Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy 9402420665, 9789402420661

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V. Y. Mudimbe Kasereka Kavwahirehi Editors

Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy

Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy

V. Y. Mudimbe • Kasereka Kavwahirehi Editors

Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy With 12 Figures and 2 Tables

Editors V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature Duke University Durham, NC, USA

Kasereka Kavwahirehi Department of French University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-94-024-2066-1 ISBN 978-94-024-2068-5 (eBook) ISBN 978-94-024-2067-8 (print and electronic bundle) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5 © Springer Nature B.V. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature B.V. The registered company address is: Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3311 GX Dordrecht, The Netherlands

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we would like to express explicitly our gratitude to all the authors (some posthumously) whose words make up this Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy. Without their unfailing engagement, patience, and understanding, this collective volume would not have been possible. We are particularly grateful to Catarina Antunes Gomes, whose encouragement, helpful suggestions, and timely advice have been greatly appreciated. Almost as essential was Trip Attaway, assistant of Professor V.Y. Mudimbe at Duke University, for his dedication and patience in the administration of the project. Finally, we have to express our special thanks to Cristina Dos Santos, Tina Shelton, and Vasowati Shome, our editors, for their editorial assistance. They deserve acknowledgment for their faith in the project, support, and efficiency.

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List of Topics

Accad, Evelyne Acculturation Act (Mental) Adornment, Bodily Aesthetic, African Aesthetic, African Dance Africa, Central African Anthropology African Diaspora, Religion in African Feminism, The Emergence of African Language, Prayers and Hymns in African Philosophy in America African Philosophy Incipit African Philosophy, Search for Identity of African Philosophy: The End of a Debate African Spiritual Beliefs African Theology: Manifestoes and Positions 1960–1980 African Traditional Religions, Philosophy of Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West African-American Philosophy (1) African-American Philosophy (2) Afrocentricity Afterlife Agent (Ethical) Aggrey, James Emman Kwegyir Aimé Fernand Césaire (1913–2008) Akan Philosophy Aladura Churches: Women’s Role Ambiguity and Religion Amo, Antonius Guilielmus Ancestors Androgyny

Animism Anthropocentrism Anthropomorphism Antony of the Desert Apartheid and Religion Apparition Appearance Appiah, Anthony Kwame Architecture, West African Built Environment Asante, Kariamu Welsh Asante, Molefi Kete Ashe Athanasius Attribute Bâ, Amadou Hampâté Ba, Mariama Bakary, Diallo Balandier, Georges Bamana Religion and History Bantu Philosophy Bapostolo, Apostolic Church of John Maranke or Vapostori Bebey, Francis Being Belief, Anthropological Studies of Beliefs, Economic and Religious Beti, Mongo Beti-Bulu, The Tortoise Trickster Black Orpheus Blacksmith Blood Blyden, Edward Boganda, Life Religion and Politics Book of the Dead, The vii

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Busia, Kofi Abrefa Bwami Cabral, Amílcar Cannibalism Certitude Charles, Pierre Child Christianity, Historiography in Africa Christology, African Folk Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic Church, Women Founders of Churches, Indigenous Cities Coetzee, J.M. Cognition Colonial Library Colonial Space Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to Communication Community Conceptual Translation Conduct Conjuring and Clowning Continence Convention Couchoro, Felix Crahay, Franz Crisis Rites Cuisine Cult, African Cultural Elements in the Trinidad’s Shango Culturalism and Anticulturalism Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies Delafosse, Maurice Dialectic Difference and Literature Dinka, Christianity Among the Dinka: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals Diop, Cheikh Anta Divination and Diviners Divination and Possession Divination, Muslim Domesticity Dreams Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Dualism Eboussi-Boulaga, Fabien

List of Topics

Education and Pre-consciousness Education, Religious Egypt, Creation in Ancient Egypt: History, Language, and Literature Egypt: Religion and Theology Ela, Jean-Marc Enkang Environment Environment, Attitudes Toward Natural Episteme Epistemology, Religious Equiano, Olaudah Essence Essentialism Eternity Ethiopia, Christianity and Philosophy in Ethiopian Case: Folktale and Wisdom Ethiopian Case: Song and Wisdom Ethiopian Jews: Falasha Beta Israeli Ethiopian Philosopher Zera Yacob, Autobiography of the Ethiopian Philosopher Zera Yacob, Theodicy of the Ethiopian Philosophical Literature Ethiopian Philosophical Literature: Keywords and Themes Ethiopian Rationalist Zera Yacob’s Philosophy, Structure and Spirit of the Ethiopian Wisdom Literature Ethiopic Liturgy Ethnoastronomy and Body Arts Ethnophilosophy Eunuchs Evangelization of Western Africa Evergetism in Ivory Coast Evil Evolution Excision Existence Experience (Religious) Expiation Fables, African Fanon, Frantz Feminism (African) Fertility Fetish Fetishism

List of Topics

Fiction Fodéba, Keïta Food France, Image of in African Literature Free Will Garvey, Marcus Mosiah Genesis God in Bantu Religion Gordimer, Nadine Gospel (African Religion and Christian) Gyekye, Kwame Harlem Renaissance and Negritude Harris, William Wade Hausa Heteroglossia Hierarchy, Gender Hinduism: An Introduction Homosexuality Horton, James Africanus Beale Hountondji, Paulin House Human Rights, African Contemporary Thought Ifa, Divination System of Igbo Religion Igbo, Mbari Illness Imana Immortality Imperialism, Cultural Impurity Inculturation and Anthropology Individual as Community Member Individuality and Destiny Intercultural Philosophy Inventions, Religious Islam, Swahili Language, and Literature Islam: Ahmad Baba and Islam in the Sahel Islamic Thought, History Islamism Jonkonnu, John Canoe Judgment Kabbe Kagame, Alexis Kalenjin Kane, Cheikh Hamidou Kaoze, Stephano Kenya, The Roho Churches of

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Kenyatta, Jomo Kesteloot, Lilyan Khoisan Kikuyu, Philosophical Proverbs Kikuyu: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals Kimbangu, Simon King, The Sacred Kiranga, The Cult of Knowledge and Secrecy Kongo Kongo and Angola, Christianity in Kpelle Kuba Language, Philosophy of Liberation in African Philosophy Lienhardt, Godfrey Limba Literature, Destiny in Literature, Religious Themes in Loibonok, Great Prophets, Maasai Lopes, Henri Loutard, Jean-Baptiste Tati Lutuli, Albert Maasai (History, Religious Systems, Rituals) Maasai Age-Sets Magic Mahfouz, Naguib (1911–2006) Malawi, Mbona Cult of Malula, Joseph Mande Area: The History of Religious Systems Maranke, John Marxism Masks and Masquerades Masolo, Dismas A. Masquerade Mathematics Matrilineality Matsoua, André Mazrui, Ali Mboukou, Jean-Pierre Makouta Medicinal Systems, Philosophy of Indigenous Medicine and Religion Memory, Remembering in Myth Menkiti, Ifeanyi Metaphors, Religious Mnemonics and Religion (Non-written) Morality

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Morality and Religion Morals Mourning Movement, Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement, Black Consciousness Movements, African Religious Movements, Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Political Philosophy of National Independence Mphahlele, Es’Kia (1919–) Mulago, Vincent Mushete, Alphonse Ngindu Music and Religious Practices Music, Philosophy, and Culture Muteko Muzimu Mvemba a Nzinga, Alfonso I Mvemba, Henrique Kinu a Mveng, Engelbert Myal/Myalism Mysticism N’Krumah, Kwame Naming Nature and Culture Nature and Universe Nature, Human Negritude Negritude Women New Age and Esoteric Religion Ngbandi Ngoma Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Nguni (Xhosa and Zulu-Speaking) Communities and Islamic Culture: Meeting Traditions, Fusing Cultures Nilotic Peoples Nilotic Religious Thought Nilotic Society, Religion and Moral Values in Nketia, Joseph Hanson Kwabena Ntu Philosophers 1950–1970 Nubia, Christianity in Nyerere, Julius Oaths Oaths, Political Usages of Obligation Odinga Ajuma Oginga Ogot, Grace Akinyi

List of Topics

Okiek (Ogiek, Dorobo, Torrobo) Okigbo, Christopher Orality Order Oruka, H. Odera Ouologuem, Yambo Owomoyela, Oyekan P’Bitek, Okot Pachomius Papal Bulls Pende (Religion, Sacrifice, and Rituals) Performance, Ritual Person (Individual and Community) Peul People Philosophy and the Arts Philosophy, Sage Pluralism Poetics Popular Culture Possession Cults Practical Philosophy and Religion Présence Africaine Primitive/Noble Savage Primitivism Problem-Solving and Religion Prophetism, Precolonial African Proverbs Proverbs, Women in African Purity Rabih, B. Fadlallah Race (Fallacy of Race) Race: In Disciplines and Politics Rainforest, Cultural Ecology of the Reappropriation, Cultural Reciprocity Regicide Reincarnation Religion and Art Religion and Economics Religion and Technology Religion, African Scholars of Religion, Anthropology of Religion, Civil Religion, History and Politics of Religion, Technology, and Social Change Religion, Tropes in Central Africa Religious Literature in Africa

List of Topics

Ritual Rwanda Rwanda, Imana in Script Secrecy as a Way of Seeing, Knowing, and Acting Sembène, Ousmane Senghor, Léopold Sédar Sex, Prohibitions and Taboos Seydou, Badian Kouyate Shona: History, Religious Systems Change, and Rituals Sinda, Martial Slavery Sodipo, John Olubi Soul Sow, Ibrahim Soyinka, Metaphysics of Spirit Spirits Subject Surrealism and Africa Swahili Poetry, Classical Tradition Swahili Poetry, Stylistics and Metrics Taboo Tal, Cerno Bokar Saalif Tempels, Placide Text Theology, Black Theology, Feminist Critique of Thoth Time Translating Biblical Categories into African Languages

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Tshiamalenga-Ntumba, Marcel Tshibangu Tshishiku, Tharcissius Turner, Victor Witter Tutu, Desmond Tutuola and His Vision of Yoruba Cosmology Twins, Symbolism of Uganda, Literature of (Religious Topics and Political Comments) Umuntu Value, Economic and Religious Victim, Sacrificial Vita, D. Beatriz Kimpa War Watchtower Williams, Eric Wiredu, Kwasi Witchcraft/Sorcery Witch-Doctor Womb Women, Conflicts, and Symbols Women’s Power, The New African Religions and Writing Yacob, Philosophy Structure and Spirit of Ethiopian Rationalist Yoruba, Concept of Human Personality Yoruba, Conception of Wealth Yoruba, Foundation of Ethical Thought Among the Yorubaland, Female Deities Yorubaland, Goat in Zar, A History of

About the Editors

V. Y. Mudimbe (1941–) Poet, novelist, philosopher, anthropologist, and philologist, V.Y. Mudimbe received his Doctorat en Philosophie et Lettres from the Catholic University of Louvain in 1970. In 1997, he became Doctor Honoris Causa at Université Paris VII Diderot, in 2006, Doctor Honoris Causa at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and in 2014, Doctor Honoris Causa at Université Laval. Before arriving at Duke University, he taught at the Universities of Louvain, ParisNanterre, Congo (DRC), Stanford, and at Haverford College. Among his publications are three collections of poetry, four novels, as well as books in applied linguistics, philosophy, and social sciences. He is known worldwide for two path-breaking and greatly influential books: The Invention of Africa. Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (1988) which was awarded the Herskovits Award, by the African Studies Association (1989), and The Idea of Africa (1994). Concerned with the processes of transformation of types of knowledge and of cultural conversion that resulted in the Western invention of Africa, these works interrogate Western images of Africa; analyze the power of anthropologists, missionaries, and ideologists; and attempt to answer the question of what it means to be an African and a philosopher today, that is in a postcolonial African context. His other publications include: L’Odeur du pére (1982), Parables and Fables (1991), Les Glorieux des mots et des êtres. Esquisse d’un jardin africain á la bénédictine (1994), Tales of Faith (1997), Cheminements. Carnets de Berlin (2006) and On African Fault Lines. Meditations on Alterity Politics (2013) He is the editor of The Surreptitious Speech (1992), Nations, Identities, Cultures (1997), Diaspora and Immigration (1999). He is also former General Secretary of SAPINA (the Society for African Philosophy in North America) and co-editor with Robert Bates and Jean O’Barr of Africa and the Disciplines (1993). V.Y. Mudimbe is a Membre Honoraire Correspondant de l’Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre Mer (Belgium); a Member of the Société américaine de philosophie de langue française; as well as of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, and the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning. He has also served as Chairman of the Board of African Philosophy in Nord America, and from to 2014, as the Chairman of the International African Institute (SOAS, University of London).

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Kasereka Kavwahirehi (1969–) Kasereka Kavwahirehi is a professor of Francophone literatures at the University of Ottawa. He received a B.A. in philosophy from the Faculté de Philosophie Saint-Pierre Canisius in Congo in 1994, an M.A. in Romance languages and literature from the Catholic University of Louvain in 1998, and a Ph.D. in French studies from Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada) in 2003. He was a Fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Bayreuth (2010–2011) as well as of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2018–2019). Kasereka Kavwahirehi is a specialist in Francophone literatures with particular interests in literatures and social discourse, religion and politics in Africa, and African philosophy. His recent publications include: V.Y. Mudimbe et la ré-invention de l’Afrique. Poétique et politique de décolonisation des sciences humaines (2006), L’Afrique, entre passé et future. L’urgence d’un choix public de l’intelligence (2009), Le prix de l’impasse. Christianisme africain et imaginaires politiques (2013), and Y’en a marre! Philosophie et espoir social en Afrique (2018). He is also the editor of Dire le social dans le roman francophone contemporain (with Justin Bisanswa: 2011), Beyond the Lines: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, a Philosophical Practice/Au-delà des lignes: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, une pratique philosophique (with Lidia Procesi: 2012), and Violence in/and the Great Lakes: The Thought of V.-Y. Mudimbe and Beyond (with G. Farred and L. Praeg: 2014).

