From Casamance to Turin. Lao Kouyate’s Modern Travelling Griot: The Creation of a Space for Discursive Mobility

The notion of "entextualization" proposed by R. Bauman and C. L. Briggs (1990) can be used, from a linguistic anthropology perspective, as a means of interpreting the processes of migratory circulation through the analysis of linguistic productions of migrant subjects. Drawing upon the musical-narrative performance of a young griot coming from the Casamance region and living in Italy, the article examines the discursive and metaperformative strategies of "decentering" and replacing an allegedly "griots discourse" in a different context he performs. The tension between a process of essential ization of "the griottisme tradition" on the one hand, and the subjectifica-tion of the migratory experience through performance on the other hand, highlights the importance of taking into account the ideological aspects of the linguistic productions, in analyzing and interpreting social dynamics.