hybrid heritage - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

hybrid heritage

Shining Lights:
Self-fashioning in the Lantern Festival

of Saint Louis, Senegal

Ferdinand de Jong

Photography: Judith Quax

Jewelry store La Signare on the tourist track in Saint Louis.

38 | african arts WINTER 2009

The Senegalese city of Saint Louis celebrates its

lantern festival or Fanal, as it is usually called,
on an annual basis. During several days of the
Christmas holiday, cultural performances of
various kinds are staged at the central square of
this city. The climax of these celebrations con-
sists of a procession of large, float-like lanterns, which ends at the
central square, where the lanterns are presented to their patrons
and public, seated at the grandstand erected for that purpose.
Allá, patrons and public admire the lanterns that represent
colonial buildings of Senegal. Praise singers publicly aggrandize
their patrons’ honor.

The Fanal is a tradition that has witnessed various histori-
cal transformations, and the contemporary festival is in fact a
revival intended to enhance the touristic potential of the city
of Saint Louis. In December 2008, I attended the tenth edition
of this festival, accompanied by the photographer Judith Quax.
Her photographs illuminate my exploration of the historical
continuities and discontinuities in the contemporary festival.
As this festival remembers historical modes of self-fashioning
and actualizes these historical modes in the postcolonial pres-
ent, I suggest that the festival is best understood as a palimpsest
heritage. Aquí, the notion of palimpsest refers to the parchment
scroll used by the ancient Egyptians for the purpose of account-
En g. Once the parchment scroll was filled with writings, fue
washed, to be used again for future writings. Inevitably, traces
of previous writing would remain visible in the scroll, saturating
it with sediments of writing. I will use this concept to suggest
that the performance of the Fanal—indeed, any performance of
any tradition—is best understood as a palimpsest of different
temporalities that are often difficult to read and disentangle in
the present (Huyssen 2003, Basu 2007). This raises the question
of how such past and present writings relate to each other. Do
past writings provide legitimacy to present writings, as one may
be inclined to think? Instead of assuming that traditions simply
continue the past in the present (Connerton 1989) or dress up
the present as past (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), I argue that
palimpsests of postcolonial modernity actually accumulate pasts
in order to re-member the present (cf. Fabian 1996). En otra
palabras, the revived tradition of the Fanal is not simply a continu-
ation of the past but an intervention in the present.

As an intervention in the present, the contemporary festival

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2 Display case in the
jewelry store La Signare in
Saint Louis.

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of the Fanal reminds one of the history of festivals in French
West Africa of which Saint Louis was the political and admin-
istrative center. At the end of the nineteenth century, Francia
initiated a wide array of commemorations modelled after July
14 celebrations, meant to propagate Revolutionary ideals. Estos
commemorations were subsequently introduced in the colony
in order to establish imperial hegemony (Coquery-Vidrovitch
1999). Although the lantern festival of Saint Louis has its roots in
the transatlantic slave trade, it was appropriated by the colonial
regime to contribute to the construction of colonial hegemony.
Hoy, the Fanal remembers the colonial past with nostalgia. Nosotros
should therefore distinguish the Fanal from those Senegalese
spectacles in which colonialism is remembered with resentment
(De Jong 2008, próximo). But like these other spectacles,
the Fanal should be understood as a festival that remembers the
relationship to the former metropolis. In the postcolony, heri-
tage is a technology that enables the formerly colonized to come
to terms with colonialism (De Jong and Rowlands 2007, 2008).

MÉTIS REVIVAL
The revival of the Fanal is part of a burgeoning interest in
Senegal’s heritage of métissage and in particular of its signares, a
brand of métis women known for their wealth and extravagance
who dominated the social and economic life in the European
trade posts of the eighteenth century. As a result of the presence
of European traders, a class of métis emerged in Gorée and Saint
luis (Arroyos 1976, 2003, jones 2005). In the eighteenth century,
métis women acquired fabulous wealth through their temporary
liaisons, referred to as mariages à la mode du pays, with French
Company officials. As their title already conveys, signares (a word
derived from the Portuguese senhora) acquired high social status
in the strictly hierarchical social order of the contact zones consti-

tuted by these trade posts. Although some signares were of slave
origen, their status required that they be always accompanied by
domestic slaves. The politics of distinction revolved around prop-
erty and the ownership of one’s own and other persons’ bodies.
The historical emergence of the signares was indeed part of the
making of a transatlantic slave trade economy (Searing 1993).

The signares constitute part of Senegal’s slave-trade heritage and
the process of métissage that resulted from it. Métissage captivated
the interest of Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor,
an interest that he expressed in his poetry on the signares. Pero el
current interest in Senegal’s métis and their heritage seems less
inspired by Senghor’s poetry than by the vested interests of their
descendants to obtain recognition for their history. Such a long-
ing for recognition can be traced in the numerous recent publi-
cations on the métis heritage, which are mostly of a celebratory
nature.1 These attempts to revalue the métis heritage are not lim-
ited to private initiatives, but include state interventions. The state
has adopted policies to restore the architecture of Gorée and Saint
luis, which are both classified UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
What all these initiatives have in common is what Senegalese call
a valorization of this heritage. The tourist industry objectifies the
métis heritage in hotel names, menus, guided tours, and souve-
nirs, resulting in a particular styling of Gorée and Saint Louis.
Por ejemplo, a jeweller situated on the tourist track of Saint Louis
named his jewelry store La Signare, since signares are remembered
for their elegance and for the jewelry with which they decorated
ellos mismos (Figs. 1–2). Thus jewellers promote their sales through
association with this heritage. The Fanal too, can be seen as an
example of this heritage fever.

Marie Madeleine Diallo is the organizer of the current incar-
nation of the festival. She considers herself a signare and the
Fanal her legacy (Higo. 14). The Fanal is a tradition that she iden-

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(this page)
3 Dancer at tanebeer.