About the Editors

Contributors

Aduke Grace Adebayo Department of Modern European Languages, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria Kofi Agawu Department of Music, Lincoln Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Peter Amato Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Fordham University, The Bronx, NY, USA Edward P. Antonio Iliff School of Theology, 2201 S. University Boulevard, Denver, CO, USA Mary Jo Arnoldi National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA Simha Arom Senior Research Fellow Emeritus, CNRS, Paris, France K. W. Asante Department of African-American Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Kariamu Welsh Asante Boyer School of Music and Danse, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA Katya Gibel Azoulay Department of Anthropology, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, USA Simon Battestini Department of French, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA Les Roblins, Cosne, France Heike Behrend Institut für Afrikanistik, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany T. K. Biaya Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Verdun, QC, Canada Gilles Bibeau Département d’Anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada T. K. Biaya: deceased. xv

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Mubabinge Bilolo African Institute for Prospectives Studies (INADEP), Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo Caroline Bledsoe Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA Janice Boddy Department of Anthropology, Division of Social Sciences, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada Pieter Boele van Hensbroek Globalisation Studies Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Jean-Paul Bourdier Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Habil Eckhard Breitinger Universitat Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany Louis Brenner School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, UK Norbert Brockman International Relations, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, USA Nicholas Mainey Brown Department of English, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Bernadette Cailler professor emerita Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA Diane M. Ciekawy Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA miriam cooke Department of Asian and Middle East Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch Professor Emerita African History, University of Paris, Paris, France Dennis D. Cordell Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA Filip De Boeck Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Léon de Saint Moulin Faculté de Philosophie Saint-Pierre Canisius, Université Catholique du Congo, Kinshasa, République Démocratique du Congo Denyse de Saivre Sociologie Consultant International, Paris, France J. P. Olivier de Sardan LASDEL, Niamey, Niger Francis M. Deng The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA Dennis D. Cordell: deceased. Denyse de Saivre: deceased.

Contributors

Contributors

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Gaurav Desai Department of English, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA University at Albany, Albany, NY, USA Rene Devisch Deptartment of Anthropology, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium J. P. Dozon Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France Elizabeth A. Eames Department of Anthropology, Bates College, Lewiston, ME, USA Marie Pauline B. Eboh Philosophy Department, Faculty of Humanities, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria Emerita Department of Spanish and Portuguese and African and Afro-American Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Émmanuel Bueya Bu-makaya S. J. Université Loyola du Congo, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo Emmanuel C. Eze Lewisburg, PA, USA Silvia Federici Professor Emerita, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, USA Karen E. Fields University of Rochester, NY, USA Etienne Galle Le Bas Boul, Osse, France Segun Gbadegesin Department of Philosophy, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA Peter Geschiere Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Jack Goody St. John’s College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK Anke Graness Department of Philosophy, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany John Gray Black Arts Research Center, Nyack, NY, USA Rosalind I. J. Hackett Department of Religious Studies, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA Barry Hallen Southern Crossroads, Sarasota, FL, USA Karen Tranberg Hansen Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA Muhammed Haron Department of Practical Theology and Missiology, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa Emmanuel C. Eze: deceased.

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Leonard Harris Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Kenneth W. Harrow Department of English, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Peter Hawkins Department of French, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA Bonny Ibhawoh Department of History, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada Christiana C. M. N. Idika Institute for World Church and Mission, Graduate School for Philosophy and Theology, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Elizabeth Isichei Religious Studies Department, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand John M. Janzen Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Clarence Sholé Johnson Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, USA George Joseph French and Francophone Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA Bennetta Jules-Rosette Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA Mabika Kalanda Kinshasa, RDC Tabitha Kanogo Department of History, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA Musimbi Kanyoro Nairobi, Kenya D. N. Kaphagawani Zomba, Malawi Kasereka Kavwahirehi University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada Karen R. Keim Center for International Studies, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA Mpay Kemboly Faculté de Philosophie Saint-Pierre Canisius-Kimwenza, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo Alexandre Kimenyi Department of Foreign Languages and Ethnic Studies, California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

Mabika Kalanda: deceased. D. N. Kaphagawani: deceased.

Contributors

Contributors

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Jan Knappert Harpenden, Herts, UK Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Igor Kopytoff Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA Corinne A. Kratz Anthropology and African Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Murray Last Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK Helen Lauer Department of Philosophy, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana Mireille Lecarme Lyon II University, Lyon, France Shireen Lewis Department of Romance Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Francoise Lionnet Los Angeles, CA, USA Janet MacGaffey Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA Wyatt MacGaffey Department of Anthropology, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA Anthony Mangeon Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France Denis-Constant Martin LAM, Sciences po Bordeaux, Pessac, France Dismas Masolo Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA Pénéloppe-Natacha Mavoungou-Pemba Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada Richard I. McKinney Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA Patrick R. McNaughton Department of the History of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Claude Meillassoux Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France Gertrude Mianda Gender and Women’s Studies, Glendon Campus, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada John Middleton Guilford, CT, USA Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Jan Knappert: deceased. John Middleton: deceased.

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Christopher L. Miller Department of French, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Trinh T. Minh-ha Departments of Rhetoric and of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Aloo Osotsi Mojola United Bible Societies, Africa Regional Centre, Dodoma, Tanzania Bernard Mouralis University of Cergy-Pointoise, Cergy, France V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Jean-Claude Muller Département d’anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada Catharina Newbury Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA Department of History, emeritus, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA John K. Noyes University of Toronto, ON, Canada Rigobert Obongui Paris, France Lycée Younoussa Bamana, Mamouzou, Mayotte, France Atieno Odhiambo Department of History, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA Mercy Amba Oduyoye World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland Henry Odera Oruka Nairobi, Kenya Simon Ottenberg Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Lucius Outlaw Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA Oyedan Owomoyela Department of English, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA Philip M. Peek Madison, NJ, USA Marie Perinbam University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA William Pietz Los Angeles, CA, USA Dan Pillay Umhlaruzana Township, Durban, South Africa Literature Program, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA M. B. Ramose Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Tilburg, The Netherlands Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Henry Odera Oruka: deceased.

Contributors

Contributors

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Benjamin C. Ray Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA Peter Rigby Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Allen F. Roberts Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Mineke Schipper Professor Emeritus of Intercultural Literary Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands Jean Schmitz EHESS (École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Paris, France David L. Schoenbrun Department of History, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA J. M. Schoffeleers Leiden, The Netherlands A. Sooklal Department of Hindu Studies, University of Durban-Westville, Durban, South Africa Clarke K. Speed Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Washington, DC, USA Ruth M. Stone Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Z. S. Strother Columbia University, New York, USA Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia John K. Thornton Department of History and African American Studies, Boston University, Watertown, MA, USA Farouk M. Topan Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London, UK I. Peter Ukpokodu Department of African and African-American Studies, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Margaret Umeagudosu Department of Religion, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nsukka, Nigeria Walter E. A. van Beek African Studies Center, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands Pieter Boele van Hensbroek Globalisation Studies Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Jay M. Van Hook Department of Philosophy, Northwestern College, Orange City, IA, USA Frans J. Verstraelen Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe Claude Sumner: deceased.

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Claudine Vidal Sevres, France Michele D. Wagner History Department, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA K. Wambari Department of Philosophy, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya G. J. Wanjohi Department of Philosophy, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya David Westerlund Study of Religions, Department of Historical and Contemporary Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden Luise White Professor Emerita, University of Florida, Florida, USA Edwin Wilmsen Department of Anthropology, University of Texas-Austin, Austin, Texas, US Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA Sylvia Wynter Department of Spanish and Portuguese and African and Afro-American Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Yvon Christian Elenga S. J. Institut de Théologie de la Compagnie de Jésus, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire Yarisse Zoctizoum El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico

Contributors

Introduction

Representing a reliable and significant synthesis of African Studies since the early 1980s, the Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy presents a comprehensive view of major trends in the field. The project developed out of international debates on African philosophies and religions, in which a great number of its authors have been involved. Its entries attempt to account for the recent invention of Africa within the complicated intellectual configuration of histories of conquest. In effect and in principle, their challenge consists in the invocation of a right to a statement of difference, based on a critical assessment of philosophical criteria, precisely on the issue of knowing how a scientific language functions, and when and how its concepts make sense. The work has benefited from commitments in advanced interdisciplinary exchanges in a number of domains, including comparative research in epistemology and from surveys in postcolonial studies and social sciences, along with religious and philosophical compendia. Simply put, this is an Encyclopedia made from the viewpoint of African Studies, and in dialogue with scientific traditions. To go a little deeper into the economy of the project and grasp its scope, a step backwards can be enlightening. In 1970, a conference was held in Cotonou, Benin, on the theme “African Religions as a Source of Values of Civilization.” This conference brought together African researchers and thinkers with the aim of reflecting on the ways in which traditional African religions exert an influence on the structures of African civilization. For BlackAfrican thinkers the conference was an opportunity to unequivocally take charge of their cultural and belief systems in a language that was their own. They vigorously rejected classical terms such as fetishism, animism, totemism, paganism, and ancestrism and showed that despite the conversion to the religions of the Book, notably Christianity and Islam, the African religious framework was still present and its omnipresence, whether manifest or latent, goes beyond the borders of the continent, since it can be found in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, among other places. This suggested the necessary contribution of the diaspora experience to grasp its persistence through the upheavals of history and geographic changes. In addition, the researchers confirmed the realistic basis of the African religious imagination, which then appeared as a source of “humanization of natural laws” (Lévi-Strauss). In fact, myths and beliefs, rituals and pantheons, presupposed an undeniable knowledge and mastery of the environment as well as its respect. One could not understand anything of religious healing therapies, Voodoo cults of Benin, or oracles if he

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neglects, for example, the zoological, botanical, astronomical, or mathematical semantics they imply. What emerged from the Conference in Cotonou is that religion in Africa is above all a metaphor of life, the acknowledgment, in the acts of living, of the movement and the power by which life’s self-transcendence never abates. In accepting one’s determinations and conditionings, one’s radication in nature, and everything by which one was mediated: earth, sex, strength, the African human being moved into a position of relationship with Life, with God. As Eboussi Boulaga would put it, it was one’s attachment to this or that piece of earth, it was this particular mode of production, such-and-such a manner of life, such-and-such a way of being a sexual creature, it was the playing of this or that role in society, belonging to this particular age-group that wove the tissue of the religion of existence. It was being born, living, and dying in the most empirical manner that ever could be, that furnished the framework, the matter, and the experience of God’s sacrality and sovereign immanence. To put it more concisely, African religions that above all seek harmony within the community of the living and dead, and within the universe, present themselves as requirements of a living, concrete, and dynamic totality. This totality is visible at various levels: for example, the level of mythical archetypes, privileged support for rites, the permanent communion with the universe, the ancestors and the members of one’s clan, and the close links between the sacred and the political, the former legitimizing and structuring the latter. Ultimately, what was expressed in Cotonou was the desire for a reassessment of knowledge on African religions and cultures. One could also speak of a new will to truth which implies the rejection of “colonial sciences” and the affirmation of African right to difference. This Encyclopedia bears critical witness to this new will to truth and to transformations that, since contact with Christianity and Islam, have given rise to a new geography of the continent and promoted new systems of savoirs and connaissances. In fact, the encounter of traditional African religions with Christianity, first in the first century AD, later in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and with Islam in the seventh century onwards, did not occur in perfect harmony. On the contrary! It was a relation of subordination or subjugation structured by the missionaries’ pretention to possess the only true and good religion which justifies their superiority as well as the authority they exercise over the pagan peoples who do not know the true God. To be more complete, one could say that this authority is, in indissolubility, natural and religious. It is the authority of reason and revelation, of civilization and faith, the former being condition and product of the latter in each pair. Thus, to convert, or to save the soul of the pagan peoples whose world was then explained in the cult of idols, or reducible to idolatry, would mean to destroy the pagan institutions and substitute Christian ones. This allows them to have a monopoly in the construction of order, in the structuring of the mental space of societies, as well as the definition of their perceptual schemes. On the violence of the encounter, which was not simply symbolic, African novelists produced captivating testimonies. This is notably the case with Things Fall apart and Arrow of God by the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe and Ambiguous Adventure by the Senegalease Cheikh Hamidou Kane, to name but a few classics.

