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Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa In her book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in Western Africa Katherine Dettwyler embarks on a few impossible tasks. On one hand, she tries to convince the reader that the people of Mali have a rich cultural traditions, one the other she comes to the conclusion that it is Africans' way of life that never allows them to break out of poverty, rather than exploitation by more developed countries. In my opinion, the essence of these two suggestions is highly controversial. Therefore, we cannot give author the credit of being logical, throughout her entire book.
But the logic is not something that one might expect to find in the book, written by anthropologist who tries to push the Liberal agenda. On many occasions, Dettwyler admits of being shocked, upon seeing people washing their faces with fresh cow's urine, for example, yet she associates this shock with her own cultural badness towards the people of color. Yet, when she sees children starving, she has no doubt that this is wrong and that this has to stop. It never occurs to her that the high children's mortality in Africa is absolutely normal, in the view of native people. For whatever the Africans lack in quality, they compensate in cheer numbers. The population of Ethiopia has tripled within the last 20 years of never ending famine and social unrest.
In my opinion, Dettwyler did an excellent job, as an anthropologist, while researching different aspects of Malian culture. The problem is that she tries to draw a socio-political conclusions from her research. But it proved to be impossible for her to remain objective, while doing this, as Dettwyler appears to be heavily brainwashed by the left-wing propaganda. We can even speculate that it is author's subconscious attraction to death, poverty and misery, which prompted her to spend many years working in West Africa. Throughout her book, Dettwyler refers to death as an extended illness and there are clearly certain pathological undertones in how the author is viewing it.
Even though that she proclaims that her foremost task in Africa was to contribute towards the ending of hunger and poverty, Dettwyler is never quite enthusiastic about it, finding it much more fascinating to learn about all the aspects of female circumcision or about the life-cycles of intestinal worms, which parasite on humans. Dettwyler rightly suggests that the practice of children immunization in Africa will remain highly ineffective, for as long as the children lack nourishment. But it is not likely that she will get a Noble prize for such discovery. The question, which remains unanswered in her book, is why it is so important to for the Western countries to provide food to starving children in Africa?
Or why it is the only matter of time, before countries with predominant black population will inevitably decent to savagery, like it happened in Haiti, South-Africa, Zimbabwe and Mali? In Dancing Skeletons author also provides us with a numerous examples of women, being deprived of the basic human rights in Africa. As a matter of fact, the traditional Malian view of women do not even consider them as humans. It is quite normal for the husband to keep his wife chained up to the bad, while he is not around says Dettwyler (p. 76) and there is no reason for us to doubt her words, as we also learn about some cultural customs in Third World countries first hand, by embracing diversity in America. In my view, the only part of Dettwyler's book, which is truly interesting to read, is where she describes the challenges of fieldwork in Africa. Partially, this is due to the fact this part is totally deprived of help the needy children sentiment.
I would even say that it reads like some of the London's or Kipling's adventure tales - the constant danger, unknown diseases, war, treacherous savages. The public campaign to stop the hunger in Africa has been going on for decades. Yet, there was absolutely no progress accomplished. Yet, while liberals like Dettwyler whine about it, the population in African countries rapidly grows, which allows us to suggest that these countries have a future, while Western countries are going to turn into expensive hospices, with no people younger than 60, in the matter of next 50 years. We should help ourselves first, before helping others. Bibliography: Dettwyler, Katherine Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in Western Africa.
New York: Waveland Press, Inc. 1994.
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