(opposite)
4 Skeleton of a fanal in the
workshop of Aliou Dieye, san-
thiaba. Note the plastic sheet
in the background, which was
hung there for the express
purpose of preventing curious
peeping by youth.

5 An apprentice sticks paper
to the skeleton of the fanal
of the workshop of Boubacar
Sarr, Pikine.

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tifies with and that she wants “to give a future.” She would like
to preserve the Fanal as the “intangible heritage” of Saint Louis.
But Marie Madeleine Diallo has made her career as a profes-
sional actress on national television and, being an actress, she
has turned the Fanal into a theatrical production. The initiator
and organizer of the Fanal considers the festival a tradition that
she is part of and that she can transform at will. In this article I
explore the extent to which the festival is indeed a reinvention
of tradition and to which it continues the past or reinvents the
present. I hope to demonstrate that heritage is a technology for
the inscription of different temporalities in the present, infusing
that present with the past.

TRANSATLANTIC HERITAGE
Although lantern festivals can be found all over the world, sev-
eral authors have attempted to establish a single origin for those
festivals found along the West African coast. While some argue
that the Fanal of Saint Louis has a European origin, others pre-
fer to situate its origin in the Caribbean. For Fatou Niang Siga
(1990:113), the lanterns were made in imitation of the beacons used
to orient ships at sea. For Dieng (1991:38–39), it seems more likely
that the fanal was made in imitation of the stern light of a ship.
En efecto, the Wolof term fanal is derived from the French fanal
(pl. fanaux), which means ‘lantern, ship’s lantern, or signal lamp’
(Gamble 1989:1). While these authors speak specifically about lan-
terns used in Senegal, lantern festivals seem to constitute a genre
of urban festival that was not limited to the French colony of Sen-
egal, and lantern festivals were in fact also performed in British
trade posts in West Africa. Ironically, while Nunley (1985:45) attri-
butes the origin of lantern-making in Freetown to Banjul in the
Gambia, Oram (2002:79–80) suggests that the lantern festival of

Banjul was introduced by Muslim Yorubas from Freetown. Este
suggests that the lantern makers attribute their festivals an alloch-
thonous origin. Bettelheim (1985) suggests that this “elsewhere”
might in actual fact have been the Caribbean.

According to Bettelheim, Christmas was a time when slaves
were permitted the leisure to entertain themselves and their
masters, and the lantern festival may have been one of the lei-
sure activities that occurred around Christmas time in the slave
societies of the Caribbean (ibid., pag. 50). Lantern festivals hap-
pened in Haiti, Jamaica, and Suriname. In these various contexts
the lantern festival has been associated with both Christian and
Muslim holidays (ibid., páginas. 52, 96). This suggests that the lantern
festival cannot be exclusively associated with a single geographic
origen, religious denomination, or trade network, nor even with
a particular social class. Bettelheim suggests that slaves and
freed slaves transmitted the lantern festival across the Atlantic.
Because the lanterns were usually made by slaves and patronized
by their masters, the festival was part a transatlantic culture that
emerged in the context of the slave trade (cf. Gilroy 1993). El
lanterns may indeed have been modelled on maritime technol-
ogy used in the transatlantic trade, but they obviously acquired a
new functionality in the Fanal of Saint Louis.

THE ORGANIZATION
Hoy, the Fanal is organized by a production company, Jal-
lore Productions, presided over by Marie Madeleine Diallo. A
great deal of the work in producing a successful Fanal consists
of fund-raising. One of the company’s assistants spends a lot
of time calling bureaucrats and visiting ministries in the hope
of receiving substantial funding for the Fanal. Although Jal-
lore Productions targets private companies as well, most of its

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funding is actually obtained from ministries and regional and
municipal administrative bodies. Another substantial part of the
funding is obtained from the so-called parrains, the patrons in
whose honor the fanaux or lanterns are made.

Months before the actual performance, the production com-
pany approaches craftsmen for the execution of the lanterns and
the songs to be sung in honor of the patrons. En 2008, three car-
penters were selected to fabricate a lantern. Each of these carpen-
ters heads a workshop in which he acts as master to a number of
younger apprentices. For the frame of the lantern they use tim-
ber of Senegalese origin (Higo. 4). Obviamente, the construction
of the frame is informed by a vision of what the lantern should
eventually look like. Each lantern is meant to represent a partic-
ular building, and in general, the craftsmen attempt to produce a
faithful reproduction, at least as far as the shape of the building
is concerned. In the workshops, photographs of the building that
serves as source of inspiration are tacked to the wall to remind
the craftsmen of the original. Some lanterns do not depart from
rectangular shapes, but others have very complicated shapes and
are assembled from many parts. A week or so is spent on the
construction of the frame, while another week is spent on cover-
ing the skeleton with a mixture of paper sheets bought for that
purpose in Dakar. In order to obtain the proper decorative pat-
terns on the surface of the fanal, apprentices spend much time
punching the paper sheets with hammer and chisel. The paper
sheets are then attached to the wooden frame with glue made of
a mixture of millet and water (Higo. 5). The lantern is finished off
with decorations made of colored crepe paper. Finalmente, the fanal
is mounted on a wheeled frame. This frame will also support
the generator that produces the electricity for the bulbs that will
light up the lantern from within. During the last few days prior
to the festival, time pressure mounts and some workshops must
work at night in order to finish in time.

The production company also selects groups of women in
various neighborhoods of Saint Louis to sing songs in honor of
the patrons when the lanterns are presented to them. To com-
pose the song the company obtains the patron’s curriculum vitae
and consults the praise singers of his or her family. Juntos, el

patron’s genealogy and curriculum vitae are used by the women
to compose a song that they rehearse until all members of the
choir know it by heart. For several hours a day, several days a
week, the women gather at one of their homes and rehearse
the songs. Each of the women’s groups prepares a song for the
patron allocated to them by the production company, which also
allocates carpenters’ workshops to the patrons. De este modo, the rela-
tionships between the fanal craftsmen, the women praise-sing-
ers, and their patrons are not based on long-standing patterns of
patronage but are established for the occasion, made possible by
the commodification of this relationship by the production com-
compañía. While this part of the organization is not determined by
established forms of patronage—although it definitely remem-
bers patronage as form—other aspects of it are steeped in tra-
ditional concepts of craft production. Since craftsmen fear the
competition of others, both the carpenters and the singers solicit
the help of marabouts, learned Muslim men, in order to protect
themselves and their works and to ward off evil.