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From an analytical perspective, antagonism among the three traditions became apparent on two levels. Firstly, it was rooted in the opposition between the “paganism” of the indigenous people who practiced a religion of custom or of Ancestors, with no Credo nor political economy of proselytism on the one hand, and the religions of the Book and of salvation on the other, whose claim to universality and unequivocal truth find their foundation on the absolute Revelation of the Word of Allah to his Prophet, or in an absolute knowledgepower that is spread in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. On the second level, it was expressed by the rivalry between the two systems of absolute truth. In fact, the claim to universality and the certainty of possessing absolute truths mean that, yielding to fundamentalism, each of the two systems pretended to be the foreordained truth and norm of all authentic existence and the solitary matrix of genuine human beings. Consequently, each one engages in its own interest in acts of expansion to conquer peoples and spaces that are still considered to be in the shadows of sin and ignorance, to make them participate in the splendor of the Truth, which they believe to embody in an exclusive way. Thus Christianity and Islam have come to be seen as machineries of cultural conversion, negation of regional histories and fabric of new kind of subjectivity and social consciousness. However, if colonial Christianity and conquering Islam gave rise to a new geography of the continent, promoted new systems of both savoirs and connaissances, as well as new subjectivity and social consciousness, the so-called traditional forms have hardly disappeared. It would suffice to pay attention to present-day contradictions within production that exist throughout the continent, particularly between the processes of production and the social relations of production and the organization of power on the one hand and the political discourses on the other. Anyone who questions appearances to discover the underlying logic of behavior can note how much African religious heritage persists and permeates the African individual and social consciousness in the midst of, and often overriding, current local and global pressures. While African religious heritage continues to influence, challenge, and transform the Christian or Muslim proposal, its impact is also present in political, economic, and social practices. Nonetheless, despite this persistence, it would be illusory to look for pure originary and definitively fixed African traditions. One should remember that Kwame Nkrumah used to think, concerning African heritage, that the colonial experience and its powerful heritage exemplified something that, in terms of knowledge and experience, has been going on for centuries, namely, what the French call métissage. The reality of métissage challenges the idea of tradition as a pure essence that is a witness to its own originary being. It is from this métissage that occurred in a space circumscribed by African elements, but also well determined by anthropology and the colonial saga, as well as the practices and missionizing of Islam and Christianity, that gives evidence to the emergence of an “African Christianity” alongside what in the 1970s Vincent Monteil called “Black Islam.” Here and there, African subjects have known how to divert the alienating logic of conversion and dispossession to remain faithful to the worldview specific to African belief and thought systems. For example, the traditional

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concept of life and belief in the invisible world continue to shape the behavior of African men and women in modernity. What this indicates is the need to get out of the totalitarian logic of conversion to the unique and absolute truth with the violence it implies, in order to promote a dialogical approach based on the acknowledgment of plurality of belief systems and historicity, none of which can claim to possess the Absolute Truth. Or, to put it succinctly, no single culture has a monopoly of God, just as no single culture has a monopoly of human experience. Another illustration of the active reception of Christianity is undoubtedly the founding of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the fourth century after the conversion of Ezana, King of Axum, which was legally linked to the Patriarchate of Alexandria until its full independence in 1959. Established first in the Northern Kingdom of Axum and installed as the state religion, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity progressed southward following rulers’ conquests in the Amharas and Tigray regions. However, its history would remain closely entwined with that of the country due to the centuries of influence it had exerted on political power, its culture and society as a whole, and even more due to the Muslim conquests during the seventh century and the settling of several sultanates in the Horn of Africa during the following centuries. In order to survive being enveloped within Islam, Ethiopia had to, at times, turn in on itself and others, unite with this new occupier in the common struggle against the Christian West, especially the Portuguese, as well as Roman emissaries. But this forced withdrawal into itself also enabled Ethiopians to forge a spirituality from their own cultural heritage, so that we can speak of Ethiopian Christianity as a Christianity that is truly African, indigenous and traditional, with deep roots in the history and traditions of those who profess it. In short, attempts at the systematic reduction of African being and myths that seemed to establish, in the era of theology of the salvation of souls and the establishment of the Church (l’implantation de l’Église), an equivalence between conversion to Christianity and the assumption of Western cultural values, could not suppress the peculiarities of the African experience of God and the capacity of the natives to appropriate the Message, if not even to use it by inscribing it in combinations that facilitated the emergence of an African Christianity (Christianities) and an African modernity. In the name of the right to be different and of God’s irreducibility to Western experience and language, and in the name of God who frees the poor and oppressed, and finally, in the name of a desire for self-determination, a new reading of Christian scriptures and African cultural traditions was assumed by African prophets who, from the colonial period, knew how to use Christian novelty as a grid for critical reading of their situation and as the normative horizon of their action. It is in this sense that we can interpret the prophetic work of William Wade Harris in the South of the Ivory Coast and Simon Kimbangu in the Belgian Congo at the beginning of the last century. With these African prophets, the independent Christian churches played the role of public spaces where colonial and missionary power/discourse could be thought about and assessed by the natives in the light of the misfortunes that it multiplied and its humanist or civilizing claims, on one side. From another angle, they established themselves as spaces for social discourse, better still, as spaces for negotiation and invention of new

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forms of legitimizing new ideas about power, culture, and wealth, and particularly about solidarity, transcending clanic, and ethnic mythologies. The irruption of Christianity and Islam in Africa gave rise to new ideological spaces, new subjectivities, and social consciousness, as well as new expectations and unprecedented relationship to local cultural and religious practices. As shown by scholarly research and literature, not only did precolonial African societies and cultures produce thought systems that were deeply rooted in religious ideas and cosmogonies, but after its encounter with Christianity and Islam, the African continent also developed a long tradition of philosophical discourse that can be symbolized by the works of Saint Augustine of Hippo, and the great intellectual and cultural center of Timbuktu with its outstanding figures, figures such as Ahmed Bhabha of Timbuktu, and the first Ethiopian philosophers that included Zär’a Yacob and his disciple Walda Heywat. The emergence of what is known today as African philosophy and theology since the 1930s also testifies to the capacity of Christianity to bring about new cognitive spaces and produce new subjectivities. In fact, the pioneers and current tenors of African philosophy and theology are for the most part ecclesiastics or consciences marked by the education they received in missionary institutions. But it is not only the fields of African theology and philosophy that are at issue here. Political ideologies are also well represented. A critical look at African practices of philosophy and social sciences may reveal that, beyond the methodological requirements specific to these disciplines, Christian and Islamic sensitivities shape and guide the selection of objects that are questioned, the reflectors and theories to be mobilized, and determine styles in inscription and indeed in philosophical expressions. The same observation can be made in the field of literature. An important example is the adaptation of biblical verse by the Senegalese poet, Leopold Sédar Snghor, following the French poets such as Charles Péguy and Paul Claudel. From Belgian missionary Placide Tempels, author of Bantu Philosophy (1945), to Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, author of Muntu in Crisis: African Authenticity and Philosophy (1977) and Christianity Without Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity (1981), which analyze the effects of the colonial and missionary enterprise on African consciousness, by way of La Philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l’Être (1956) by Alexis Kagame, Visage africain du christianisme (1965) by Vincent Mulago, and John S. Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy (1969), African practices of Philosophy and theology have been facing existential, political, and anthropological challenges born from the extension of a bourgeois and Christian way of being, thinking, and producing to Africa. This means that theologies of inculturation, liberation and reconstruction, Ethnophilosophy, and critical philosophies represent moments when African theologians and philosophers try to restore or render coherence to their individual and collective existences by critically situating themselves into the horizon opened by colonial modernity and the evangelizing mission, but without renouncing their African heritage. This means trying to think by oneself, and for oneself, the integration of traditional values into modernity, and to ensure that modernity fulfills its promises within the history of the African experience.

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In the name of a new paradigm, books and articles published since 1970s have been criticizing the ethnophilosophy of disciples of Tempels (Alexis Kagame, Vincent Mulago, John Mbiti, etc.) who were accused of conflating ethnology and philosophy. Indeed, the works of ethnophilosophers were marked by the attempt to restore the dignity of African culture, either ontologically or hermeneutically. They either strove to construct an African philosophy by finding in African cultures the equivalents of Aristotelian or Thomistic categories, thanks to which they claim they reveal implicit African systems of thought, or to identify a philosophy structured by sorting through the contents of extant ethnographic studies and collections of myths, stories, prayers, and ritual formulas through hermeneutical restitution. To identify, through hermeneutic restitution, a structured philosophy by sorting through the contents of extant ethnographic studies and collections of myths, stories, prayers, and ritual formulas. What African philosophers criticize in the ethnophilosophical practice is the belief that there is, “out there” in everyday life, an implicit philosophy that can be brought to light by a careful observer using a rigorous philosophical instrumentarium. Unlike ethnophilosophers, from the end of the 1970s African philosophers invested themselves, in a quest for the conditions of the possibility of a rigorous, critical, self-critical, and systematic philosophical discourse on the world, a discourse that justifies Africans as singular existences engaged in a history that is also singular. One can now see a convergence taking shape: much like the thinkers gathered in Cotonou in early 1970s, critical philosophers seek a new will to truth in the discourse on Africa. The entries that make up the Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy share the same dynamic that is, ultimately, a desire to reinvent Africa. At the heart of this will to truth is, among other things, a desire to overcome the binary oppositions between paganism and Christianity or Islam, primitivity and civilization, oppositions conveying levels and tables of values that discriminate between evil and good, wrong and right, unscientific and scientific. This also implies a new historical responsibility for African intellectuals trained in European universities. A statement by Engelbert Mveng about the decolonization of theology, philosophy, and human and social sciences in the late 1970s sums up the intellectual mood of the time: “The West agrees with us today that the way to truth passes by numerous paths, other than Aristotelian, Thomistic logic or Hegelian dialectic. But social and human sciences themselves must be decolonized.” These words announce a new direction in a long history of struggle for difference. From an organizational and technical perspective, the Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy is based on four pillars: (1) the acknowledgment that African cultures had and have their own savoir and connaissances inscribed in, and dependent upon, traditions that have never been fixed; (2) the acknowledgment of the determining role of African diasporas in the Americas in the true understanding of African traditions and identity; (3) the acknowledgment that in its two meanings (as a critical, autocritical, and systematic discipline and as Weltanschauung), African philosophy cannot but refer to ethnographic contexts. Without them, African practices of philosophy could lose their historical and conceptual coherence;

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and (4) in the same concern for openness and inclusiveness, alongside African thinkers who have contributed significantly to the development of African philosophy, are European researchers who have had a considerable impact on the modern idea of Africa and the future of African thought (e.g., Placide Tempels, Pierre Charles, Maurice Delafosse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Balandier, Franz Crahay). In summary, the idea of Africa presented in this Encyclopedia is that of an intercultural space in which over the centuries several systems of beliefs and thoughts have come together to bring forth new identities, subjectivities, promote new systems of both savoirs and connaissances as well as new cultural and religious framework. Like any great historical force, the latter is constantly being recomposed according to new challenges, institutional, social, and economic transformations, the particularities of the regional histories and the global context in general. The Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy has four hundred entries presented in alphabetical order. In line with the objective of the volume, which is to serve as a reference work for both newcomers in the field of African Studies and for specialists on the one hand, on the other hand, with the concern for intelligibility and intellectual efficiency, entries are generally short and written in language that is clear, with minimal use of technical terms. Each entry is followed by a selective bibliography to facilitate further research or further comprehension of the notion, concept, or element of a regional tradition presented. At the end of some of the entries are references to other articles in the volume that deal with a related or complementary subject. This Encyclopedia comes in addition to a number of anthologies or encyclopedias that have appeared in recent years and relate either to African thought, culture, religion, or philosophy. However, the Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy has its specificities. Made up from the viewpoint of African studies, yet in dialogue with all disciplinary scientific traditions, not only does it combine African religions and philosophy, but it is also historically and culturally grounded. But this convergence does not indicate a neglect or relativization of the specificities or differences between religions and philosophy. It signifies something else that is fundamental: the need, for a greater intelligibility and efficient evaluation of the African philosophical practice, to inscribe it in the history and cultural traditions that made it possible. Finally, without being apologetic or exhaustive, this Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy can also be received as a celebration. Its entries were written by scholars who for 30 or 40 years have assumed leadership in the field of African Studies. They have invested themselves in making African belief systems and philosophical practices known by trying to be as attentive as possible to their uniqueness, historicity, their own language and immanent logic. Thus, this Encyclopedia is a legacy of cultural memory and intellectual history for future generations of researchers. University of Ottawa

Kasereka Kavwahirehi

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Accad, Evelyne miriam cooke Department of Asian and Middle East Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Evelyne Accad was born in 1943 in Beirut, Lebanon. She earned her Ph.D. at Indiana University and then went on to teach African and Arab Francophone Literatures at the University of Illinois, Champagne–Urbana. She is a literary critic, novelist, poet, and musician. Accad was one of the first critics of Arab Literature to focus on women writers. After publishing Veil of Shame: The Role of Women in the Contemporary Fiction of North Africa and the Arab World in 1978, she turned her attention to writings on the civil war in Lebanon. In War and Sexuality: Literary Masks of the Middle East (1989), she evinces a concern for men’s advocacy of violence and looks to women’s fiction for hope of reprieve and an ultimate solution. This critical work complements the fiction she has written on the war: L’Excisée (1982), a novel about clitoridectomy and patriarchy set against the background of the war, and Coquelicot du Massacre (1988). Her next novel, Blessure des Mots (1993), moves to Tunisia, where she described complex friendships with feminists. Accad has devoted her life to peace activism and, despite evidence to the contrary, believes that

it is in the power of the individual to work for and to achieve good.

Bibliography Accad, Evelyn. 1978. Veils of shame. Sherbrooke: Naaman. ———. 1982. L’excisée. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 1988. Coquelicot du massacre. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 1990. Sexuality and war. New York: New York University Press. ———. 1993. Wounding words. Oxford: Heinemann. ———. 1992. Writing to explore (W)human experience. Research in African Literatures 23 (1): 179–185. ———. 1994. Translation of the orient: Writing the Maghreb. Research in African Literatures 25 (1): 118–120, review of Bernard Aresu, Counterhegemonic discourse from the Maghreb, Tubingen: Narr, 1993.

Acculturation John Middleton Guilford, CT, USA Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Societies and their cultures are always in process of change – sometimes cyclical or repetitive, at other times radical or structural – due to both internal and external factors, particularly in

John Middleton: deceased.

© Springer Nature B.V. 2021 V. Y. Mudimbe, K. Kavwahirehi (eds.), Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5

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contact with other societies. Acculturation refers to the acquisition of new cultural elements, which are often accompanied by the loss of “traditional” elements, as part of historical processes of intersocietal contact – both direct (as in conquest) and indirect (as in many colonial and neocolonial situations of commerce, political hegemony, or religious conversion). Acculturation is not uniform acquisition: Only certain elements are selected and accommodated, while others may be refused. The former is used to replace either existing elements which are discarded or are given place besides the existing ones. The reasons for the choice and decision are various, but probably the most important is that of the symbolic value of a new cultural element within the ongoing hierarchical and competitive structure of the society. Examples are legion: New sumptuous articles or values are used to claim higher status, new items of religious faith, or new claims to particular external ancestry or ethnicity. They may mark a new group or personal identity, and new rituals may confer legitimacy on a new class position or may be refused and old ones retained to emphasize an already existing position. In colonial situations, the acceptance or nonacceptance of Christianity or Islam by adherents of local religions was closely linked to changes in the social roles of local rulers, elites, gender–categories, or common people, both vis-à-vis colonial rulers and vis-à-vis one another. In brief, as social structures and organizations change, old symbols are constantly discarded and new ones that better express the significance of developing interests and identities of evolving groups and persons are acquired.

