Intimacy and Alterity: Prophetic Selves and Spirit Others in Central Mozambique

Abstract

In the context of Mozambican prophet healing, spirit-host relationships unfold between intimacy and alterity. The interweaving of spirits’ and hosts’ biographies in possession is enacted bodily in the form of pains, postures, and punishments, and often pits their wills and well-beings against one another. Spirit possession is an intimate exchange, a bodily and social confluence that invokes the most familiar of interpersonal relationships (spouses, parents and their children). On the other hand, the natures, motives, and agendas of the spirits often remain opaque. As prophets struggle to make sense and make use of the spirits who possess them, the power of the spirits reveals itself in their unknowability and contrariness, the elusiveness and partiality of their profiles. These intimate others both threaten and succor their hosts, to whom they are both kin and strangers, and it is through this dialectic that their special vantage on human suffering comes into view.

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“…More importantly, besides consulting my interlocutors, I have also made use of several theses (e.g. Mtetwa 1984;Neil-Tomlinson 1987;Neves 1998;Allina-Pisano 2002;Luedke 2005;MacGonagle 2007) and some sociohistoric works on the area (e.g. Artur 1996Artur , 1999aLiesegang 1996;Suana 1999;Chapman 2010) to check my particular spelling against those of other scholars.…”

“…See, for example, A. Honwana (1996), Igreja (2003), Luedke (2005, Marlin (2001), and Schuetze (2010). 17.…”

“…1 Approaching a particular spirit and eliciting its power is undertaken in ritual settings by the n'anga to locate causal patterns and attempt various treatments of a range of individual or collective affl ictions. However, during the last decades, the n'anga has in these regions of Mozambique been challenged by a second fi gure, the so-called profete (see also Maxwell 2006;Luedke 2011). The profete treats less by means of autochthonous or nonautochthonous terrestrial spirits, being more fully integrated within a Christian framework wherein, especially, the power of the Holy Spirit, the force of God or energy in various versions of scripture, is tapped directly in healing rituals.…”

“…Through being set apart from the rest of the household and the surroundings in general, the tchitumba tchonanga comprises a visible marker of the prospects of healing and of the potencies of the traditional, as well as embodying a powerful spiritual locus in the social and physical landscape. 10 For the profete, the marker of their practice, abode, and place of healing is often in close proximity to the so-called African Independent Churches, where they frequently hold prominent positions as so-called bishope or president (see also Luedke , 2011. The Zionist churches in Chimoio flourish (Pfeiffer et al 2007;Seibert 2006), and new congregations are formed each year.…”

“…5. See, for example, Luedke and West (2006) for a "Southeastern African" expression of this type of analysis, as well as Pfeiffer (2002Pfeiffer ( , 2006 and Luedke (2011) for analyses based on Manica Province material. 6.…”