THE PROGRAM
El 2008 edition of the Fanal was the tenth anniversary of the
revived festival and for that reason a very ambitious program
had been drawn up. The original program consisted of a couple
of core events staged at a central venue and a number of auxil-
iary events staged in the various neighborhoods of Saint Louis.
In the end, the available funding did not permit the organiza-
tion of the auxiliary events and the program was reduced to the
core events only. On the 28th of December, a fashion show was
staged; on the 29th of December, a traditional dance known as
tanebeer was performed; finalmente, on the 30th of December the
Grand Fanal was staged. Por eso, three different events were held
at the central square of Saint Louis over three successive eve-
nings. Notwithstanding the endless delays and long waits typical
for festivals in this part of the world, in the end an astonishing
program was delivered.

Although the majority of people involved in the Fanal were
aficionados, for the 2008 edition the production company had
sought and obtained the help of some professional artists. El

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6 Trunks containing
Oumou Sy’s dresses in the
governor’s palace. Ella
brought several trunks of
historical costumes, incluido
those for the signares. On
the wall hangs a picture of
Governor Faidherbe.

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producer Jean Pierre Leurs was invited to devise a choreography
(mise-en-scène) for the Grand Fanal. As a long-time producer
of plays for the Daniel Sorano theater in Dakar and collabora-
tor with the Opéra du Sahel, the first-ever African opera, Leurs
is one of the most sought-after cultural producers in Senegal.
He developed a son et lumière of various tableaux historiques in
which the lanterns were to make their appearance. Each scene
was to recount a particular historical event, to be exemplified
by a particular fanal which was to be presented to a particular
patron. Por eso, Leurs was also responsible for the spatial and
temporal organization of the performance: how the lanterns, el
choirs, and the historical actors should move across the space of
the city and in which order they should make their appearance
at the Place Faidherbe (Higo. 9).

At the Place Faidherbe of Saint Louis, which is the heart of
the former colonial city, sits the Governor’s Palace established
under Governor Faidherbe. For the first time since the Fanal’s
revitalization, the governor of Saint Louis had allowed the pro-
duction company to use several rooms in the Governor’s Palace
as dressing rooms. Much of the preparation for the festival went
on in this colonial building, which provided an appropriate set-
ting for the historical scenes of the Grand Fanal. In this building,
the models were dressed by fashion designer Oumou Sy, enterrar-
nationally renowned for her designs inspired by African textile
traditions and made out of African materials. She too, offered
her services to the organizers of the festival. Oumou Sy brought
many trunks containing historical dresses for the scenes to be
enacted during the Grand Fanal (Higo. 6),2 and led a fashion show
of clothes designed by herself and some young, up-and-coming
Saint Louis designers (Higo. 7). The fashion show was held on a
red tapestry laid out in front of the Governor’s Palace, turning
the Place Faidherbe into a catwalk (Higo. 8).

While the organization of the Fanal required much coordina-
ción, the successful performance of the festival also demanded
improvisation on the part of the participants, particularly the
drummers and dancers involved in the dance organized on
the second night of the festival (Higo. 3). The creativity of dance
depends on the sedimented, embodied knowledge of particular
rhythms and a multisensory coordination between drummers
and dancers that makes possible the drummer’s rhythmic impro-
visations accompanied by the improvisation of the solo dancer.
During the tanebeer, which was attended by a good number of
tourists, some hired women dancers excelled in demonstrat-
ing some of the most provocative and obscene postures I ever
witnessed in Senegal. While the dance allowed for the shame-
less exhibition of certain body parts—as typical of a corporality
historically associated with slaves—the girls who impersonated
the historical signares were to embody an honorable corporality
associated with civilization and chastity (Figs. 10–11).

TABLEAUX HISTORIQUES
The Grand Fanal consisted of a son et lumière, a spectacle of
sound and light during which the lanterns were presented to
their patrons. If the dance was meant to entertain a popular
audience, the Fanal itself was mostly directed towards a very
exclusive set of invited guests. For these guests a grandstand had
been erected, accessible only to tourists and those members of
the Saint Louis elite in possession of a formal invitation. El
guests of honor comprised the patrons of the fanaux and their
familias. Invariably, the patrons of the fanaux are politicians and
administrators of regional or national renown. Most of them are
hombres, but several women once sponsored a lantern and in 2008
two out of three patrons were women. Patrons should be wealthy
enough to patronize a lantern, and rare are the writers, artists,

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or musicians that have been invited to act as patrons, a pesar de
Marie Madeleine Diallo has tried to include them whenever pos-
sible. En el 2008 edition of the Fanal, fashion designer Oumou
Sy was one of the patrons.

The son et lumière spectacle consisted of three historical scenes
in which the lanterns were presented to their patrons. The mod-
els selected to act the historical roles were recruited amongst
young women aspiring to a career in fashion (Higo. 11). An attempt
was made to select tall girls of fair skin color, in keeping with
the historical image of mixed-race signares. If there were plenty
of young, beautiful women in Saint Louis to choose from, este
was not the case for the whites needed to impersonate the his-
torical Frenchmen. Since access to the backstage of the organiza-
tion was critical to my research, I volunteered to become Baron
roger, one of the governors of colonial Senegal. I should admit,
aunque, that Baron Roger was not my preferred role. Initially I
volunteered for the prestigious role of Governor Faidherbe. Este
governor conquered most of Senegal and is for that reason con-
sidered the “founder” of modern Senegal (robinson 2000:43). I
was rejected for this role for a number of reasons, one of them
being that Faidherbe was not bald. Además, I was not consid-
ered sufficiently mature to impersonate Faidherbe. Asombrosamente,
an American student about twenty years younger than I am was
given the role instead (Higo. 12). This American student had very
little sense of Senegalese history. He had no clue as to who Faid-
herbe was and kept joking that he was De Gaulle.