See Also ▶ Inculturation and Anthropology

Bibliography Costers, Michel de. janvier 1971. Acculturation. In Diogène, # 73. Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves. 1997. Tales of faith, chapter four. London: The Athlone Press.

Act (Mental)

Act (Mental) Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

Consciousness constitutes the basic difference between mere physical movement and a human act – but not every state of consciousness is mental. Indeed, not every mentally conscious movement is an act; only those that involve or presuppose premeditation are and out of these are the logical constructs (called conduct) that are susceptible to moral evaluation. Fundamental concepts in the philosophy of mind and ethics are at play here, namely, the physical, the conscious, the mental, and the deliberative, which are perhaps easy to enumerate but hard to elucidate. As far as the philosophy of mind is concerned in the present connection, two issues are urgent. In the first case, what makes the difference between the merely physical and the conscious and, in the second, between the merely conscious and the mental? In some Western philosophies of mind, these two issues are not even distinguished because of an historical conflation of mind with consciousness. An African philosopher, mindful of his or her traditional philosophy background, need not be afflicted with this incapacity for, in accounts of traditional concepts of personhood, it is usual to find the source of consciousness attributed to a life principle (generally of a direct divine origin), while the possibility of thought is equally traced to some organ of the body. For example, the Yorubas (famous for their elaborate conception of human personality) speak of the Emi, a breath-like divine substance that symbolizes consciousness. They cite the Okan, which is literally the heart, when speaking of the human capacity basis for thought and emotion; yet, it should not be taken literally or solely as such. In Rwandan thought, which features a philosophical psychology of no mean complexity, the life principle in a conscious human being is the Umuzimu (which is “dormant” until after the subject’s death), while emotion and will are ascribed to the Umutima (the heart) – not

Adornment, Bodily

altogether unlike in the Yoruba analysis, and the power of ratiocination is credited to Ubwenge (a distinct faculty of intelligence). Not surprisingly, how traditional concepts for the analysis of human personality (such as the Okan of the Yoruba, the Adwene (mind) of the Akans, or the Umutima of the Rwandans) are to be interpreted from an ontological point of view is a matter of dispute among some contemporary African philosophers. Some (Oguah, Gyekye, and Gbadegesin) see these concepts functioning within the philosophies of their own traditional cultures as references to the spiritual component of a veritable Cartesian dualism. Others (Appiah and Wiredu) find the monism/dualism antithesis itself inapplicable to the relevant thought system. Hopefully, this healthy debate will lead not only to an adequate clarification of traditional conceptions of a mental act, but also to similar theories that can withstand the modern developments tests. The expectation that the first type of enterprise will aid the second is a legitimate motivation for the contemporary study of traditional philosophy.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate ▶ Agent (Ethical) ▶ Conduct ▶ Morality ▶ Morals ▶ Spirits ▶ Yoruba, Concept of Human Personality ▶ Yoruba, Foundation of Ethical Thought Among the

Bibliography Appiah, Anthony. 1989. Necessary questions: An introduction to philosophy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. ———. 1992. In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Gbadegesin, Segun. 1991. African philosophy: Traditional Yoruba philosophy and contemporary African realities. New York: Peter Lang. Gyekye, Kwame. 1987. An essay on African philosophical thought: The Akan conceptual scheme. New York: Cambridge University Press.

3 Kagame, Alexis. 1989. The problem of ‘man’ in Bantu philosophy. The African Mind: Journal of Religion and Philosophy in Africa 1 (1): 35–40. O’Donohue, John. 1991. A Bantu philosophy: An analysis of philosophical thought among the people of Rwanda, based on La philosophie Bantu–Rwandaise de l’etre (Brussels, 1956) by Alexis Kagame. Journal of African Philosophy and Religion 2 (1): 140–148. Oguah, Benjamin Ewuku. 1984. African and Western philosophy: A comparative study. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard Wright, 214–215. New York: University Press of America. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1987. The concept of mind with particular reference to the language and thought of the Akans. In Contemporary philosophy, vol. 5: African philosophy, ed. G. Floistad, 175. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Adornment, Bodily Atieno Odhiambo Department of History, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

African bodily decoration is a major index of the social changes that have occurred in the last two centuries, as well as a mirror of the wide range of aesthetics within the vast continent. Body art has been described as a detailed sign language, conveying information about identity, gender, status, achievement, social standing, values, and a sense of occasion. Bodily adornment in clothing is a text, “a live information system” about the cultures, social categories, and intelligibility of the society in question, while jewelry adds color, emphasizes movement, and accentuates and highlights bodily decoration and clothing adornment. Africans have practiced varieties of bodily adornment by cicatrization, scarification, chalkpainting, tattooing, body-painting, hairstyles, circumcision, teeth extraction, teeth filing, and ear, nose, and lip piercing. Hats, hair-styles, veils, headcloths, scarves, earrings, necklaces, nose rings, ear plugs were objects of glamour, flamboyance, and prestige, as were arm-bands, amulets, and varieties of jewelry. An example of prestigious hair-styling is the zoumbo circular disc at the front adorned by Songhai royal women, while

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Hamar men in Ethiopia plait hair so as to depict status, bravery, and courage. Henna designs focus attention on the hands and feet of Tuareg and Swahili women, as do ankle bracelets. Christian Ethiopia has donned a variety of crosses for centuries. The Nuer scarify their faces as marks of identity as do the Yoruba, while Luo women scarify their bellies for sensual appeal. Maasai and Surma paint their bodies for beauty and to intimidate their adversaries. The dancing arena was and is a favorite location for display; the Karo paint their bodies with chalk-paint in preparation for the dance, while the urban youth of Johannesburg wear the latest western clothing styles. Natural materials form the basis of most traditional bodily decorations: ashes, rouges, soil paints, bronze, cowries, feathers, silver, ivory, as well as the more symbolic warthog teeth, lion’s teeth, leopard skins, bird beaks, and elephant’s tail. Ashanti gold, Igbo women’s ivory, and mangbetu women’s copper jewelry are justly famous, as are the Songye ivory bracelets, Baluba ivory pendants, Azande hairpins, Yoruba ivory bracelets, Baoule bronze mask pendants, and the heavy bronze anklets worn by Bete women of status. Equally elaborate have been the worked materials: bark cloth from Buganda, kente cloth of the Akan peoples, beaded goatskin aprons of the Ndebele, and the ubiquitous wrapper (leso) with cryptic messages from the East coast. Many ornaments also have religious significance, as seen in the ancestor imagery in bronzes of the Mossi, bronze rings of the Senufo and Lobi, Kirdi betrothal dolls. In addition, woven skirts with verses from the Koran (batakari) or amulets holding the same (hirisi) as worn by the Kasena of Ghana and the Swahili are distinctive characteristics of African Islam. Some ornaments embody esoteric knowledge, like the Senufo insignia rings associated with healing. Specific traditions of bodily decoration are associated with the life cycle. The male Maasai body is the subject and object of elaborate decoration at the eunoto rite of passage, a gendered ceremony including mothers, sons, and elders which marks the transition from warriorhood to regular homemaking. The female body is likewise

Adornment, Bodily

elaboratively decorated during the circumcision ceremony. Dinka maidens wear elaborate beaded corsets, bodices, and necklace that display the family’s relative wealth in cattle, while Okiek hunter-gatherer brides and womenfolk display and mutually admire elaborate beadworks on the eve of marriage. The advent of colonialism ushered in an era characterized by the struggle over “nakedness,” as Christian missionaries sought to dress the human body so as to cover “sin,” and as the colonial rulers designed attires appropriate for the servile status of the African subjects. Baganda women were thus inducted into the busuti, while male house servants donned a fez and served barefooted. Africans vigorously resisted and subverted these imperial prescriptions. The subversion was facilitated by the fact that colonialism expanded the scale of access to material goods, and thus the scope of choice in items and fashions. Mass-produced glass beads, soap, and textiles are indicative of the first, and the choices of styles made available by tailors and seamstresses of the second. The movement of ideas through talk, display, observation of travelling people’s clothes and copying from hand-me-downs and glamour magazines made a wide range of choices available, from Charlie Chaplin’s movie clothes, Winston Churchill’s cigars to the nationalistic toga popularized by Kwame Nkrumah in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the ethic of African difference was enunciated in the “socialist” male attires popularized by the Kaunda’ suit after President Kaunda of Zambia and by the abacost in Mobutu’s Zaire, which was meant to symbolize authenticity. Meanwhile young people have taken to the changing fashions with alacrity, from the “bell-bottom” trousers and “platform” shoes of the 1970s to the ubiquitous unisex T-shirts and jeans of the 1990s. The most fashionable youth are to be found in the twin cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, where the kinois and the sapeurs youth groups compete for recognition over the sharpness of their dress styles. Historians of Africa have noted the direct relationship between bodily adornment, clothing, and power. In the past, men of wealth and power accumulated fine cloths, jewelry and prestige

Aesthetic, African

pieces. The twentieth century gave access to many ordinary peoples to acquire everyday clothing. But this did not disrupt the continuity of ideas associated with wealth, bodily adornment, and power. The sapeurs of Kinshasa could indeed don the latest Parisian styles; the most expansive abacost, gold-rimmed grasses, copper bracelet, and carved and decorated walking stick were still owned by President Mobutu Sesse Seko.

See Also ▶ Crisis Rites ▶ Fetish

Bibliography Anderson, Martha G., and Christine Mullen Kraemer. 1989. Wild spirits, strong medicine. New York: The Center for African Art. Atieno odhiambo, E.S. 1992. From warriors to jonanga. The struggle over nakedness by the Luo of Kenya, 1900–1951. In Sokomoko: Popular culture in East Africa, ed. Werner Graebner, 11–26. Amsterdam/ Atlanta: Editions Rodopi. Beckwith, Carol, and Angela Fisher. 1990. African ark. New York: Abrams. Bravman, R.A. 1983. African Islam. London: Ethnographica. Fisher, Angela. 1984. Africa adorned. New York: Abrams. Friedman, Jonathan. 1990. The political economy of elegance: An African cult of beauty. Culture and History VII: 101–125. Hay, M.J. 1989. Western clothing and African identity: Changing consumption patterns among the Luo. Boston: African Studies Center Working Paper. Kratz, Corinne. 1994. Affecting performance: Meaning, movement and experience in Okiek women’s initiation. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Martin, Phyllis. 1994. Contesting clothes in colonial Brazzaville. The Journal of African History 35 (3): 401–426. Sieber, Roy, and Roslyn Adele Walker. 1987. African art in the cycle of life. Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art. Vansina, Jan. 1984. Art history in Africa: An introduction to method. London: Longman. ———. 1994. The arts and society since 1935. In UNESCO general history of Africa, ed. Ali Mazrui, vol. VIII, 601–605. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vogel, Susan. 1991. Africa Explores. New York: The Center for African Art.

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Aesthetic, African Kariamu Welsh Asante Boyer School of Music and Danse, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

Theories of African Aesthetics are specific or general. Specific theories focus on one ethnic group nation. General or pan-African aesthetics aim at identifying the common characteristics that occur and recur in the African Aesthetics. The nature and complexion of an aesthetic will differ from one culture to another, depending on their histories and mythologies, which almost always involve religion. In precolonial Africa, the concept of State was intertwined and interdependent with the traditional religions. The aesthetics reflects the union of government and traditional religion. An artist “in the tradition” worked for the community, and one’s task was considered part of a divine or sacred order. It was a structured vision and perspective with parameters that permitted individual expression, but simultaneously supported the collective artistic expression. Distinctions between society and artist and between spectators and performers were not linear and separate. In traditional African societies, the spectators and the artists were one. Individual creativity emerged from expressive tradition of the communal canon instead of a response to the reactions of an audience, to adoration, or wealth. It is from the context that an artist is appreciated, acclaimed, and affirmed. Within the general African aesthetics, there will exist a multitude of national and family aesthetics. Family aesthetics are related by specific common characteristics while maintaining individual ethnic aesthetic identities. Thus, the Sabbaar dance of the Wolof people of Senegal is unquestionably Wolof; at the same time, it shares common aesthetic traits with the Gure dance of the Chopi people of Mozambique. As in the case of the Sabaar – whose meaning, language, and context are decidedly Wolof – the Gure is decidedly Chopi. Both dances can be understood appreciated in the more general context, and that is

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predicated on the aesthetic characteristics that link these two dances and numerous others. A viable aesthetics becomes a significant cultural barometer with a responsibility to the entire community, both living and dead. When discussing an African aesthetics, one must make mention of the African’s relationship with time and space, the concept of community, rhythm, and myth (symbolic representation of mythical forces). Africans manifest rhythm’s symbolism in both the artistic products and religious institutions. There is a fluidity of rhythm that operates at the preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages manifested in complex and structured artistic compositions, as well as the rythms of everyday living. Africans distinguish and discern by rhythmic flux in addition – sometimes in opposition – to material changes. Spirit, rhythm, and creativity are the key criteria in discussing any aesthetics for African people. Spirit, rhythm, and creativity derive from an epic memory (Welsh Asante 1985) or sense of ancestorism or race memory (Larry Neal 1972). African people can draw upon a collective aesthetic bank that houses images, symbols, and rythms based upon history and subsequent mythology. For example, court dances embody certain ritual behavior that became part of the epic memory and serve as resources for artistic expression today. The aesthetic bank of Africa provides useful and usable canon for creativity and emulation. Senghor (1956) makes his salient comment about the African aesthetics: “An African aesthetics rests, therefore, on the aesthetics of Kuntu, and that means on the harmony of meaning and rhythm, sense and form . . .” A universal aesthetics that is applicable to all the art is valid only within the context of a particular culture, based on criteria derived from history and mythology. In effect, the cultural dynamics of a people create a specific aesthetic complexion. An aesthetics that reflects the images and symbols of a culture exists in harmony with the cosmology of that society, thus facilitating the highest creative expression and innovation. The integration of music, dance, and theatre has been understood as mere integration; however, it is the

Aesthetic, African

complimentarian synthesis that combines yet distinguishes. The only way in which the commonalities of the African aesthetics can be examined is to isolate their aesthetic characteristics and then to compare them to see if there are any similarities. According to art historian Susan Vogel (1986), “The (African) aesthetics is fundamentally moral.” The word for “beauty” and “good” is often the same in African languages. “This word usually means well made, beautiful, pleasing to the senses, virtuous, useful, correct, appropriate, and conforming to customs and expectations and stands in contrast to the word meaning vicious, useless, ill-made, unsuitable” (Vogel 1986). Vogel correctly points to the symbiotic connection between beauty and good that is so prevalent in African societies. The fusion of beauty and good does not denote a lack of distinction between the two. It is, instead, an indication of the perennial multiplicity of concepts that occupy equal status and dominance. Vogel continues by stating, “It becomes clear, however, that a real understanding of African art and African value systems lies in the very recognition that the two concepts overlap.” A concept of complimentarian duality is constant in the African aesthetics (Rochord 1989). “Good/aesthetics expresses two sources of African aesthetics: the aesthetic form of work (its external appearance) and its aesthetic content (the signification of something good)” (Vogel 1986). Moral perfection, as articulated by Thompson, is the cornerstone to understanding the African aesthetics. The material manifestation of the art form will always be imperfect, but the content, if functional, will achieve moral perfection – this is where the value is placed. As Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola tells us, beauty is a force: Kuntu – not the beauty of something, but beauty itself (Jahn 1961). The connection between goodness and beauty operatives in the African aesthetics. In other words, “pretty is as pretty does.”

