The Religious Commissions of the Bakongo

MacGaffey, Wyatt

doi:10.2307/2798802

Cited by 27 publications

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“…12 12 Similar notions are described by Beattie (1964: 217; 1966: 211), De Boeck & Devisch (1994: 114), Jules‐Rosette (1978: 559), Lienhardt (1961: 154), MacGaffey (1970: 30), Turner (1975: 212), Schoenbrun (1998: 111), Werbner (1989: 31), and Zeitlyn (1993: 232). Importantly, the Ndembu concept of kusolola appears to be related to the Chagga notion of ilholhya , a connection possibly due to their commonality as eastern Bantu languages. …”

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confidence: 87%

“…7 7 For different yet related accounts of the process of becoming a diviner, see for instance Ashton (1943), Brandström (1990), Burton (1991), Callaway (1991 [1870]), De Boeck & Devisch (1994), Devisch (1978 a ; 1991), Heald (1999), James (1988), Lienhardt (1961), MacGaffey (1970), Middleton (1969: 267), Parkin (1991a), Redmayne (1970), Reynolds (1992), Rigby (1975), Shaw (1992), Wagner (1949, 1954), Weck (1969 [1908]), Werbner (1973), and Whyte (1991; 1997). In the context of Kilimanjaro, these facts appear to have a deep historical salience, as Raum (1911: 171) and Dundas (1924: 161) describe from the early colonial period how ancestors appear before the diviners in their sleep. …”

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confidence: 99%

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Divination and experience: explorations of a Chagga epistemology

Myhre

2006

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article argues that anthropological approaches to African divination are characterized by a certain epistemology, which creates specific problems with regard to vernacular truth-claims. Using ethnographic material from the Chagga-speaking people of Kilimanjaro, the article traces the multiple overlapping ramifications that interrelate vernacular concepts, physical objects, and local subjectivities. By thus avoiding reductionist arguments, the article endeavours to demonstrate that careful attention to these complex lateral relationships reveals how local diviners are able 'to see', or 'be shown', the 'truth' pertaining to their clients.

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confidence: 99%

Divination and experience: explorations of a Chagga epistemology

Myhre

2006

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…In most African belief systems, including those of at least two of the specific societies under discussion, the extreme deviant threat to reproduction is the witch, a figure whose personal transcendence beyond the ordinary confines of domestic life depends directly upon the consumption of the vital resources of others. 8 While witches are normally portrayed as operating from within the domestic sphere and tend very often to be women, a number of anthropologists (Goody, 1970;McGaffey, 1970) have noted the close parallels between rulers and witches. In each of these sets of narratives such parallels are implied to varying degrees, although ultimately the heroes escape definition as witches.…”

Section: Pre-colonial Narratives: the Ambiguous Normative Heromentioning

confidence: 99%

Criminals and the african cultural imagination: normative and deviant heroism in pre-colonial and modern narratives

Austen¹

1986

Africa

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Opening ParagraphIn a previous essay (Austen, 1986a) I attempted to trace a particular type of deviant hero in African history and culture: a ‘social bandit’ or criminal figure identified in the popular imagination with resistance against alien or indigenous oppressive elites. The search proved frustrating within its original terms of reference but it did suggest an alternative paradigm for identifying the entire relationship between cultural norms and criminal behaviour in Africa. The present article attempts to develop this paradigm through the analysis of six African narratives dealing with heroic and/or anti-heroic figures in a variety of contexts.

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“…The present work will interpret the divergent institutions such as centralized shrines (Bunzi, N'kwe Mbali), kingdoms (Loango, Kakongo, Ngoyo, Tio), movable shrines or major drums (Lemba, the Tio nkobi), local horizontal specialists' medicines (N'kondi feud resolution techniques), and other institu-22 INTRODUCTION TO LEMBA tions in terms of corporation theory as developed by Maine, 43 Smith, 44 and for Central Africa by MacGaffey. 45 Corporate theory acknowl edges authority and power of both centralized and decentralized polities in terms of corporateness: that is, a presumptive perpetual aggregate with a unique identity; having determinate social boun daries and membership; possessing the autonomy, organization, and agreed upon procedures to regulate exclusive collective affairs. In other words, a corporate group forms a social structure around a set of diverse issues.…”

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confidence: 99%

Lemba, 1650-1930: A Drum of Affliction in Africa and the New World

Bourgeois¹,

Janzen²

1984

The International Journal of African Historical Studies

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Introduction to Lemba Lemba: Historic Equatorial African Drum of AfflictionLemba, a major historic cult of healing, trade, and marriage relations, came into being in the seventeenth century in a triangular region extending from the Atlantic coast to Malebo Pool between today's cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and from the Congo (Zaire) River northward to the Kwilu-Niari River valley (figure 1). Mpumbu market, situated on a hilltop overlooking Malebo Pool, was the western end point of the vast riveraih trade network which covered the Congo Basin. From Mpumbu westward, rapids on the Congo River required trade to the coast to follow land routes. Until railroads were built from Malebo Pool to Pointe Noire and Matadi three centuries later, caravans of porters brought ivory, copper, slaves, and other products to the coast, and European wares such as cloth, guns, liquor, and beads back inland over the same routes. Lemba controlled this trade on the north bank, keeping the routes open, regulating local markets, and assuring that the massive international trade did not destroy local communities. In the mid-eighteenth century, for ex ample, fifteen thousand slaves were being shipped annually from the ports of Loango, Cabinda, and Malemba. These slaves were drawn from inland societies which tended to see the trade, despite its economic advantages, as disruptive. Conflicts of interest between the trade and social order may explain why Lemba-a word meaning "to calm" (lembikisa)-took the form of a therapeutic association, a "drum of affliction" (ngoma or nkonko).Lemba's illness is described in a variety of ways: as possession by Lemba's ancestors, common in drums as a mode of affliction; as any illness affecting head, heart, abdomen, and sides, that is, the key organs of the person; as difficulty breathing, a typical witchcraft symptom; as miraculous recovery from a deadly disease, and more. However this erratic list of Lemba symptoms and causes tells less about it than does identification of the types of individuals afflicted and directed toward membership in Lemba. They normally were the region's elite, prominent healers, chiefs, and judges, especially those 3 4 INTRODUCTION TO LEMBA engaged in mercantile work. Their ability to succeed in commerce and their aspirations to wealth made them vulnerable to the envy of their kinsmen, thus in a sense marginal in the society and "sick" with the Lemba affliction.In typical drum of affliction manner, Lemba doctor-priests took the "sufferer" in hand and administered the initial purification. If he could muster further sponsorship, he would undergo full therapeutic initiation before the priests and priestesses of the locality. A ceremonial Lemba marriage with his leading wife, a lavish feast for Lemba priests and priestesses as well as for the public, and extensive instructions made up part of the initiatory ritual, before the priestly couple were qualified to themselves perform Lemba's therapy.Given such characteristics among many more to be explained in this book, it is not surpri...

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The Religious Commissions of the Bakongo

Cited by 27 publications

References 4 publications

Divination and experience: explorations of a Chagga epistemology

Divination and experience: explorations of a Chagga epistemology

Criminals and the african cultural imagination: normative and deviant heroism in pre-colonial and modern narratives

Lemba, 1650-1930: A Drum of Affliction in Africa and the New World

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