Claramente, the models for the historical scenes were selected
on the basis of outward appearance: edad, height, color, and sex.
These models were then disciplined so as to embody the his-
torical personages that they were to impersonate. While the sol-
diers were not instructed in their historical roles, the signares
were told that the historical signares were true man-eaters (“des
véritables mangeuses d’hommes”). They were instructed in how

to walk on stage and what posture to assume (Higo. 11). Pero el
most important instruction given to them was: “Remember, No
chewing gum on stage!” While whites were given roles of per-
sonages of historical significance, the Senegalese volunteers were
turned into either anonymous soldiers or nameless signares. No
that they seemed much concerned with their minor roles; todo
the soldiers jested that they were Faidherbe. At no point did the
historical mimesis by the actors—that is, their attempt to look
like historical personages—become subject of serious histori-
cal debate. We pretended to impersonate historical personages
in blissful ignorance of history “as it really happened.” This sug-
gested to me not so much a glaring lack of historical memory
but the irony of historical mimicry at play. History was repeated
with a difference (cf. Bhabha 1994).

A Belgian couple with two children, on holiday in Senegal, had
been recruited for historical roles: The husband was to be a ser-
geant and the wife was to play Mother Anne-Marie Javouhey, el
founder in 1807 of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, the Catho-
lic order that set up the first girl school in Saint Louis. Unfortu-
nately, while the Senegalese took their roles seriously enough,
some of the European participants were less dedicated to their
historical roles. Ten whites had been recruited but because the
performance was seriously delayed, the Belgian tourists and two
American Peace Corps workers—or six out of ten whites—had
left and deserted their roles before the Grand Fanal even started.3
This clearly demonstrates—in the most banal way—that the
white Westerners were less committed to historical mimicry
than the Senegalese youth whose history was thus represented.
Mimicry, even as an opportunity to mock history, obviously still
requires a commitment.

While the actors and actresses got dressed in the governor’s pal-
ace, elsewhere in Saint Louis the lanterns were brought out of the
workshops to be admired by the public (Higo. 16). After the carpen-

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7 Oumou Sy dresses one
of her models for her fashion
espectáculo.

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8 One of the models on the catwalk at the Place
Faidherbe.

9 Director Jean Pierre Leurs indicates the trajec-
tories of the various fanaux through the streets of
Saint Louis.

ters and other members of the workshop were photographed with
their fanal (Higo. 18), young men pushed the lantern from the work-
shop to the city square. Obviamente, everyone involved was under
stress, and tensions built up over weeks sometimes escalated into
heated discussions. When all the lanterns had finally arrived at
their indicated positions and the invited guests had taken their
seats, the grand finale was to start.

The Grand Fanal consisted of a series of tableaux historiques
during each of which a lantern was pushed across the Place Faid-
herbe, preceded by the historical personage who had erected
the building reproduced by the fanal. The lantern was followed
by the drummers and the women’s choir. When the lantern had
been shown to the public, a soundtrack was played that spoke to
the accomplishments of the historical personage. After this, el
women’s choir sang a song of honor to the fanal’s patron. Three
different lanterns were thus shown in three different historical
scenes and their three different patrons praised in song. The last
fanal to be brought out represented the fortress of Podor (Higo.
13). This fanal was preceded by Faidherbe, who had ordered the
fortress to be built. Faidherbe, who was meant to stride across
the square named after him, was actually very nervous and par-
alyzed with fear. While he was to process arm-in-arm with his
signare, he lost hold of her and each of them walked across the
square in different directions. Only after an intervention by an
assistant were they united again.

After Faidherbe’s contribution to the construction of contem-
porary Senegal was thus commemorated, the fanal of the for-
tress of Podor was presented to Oumou Sy and the women sang
her praises (Figs. 15, 19). All the international competitions and
prizes she had won were named one by one, in strict chronologi-
cal order. On top of that, her praises were sung by a professional

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female singer. This was the climax of the Grand Fanal. Después
all went home, except Faidherbe, who had his finest hour when
many Senegalese youth came to take a picture of the historical
founder of their country impersonated by the American student.
Oumou Sy and her friends retired to the governor’s palace while
praise singers acclaimed her, begging for money. Marie Made-
leine Diallo oversaw it all with pride (Higo. 14). After their presen-
tation at the Place Faidherbe, the lanterns were returned to the
workshops (Higo. 20).

Este, I hope, demonstrates how the Fanal was organized and
how formal relations of production made its production pos-
sible. It is clear that almost everyone involved makes a bit of
money out of it. Todavía, although it might look as if the Fanal is thus
entirely formalized and commodified, it is certainly not bereft
de significado. De hecho, the contemporary Fanal derives its signifi-
cance from sediments of meaning that have accumulated over
centuries and are still visible in today’s palimpsest performance.
In spite of the production company’s rhetoric that the festival is
organized to enhance the tourist potential of Saint Louis, I sug-
gest that the Fanal is primarily performed today—as it always
was—to celebrate the status of its patrons. En otras palabras, mientras
the reinvention of the Fanal as a tourist attraction suggests that
this tradition was successfully objectified, the palimpsest per-
formance actually contains memories that resist their erasure
through engineering.

HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Throughout its history the Fanal has gone through a series of
profound historical transformations, which I will describe here
to demonstrate that the Fanal has thereby accumulated sedi-
ments of meanings. In eighteenth-century Saint Louis, lanterns
were made to illuminate the signares when they walked to mid-

10 One of the models being dressed as a signare
at the governor’s palace. Note the contrast in bodily
posture of this signare with the posture of the
dancer in Fig. 3.

