Images of loneliness in Tuareg narratives of travel, dispersion, and return

Bibliographic Data

ID2395331
AuthorsSusan J Rasmussen (University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume57
Issue5
Pages649-660
Publication date2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363461520920322
PMID32370629
OpenAlexW3021536080
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited23

This article examines how social, economic, and political upheavals in the Sahara have stimulated re-thinking about loneliness in relation to trauma from mobility, dispersion, and return home in communities of Tamajaq-speaking, Muslim, and semi-nomadic Tuareg in northern Niger and Mali. How do Tuareg, sometimes called Kel Tamajaq after their language, draw on and re-formulate longstanding and new ways of coping with loneliness in regional droughts and wars, which have driven many to alternately disperse from their communities and return to homes that are no longer the same? What is the connection between changing modes of travel, concepts of loneliness, and ways of coping with this experience? In these communities, loneliness is a recurrent theme in personal life histories-in particular, in narratives of both geographic travel and spiritual travel in medico-ritual healing-and is alluded to in poetry, song, and everyday conversation. This article explores the meanings of loneliness and ways of coping with it in this society through analysis of this emotion in symbol, subjective perception, and social experience. The focus is upon representations of loneliness in narratives by travelers who have confronted this emotion, and upon relevant Tamajaq terms often used to express loneliness: namely, essuf (the wild, solitude, and nostalgia); tamazai (approximately, a depression); and tarama (unrequited love), illustrating with cases and examples. More broadly, the article is guided by and builds on insights in psychological anthropology into emotion and affect as well as suffering and subjectivity

Aesthetics · Art · Conversation · Coping (psychology · Literature · Loneliness · Narrative · Perception · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Solitude · Subjectivity · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Communication · Gender Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research