“Tie it on tight, girls!” Speaking and Acting through Cloth in Southern Madagascar
Sarah Fee
A large island situated at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean, Madagascar is home to a unique and little-known-- handweaving tradition. While the Malagasy people place great value on formal oratory, in daily social life, actions speak louder than words. Intentions and feelings must be made manifest, and cloth is a key idiom for doing so. This paper explores the four levels on which cloth serves as visual social discourse among the Tandroy, a cattle-herding people who inhabit the southern tip of the island. First, cloth is an expression of love. Women weave and present loincloths to husbands and sons. Husbands offer gifts of clothing at key points in the marriage. All adults make gifts of shrouds to revered ancestors. Secondly, these same gifts can serve to establish the relation for the public record. Tracing the trajectories of cloth gifts allowed the author in her fieldwork to map out the wider obligations of ceremonial gift exchange in Madagascar and women’s central roles in them – key features of the society largely neglected in the literature. Thirdly, cloth is a key signifier for women who are otherwise excluded from public discourse. A focus on cloth shows women to be full social actors: they use weaving, dress and gifts of cloth to express their honor, command respect and perpetuate the social institutions that protect them. Finally, conversations about cloth with individual women provided the author with an unexpected entry point for intimate and animated conversations on their personal experiences, their views on patriarchal society, and polygamy.