11 The models follow instructions in how to per-
form as signares. Their dresses are considered typi-
cal for the historical signares. Note the restraint of
posture in contrast to that of the dancer in Fig. 3.

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12 The American student dressed as
Governor Faidherbe.

13 The fanal of the fortress of Podor
accompanied by women singing the praises
of Oumou Sy. The women are dressed as
Fulani women, thus associating themselves
with Oumou Sy’s region of birth.

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night mass. Christmas was an occasion for signares to show off
their beauty, vestido, and jewelry.4 The signares and their dames
de compagnie paraded through the city’s streets in a proces-
sion of accumulated wealth and an ostentatious display of for-
eign consumer goods. While they walked to Mass, the signares
were accompanied by slaves whose very presence constituted a
conspicuous sign of their mistresses’ accumulated wealth.5 The
lanterns that the slaves carried illuminated the mistress and her
splendid dress. Thus Christmas offered the signares an oppor-
tunity to express their social mobility and affirm their status by
drawing attention to their wealth, rather than their birth. Illumi-
nating their extravaganza, the shadows of the fanaux must have
obscured parts of their genealogies.

In the nineteenth century, much of this changed as a result of
a male appropriation of the Fanal. While the signares succeeded
in establishing stable métis families and increasingly became
respectable bourgeois housewives, their métis husbands set them-
selves up as independent traders. Their social status depended on
their mixed-race heritage and their political rights. As the island
of Saint Louis was considered French territory, in fact French
soil, the inhabitants of the island were subject to French law and
enjoyed French citizenship (Johnson 1971). Este, I think, explains
why the lanterns that were once made to highlight the status of
signares were now given the form of public buildings of the city of
Saint Louis. The lanterns of the architecture of Saint Louis embod-
ied the autochthony of their patrons and expressed their political

rights in the French empire. Carried through the streets of Saint
luis, the lanterns celebrated the belonging of their métis spon-
sors to this colonial city. After a procession through the city, el
fanal was returned to the patron’s, where it was offered to him
while women sang his praises.

By the second half of the nineteenth century the economic
strength of the métis class was undermined by the emancipa-
tion of the slaves and a free-trade policy on the River Senegal
(jones 1980:340; 2005). As a result, their economic position
was threatened by the French trade houses and their political
position by the rise of an African citizenry. Desde 1848 all male
Africans in Saint Louis—including former slaves—had enjoyed
voting rights, but a mariage de raison between French traders
and the métis effectively excluded the African electorate from
the political process for most of the nineteenth century (John-
son 1971:93). Sin embargo, in the early twentieth century African
political parties were established. They modelled themselves on
the existing political process in Saint Louis, which had always
revolved around the politics of patronage. The appropriation of
the Fanal by African politicians should be situated in this con-
texto. Throughout the twentieth century, all major politicians
from Saint Louis patronized fanaux. Carried through the streets
of Saint Louis, these lanterns attracted the African voters, OMS
demonstrated their allegiance to a politician through association
with his fanal. De este modo, the Fanal served as an important indica-
tor of the politician’s popularity (Dieng 1999:44). The songs that

14 Marie Madeleine Diallo, the director
of Jallore Productions, the company that
produces the Fanal festival of Saint Louis.

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15 Female praise-singers. Ellos
are dressed in orange in order to
heighten their visibility for the pur-
pose of television recordings.

16 The fanal for Minister Awa Ndiaye
is carried out of the workshop of
Malick Welle.

were sung on the occasion praised the politician for his compe-
tence, while denigrating his opponents (ibid., páginas. 47–48). Este
association of the Fanal with the political process was reinforced
by a competition organized by the colonial government at the
Place Faidherbe, where the lanterns and the accompanying sing-
ers and dancers competed for a jury composed of members of
the municipal council (ibid., pag. 46).6 Since competition between
the supporters of these “party lanterns” sometimes escalated in
violence, the colonial government later decided to suppress the
organization of the Fanal.7 In the postcolonial era the occasional
Fanal was still performed, mostly for visiting statesmen. Este
meant that the performance of the Fanal was effectively monop-
olized by President Senghor, a situation which foreshadowed
today’s appropriation of the performance by Jallore Productions.
The politicization of the Fanal by African politicians was not
a real break with previous practice. The Fanal had always been a
moment to celebrate the honor and prestige of the patron, closely
associated as these were with the enjoyment of citizenship and
its denial to slaves and colonial subjects. The Fanal has always
been a public spectacle for the embodiment of a regime of polit-
ical subjectivation that actually displays considerable continu-
idad. After the emancipation of slaves and the emergence of black
politics in Senegal, the slaves who had carried the lanterns for
the signares or their métis husbands were replaced by the voters/
clients who followed the fanal of their favorite patron/politician.
That the performance of subjectivation was made to culminate
in a competition on the Place Faidherbe made the Fanal even
more explicitly a spectacle of power.

The Fanal’s function to subject the population of Saint Louis
does not seem to have disappeared, as the contemporary festival
clearly remembers previous forms of subjectivation. The contem-

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porary Fanal is a festival that honors politicians and adminis-
trators and affirms their status. De hecho, the production company
selects its patrons from amongst important Saint Louis families
and affirms their membership in a Saint Louis elite whose pres-
ence is thus publicly asserted. The production of honor through
the patronage of lanterns continues today. Although Dakar
became the national capital of Senegal in 1958—a transfer that
is still mourned at Saint Louis today—the “old city” has not
entirely lost its influence in the army, administración, education,
and professions. Más importante, the “old city” has maintained
its reputation for “good taste” and its authority to judge matters
of professional achievement. The Fanal capitalizes on this cul-
tural capital that the festival constitutes as a Saint Louis heritage.

