Portrayal of Aspects of Dinka Culture Through Oral Narrative Performance

Abstract

This Study explores the portrayal of some aspects of the Dinka culture in Dinka oral narratives. Attending and participationg in oral narrative performances this research interrogates oral narratives as a repository of a people’s culture which reveals itself through the live performance of the narratives. Dinka people in the republic of South Sudan have always interacted and continue to interact with other cultures in their contacts with the outside world as they are not an island in their own world, but rather, they are a part and parcel of the larger world with diverse cultural practices. This state of affairs has had great impact on Dinka people’s culture and identity. This notwithstanding many of the values that the people as an entity espouse can be traced in the narratives they tell. This project draws from the lives lived and experienced by the Dinka people during and after the departure of the alien powers from South Sudan. Many Dinka oral narratives focus on the impact of alien cultures on the Dinka people. The project also draws from the life lived and experienced by the researcher as a Dinka and literate man at the crossroad of two diverse worlds -- the world of distinct and authentic Dinka culture and the world of flaming forces of foreign influences among the Dinka people as a result of civil wars which have scattered Dinka people into different places in the world that resulted into almost extinction of the Dinka authentic and distinct cultures and language. In exploring the aspects of Dinka culture traceable in the oral narrative performances, the study applies narratology as its main theoretical approach. Besides, the research also employs ethnopoetics in data collection and transcription, sociological literary theory and performance theories as tools of determining meanings in the narratives. The research scrutinizes the questions of religion, identity, language, and traditions among others through orality within the context of Dinka authentic culture and the outside cultural influences as coded in their languages , especially Arabic and English languages respectively. The dominance of English and Arabic languages as both official languages of communication and instructions in the introduction of formal education in the republic of South Sudan; have had tremendous effect on the traditional life of Dinka people and their culture as the stories narrate. As a consequence Dinka oral narratives present many characters struggling between the alien cultures and their traditional Dinka cultural values. This results in a kind of rootlessness that sees the characters rejected on both sides.