Le fakamisimisi de Futuna ou l’esthétique du travail quotidien

The aim of this article is to analyse a text of the rich and lively oral tradition of East Futuna, which has never been the object of an anthropological or linguistic study: the fakamisimisi. This text is pronounced by a chief in the village plaza (mala’e) where local «richness» is displayed during the redistributive ceremonies named katoaga. Unlike mio¯, fakamatalaand other kinds of Futunan oral performances, the fakamisimisiis not dealing with heroes (to’a), chiefs (aliki) or divinities (atua) of the pre-christian past. It deals with the everyday work of men and women and with the products of this work: kava, yam, taro, pigs etc., which are the central topics of the different stanzas of the poem. Starting out with the translation and interpretation of a fakamisimisiperformed in October 1997 during a katoagain Ono village (chiefdom of Alo), this article reflects upon the aesthetic (or ethno-aesthetic) dimension of human production and of Polynesian redistributive rites. It shows that one has to understand the importance of particular aspects of the «kustom» – such as the contemporary katoagarites in Futuna – not only in the light of the «politics of tradition», or as an efforts to avoid the spread of social and economic inequalities, but as a mean to stress the value of local products and processes against the standardized goods and activities of the globalised market.