CREOLE HERITAGE
The Fanal is a spectacle of cultural mixing, or creolization. Si
the creolization of its cultural forms is spectacular, some forms
can nevertheless be identified with a particular origin: the format
of son et lumière is ostensibly derived from French revolutionary
cultura, while the praise singing can safely be attributed to Wolof
cultura. But not all aspects of the Fanal can be attributed to a
particular origin, and creolization has effectively merged cul-
tural originals in hybrid forms. Por ejemplo, the reproduction
of colonial architecture in lanterns is the material focus of the
Fanal. While the heritage of colonial architecture is neglected in
the day-to-day administration of the city, in the context of the
festival this architecture is celebrated as an expression of locality.
This clearly demonstrates that the Fanal appropriates colonial
architecture in a way that gives meaning to this heritage, which it
does not have in its original form. Colonial architecture in itself
is not a constituent element of the festival, but its appropriation
in the shape of lanterns is.

17 Actors waiting to perform at the
Grand Fanal.

18 Malick Welle (bien) and his brother
Abdourahmane Welle (izquierda) posing with
their fanal, which represents the building
of the Sisters of Cluny on the island of
Saint Louis (Sindoné).

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19 Female singers at the Grand Fanal.

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There is no doubt that the fanal is a most intriguing materiali-
sation of the process of creolization. In many ways the lantern is
a metonym of the history of the métis. In a historical process, el
fanal has appropriated the technology of ship’s beacons and given
them the form of colonial architecture, thus embodying the tran-
sitions from maritime trade to sedentary occupation and from
the danger of maritime navigation to the security of bourgeois
citizenship. Seen in this light, the lanterns seem to materialize
a genealogy of the métis as an emergent class in the transatlan-
tic world, tracing their origin in maritime trade and their estab-
lishment as successful traders at Saint Louis. De este modo, the fanal has
appropriated technologies associated with the transatlantic trade
(ship’s beacons) and the French empire (architecture) to express
the position of a class of métis consisting of full-fledged citizens
and their subjectivity of being superior to their African servants,
but not being fully French (white). The fanal materialized a cre-
olized subjectivity of an intermediate class of métis citizens that
belonged to the Empire, at a slight remove. The Fanal should
thus be understood as yet another instance of colonial mimicry,
the expression “of a difference that is almost the same, pero no
quite” (Bhabha 1994:122). Even when performed by Senegalese
los ciudadanos, the Fanal still conveys a sense of belonging to a realm of
French civilization, but not quite.

There are other, unexpected creolizations of form and mean-
ing that suggest that the Fanal is a creolization of self-fashioning.
The impersonation of colonial personages and the miniaturiza-
tion of colonial buildings and their recontextualization in a son
et lumière does not in any way clash with the performance of
sabar drumming and praise-singing. De hecho, the praise-singing
has taken on a creolized form itself, amalgamating in one song
the patron’s genealogy and his curriculum vitae. Songs speak

simultaneously to the professional career of the patron and his
family genealogy, celebrating at once individual achievement
and family honor. The praise songs creolize the values associ-
ated with personal advancement on the basis of merit, with val-
ues associated with an economy of honor based on ascription by
birth. Thus the creolized form of the praise-song reflects the cre-
olization of its subject and the Fanal celebrates a creolized citi-
zenship (cf. Diouf 1999). In Saint Louis this creolized subjectivity
exists to this day. Although most métis families left Saint Louis
at Senegal’s independence to settle in metropolitan France, Saint
Louis is still very much a creolized society. The proof is in the
Fanal itself: while the lantern festival originated with a class of
Catholic métis, it is today performed by African Muslims.

REMEMBERING DISTINCTION
Por supuesto, creolization does not in the least imply the disap-
pearance of cultural hierarchy (see the First Word for this issue).
While one can clearly see how Wolof and French cultural forms
have been creolized in order to celebrate the status of the elite,
in the context of the festival the distinction between signares
and their domestic slaves is remembered in different forms of
embodiment. Por un lado, the dance performed by profes-
sional dancers embodies a corporality considered dishonorable
to “nobles.” Aimed at a popular audience, the dance remembers
slave entertainment for the lower strata of Saint Louis society.8 On
the other hand, the girls impersonating the signares are instructed
into bodily postures of “civilized” restraint considered typical for
the historical signares and their contemporary audience compris-
ing the Saint Louis elite. De hecho, the elite is seated at the grand-
stand and remains almost “invisible” to the general audience. Este
suggests that different, historical forms of recognition are thus

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20 After its presentation to the patron,
this fanal is pushed across the Bridge
Faidherbe and returned to the workshop
of Boubacar Sarr in Pikine.

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remembered at the festival. While dancers perform their vulgar
dances and thereby gain recognition through visibility, the patrons
of the fanaux are recognized through songs sung to their honor by
praise-singers and female choirs. While the dancers are subjected
to the gaze, the patrons are glorified through words. The recogni-
tion of their elevated status requires that they make a gift to the
praise-singers, as patrons do. En otras palabras, while the dancers
obtain recognition through the exposure of their bodies—re-
membering the condition of slaves—the patrons enjoy the pre-
rogative of being honored without having to expose themselves
and in return they reward the praise-singers through culturally
prescribed generosity.

The spatial organization of the performance re-members such
distinctions in ways that reflect their historical transformations.
In the eighteenth century, the signares were accompanied by
their slaves as they paraded through the streets of Saint Louis,
exhibiting close proximity. Hoy, the workshops that make the
lanterns are paid to do so and have no established relationship
to their patrons. The spatial organization of the contemporary
Fanal reflects the increased formalization and commodifica-
tion of the relationship between the makers of the fanaux and
their patrons. Today the carpenters and choirs move through
the city to offer their fanal and praise to the patrons seated at
the grandstand in front of the Governor’s Palace according to
the choreography devised by the production company. If aboli-
tion and emancipation have resulted in greater freedom for the
craftsmen, the contemporary festival maintains the social dis-
tance between the patrons and their dependents and formalizes
the movements of the latter. The relationship between patrons
and dependents remains the critical nexus in the Fanal and its
public staging makes the Fanal a true festival of power. En el

Place Faidherbe the invited guests are seated at the grandstand
that sits in front of the Governor’s Palace at some remove from
the general public, which stands across the square, viewing the
invited guests and the Governor’s Palace which are thus associ-
ated in perspective.9 In as far as the public is given an opportu-
nity to watch the event, their perspective seems to inculcate their
inferior position in the polity. Such an analysis conveys that the
Fanal, although in many ways formalized and commodified, re-
members the historical status distinctions between free citizens
and their slaves/dependents. De hecho, the festival formalizes these
distinctions and thereby re-members social distinction today.

