Abstract
This article examines the autobiographical interpretation that a Sakalava, from the northwest of Madagascar, offers of his conversion to Christianity, which took place in the 1930s, and the interpretation his grandson makes of it for the purpose of a thesis based on the theory of inculturation after 30 years of national independence. Between these two moments, history has done its work of producing meaning which, in turn, informs the actors' outlooks. The differences revealed at the end of this comparison do not bear on the finality of the act: in both cases it is a question of regrasping of speech which intends to grasp the world. The differences bear on the shifts of meaning which affect the witness to faith, in its content and in its project for the self. One is tempted to conclude that the act of conversion results less from a testing of the truth of beliefs than from a renegotiation of the subject's relation to the world, imposed by history. In conversion is it the accomplishment — or thwarting — of political assertion that constitutes the major event?