I LIBERIA II
1. The insider's perspective of interpretation and analysis of the tales
As a native Gouro speaker myself,I have adopted an insider's perspective in the discussion pertaining to the Gouro lifestyle and their cultural
significances, and to the interpretation and analysis of the Gouro tales presented in this thesis. An insider research perspective can be defined as a perspective by which a researcher operates through her/his cultural knowledge and experiences. The insider's perspective can be significantly beneficial for the outcomes of a study as it gauges an authentic explanation of the cultural material being investigated. The insider's research
perspective is much needed today in the interpretation of the rich African Oral Traditions in general as these have mostly been too often
misinterpreted by 'outsiders',i.e. researchers who are foreign to the very culture they investigate. Indeed, as Jousse argues,
The true laboratory is an observation laboratory of the self, so- called because it is difficult to see oneself. That is why it is necessary to create what would best be called a 'laboratory of awareness.' While we will be able to step outside ourselves, yet, thanks to mimism,everything that is re-played through us, is within us. All science is awareness. All objectivity is subjectivity. (Jousse1997: 16)
Born and brought up in a Gouro rural community, I have developed over years the mental dispositions, "...the ways of feeling and evaluating the innumerable types of affective behaviour which are in the strictest sense of the word proper to each of the two milieux (oral and literate), and which have no real equivalent in the other." (Jousse 1997: 76). Since an early age I was part on many occasions of Storytelling performances: When youngsters gather in the homeyard in the evenings to tell each others stories of the vast Gouro repertoire, or when we happen to belong to a more experienced circle including elders, mothers, grand-mothers , and other attendants from the neighbourhood, or else when we happen to be part of the audience of a skilled taleteller. Thus my insights relevant to the Gouro tale telling tradition, and my relevant linguistic capacity present this study as the product of an insider. In respect of the inter-lingual insights,I am educated in the Western tradition in both French and English. I give an intellectual understanding of both the Gouro oral tradition and worldview, and the literate perspective.
One may still ask, in which wayan 'insider's' perspective can be resourceful.
Fundamentally, the study of oral traditions requires direct human interactions. Value
judgements and personal reactions may be part of the analyses and interpretations of oral materials from both the insider and the outsider's perspectives. But an 'insider's' view is imperative for the authenticity of the materials and their interpretations as opposed to an outsider who, to gain insight into a strange research material, will still have to base her/his value judqernent and personal reactions on the intervention of informants who are
insiders to the material being investigated . In other words, interpretations are of a distance when it is an outsider who is researching a strange culture of which s/he is not personally experienced. With regard to tale telling in particular, some researchers focus their interpretations on a specific setting among a particular traditional community by observing closely the features of the telling process including the gestures and movements. Their method very often includes detailed evaluation of the audience type, i.e. its age group, its composition, the number of participants, how they are dressed, and the scope of their interaction in that particular performance. Such a method mostly adopted by outsiders, such as Ruth Finnegan amongst the Limba of Sierra-Leone, has a shortcoming. In fact, this method is based on a random choice of an oral tradition where the researcher knows little of the intricacies of the language and culture. Further, the researcher takes note of the reactions of the audience without reacting her/himself, or else would observe the 'expressiveness of tone' without knowing its meanings. And because the focus of an outsider is mostly confined to the materials provided within the limits of his/her topic, his/her interpretations and analyses of the data may be limited. An insider is at home as to how to establish correlative significances of data with other features of his/her own culture. In tale telling for example,it can be given to any researcher to study the form, the structure, the characters, the compositional techniques, and style, but questions of functions, meanings, cultural significances can be very speculative and liable to misinterpretations by an outsider. Utilising the frame of personal ethnic experiences, an insider is an authority as to how a meaning can be specified from social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. In this sense, interpretations need not focus only on the specific collected data from a strange culture, but embrace the social dynamics tied up with the researcher's visceral or biological memory.
2. The collection of the tales under review
In the year 2001, I requested my family living in the Ivory Coast to collect some Gouro tales for the purpose of the present study, as I had no financial support to travel to the country for a field trip to do the collection myself. My family has thus collected X tales by initially recording the performances on audio-tapes from live informal performances in various family settings, and also during formal tale telling performances by the renown Gouro storyteller Towli bi Zoro of the tonhon (bedia/a) district. The tapes were then sent to me in South Africa to work with. As such, I was not directly involved in the tale collection per se. I thought of this alternative of collecting the material ofthe study to initiate a study of my culture. I strongly felt the urgent need to contribute to the documentation of Gouro oral tradition for the reason that a lot is fast dying of the Gouro cultural values today because the language has not yet been committed to a standardwritten form.
3. The selection of the ten tales under review
Once in possession of the tapes, I have listened to them many times,then I selected ten from the record for the purpose of the present study. The tales were all initially composed and told in Gouro and were very familiar. I limited the selection to ten tales for the purpose of this research study because the study adopts a descriptive,an interpretative and analytical, and a comparative approach of the Gouro tale telling. It would have been too prolific to extend the number beyond ten considering all these aspects of the study.
There are indeed thousands of tales in Gouro. If I retained these ten it is, not because they are the best Gouro tales. Their selection was inspired by the various themes that they develop and that account for the daily lifestyle of the Gouro people. They address social issues ranging from the secular to the sacred, and are all as important as each other. The themes they develop address for example jealousy, selfishness, disloyalty, greed, power
abuse, etc. They all teach the members values the Gouro consider to be vital to a harmonious social life. In addition to the thematic reason, the selection was also motivated by the Gouro tale types as discussed in chapter four. It is important to note that the ten tales under review may adopt various character types in the different Gouro regions. Nevertheless, the many versions of one tale do not corrupt the initial lessons underpinning their characters' actions consistent with the Gouro cultural belief in general.
Whether adopting Fox, Hare, Spider as trickster to develop a similar theme, the profile of the trickster in Gouro is primarily to promote clever deeds and the class of moral the deeds underlie.
4. Writing down the Gouro tales for the first time in Gouro: A