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.