See Also ▶ Aesthetic, African Dance ▶ Tutuola and His Vision of Yoruba Cosmology

Aesthetic, African Dance

Bibliography Abusabib, Mohamed A. 1995. African art: An aesthetic enquiry. Uppsala: Academic Upsaliensis. Anyanwu, K.C. 1981. African philosophy. Rome: Catholic Book Agency. Asante, Molefi Kete. 1987. The Africentric idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Boone, S. 1986. Radiance from the waters. New Haven: Yale University. Bloccker, H. Gene. 1998. On the distinction between modern and traditional African aesthetics. In Philosophy from Africa: A text with readings, ed. by P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux. Johannesburg: International Thomson Publisher. Croce, B. 1971. Aesthetics: An introduction. Indianapolis: Boobs Merrill Publishing Co. ———. 1974. Art and the aesthetic: An institutional analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gayle, A., ed. 1972. The black aesthetics. New York: Anchor Books. Jahn, J. Muntu. 1961. An outline of the new African culture. New York: Grove Press. Kofie, Nichols N. 1994. Contemporary African music in world perspectives: Some thoughts on systematic musicology and acculturation. Accra: Ghana Universities Press. Mbiti, J. 1970. African religions and philosophies. Garden City: Doubleday and Co. Moyana, T. 1976. Muchongoyo: A Shangani dance. African Arts IX (2): 40–42. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Neal, Larry. 1972. The black aesthetics (ed. A. Gayle). New York: Grove Press. Nketia, K. 1966. Music in African cultures. Legon: University of Ghana, Institute of African Studies. ———. 1974. The music of Africa. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Onyewuyeyi, I. 1998. Traditional African aesthetics: A philosophical perspective. In Philosophy from Africa: A text with readings, ed. P.H. Cpetzee and A.P.J. Roux, 396–400. Johannesburg: International Thomson Publishing. P’Bitek, Okot. 1986. Artist, the ruler: Essays on art, culture and values. Nairobi: Heinemann. Rochord, D. 1989. Let the Circle Be Unbroken. New York: Djifa Press. Senghor, L. 1954. Langage et poésie négroafricaine. Second Biennal of Poetry, Knakke, Belgium. ———. 1956. L’esprit de la civilisation ou les lois de la culture négro-africain. Présence Africaine VIII-X: 51–65. Sieber, R. 1971. The aesthetics of traditional African art. In Art and aesthetics in primitive societies, ed. C.F. Jopling, 127–131. New York: E.P. Dutton. Snead, J. 1981. On repetition in black culture. Black American Literature Forum 15 (4): 146–154.

7 Tracey, H. 1948a. Chopi musicians – Their music. Poetry and instruments. London: Oxford University Press, International African Institute. ———. 1948b. Ngoma. London: Longmans Green. Tutuola, A. 1954. My life in the bush of ghosts. New York: Faber & Faber Publishers. Udenta, Udenta O. 1993. Revolutionary aesthetics and the African literary process. Enugu: Fourth Dimension. Vogel, S.M. 1986. The African aesthetics of art. New York: The Institute of Arts. Welsh, Asante 1985. African Culture: The Rythms of Unity. Westport: Praeger Publishers. Williams, D. 1974. Icon and images: A study of sacred and secular forms of Africa. New York: New York University Press. Wiredu, K. 1980. Philosophy and African culture. London: Cambridge University Press. Zahan, D. 1979. The religion, spirituality, and thought of traditional Africa. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Aesthetic, African Dance Kariamu Welsh Asante Boyer School of Music and Danse, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

The Ghanian choreographer, Mawere Opoku, has said “To us life with its rhythms and cycles is dance and dance is life” (Opoku 1965). In a similar manner, Pearl Primus (1954) has equated the dances of Africa with the life-force and spirit of the cosmos. These statements may provide viable grids regarding the understanding of these artistic manifestations, since they alert us for the close relationships between these and given social and cultural orders. In this sense, Davidson’s statement, according to which art for life’s sake, instead of art for art’s sake, is an important dictum of “traditional” African cultures (1969) and is quite pertinent. In several cultural inscriptions, dance is not selfreferential, but exists and is recognized for its contribution to the good of the community. It is not merely an individual’s indulgence; rather, it is the evidence of collective values and mores. A comprehensive approach to the distinct aesthetics involved in dance may include a consideration for two elements: senses and characteristics.

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Seven senses are usually identified: (1) polyrhythm, (2) polycentrism, (3) curvilinearity, (4) epic memory, (5) force vitale dynamism, (6) repetition, and (7) holism. A second component of the African dance aesthetics is characteristics, which refers to those aspects that identify the dance by a collective signature and identity, creativity, and theme. While the senses refer to those qualities that make up the internal composition of the dance, characteristics refer to those qualities that the dance itself performs. Characteristics help to locate a given dance; but, alone, the characteristics do not adequately describe the makeup of the dance. The senses undergird the dance, regardless of theme, and geography. In this way, the interaction between senses and characteristics, as well as its dynamic cultural and aesthetic explorations and developments, namely in what concerns cultural and intercultural fluxes, can help to recognize a given cultural and identity performance in the form of a dance and, most importantly, to construct a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between aesthetics forms and cultural identity expressions and experiences. Understanding the dance aesthetics in distinct African contexts requires frequently an appreciation of its communal dimension. Dance is often regarded as communal organic and in harmony with the natural order of the universe. Movement for the sake of movement is not portrayed as a valuable goal. This does not mean that movements and performance virtuosity are not appreciated for their own intrinsic value and beauty, but beauty and value of the movements are connected and invested with meaning. One could say that the dance gains relevance in the relation between its performance and its audience. In this sense, bearing witness becomes an organic document to the sound and motion and meaning. These considerations lead to the recognition of a holistic trait that tends to structure these aesthetics and performative manifestations. There is an Akan saying that, before a dancer says she will dance until daybreak, she must first ask the drummer. The holistic quality here implicit includes the music-makers and the audience. This is why the concept of an artist tends to be mostly linked to a collective. Dance is a communal effort because of

Aesthetic, African Dance

the community’s participation, including the tree, whose permission is sought before the drummer cuts it to make the drum.

See Also ▶ Aesthetic, African

Bibliography Barrett, L. 1974. Soul force. Garden City: Doubleday. Begho, F. 1985. Black dance continuum: Reflections on the heritage connection between African dance and AfroAmerican jazz dance. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International. Berliner, P. 1974. The soul of mbira. Berkeley: University of California. Boas, F., ed. 1972. The function of dance in human society. New York: Dance Horizons. (Original work published 1944). Dunham, K. 1983. Dances of Haiti. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Fabre, G. 1983. Drumbeats. Masks and metaphor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gorer, G. 1935. Africa dances. London: Penguin Press. Hanna, J.L. 1966. What is African dance. Journal of the New African Literature and the Arts: 64–67. ———. 1983. The performer-audience connection. Austin: University of Texas Press. Imperato, J.P. 1970. The dance of the Tyiwara. African Arts 4 (1): 8–13, 71–80. ———. 1971. Contemporary adapted dance of the Dogon. African Arts 5 (1): 28–33, 68–72. Kaemmer, J. 1975. The dynamics of a changing music system in rural Rhodesia. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University. Matthew, J.C. 1946. Mohobelo. The Dancing Times, October, 12–13. Opoku, M. 1965. African dances. Legon: Legon University Press. ———. 1970. The dance in traditional African society. Research Reviews 7 (1): 1–7. Primus, P. 1961. African dance. Presence Africaine, Special Issue, 163–173. Ranger, T.O. 1975. Dance and society in Eastern Africa 1890–1970. Berkeley: University of California Press. Richards, D. 1985. The implications of African-American spirituality. In African culture: Rhythms of unity, ed. K. Molefi and K. Welsh Asante, 207–232. Westport: Greenwood Press. Thompson, R.F. 1965. Dance sculpture of the Yoruba: Its critics and contexts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, CT. ———. 1974. African art in motion: Icon and act. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Africa, Central Tracey, H. 1952. African dances of the Witwatersand and gold mines. Johannesburg: African Music Society. Warren, Lee. 1972. The dances of Africa. New York: Prentice Hall. Welsh Asante, K. 1985. The African aesthetic: Commonalities in African dance. In African culture: Rhythms of unity, ed. M. Asante and K. Welsh-Asante, 71–82. Westport: Greenwood Press. Williams, D. 1978. Deep structure of the dance. In Yearbook of symbolic anthropology, ed. E. Schwimmer. London: C. Hurst.

Africa, Central Catharina Newbury Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA Department of History, emeritus, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

“Central Africa” is a contested term with three distinct historical references. British Central Africa was the name commonly given to the region comprising the present states of Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, which were united from 1953 to 1962 as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In a very different association of the term, the Central African Republic is the name given to the former colonial territory of Ubangi-Shari located north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), east of Cameroon, south of Chad, and west of Sudan. The third, more inclusive use of the term applies it to that region essentially south of Chad (but culturally including the southern third of Chad), west of the Uganda-Tanzania border with the DRC, and north of the Zambezi. It is a vast region, comprising three million square miles – about equal to continental USA – and includes 13 countries, entirely or in part: Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, and northern Mozambique. Geographically, this region is bisected by the equator. With the exception of the mountain range

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in northern Cameroon, on the northern fringe of this region, there are few prominent mountain ranges, though the land rises gradually towards the east and culminates in the chain of mountains along the Nile-Congo (DRC) Divide, and the chain of lakes running north and south along the western Rift Valley. Because of its location relative to the equator and its generally consistent topography, Central Africa shows a regular pattern of east-west “bands” of rainfall and vegetation: heavy rainfall near the equator falls off to the north and south in a regular pattern, and seasonality becomes more marked with greater distance from the equator. The geographical centerpiece to this region is the huge drainage basin defined by the Congo River and its tributaries (the Ubangi, the Lualaba, and the Kasai Rivers). Overall, this is a sparsely populated area which includes equatorial forest, vast swamps, and powerful rivers; personal mobility was frequent because of the importance of hunting and trade. In general, social organizations in this area were rarely centralized (the Kuba and the Mangbetu kingdoms, to the southwest and northeast sections of the equatorial forest, respectively, are prominent exceptions). Most often, social formations in this region showed little political hierarchy and were organized around powerful individuals, lineage councils, or initiatory groups, such as the bwami associations among the Balega, east of the Lualaba. In art forms – sculpture, oral epic, poetic imagery, raffia weaving, and basketry – the cultures of the equatorial forest and nearby areas remain some of the most celebrated in Africa. And, in general culture, there is a great deal of homogeneity over this vast area. Both to the north and south, the forest gives way to gallery woods and then to full savanna, areas where precolonial state formation was frequent, including powerful kingdoms, extensive empires, and broad federations: in the southern savanna, the Kingdom of Kongo and the Lunda and Luba empires were illustrative of this pattern; to the north of the forest, the Mangbetu kingdom and the federated Azande states also conform to this pattern. Within the savanna bands, both south and north of the forest belt, intercommunication brought remarkable cultural consistency across a wide area despite powerful political rivalries. In

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addition, broad commercial networks spread through these savanna regions: with the arrival of firearms, such commercial interaction became absorbed within the vast slave trade networks and the consequent destruction of large-scale political units, as mobile groups of armed slave raiders outflanked state armies and state control. In the north, the jallaba trade network intersected with the slave networks of the Nile drainage area; to the south by the late nineteenth century, such trade networks reached both west to the Atlantic and east to the Indian Ocean. In more recent times, the vast area of Central Africa was divided politically among six different colonial powers: Portuguese and British power in the south; Belgian interests (preceded by the Congo Free State, the political instrument of King Leopold and his financial associates) in the center; and French, German, and Spanish hegemony in the northern areas (though the Spanish territory, Rio Muni, was very small, and Germany lost control of Cameroon after World War I). Nonetheless, what was most characteristic of this area in the early colonial period was the effect of what is referred to as the concessionary companies, the predominant form of colonial exploitation in both the French Congo and the Belgian Congo (lasting until at least the 1930s in the French Congo). The effects of this form of colonial power were noteworthy, for these companies were ceded all administrative rights, taxation authority, justice systems, and resources not directly exploited by local population. Such colonial forms became the epitome of the corporate state without distinction between administrative power and economic exploitation; and it left behind the searing legacy of the most brutal institutionalized forms of colonization in Africa. The process turned virtually all Africans into laborers by the most extraordinary forms of coercion – often involving mutilation and murder. In the southern regions of central Africa, colonial economies were based on mining. And this led to the elaboration of vast network of labor recruitment in the Belgian Congo, Angola, and the British territories. It also tied these areas to the British sterling capital zone of southern Africa, an economic characteristic which was to

Africa, Central

affect the development patterns in the area, even into recent times. Recent Central African history also illustrates marked extremes of wealth and class, with the economic potential of those states controlling high-priced mineral or petroleum commodities: Gabon and Angola (oil) and Congo (DRC) and Zambia (minerals) contrasted with those states that relied on commodity exports such as cotton and wood products, including Chad, the Central African Republic, and Congo-Brazzaville. The concentration of such sources of wealth served to reinforce internal class distinctions as well as regional economic differences. Since decolonization in the early 1960s, this region has been marked by considerable political violence. Postcolonial struggle in Congo (DRC) represented one of the most serious attempts in all of Africa at this period – to transform colonial administrative structures. In Rwanda, a revolution brought to power a republican government to replace a monarchical regime associated with the colonial administrative apparatus. Similar though less successful attempts occurred in Cameroon and Burundi. Chad and Angola each became involved in civil war, each with strong involvement by outside powers. Strongly personalized – arbitrary – despotism emerged in Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and elsewhere; patrimonialism – institutionalized personal rule, no less exploitative, if less overtly brutal – also became the common form in Zambia, Malawi, and Gabon. The economic concentration of wealth and marked class structures, the strong administrative legacy from colonial practices, and the continued involvement of outside powers in many of these states means that this region has not been a training ground for democratic experiments. Today, it remains a region lacking any clear political definition or unity, in part because of these three interrelated factors: the variety of colonial legacies, the involvement of international intervention, and the extremes of wealth.