The Fanal is crucial in establishing such social distinction.
While the fanal can be seen as a metonym of métis history—as
suggested above—we should acknowledge that the majority of
its patrons today are in fact Africans. This posits an interesting
conundrum: if the fanal does not represent to them the history
of the métis (a history with which they presumably have little
affinity), what does it represent to them instead? I suggest that
the Fanal enables historical mimesis through the identification
of the patron with a historical personage, enabled through iden-
tification of the patron with his fanal. Let me explain this. Primero,
it should be emphasized that the production company selects the
patrons from amongst established Saint Louis families. Segundo,
the company subsequently chooses a historical building that
will be represented as fanal. The choice for the historical build-
ing is at least partly inspired by the relationship that a historical
personage had with this building. De este modo, amidst the cacophony
of historical representations, very precise relationships are cele-
brated between the patron, the fanal, and a historical personage.
Por ejemplo, en el 2008 Fanal the fanal for Minister of Family
Awa Ndiaye represented a detail of the building established by

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the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, the Catholic order that set up
the first girls’ school in Saint Louis. The choice of this building
was deliberate. Awa Ndiaye is a daughter of an important Saint
Louis family and throughout her educational career she has
obtained a great many diplomas. Her individual achievements
in education—a core value of middle-class Saint Louis—were
thus embodied in her fanal, which represented the building of
the Catholic order that, historically, introduced girls’ education
in Saint Louis. The fanal was preceded by a white actress imper-
sonating Mother Anne-Marie Javouhey, the founder of the Sis-
ters of St. Joseph of Cluny. Through her fanal, the Minister of
Family was connected to the founder of the Sisters of Cluny. Menos
straightforward but perhaps more daring in its interpretation
fue el 2008 fanal for Oumou Sy. Oumou Sy never completed
primary education. Her genealogy includes ancestry in Casa-
mance, Saint Louis, and the Fleuve region (she identifies herself
as Toucouleur). By choosing the fortress of Podor as the basis for
her fanal, the production company chose to honor her ancestry
in the Fleuve region. Since this fortress was built by Faidherbe,
her fanal was preceded by the Governor of Senegal, who strode
across the Place Faidherbe during the presentation of the lan-
tern. Ahora, the correspondence between Faidherbe’s political
achievements and Oumou Sy’s artistic accomplishments may be
slight, but by choosing the fortress of Podor and the historical
personage of Faidherbe for the contemporary patron Oumou
Sy, her achievements were celebrated as equivalent to those of
Faidherbe. Claramente, the fanal mediates between past and present
and attributes to the present patron the status of the historical
personage associated with his or her fanal. As a technology of
temporality, the fanal enables the present patron to assume the
status of the historical personage.

CONCLUSIÓN
The Fanal speaks about the past and remembers a history of
Senegal. In this history, the signares offered themselves to French
traders, fatally compromised as they were by their love for ele-
mirada, extravagance, and the money to pay for it. Out of a mar-
iage à la mode du pays—the creolized, temporary liaison between
Senegalese women and French men—the class of métis was born.
As the city of métis, Saint Louis subsequently served as the logis-
tic basis for the conquest of the colony. Thus the Fanal represents
Senegal as a nation colonized by the French and a class of métis.
In this story the children born and educated at Saint Louis sub-
sequently administered the colonial nation. The contemporary
sons and daughters of Saint Louis constitute the latest genera-
tion to serve as beacons of the nation, a task for which they are
honored with a fanal. This story clearly represents Saint Louis as
the place of origin of Senegal and is fundamentally nostalgic in
claiming a historical role for a city whose political significance
has since waned. Today the Fanal still celebrates the city’s taste
for elegance and the making of careers required to finance such
lavish spending, but the festival itself depends on funding pro-
vided by the national government in Dakar.

The Fanal does not limit itself to telling a story that can be
interpreted as a history of Senegal, but relives the past in the
present as if to extend that past into the present. The Fanal is
indeed fundamentally nostalgic in modelling the present after

52 | african arts WINTER 2009

the past. By means of tableaux historiques and the making of
fanaux of historical buildings, the past is actually remembered
in the present. Por eso, in addition to spoken accounts of the
past—or history—the Fanal offers a range of embodied repre-
sentations of the past in the present. Por ejemplo, if the story
recounted above is partly conveyed through the textual com-
mentaries provided in the tableaux historiques, most of it is
actually transmitted through the embodied performance of the
pasado. Such embodiment of the past offers possibilities for histori-
cal telescoping. Por ejemplo, Faidherbe is known to have had
a local mistress who was either a Khassonke or a Sarakholle.10
But in the Fanal, Faidherbe is accompanied by a signare. To stage
Faidherbe with a signare is to confound the precolonial history
of the signares with the era of Faidherbe’s colonial project. El
past is thus compressed in the present and the Fanal accumu-
lates these temporalities in a palimpsest. The productivity of
such an accumulation of temporalities in a single performance
is yet to be established. My hypothesis is that, as a technology
of temporality, the palimpsest performance accumulates time in
order to redistribute it in the present. The honor bestowed on the
patrons—as mediated by the fanaux—is thus given the weight
of centuries of distinction and discernment. An accumulation
of time that blurs historical distinction—as in the palimpsest—
actually produces a stage for contemporary Senegalese patrons
to identify with and be identified with the historical personages
of colonial Senegal. Past and present coincide in the palimpsest.

