Hunting stories will usually glorify the hunters, since it is the
hunters who write the stories. In this book, Dénètem Touam Bona takes up
the perspective of the hunted, using the concept of marronage to
highlight the lives and creativity of colonized and subjugated peoples.
In a format that blends travel diary, anthropological inquiry, and
philosophical and literary reflection, he narrates the hidden history of
fugues - those of the runaway slave, the deserting soldier, the
clandestine migrant, and all those who challenged norms and forms of
control. In the space of the fugue, in the folds and retreats of dense
and muggy woods, runaway countercultures appeared and spread out,
cultures whose organization and values were diametrically opposed to
those of colonial societies.
Marronage, the art of disappearance, has never been a more timely topic:
thwarting surveillance, profiling, and tracking by the police and by
corporations; disappearing from databases; extending the forest's shadow
by the click of a key. In our cyberconnected world, where control of
individuals in real time is increasingly becoming the norm, we need to
reinvent marronage and recognize the maroon as a universal figure of
resistance.
Beyond its critical dimension, this book calls for a cosmo-poetics of
refuge and aims at rehabilitating the power of dreams and poetry to ward
off the confinement of minds and bodies.
