PODCAST BONUS CONTENT

 

A young Jean-Pierre Warnier at a gathering of palace notables and others on the occasion of being incorporated by the Fon into the Mankon kingdom, Cameroon, 1974. The Fon gave him the name of Sangto’ (courtyard of the palace) and “made a deal” with him that he would only bring good things into the kingdom. Warnier describes this as part of the paradigm of “the pot king” in his 2007 book where the body of the king/kingdom are boundaries of inclusion/exclusion. Image courtesy: J.-P. Warnier.

After teaching for three years in Nigeria, Jean-Pierre Warnier was recruited in 1979 to teach at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon till 1985. Here pictured at an informal meeting on the margins of a conference, he found teaching at the university to be a kind of “field inquiry” in itself. He got to know and appreciate his colleagues and new encounters led to new developments in his research. All these encounters ultimately fed into his material culture research. Image courtesy: J.-P. Warnier.

Jean-Pierre Warnier and a jester at the gate by the Palace of Mankon, Cameroon, December 2009, during the annual festival combined with the Fon’s 50th Jubilee. J.-P. was there at the event as a “fixer” for a documentary film-making team consisting of Werner Zips and Manuela Mairitsch.The jester was imitating him and making fun of him, something that J.-P. was conversant with and so “he played the game”. Image courtesy: Manuela Zips-Mairitsch.

Warnier notes that he has very few images of himself in Cameroon because he disliked being photographed. 2009 was also his last visit to the field. He now lives and works in Paris. Learn more here and here about his pioneering contributions to material culture and embodiment studies.