If the Fanal is presented as heritage, it is presented as such
because the festival cannot sustain itself and depends on national
subsidies for its performance. Although it is in many ways for-
malized and commodified, at its heart the Fanal still celebrates
the careers made by Saint Louisiens and Saint Louisiennes. Como
a festival that praises the values of education and public admin-
istración, its public funding seems to contribute to inculcating a
sense of citizenship. The Fanal is not an objectified heritage, pero
a festival that subjectivates the city of Saint Louis. Sin embargo, el
subjectivation of the urban populace through the festival does
not in any way achieve hegemony. The actors who portray the
historical personages mimic these personages with irony and
subvert the social distinctions that they themselves imperson-
ate. En ese sentido, the Fanal does not uncritically remember colo-
nial pasts but performs a split memory of colonialism. History is
repeated with a difference.

Ferdinand de Jong is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the School of
World Art Studies and Museology of the University of East Anglia, dónde
he teaches the anthropology of art, material culture, public memory, y
heritage. His publications include Masquerades of Modernity: Power and
Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal and Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative
Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa (co-edited with Michael Row-
lands). F.Jong@uea.ac.uk

Judith Quax studied at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam. Her projects
touch themes like cultural identity, differences in cultures, religion and
spirituality. She exhibited (a.o.) at the Dak’art Biennale 2008 in Dakar,
Senegal, the Dutch Photobiennale Noorderlicht in Groningen, 2007, y
was selected by curator Akinbode Akinbiyi for the exhibition “Spot on
Dak’art” in Berlin, Alemania, 2009. Her photos are published in various
magazines. She is currently working on a long-term project on Senegalese
immigrants. judith@judithquax.com; www.judithquax.com

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Notas

This article is part of a larger project that will result
in a monograph, provisionally titled Remembering the
Nation: Heritage and Memory in Postcolonial Senegal.
Fieldwork for this project was conducted in 2003, 2004
y 2005, 2008, y 2009. I attended the Fanal of 2008
and interviewed various experts on the Fanal. me gustaría
like to thank the Senegalese Ministry of Education and
Dr. Hamady Bocoum for permission to conduct research
in Senegal and Fatima Fall (CRDS) for her assistance in
Saint Louis. I also want to express my gratitude to Marie
Madeleine Diallo, Daouda Dia, Jean Pierre Leurs, y
Oumou Sy for their permission to research the Fanal
and to photograph the proceedings. The fanal makers
Malick Welle and his brother Abdourahmane Welle,
Boubacar Sarr, and Cheikh Makhfou Sène are gratefully
acknowledged for their help and hospitality. Finalmente, I
would like to thank all assistants and models for willingly
posing for the photographer. Fieldwork was funded with
grants by The British Academy and the Economic and
Social Research Council. Research leave of the University
of East Anglia, partly funded with a generous grant by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has enabled
me to write this article. Finalmente, thanks to Judith Quax
for her collaboration on this project and to Martin Klein
and Peter Probst for their helpful comments on an earlier
version of this paper. The responsibility for any remaining
mistakes in this article is mine.

1 Alongside popular histories of signares

(Angrand 2006, Sankalé 2007), publications have been
dedicated to the traditions and fashions of women (Siga
1990), the history and architecture of Gorée and Saint
luis (Camara and Benoist 2003, Aïdara 2004), y
colonial iconography (Ricou 2007).

2 Models dressed as signares partook in the fash-
ion show, as if to make the point that signares were very
fashionable in their time and still are today. The pres-
ence of signares in the fashion show was another indica-
tion of the palimpsestual nature of the performance. I
should note that the signare costumes used during the
fashion show were provided by the association Ndart,
which has its own collection of signare costumes. Este
association strives to improve the position of all couture
professionals in Saint Louis and is presided over by
Fatima Fall, the Director of the Centre de Recherche
et de Documentation du Sénégal (CRDS). The CRDS
authorized the production of the historically “authentic”
costumes of Ndart in order to counter the prevalence of
anachronistic costumes made by amateurs.

3 Quantity was not unimportant. A recurring
question was: “How many signares have we got now?"
Except for Faidherbe’s wife, none of the signares was
given a particular historical personage to impersonate,
but a signare presence was urgently required.

In many ways, Christmas was a tournament of

status not unlike the folgars or the balls that signares
organized in order to entertain themselves and their
visiting traders.

5 Although not as ostentatiously attired, el
accoutrements of the slaves testified to the wealth of
their mistresses.

6 Thus the Fanal was reorganized in such a way as
to culminate at the Place Faidherbe, not at the house of
its patron, as it formerly used to be. The fanal was still
brought to the patron’s house after the event at the Place
Faidherbe.

7 Which government suppressed the Fanal is a
matter of debate. Dieng, in his essay on the history of the
Fanal, suggests that the colonial government is to blame:
“Mais puisqu’il revêtait les aspects d’une manifestation
africaine de masse dans un contexte colonial, les autorités

finirent par l’interdire sous prétexte qu’il était devenu un
foyer de discorde et de trouble à l’ordre public” (Dieng
1991:48). Sin embargo, in my research in Saint Louis an infor-
mant suggested that the Fanal was suppressed by the first
Senegalese president, Léopold Sédar Senghor.

8 This analysis is informed by Martin Klein’s
observations on the embodiment of status in the Sahel
(1998:8, 246–51) and more recent work on the remem-
brance of slavery and the slave trade in dance and mas-
querades (Argenti 2007).

9 At the annual celebration of National Indepen-
dence Day on the 4th of April, the grandstand for the
invited guests, including local and national administra-
tores, politicians, and army personnel, is erected at the
same position. It is at the same place that thousands of
Murid disciples gather for the annual commemoration
of the Prayer of the Two Rakhas by Sheikh Ahmadou
Bamba (see De Jong forthcoming).

Interview with Daouda Dia, Enero 2, 2009,
and personal communication Martin Klein, Abril 22,
2009.

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