See Also ▶ Bwami ▶ Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to

African Anthropology

▶ Kongo ▶ Religion, Tropes in Central Africa ▶ Rwanda

Bibliography Birmingham, D., and P. Martin. 1983. A history of Central Africa. 2 volumes. London: Longman. Cordell, D. 1985. Dar al-Kuti and the last years of the slave trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Klieman, K. A. 2003. “The Pygmies were our compass”: Bantu and Batwa in the history of West Central Africa, Early times to c. 1900 CE. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Vansina, J. 1966. Kingdoms of the savannah. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Vansina, J. 2004. How societies are born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600. Charlottesville: Univeristy of Virginia Press. ———. 1990. Paths in the rainforest. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

African Anthropology Gilles Bibeau Département d’Anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

Postcolonial Africanists experience increasing uncertainty about the boundaries of the territory covered by ethnography, about the adequacy of their methods for the study of contemporary African problems and, more globally, about the prevalent concepts and theories traditionally associated with the practice of anthropology in Africa. This recent shift into disciplinary selfquestioning has developed at the confluence of three main concerns. First, the entrance of “decolonized” Africanborn intellectuals into international academic life has created a radically new concept for discussing authoritative writing and interpretation in anthropology: The historically unquestioned claim of expatriate ethnographers to authenticity and truth (based on “having been there”) is challenged by the voices from the inside that speak more and more boldly in the name of the cultures to which they belong. The Africanist discourse is criticized

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on the basis that foreign ethnographers, missionaries, administrators, and many of their African counterparts use, in their ethnographic accounts, concepts, categories, and theories rather than indigenous African systems of thought. In their critique, African intellectuals fluctuate between the urgent need to dismantle the theoretical foundations of the Westernized discourse about Africa and the necessity to acknowledge the fact that most African scholars still live and think “in a once-colonized and merely notionally decolonized culture” (Appiah 1992), making it difficult to describe and interpret African cosmologies, societies, and cultures in their own terms, as well as in local languages. Representing this conflict, Wole Soyinka vividly captures the ambivalent existence of the African intellectual who straddles many worlds and who is forced to write standing at the boundaries. Second, the reappraisal of the discipline has been reinforced by the study of contemporary issues: migration and urban explosion, changes in family and gender structures, questions regarding national ethnic integration and violence, environmental hazards, postcolonial development strategies, and the transformation of value systems. All these new challenges have contributed to liberate anthropology from its archaism and its historical tendency to produce an idealized mythic Africa, often abstracted from the actual life in rural communities. The new anthropological approach has particularly mushroomed in the study of problems associated with urban multiethnic societies, such as marginality and drug addiction (Werner 1993) and survival strategies (Deblé and Hugon 1982). Ethnographers now use methods inspired by street ethnography in addressing problems of gender relations and prostitution. A new generation of urban anthropologists has built on the seminal studies of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (M. Wilson, A.I. Richards, M. Gluckman, and J.C. Mitchell) and the French School of Balandier (1986), which were conducted more than three decades ago, regarding urban migrations and social mutations in urban settings. A new vocabulary has emerged with the keywords of “network,” “strategy,” “urban space,” “syncretism,” and “continuity-discontinuity.” Simultaneously, the traditional analytical notions of

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“tribe” and “ethnic group” have been radically questioned. The fuzzy boundaries of such ambiguous notions have led progressive anthropologists to replace classical monographic descriptions (the dominant literary genre in the discipline) by regional studies of larger geolinguistic areas (Amselle 1990). A new discourse has emerged around the linguistic and cultural continuum which challenges the past (often abusive) assumptions of colonial anthropologists. A third motivation for revising the Africanist discourse emerged as theories and instruments provided by functionalism, structuralism, and other classical schools of thought appeared no longer adequate in the practice of anthropology in contemporary Africa. Consequently, anthropologists engaged in a reexamination of existing fundamental concepts of their discipline. The notions of disorder, conflict, crisis, and contestation have moved to the forefront of the theoretical debates and have progressively made it fashionable to look for multiple meanings, for internal disorders in classifications and in symbolic systems and, more generally, for inconsistencies, heterogeneity, and anomalies in the ordering of cultural formations. In parallel, Africanist ethnographers stress the historical and socio-political context of local systems of power, of dominance structures and contextual determiners, and of the articulations which connect the macrosocial context of cultural codes and the actual behaviors of people. The daily practices of people within a given social and political-economic context have become central in the focus of new Africanism. Among North American ethnographers who work in Africa, particularly, the phenomenologically inspired concepts of “subjectivity” and lived experience (erlebnis) have led to the study of a cultural construction of the person, the self, the emotions, and individual identity, with a particular emphasis on the body as the medium for “being-in-the-world.” The new intellectual atmosphere has equally contaminated Africanists who continue to work in the three classical domains (social organization, politico-juridical systems, and religion) which have traditionally constituted the core of African anthropology. Kinship studies still rank high on

African Anthropology

the ethnographic agenda, but the new approaches are less formal and focus much more on specific questions about such issues as age-group systems (Abélès and Collard 1985), initiation of boys (Muller 1989), body humoral liquids in cases of incest (Héritier 1994), maternal uncles, intergenerational relations, women’s roles, and sexuality. Frazer’s theory is reinvested in studies dedicated to the “sacred kingship” (Adler 1982; de Heusch 1982; Muller 1980) in kingdoms, chiefdoms, and even modern states. The links between power and symbolism (Manning and Philibert 1990), politics and resistance (Comaroff 1985; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991), and conflict and resolution are presently scrutinized by many anthropologists. The most active domain among African anthropologists remains the one covered by religious, ritual, and ideological systems, which are increasingly approached from specific angles: comparative studies of sacrifice (Catry 1987; de Heusch 1986) as a key category for rethinking African religion; divination systems (Peck 1991) as ways of knowing and generating intelligibility out of contingency; modes of thought as providing epistemological and moral premises in different ethnic groups (Beidelman 1993; Berglund 1989); modern religious movements as a (dis) continuity of indigenous religious universes (MacGaffey 1986); fecundity rituals as a way to weave the threads of life (Devisch 1993); and spirit possession rituals as an idiom for reframing inner experience (Corin 1979). Janzen (1992) has proposed a comprehensive model for interpreting African “drums of affliction,” while Augé (1982) has tentatively delineated the logics which link the central figures (sorcerer, king-chief, diviner, spirits, and gods) in African “paganism.” These theoretical approaches have forced anthropologists to combine the context, the meaning of system, and the experience of people in their study of social and cultural realities.

See Also ▶ Community ▶ Culturalism and Anticulturalism

African Diaspora, Religion in

▶ Episteme ▶ Nature, Human ▶ Religion, Anthropology of ▶ Value, Economic and Religious

Bibliography Abélès, Marc, and Chantal Collard. 1985. Age, pouvoir et société en Afrique noire. Paris/Montréal: Karthala and Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Adler, Alfred. 1982. La mort est le masque du roi: La royauté sacrée des Moundang du Tchad. Paris: Payot. Amselle, Jean–Loup. 1990. Logigues métisses: Anthropologie de l’identité en Afrique et ailleurs. Paris: Payot. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Augé, Marc. 1982. Génie du paganisme. Paris: Gallimard. Balandier, Georges. 1986. Afrique plurielle, Afrique actuelle. Paris: Karthala. Beidelman, T.O. 1993. Moral imagination in Kaguru modes of thought. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Berglund, Axel–Ivar. 1989. Zulu thought–patterns and symbolism. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Catry, Michel (dir). 1987. Sous le masque de l’animal: Essais sur le sacrifice en Afrique noire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of power, spirit of resistance. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1991. Of revelation and revolution: Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Corin, Ellen. 1979. A possession psychotherapy in an urban setting: Zebola in Kinshasa. Social Science and Medicine 13B: 327–328. De Heusch, Luc. 1982. Roi né d’un coeur de vache. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1986. Le sacrifice dans les religions africaines. Paris: Gallimard. Deblé, Isabelle, and Philippe Hugon. 1982. Vivre et survivre dans les villes africaines. Paris: Presses universitaries de France. Devisch, René. 1993. Weaving the threads of life: The Khita Gyn–eco–logical healing cult among the Yaka. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Héritier, Françoise. 1994. Les deux soeurs et leur mère: Anthropologie de l’inceste. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob. Janzen, John. 1992. Ngoma: Discourses of healing in central and southern Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press. MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1986. Religion and society in central Africa: The Bakongo of lower Zaire. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.

13 Manning, Frank, and Jean–Marc Philibert. 1990. Customs in conflict: The anthropology of a changing world. Peterborough: Broadview Press Ltd. Mudimbe, Valentin Y. 1988. The invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Muller, Jean–Claude. 1980. Le roi bouc émissaire: Pouvoir et rituel chez les Rukuba du Nigéria Central. Québec: Serge Fleury, éditeur. ———. 1989. La calebasse sacrée: Initiations rukuba. Paris/Montréal: Ed. La Pensée sauvage—Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Peck, Philip M., ed. 1991. African divination systems: Ways of knowing. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Soyinka, Wole. 1976. Myth, literature, and the African world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Werner, Jean–François. 1993. Marges, sexe et drogues à Dakar: Enquête ethnographique. Paris: Karthala– ORSTOM.

African Diaspora, Religion in John K. Thornton Department of History and African American Studies, Boston University, Watertown, MA, USA

African slaves brought their religions with them to America, since most of them came as adults and had been fully socialized in Africa. For newly arrived Africans, religious worship most often took place in the context of the “nation,” a group of people from the same African cultural group, who met occasionally and maintained mutual support networks in many colonies, either openly where allowed (especially Latin colonies) or secretly where forbidden or inhibited (especially in French and English areas). Burials and related cults of ancestors formed an important element of African religion in the Diaspora and an important cause for national meetings. Dances, songs, and occasionally witchcraft investigations accompanied burials. Archaeology of plantation sites also records the burying of grave goods and alignments of bodies suggesting African patterns. A priestly calling developed in America, either from deported or enslaved African priests, or new practitioners taking up the role in America.

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Contemporary reports mention divination and spirit possession as among the techniques employed by African-American priests. Although such priests drew on African sources, obeahman, emerging from the Coromanti (Akan) nation, for example, was less specialized than his Akan equivalents. In addition to focusing on ancestral cults, African-American religion sustained and developed a substantial body of client and problemoriented mediation. These ranged from love potions and luck charms to witchcraft methods designed to hurt opponents or control others. As in Africa, priests were potentially able to engage either in helpful practices or assist in harmful ones. These priests often played a role in legitimizing and providing religious assistance in revolts or among runaway communities, as well as providing day-to-day support among slaves. Often priests, mediation, and burial practices were restricted to a single African nation, but the process of creolization, inter-ethnic socializing and childbearing, and contact with Europeans altered elements of African-American religion. Thus, documents suggest that priests often mixed elements from different African traditions, especially from Central African and West African areas. Judicial inquests into practices in Saint Domingue (modern Haiti) for example, show that elements from the Allada (modern Fon) group and those of the Kongo nation were simultaneously present in the proceedings of meetings. Interactions with Christianity added to the inter-ethnic religious mixtures. Slaves from Central Africa, such as Kongo or the Portuguese colony of Angola, as well as from many coastal regions in West Africa, were already either Christians or had long exposure to the tradition, and these provided a method for blending Christian and African religious traditions. These were, in turn, reinforced by European missionaries, who had considerable success in converting slaves. In many colonies such as the Dutch and English colonies, missionary work

African Diaspora, Religion in

was inhibited by the disapproval of the settler and owning classes, who feared that Christian slaves would be able to sue for freedom, while, even in Catholic colonies, the shortage of priests and their unwillingness to work among slaves lessened the impact of formal, imposed forms of Christianity. In North America and the English speaking Caribbean, the “Great Awakening” of the mid- to late-eighteenth century and related Christian revival finally broke planter resistance to missionary work and led to the large scale conversion of many slaves to Christianity. This new congregationally oriented Protestant Christianity promoted the development of an AfricanAmerican Christian priesthood that partially supplanted the older priesthood who worked in African traditions. African-American Christians often carried elements of the earlier national religions into Christianity, either as superstitions or as witchcraft within a Christian context that was tolerated by or infused into the African-American Christian tradition. In North America, a group of practices collectively known as conjure or hoodoo represent this tradition, as does Voodoo on Haiti or Obeah and Myal in Jamaica. Such practices are maintained by Christian communities along side Christian worship following European or EuroAmerican lines. A group of late-arriving Africans, either from the mid-nineteenth century slave trade or from various free immigration schemes that brought Africans to America, sometimes continued their African religious traditions with less influence of Christianity, such as in Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba, or Puerto Rico, where the cults often involved continuation of African languages. Candomblé in Brazil, Santeria in Cuba and Puerto Rico (anchored on Yoruba practices), and Palo Mayombe in Cuba (anchored on Kongo practices) are examples of cults derived from late arriving slaves and free immigrants. Sometimes less Christianized cults also flourished longer among runaway communities (maroons) in places such as Brazil, Jamaica, and Surinam.

