Study in Ambiguity

Abstract The name of Amadou Hampaté Bâ, the veteran Malian scholar of African folklore and traditional culture, is now firmly associated with a famous remark he once made at a UNESCO conference in Paris concerning the oral tradition in Africa: “En Afrique, chaque fois qu’un vieillard meurt, c’est une bibliothèque qui est brûlée” (In Africa, each time an old person dies, it’s a library that burns down). The remark has acquired the status of an aphorism, expressing as it does, in graphic terms, the urgent necessity of collecting the oral tradition in Africa before its final disappearance with the last of its guardians, in whose memory its textual values are preserved. The import of the remark derives in the first place from what it demonstrates of the mode of existence of the oral text in Africa.