ABSTRACT
This chapter is about a relatively inconspicuous African animal. Unlike many animals that are the epitome of the rough and the wild, the antelope even for ‘us’—and more especially for the Uduk-speakers of the south-eastern Sudan-it is a quiet, gentle, and familiar creature. ‘African animals’ is a phrase in lay English conjuring up the externality, the otherness, of the world of nonhuman beings. It evokes the notion of alien, powerful, and dangerous species, the lion, snake, scorpion, rhinoceros, and elephant; and whether or not they are inherently more aggressive than others, it is their aggressive and fearsome aspect that comes to mind. ‘African animals’ of a gentle or subtle disposition rarely enter the imagination of the West, or that of China, India, or the Middle East for that matter. But in the vernacular languages and imaginative discourse of African peoples, not only are the representations of power and danger in animal form themselves more differentiated, but the animal world as a whole is not necessarily opposed as a wild and dangerous realm quite antagonistic to the human and domestic sector. Nonaggressive species and a range of muted qualities fill out any ‘ethnozoological’ account and figure prominently in myth, stories, art, dance, and ritual.
