Abstract
This article examines the relationship between subjective experience and ritual process: the meaning of nonverbal weeping laments in a ritual called techawait among the Tuareg, a seminomadic, traditionally stratified, Muslim people of Niger, West Africa. This ritual is held when a married couple moves away from the wife’s parents after approximately two years of marriage to bring the wife to the home of the husband’s family. Although officially defined as a celebration, this event has emotional undertones suggesting sorrow and conflict in the weeping of the female relatives of the wife. The article analyzes these emotions against the backdrop of a rite of passage--but not solely as social control, linear transition, or status change. Rather, it analyzes this expression of ambiguous yet profound sentiments in relation to the wider contexts of cultural constructions of emotional expression and gender and social dynamics evoked by the central symbols of techawait: tent and camel. The conclusion explores the implications of these data for theories of emotion, gender, and rites of passage.
