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Abstract:: Text of the first 2003 Evans Pritchard lecture. Introducing Diko Madeleine in Somie village, Cameroon and anthropological life writing.

This book is about Diko Madeleine, a senior Mambila woman. I use her life history to explore aspects of the history of her village in the twentieth century. First I consider some of the theoretical background to this project and discuss life-writing, biography and autobiography. In this Chapter I introduce Diko and how I came to know her. In Chapter 2 I discuss some of the theoretical background to this project and I examine some of the precedents for this exercise and the theoretical conundrums that they pose. I also consider three contrasting approaches to writing life stories: those of the anthropologist as ghostwriter, as hagiographer and as biographer.

The main concern of this book is how to understand the ways in which Mambila people talk about themselves and the past. Part of the motivation for this project came from Diko herself. In one of our conversations, about rituals then being performed either incorrectly or not at all, she said:

They should make a book of it; and write it down.

What we are saying should be written down, then tomorrow when we're all dead they'll say 'Oh Koko said this, Koko said this, Koko said this' (Koko is Diko’s honorific nickname).

Files:: diko ch1 ora.pdf

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Notes:: In Autumn 2003 Professor David Zeitlyn (University of Oxford) presented the 2003/2004 Evans-Pritchard Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford. The theme was 'The life of Diko Madeleine and the History of Somi, Cameroon, in the Twentieth Century'. This is the text of the first of those lectures

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