African Feminism, The Emergence of

See Also ▶ African-American Philosophy (1) ▶ Africana Philosophy and The History of Philosophy in West ▶ ASHE ▶ Césaire, Aimé Fernand (1913–2008) ▶ Cult, African Cultural Elements in the Trinidad’s Shango ▶ Mysticism

African Feminism, The Emergence of Gertrude Mianda Gender and Women’s Studies, Glendon Campus, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Feminist discourse in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa emerged from a space in which African women were initially absent and not producing knowledge related to their situation. The earliest scholarly discourse on African women was produced almost completely through Western ethnocentric and androcentric lenses. African women’s voices were expressed for the first time when Awa Thiam’s pioneering book, La parole aux négresses, was published in 1978. Following her footsteps, African women scholars produced abundant literature examining diverse aspects of African women’s lives during the UN Decade for Women in the 1980s. Nevertheless, they at first embraced the path to feminism with hesitation and precaution. This literature review gives an account of the absence and the presence of African women’s voices and their resistance to endorsing the feminist label even though they acknowledge the subjugation of women. Most of the early scholarly discourse on subSaharan African women was produced by missionaries and ethnologists (Soeur Marie-André 1939; Evans-Pritchard 1965, 1971; Baker and

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Bird 1959; Southall 1963; Binet 1960) who portrayed women as submissive to traditions that oppressed them. Through Western ethnocentric and mostly androcentric biases, these publications highlighted the benefits of modernization for women. The first scholarly voices to diverge from this trend can be found in Femmes d’Afrique noire, edited by Denise Paulme (1960), which focused on the diversity of African women’s activities and shed light on their agency. Contrasting with these previous publications, Marxist scholars (Meillassoux 1975; Godelier 1973; Rubin 1975) who, through their materialist theoretical framework, interpreted African women’s central roles as agents of biological and social reproduction and exposed the exploitation and instrumentalization of African women in kinship systems. Through the modernization approach, Ester Boserup (1970) documented women’s important roles in agricultural production while shedding light on their marginalization and its negative impact on development processes. It was during the UN Decade for Women – 1975–1985 – that African women began to produce an abundant literature on women’s social situation from a critical perspective. One of the first and rare expressions of the voices of African women appeared in the mid-1970s with the publication of Aoua Keita autobiography, Femme d’Afrique (1975). Keita illustrates her own and her African sisters’ engagement in the decolonization process while revealing the social conditions of women in the then Afrique Occidental Française (later Mali) during the colonial period. Achola Pala’s and Madina Ly’s La femme africaine dans la société précoloniale (1979) expanded previous observations on colonization’s negative impact on African women. Prior to publication of Awa Thiam’s book in 1978, however, African women’s voices did not systematically address the issue of patriarchy and women’s subordination enshrined in African social, political, cultural, and economic structures. Thiam (1978) was the first sub-Saharan African women to produce a subversive discourse

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tackling excision, infibulation, and polygamy. In addition to breaking the silence and questioning these practices, Thiam opened the path for feminist discourse that focuses on a woman’s body as a site of exploitation. Although Thiam refused to endorse the feminist label, as the first sub-Saharan African scholar to call attention to the interlocking systems of oppression of race, sex, and class in analyzing the African women’s situation, she was also a pioneer. It is important to emphasize that Thiam’s work lead to numerous subsequent publications about women’s situation written in a subversive tone which women had never before dared to use, especially in francophone literature (Bâ 1979; Linking 1983; Beyala 1987, 1988). However, the Copenhagen Conference in 1980 (half-way through the UN Decade for Women) was a moment of tension. African women adopted a position that can be interpreted as contrasting with Awa Thiam’s discourse against female genital mutilations. In fact, they refused to condemn these practices to signify their opposition to Western feminist hegemony. They argued that they are against Western feminist discourse that focuses on the fight against men. Western feminist discourse against men’s domination was, in their view, a discourse against Africa and against African cultural values. Despite this, in the aftermath of the UN decade for Women, African women critically analyzed women’s situation, attacking patriarchy and questioning African social, political, cultural, and economic structures which ensure women’s oppression (Beyala 1995; Ogundipe 1994). They called for a feminism grounded in African women’s lived experiences (Beyala 1995; Ogundipe 1994) while creating alternative terms, such as Féminitude (Beyala 1995), Stiwanism (Ogundipe 1994), and Nego feminism (Naemaka 2004). Others simply rejected the feminist label in favor of terms such as womanism (Ogunyemi 1985) and motherism (Acholonu 1985; Amadiume 1987). Thiam’s work introduced the presence of African women in knowledge production that focuses on examining their subordination. Other African women scholars have extended Thiam’s discourse and focused on questioning patriarchy by denouncing male domination and discussing women’s bodies and their exploitation.

African Feminism, The Emergence of

Bibliography Acholonu. 1985. Acholonu, Catherine Obianuju (1995). Motherism: The afrocentric alternative to feminism. Owerri: Alfa Publications. Amadiume, Ifi. 1987. Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African society. Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books. Baker, Tanya and Mary, Bird. 1959. Urbanization and the Women. Sociological Review, 7(1):99–122. Bâ, Mariama. 1979. Une si longue lettre. Dakar/Abidjan/ Lomé: Nouvelles Editions africaines. Beyala, Calixthe. 1987. C’est le soleil qui m’a brulée. Paris: Editions J’ai lu. ———. 1988. Tu t’appelleras Taga. Paris: Editions J’ai lu. ———. 1995. Lettre d’une Africaine à ses sœurs occidentales. Paris: Spengler. Binet, M.J. 1960. La femme dans la société nouvelle. Revue de l’action Populaire, no. 139. Boserup, Ester. 1970. Woman’s role in economic development. London: Allen and Unwin. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1965. The position of women in primitive societies, and other essays in social anthropology. New York: Free Press. ———. 1971. La femme dans les sociétés primitives. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Godelier, M. 1973. Horizon, trajets marxistes en anthropologies. Paris: Maspero. Aoua Keita. 1975. Femme d’Afrique. Paris: Présence Africain. Linking, Werewere. 1983. Elle sera de jaspe et de corail. Journal d’une misovire. Paris: L’Harmattan. Marie-André, Sœur. 1939. La femme noire en Afrique occidentale. Paris: Payot. Meillassoux, Claude. 1975. Femmes, greniers et capitaux. Paris: Maspero. Naemaka, Obiama. 2004. Nego feminism: Theorizing, practicing and pruning Africa’s way. Sign 29 (2): 357–385. Ogundipe, Molara Leslie. 1994. African women, culture and another development. In Recreating ourselves African women and critical transformations. Trenton: Africa World Press. Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. 1985. Womanism: The dynamics of the contemporary black female novel in english. Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society 11: 64. Pala, Achola, and Madina Ly. 1979. La femme africaine dans la société précoloniale. Paris: UNESCO. Paulme, Denise, ed. 1960. Femmes d’Afrique noire. Paris/ La Haye: Mouton et Co. Rubin, Gayle. 1975. Notes on the political economy of sex. In Toward an anthropology of women, ed. Rayna E. Reiter, 157–210. New York: Monthly Review Press. Southall, A.W. 1963. The position of women and stability of marriage. In Social change in modern Africa, ed. A.W. Southell. London: Oxford University Press. Thiam, Awa. 1978. La parole aux négresses. Paris: Denoël Gonthier. ———. 1986. Black sisters, speak out. London: Pluto Press.

African Language, Prayers and Hymns in

African Language, Prayers and Hymns in Jan Knappert Harpenden, Herts, UK Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Prayers and hymns have been recorded in all African languages for which there is up-to-date documentation. This means that, in all African languages for which records are possessed (written or oral), people have sung or recited traditional prayers to the god(s) they worship, and hymns to praise the deity they revere. Originally the word prayer meant “request, supplication,” as the worshipers of antiquity addressed their gods, mainly in the hope of obtaining food, health, peace, or another boon. Many psalms of the Bible are clearly sung prayers; the word psalm refers to a song performed with a plucked stringed instrument. In ancient Greece, hymns were sung prayers celebrating Hymen, the god of marriage who was invoked during weddings. In ancient times and still in some regions of Africa, the distinction between prayers and hymns was vague, since all prayers were recited in a singsong manner, cantilated as said in church, for certain forms of recital. The Hebrew word mizmor seems originally to have meant “humming a tune, singing softly.” It became the word for a psalm, perhaps because David sang his compositions very quietly to soothe King Saul’s troubled mind. Another explanation, and a much older one, might be one suggested by the words for humming and singing softly in some African languages. Such words also have the meaning of “to bewitch, to put a spell on someone” in several languages. This seems to point to what is perhaps the oldest relationship between a man or a woman and the deity they want to influence. That magic may be the oldest form of religion has been proposed by several writers. The spirit has to be

Jan Knappert: deceased.

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induced to fulfill the supplicant’s wishes, by means of magically powerful words. The oldest relationship between a man and his god may, thus, have been a magic one, and this is probably illustrated by the rock paintings that have been found in many parts of Africa. Bushmen (the term is used loosely to encompass all early hunter-gatherers) tried to catch game by putting a spell on the animals with secret incantations. This secret lore is still alive in some regions of Africa and vestiges of it are found in the myths of Africa. Hunters are believed to possess magic powers through which they can make themselves invisible for the game or make the animals incapable of moving. It should be added that, in ancient times, all animals were gods as, indeed, all the gods were represented as animals – witness the many artistic paintings and statues of ancient Egyptian deities. There is a great deal of evidence in the oldest African myths and fables of the divine nature of the animals of the bush. In some regions of Africa, the animals were ruled by a god called the Bushlord or Lord of the Animals, sometimes represented as an elephant, a leopard, or an anthropomorphic god or goddess of the forest. This deity owns the forest and its inhabitants, so that the hunter must pray to him for permission to enter the forest and take an animal without incurring the god’s wrath and/or the curse of the animal’s spirit. Similarly, when the tribe enters the forest in search of wild fruits, the chief prays: Father, we come to you We implore thee Give us nourishment, fruits, roots and game So that we may live.

After the hunt-and-search, part of the fruits and a piece of the meat is sacrificed to the deities of the forest as thanksgiving. The veneration of the ancestors is often difficult to distinguish from the worship of other gods. The researcher is left to guess whether the Bushlord is in “reality” an ancestor buried in the forest long ago, whose powerful spirit has to be propitiated before the clan dare to enter the forest for the hunt. That is why the question cannot be

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African Language, Prayers and Hymns in

answered in the above quoted supplication: that is, whether the chief addresses his ancestor or the Bushlord as mystical father of the clan? The two deities seem to merge into one. This also explains why, in the oldest times, every clan in Africa had its own god or gods: both local gods, such as the forest deity and ancestral gods; and each deity demanded its own sacrifices and its own prayer rituals. A very curious prayer has to accompany the making of fire among the Dama of the mountains in Namibia. The new holy fire has to be lit before the day’s hunt. While twirling vigorously, the chief prays to the fire god: Fire, flame! I am the chief of this land! I have seized you, twirling stick! Die before us, elephant! Die quickly, long–necked giraffe! Die, kudu! Die, eland! Die, wildebeest, die before me!

We could call this prayer “magic,” in the sense that the chief hopes by his prayer to influence the events of the hunt. Not only by magic, not only by begging for food, game, and other necessities of life is the early relationship between a human being and his gods characterized. There is also gratitude, as expressed in the following Ju prayer: God! We have received rain. We can drink! God! We have received water. We can live!

In societies without a written tradition, it is often impossible to prove that a given prayer or hymn is fixed in form and content by convention. Whereas, in Islam, every prayer has to be recited strictly according to the ritual written form, in many African cultures, the master of ceremonies is free to pray according to the immediate inspiration from the deity. This, incidentally, may be the reason for the popularity of the spontaneous modern evangelist church ceremonies. They are the nearest form of religion to the African free expression of religious feelings and needs. Most Africans – contrary to what the early explorers

believed they saw – are very religious people who take their religion very seriously. The absence of written records makes it impossible to prove that a given religion in Africa has or has not changed. Not only the prayers and hymns but also the ceremonies and even the gods themselves may have gone through an evolution encompassing many centuries, gradually developing from the elemental forces of nature and the dreamtime ghosts of the dead, to the formidable gods of the Yorubas and Egyptians. As an illustration, here is a prayer that seems improvised: Oh! The day has become dark The roofs of our houses are full of witchcraft! The banana orchards are full of witchcraft! Yet, we have never stolen, we owe no one anything! If anyone comes to my gate with witchcraft, May the Sun punish him. (Kosi, Cameroun)

Apparently the supplicator is praying to the Sun – god for protection against the many witches crawling about his house. The deity who is addressed in a prayer is not always invoked by name. Often the god’s name is identical with what the people pray for, for example, Rain, Lesa in Zambia, the word for god and rain. Christianity arrived in Africa not long after Christ, in the mid-first century. It soon flourished in Egypt where the spoken language, Coptic, was used by the apostle Thomas (as legend has it) and a script was developed for it, using Greek (and some additional) letters. An extensive literature grew up in this new literary medium, most of which was lost during the Arab invasions of the seventh century. A complete liturgy evolved in Coptic side by side with the Greek New Testament liturgy. The Coptic script was adopted by the Nubians when they became Christians in the third century. They too, developed their own liturgy. Little now survives. By the fourth century all of North Africa was Christianized but, as far as we know, only Latin and Greek were used for their liturgy. However, the onslaught of Islam suffered no Christians to survive except in Egypt. Only in Ethiopia did the Church flourish till the present

