Jennifer Jackson 
Political Oratory and Cartooning 
An Ethnography of Democratic Process in Madagascar

Political Oratory and Cartooning

An Ethnography of Democratic Processes in Madagascar

‘Insightful, detailed, and substantial, this book has much to say to students of language and followers of politics, not to mention those of us passionate about both and how they interact.’

Virginia R. Dominguez, Gutgsell Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

‘Why don’t more people write books like this? Jennifer Jackson’s brilliant insights on Malagasy cartooning, oratory, and political culture are not only a breath of fresh air for the anthropological study of political language, but a genuinely creative contribution to the study of global democracy.’

David Graeber, Goldsmiths, University of London

Called kabary in the island nation of Madagascar, political oratory jostles with political cartoon satire in competing for public attention and shaping opinion. The apparent simplicity of these modes of political commentary conceals nuanced subtleties, which inform the constantly evolving landscape of politics. Linguistic anthropologist Jennifer Jackson offers an original semiotic analysis of the formative social role played by these narratives in Madagascar’s polity. Though political orators and cartoonists rarely come face to face, their linguistic skirmishing both reflects and informs the political process, deploying rhetorical devices that have significant impacts on the vernacular political culture, its language and publics.

This new ethnography examines the dynamic interplay between past and new forms of oratory and satire and their effects in social, religious, class, and transnational contexts. Jackson assesses how far they mirror the vicissitudes of political agency and authority, especially under the leadership of President Marc Ravalomanana. The author shows how democracy must be understood as historically contingent, bound in a local and global accretion of social and economic relations, and always mediated by language.

Table of Content

List of Figures viii

Note on Orthography x

Acknowledgments xi

Preface xiv

1 Introduction: ‘Look Out! The Sleeping Locusts Awake’ 1

2 A History of Language and Politics in Madagascar 18

3 The Structural and Social Organization of Kabary Politika 65

4 The Structural and Social Organization of Kisarisary Politika (Political Cartooning) 92

5 Building Publics through Interanimating and Shifting Registers 117

6 ‘Stop Acting Like a Slave’: The Ideological and Aesthetic Dimensions of Syntax and Register in Political Kabary and Political Cartooning 157

7 ‘That’s What You Think’: Arguing Representations of Truth in Language 193

8 Conclusion: The Constraints and Possibilities of Democracy 214

Index 241

About the author

Jennifer Jackson is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1994, her research has focused on Madagascar and the US, spanning studies in semiotics, language ideologies and aesthetics, and verbal and visual artistic performance in political practice related to the formation of democracy, civil society, and statehood.