Sports, Politics, Identity Constructs in French Guyana
Within a few years, the djokan (a martial art that its inventor introduces as « a fusion of the knowledge of the native American, Businenge and Creole warriors ») acquired in French Guyana a great readability in the media but also in the political sphere, even if it is still struggling to recruit practitioners and if its development as a sport is still very uncertain. This situation questions on how the field of the martial practices grows, is formatted and structured in Western countries, but it also sheds an indirect light on the underlying logic of the today’s Guyanese society. For that, one needs to take into account the way in which the discourse of the djokan entered somehow in resonance with the expectations, sometimes the concerns, of a society that attempted to rethink a « living together » in a French Guyana undergoing substantial changes.