a
community reproduce an identity that undermines itself? The dissertation uses the
dynamics of memory approach to explain the relationship between history and
memory. I argue that memory among the Kumpal is neither entirely historically
authentic nor merely a myth. Rather, it contains edifices of the past which evidence
for some sort of historical validity while it has been reinterpreted through cultural
system of cursing. Within this approach, I have attempted to contribute a “cultural
model” of memory reconstruction. Apart from debates on the relationship between
history and memory, the dissertation also entered into the heart of the other
theoretical question: how can a community reproduce negative identity, in the case
of the Kumpal, I call, an identity of victimhood? Here also, I hope to have made new
contribution to the existing discourse of victimhood identity. Social science theories
believe that memory is selective; only those “useful” ones are maintained while
negative ones are repressed or “forgotten”. I argue otherwise: a memory of
victimhood can even be actively reproduced when it is a moral duty to do so. Hence,
I formulated a “moral theory” of memory in particular and identity in general.
The people, the Kumpal-Agäw, are found in northwest Ethiopia, in particular to the
southwest of Lake T’ana. It is one of the splinters of Agäw, an old ethnic group which
was historically dominant in the entire northern half of Ethiopia, but has been
broken apart into today’s different dialectical minority groups. The Kumpal are not
represented in official census (latest one is in 2007), and I, assisted by local experts,
estimated them to constitute a sheer maximum number of 15,000 people. They are
least studied; there is no work at all on this group in social sciences and humanities,
let alone in anthropology. What I can mention are only a couple of works in the field
of linguistics
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