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An Intimate “Range of Elsewhere”: Sensuous Imaginaries of the Indian Ocean in Precolonial Swahili Poetry

An Intimate “Range of Elsewhere”: Sensuous Imaginaries of the Indian Ocean in Precolonial Swahili... The Swahili poetry of the master poet Fumo Liyongo, which dates between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, draws much of its imagery from the Indian Ocean, and in a particularly sensuous way: the poems paint baroque tableaux of Swahili material culture, evoking multiple elsewheres. They conjure the Indian Ocean through tastes, scents, and views of its rich interiors, which delineate a distinctively coastal world implicated to different degrees in the vaster oceanic region. Borrowing from aesthetic theories, the article explores the poem’s sensuality as a productive way of “thinking” about Indian Ocean relations, namely as a continual reemergence of cycles of sensation, questioning the clear-cut dichotomy of the “exterior” world and “intimate” notions of irreducible personhood as well as notions of local and cosmopolitan. Zeroing in on the betel quid, which has turned into a “mythological” cultural node of Swahili identity as well as a prominent rhetorical topos of Swahili love poetry, this article explores its imaginative productivity. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

An Intimate “Range of Elsewhere”: Sensuous Imaginaries of the Indian Ocean in Precolonial Swahili Poetry

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Copyright
Copyright © 2022 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-9594800
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Swahili poetry of the master poet Fumo Liyongo, which dates between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, draws much of its imagery from the Indian Ocean, and in a particularly sensuous way: the poems paint baroque tableaux of Swahili material culture, evoking multiple elsewheres. They conjure the Indian Ocean through tastes, scents, and views of its rich interiors, which delineate a distinctively coastal world implicated to different degrees in the vaster oceanic region. Borrowing from aesthetic theories, the article explores the poem’s sensuality as a productive way of “thinking” about Indian Ocean relations, namely as a continual reemergence of cycles of sensation, questioning the clear-cut dichotomy of the “exterior” world and “intimate” notions of irreducible personhood as well as notions of local and cosmopolitan. Zeroing in on the betel quid, which has turned into a “mythological” cultural node of Swahili identity as well as a prominent rhetorical topos of Swahili love poetry, this article explores its imaginative productivity.

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jun 1, 2022

References

  • Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean World
    Alpers, Edward
  • Wine and Milk
    Barthes, Roland
  • Literaturas Africanas e o Oceano Índico
    Brugioni, Elena Brugioni, Elena
  • The Swahili Art of Indian Taarab: A Poetics of Vocality and Ethnicity on the Kenyan Coast
    Eisenberg, Andrew
  • The Complicating Sea: The Indian Ocean as Method
    Hofmeyr, Isabel
  • The Aesthetic Constitution of Space: Mimetic Appropriation of Foreign ‘Styles’ and the Creation of Transoceanic Connections on the Swahili Coast
    Ivanov, Paola
  • Did Speakers of Proto Oceanic Chew Betel?
    Lichtenberk, Frantisek
  • Unmoored: On Oceanic Objects in Coastal Eastern Africa, circa 1700–1900
    Meier, Prita
  • Introduction: Maritime History and the Indian Ocean World
    Pearson, Michael Pearson, Michael
  • Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean to 1800: Reviewing Relations in Historical Perspective
    Pouwels, Randall
  • The Ends of the Indian Ocean: Notes on Boundaries and Affinities across Time
    Presthold, Jeremy Srinivas, Smriti Ng’weno, Bettina Jeychandran, Neelima
  • The Liyongo Conundrum: Re-examining the Historicity of Swahili’s National Poet-Hero
    Shariff, Ibrahim Noor
  • Swahili Aesthetics: Some Observations
    Topan, Farouk Arnold, Marion
  • Introduction: The Indian Ocean as Aesthetic Space
    Verne, Julia Verne, Markus
  • East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean: Swahili Ships, Swahili Mobilities ca. 1500–1800
    Vernet, Thomas Pearson, Michael
  • From across the Ocean: Considering Travelling Literary Figurations as Part of Swahili Intellectual History
    Vierke, Clarissa
  • Of Plants and Women: A Working Edition of Two Swahili Plant Poems
    Vierke, Clarissa
  • Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean World
    Alpers, Edward
  • Wine and Milk
    Barthes, Roland
  • Literaturas Africanas e o Oceano Índico
    Brugioni, Elena Brugioni, Elena
  • The Swahili Art of Indian Taarab: A Poetics of Vocality and Ethnicity on the Kenyan Coast
    Eisenberg, Andrew
  • The Complicating Sea: The Indian Ocean as Method
    Hofmeyr, Isabel
  • The Aesthetic Constitution of Space: Mimetic Appropriation of Foreign ‘Styles’ and the Creation of Transoceanic Connections on the Swahili Coast
    Ivanov, Paola
  • Did Speakers of Proto Oceanic Chew Betel?
    Lichtenberk, Frantisek
  • Unmoored: On Oceanic Objects in Coastal Eastern Africa, circa 1700–1900
    Meier, Prita
  • Introduction: Maritime History and the Indian Ocean World
    Pearson, Michael Pearson, Michael
  • Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean to 1800: Reviewing Relations in Historical Perspective
    Pouwels, Randall
  • The Ends of the Indian Ocean: Notes on Boundaries and Affinities across Time
    Presthold, Jeremy Srinivas, Smriti Ng’weno, Bettina Jeychandran, Neelima
  • The Liyongo Conundrum: Re-examining the Historicity of Swahili’s National Poet-Hero
    Shariff, Ibrahim Noor
  • Swahili Aesthetics: Some Observations
    Topan, Farouk Arnold, Marion
  • Introduction: The Indian Ocean as Aesthetic Space
    Verne, Julia Verne, Markus
  • East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean: Swahili Ships, Swahili Mobilities ca. 1500–1800
    Vernet, Thomas Pearson, Michael
  • From across the Ocean: Considering Travelling Literary Figurations as Part of Swahili Intellectual History
    Vierke, Clarissa
  • Of Plants and Women: A Working Edition of Two Swahili Plant Poems
    Vierke, Clarissa