Pentecostal Panopticism and the Phantasm of “The Ultimate Power”

Adelakun, Abimbola A.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74911-2_6

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“…These enemies, it is believed, exist either within or outside of one's household. They are also thought to stalk one's ancestral lineage, although what marks their power to prevail over one is not their spatial location per se but their ability to remotely surveil one's life from their vantage spots in the supernatural realm (Adelakun, 2018). When those enemies witness a favorable turn of fortune in the lives of their victim, they launch a spiritual attack to cripple his/her destiny.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I am hated, therefore I am: The Enemy in Yorùbá Imaginary

Adelakun

2021

YSR

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This essay will study how the Yorùbá conceptualize “ọ̀tá” or the enemy, a trope that recurs in various cultural phenomena such as music, prayers, and other social rituals. The Yorùbá worldview of the enemy has profound implications on the way they frame issues that affect their mental, physical, social, and general well-being. Health studies, religious studies, and social ethics studies and analyses have mostly tried to investigate the enemy as a concept borne out of Yorùbá cosmology which serves as a conduit for superstition, fear, and other seemingly irrational behavior. In this essay, I frame the concept of “ọ̀tá” through the theatrical dialectic of antagonist/protagonist theory. The enemy, I argue, is the way the Yorùbá metaphorize all kinds of antagonism—material and immaterial ones—into an imaginative texture that gives it the tangibility they need to triumph against those situations. This essay will interrogate how this personification of antagonism is achieved by studying Ifá texts, Yorùbá popular music of a period, and contemporary Pentecostal prayers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%