African Language, Prayers and Hymns in

day. An Ethiopic literature grew up in Ge’ez, now extinct, but still used for the church liturgy. The modern Ethiopian languages used by Christians are Amharic and Tigrinya. Amharic is the official language, which is used also for religious poetry. From c.1500, Christianity was planted in West Africa and later in South Africa. The first catechism in Ki–Kongo was printed in 1637. However, Bible translation did not start properly until the nineteenth century. Today, the Bible, or portions of it, is translated and printed in more than 300 African languages so that, in each of these languages, the liturgy can be conducted. In some of these languages, an extensive Christian literature has grown up over the past 150 years, notably in Akan, Amharic, Chewa, Ewe, Ganda, Igbo, Lingala, Mongo, Oromo, Shona, Sotho, Swahili, Tsonga, Tswana, Umbundu, Ungwana, Venda, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. Islam was brought to Africa by the Arabs from the second half of the seventh century onwards. They insisted that all the formal prayers (salat) and ideally also the informal prayers (du’a) be said in Arabic. This was done during the following centuries until after c. 1500. The first vestiges of indigenous African literatures were noted in Arabic script in the following languages: Bambara, Berber (Akbaili, Chleuh), Fulani (Peul), Harari, Hausa, Luganda, Makua, Malagasy, Manding–Mandinka, Nupe, Songhay, Soninke, Swahili, Tamashek, Twareg, Wolof, and Zarma (Jerma). Since the oldest manuscripts are probably lost, we cannot put a date to the first creation of these literary languages. Most of these literatures in Arabic script are entirely religious, didactic, or liturgical, that is, containing hymns and prayers (du’a) in the African languages. In addition, there is the kasida, a hymn in praise of the Prophet Muhammad; to this type also belong the many poems about the Mawlid (Maulidi in Swahili, very popular in East Africa), the life of Muhammad, including his birth, death, and ascension to heaven. Members of the Prophet’s family, Hadija, Fatima, Ali, and Husayn, are also praised in verse, which can be sung in the mosques. In modern

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times, Islamic fundamentalists from Mecca discourage these fine hymns, insisting that only Arabic may be used in the mosques. Perhaps the singing in the mosques has been inspired by Christian practices in Africa, of which the Arabs in Mecca know nothing. The Islamic literature in African languages is vast. Manuscripts are still appearing, until now, in unknown languages. In Swahili alone, a volume could be filled with unpublished hymns and prayers from manuscripts in Arabic script. Most of these are first class poetry and can be sung very beautifully by boys’ choirs.

Some Lines from a Prayer to the God Ryangombe (Burundi)

Where are you father? Where are you father? Are you near the sacred trees? At Rusengo? At Nambo? We greet you, Ryangombe, owner of all things! The house is yours, the orchard is yours, The cows are yours, The children are yours. We will kill a cow in your honor. We have killed for you! The marrow is for the men The front legs are for the girls The hind legs are for the youngsters The neck is for the herdsmen You are the king, the ruler You have given us much but we need yet more You gave me rest in Namba's bed You gave me a son. Please keep him in good health Keep my mother in good health And my father and my uncles . . .

Opening Prayer to Mathias Mnyampala’s Swahili Epic of the Gospels

1. God give me a promise that I may bring forth the narration That I may fulfil Thy purpose of extolling the Gospels. 2. I praise Thy Glory, and the sacred writings to glorify our God the Son and the Holy Ghost 3. So that whoever does not know may learn our faith. I write this epic poem, to guide those who are straying.

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African Philosophy in America

4. Christian! Listen, try to make yourself imitate Christ. Teach yourself the Light, learn your faith. 5. Learn your faith, all that concerns your religion And yet more behoves you: to understand us. 6. The foundation of our Gospels with the fine epistles Let us read them with attention so that we may know them. 7. In the name of the Father – Praise! And the Son who died And the Spirit who came afterwards (Acts 2,4), the Trinity. 8. And thus I write, praying for blessing to our Exalted God, that all people may hear. 9. That I may explain the Gospels, the tales and the reasons In the Swahili language, in verse I will narrate.

A Hymn to Muhammad from Harar in Ethiopia Much of the poetry in Harari is liturgical, called zikri, and intended for recital during nocturnal prayer meetings, often under the supervision of the local leaders of the Qadiriyya. Here are a few of the almost 600 lines of the Zikri of Abd al– Malik. Oh Prophet may God's blessing be upon you we seek our refuge with you from our problems. You are a medicine for all diseases. Praying to God for you will be salvation. Oh Prophet whom the Lord of light created from light that is more radiant than sunshine. Oh Prophet who revealed the hidden knowledge, whose name was first of all the names God mentioned. Oh God admit the people who have studied and love the humble servants who implore Thee. Open for us the shining gate of mercy, as Thou hast showered mercy on Thy Prophet. Oh Prophet who hast filled our hearts with splendor, pray God for us that He may give us blessing. His blessings have no end and no beginning. May you guide us toward the gate of Heaven.

See Also ▶ Bantu Philosophy ▶ Religious Literature in Africa ▶ Translating Biblical Categories into African Languages

African Philosophy in America Leonard Harris Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

There are four major historical moments of African philosophy in the Americas since the nascent development of the United States. The first occurs in the formation of African communities in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The “orisha” religions, that is, any of the religions indigenous to west Africa, were prominent in African communities in the Americas. Sailors, slaves, indentured servants, and merchants were the savants of these religions which, however, were compelled to either dissipate in the face of the dominance of Christianity or integrate religious principles and cultural concepts into Christianity. The importance of African civilizations, particularly Egypt, Ethiopia, and west African empires with well-documented historical records such as the Asante or Yoruba, was crucial for arguments against slavery in the early eighteenth century. The importance of African history, real and imaged, was crucial in this second historical moment. Abolitionists, such as Prince Saunders, Richard Allen, David Walker, and Fredrick Douglass, consistently used features of African history to provide case examples to defeat the idea that Africans either lacked the human traits of civility or were incapable of learning such traits. Members of groups considered full person, and what rank they held, was often determined by judgments about the civilization that groups ostensibly represented. That is, individuals and groups were understood as tokens of types and individuals judged according to the status of the group type they represented. The history of Africa was also marshaled against Aristotelian beliefs that conquered peoples were justly enslaved and liberal beliefs that slavery was beneficial to the enslaved because it brought them into the flow of civilization. The third major historical moment of African philosophy in America occurs in the 1920s. Alain

African Philosophy Incipit

Locke’s The New Negro foregrounds African culture as a culture producing art. African artifacts thus became, for this author of radical pragmatism and critical relativism, works of art. African artifacts, like all of folk culture for Locke, were not heathen idols or the products of unlearned craftsmen, but masterful designs and enriched art. This development in Black America was paralleled in Africa by the Negritude movement developed by Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas. The fourth major historical moment of African philosophy in the Americas is the contemporary presence in the American academy of African philosophers and issues historically important to Africans in Africa. Contemporary African philosophy often involves debates concerning the merit of ethnophilosophy, that is, whether the concepts definitive of various cultures should be understood as philosophical systems and if so, what worth they should hold. The defenders of ethnophilosophy such as Edward W. Blyden, the early W.E.B. Du Bois, Cheik Anta Diop, Placide Tempels, H. Odera Oruka, Albert G. Mosley, and J.O. Sodipo are in alively debate with its critics such as Paulin Hountondji, Kwasi Wiredu, and Anthony Appiah. Rozenna Maart, Alternations, 2020, University of KwaZulu Natal, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of Kwa Zulu Natal; Souleymane Bachir Diagne, In Search of Africa (s): Universalism and Decolonial Thought, (2020); Olúfẹmi Táíwò, Cornel University, author of How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa, 2010, and Blog, A Life of the Mind, olufemitaiwo.com; Tsenay Serequeberhan, Morgan State University, Existence and Heritage (2015); Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University, In My Fathers House, 1993 and The Lies that Bind, 2018. Research Resources: History of Philosophy, Africana Philosophy https://historyof philosophy.net/series/africana-philosophy and Pioneers in Africana Philosophy, The Center for the Humanities, CUNY, centerforthehumanities/ pioneers-of-africana-philosophy and the Philosophy Born of Struggle Archives, Purdue University. Organizations based in America but focused on Africana philosophy are the Caribbean

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Philosophical Association, caribbeanphilosophi calassociation.org, and Philosophy Born of Struggle Association, PBOS.COM. And an Americanbased journal especially sensitive to African issues in the Americas, The Journal of Philosophy and Global Affairs, Editor, Lewis Gordon, University of Connecticut, (2020).

See Also ▶ African-American Philosophy (1) ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West

African Philosophy Incipit V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Incipits indicate an arbitrary genesis or point of departure in a history of philosophy. They represent a conception of the discipline that can be retheorized from the contextual configuration that accounts for it as a valid intellectual system or as an alternative representation of what it is. Neither the amplification of an orthodox perspective nor its deviance can be exempt from the ideology which explains and regulates them as bodies of knowledge constructed at a given time within a regional social formation. The absence of Africa in European histories of philosophy signifies two theses. The first concerns a relation that is often supposed to be caused between a human space as a referent and an explicit discourse conceptualizing human experiences according to an abstract analytical grid. The second thesis posits conversely the incipit as an entry to a system whose formal values and identity reflects itself as actualizing the singularity of the idea of philosophy. It follows that the incipit may translate the general meaning of a vision of the world, as it is conveyed through everyday practices and their normative references. To such an

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acceptation, there is another, that of philosophy as a tradition, substituting reason for the priority of myth and its conceptual institutions, and organizing a discipline whose concern is the production of knowledge about reason and the possibility of a universal rationality: in sum, a science of thought in itself and its expressions as it is inscribed in its own history in the West. Most historians of African philosophy consider Hegel’s pronouncement on Africa as that which is excluded from World History to typify a way of relating anyone else’s experience to one’s regional history and its paradigms. At best, a difference identifies with a lack. The incipit can, however, open up a number of variations from thematic lines allowed at the intersection of concepts such as history, reason, myth, etc., all of which are part of the semantic web of the very idea of philosophy. In his presentation of questions of method in the field, Alfons J. Smet mentions as illustration the twentieth-century histories of philosophy by Chevallier, Copleston, Hirschberger, Rivaud, Veberweg, Vorländer, Weber, and Husimans. The perspective signified by the silence is inseparable from what Husserl identified in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (1954) as the inherent solipsism in the Cartesian philosophy of the Cogito and in its variations in, for example, Locke’s psychology on the privilege of the soul, Hume’s fictionalist theory and Kant’s anthropology. They participate in what the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, evaluating the legacy of dialectical reason, calls a sociologization of the Cogito. Husserl had already noted in the Krisis that from the background of the teleology of European history, the constructed we-subject of this philosophy identifies with the concept of Europe as the historical teleology of the infinite goals of reason. The same epistemological configuration of the first part of the twentieth century also made possible an appraisal of the very opposition between myth and reason, traditional lore, and critical thought. An exacting process expounds progressively the undervaluation of the mythical in the Greek genesis of Western philosophy and, with structuralism, reformulates the tension between the necessary and the contingent. More

African Philosophy Incipit

importantly, poststructuralism sanctioned the inextricable tie between myth and reason in all societies, assuming that only an emphasis on one instead of the other would explain the difference in the culturally privileged type of knowledge. The process impacted on anthropological studies and thus on the force of the deviation between the two types of thought, their conflicting representations and what they meant as philosophies: that is, on the one hand a Weltanschauung identifying with its expressions, on the other an analytical and critical discourse on language and experience. The effect translated into several ways of assessing the history of African philosophy incipit, including a critique of theories that deemed prephilosophical the whole of African experience, especially its explicit narratives on procedures for domesticating nature and naturalizing culture, and a judicious reapprehension of the very notion of myth as a useful instrument in the articulation of pluralist African practices of philosophy. Suggestion: A final sentence dedicated to contemporary positionings.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy, Search for Identity of ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate ▶ Dialectic ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Essence ▶ Pluralism

References Husserl, E. 1970. The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Neugebauer, U. 1989. Einführung in die Afrikanische Philisophie. München: Afrikanische Hochschulschriften. Smet, A..J. 1977. Histoire de la Philosophie africaine. Problémes et methode. In La Philosophie africaine. Kinshasa: Faculté de Théologie Catholique. Tshiamalenga, N. 1977. Quest-ce que la ‘Philosophie Africaine’? In La Philosophie africain. Kinshasa: Faculté de Théologie Catholique. Van Parys, J.M. 1993. Une Approche simple de la Philosophie africaine. Kinshasa: Editiour Loyola.

African Philosophy, Search for Identity of

African Philosophy, Search for Identity of Jay M. Van Hook Department of Philosophy, Northwestern College, Orange City, IA, USA

The question of African philosophy’s identity – its existence, nature, and function – has been a central focus of discussion and argument among African philosophers during the decades following the demise of colonialism. Doubts about the existence of anything that might be called “African philosophy” are often perceived as manifestations of an uncritical acceptance of Western definitions and criteria, and of its bias concerning the absence of logic, rationality, and philosophical temperament among Africans. In other words, a denial of the existence of African philosophy has often been construed as tantamount to the denial that Africans are fully human. However, some African thinkers question the existence of an African philosophy on the grounds that African traditional thought is communal and communicated orally, as distinguished from genuine philosophy, which is the product of individual thinkers and requires writing. H. Odera Oruka’s distinction of four main trends observable in current practice is frequently cited in discussions concerning the question of African philosophy. They are: “ethnophilosophy,” “philosophic sagacity,” “nationalist-ideological philosophy,” and “professional philosophy.” Ethnophilosophy is the communal folk philosophy implicit in the myths, worldviews, and rituals of traditional Africans. Its proponents tend to view African philosophy as fundamentally different from that of the West. Philosophic sagacity represents the rational and critical thought to be found among traditional sages and differs from ethnophilosophy because it is individual rather than collective, and it is also often critical of the generally accepted folk wisdom. Nationalideological philosophy refers to political ideas directed to liberation and social action. Professional philosophy is the critical philosophy

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practiced by professionally trained philosophers and exhibits a decidedly Western influence. While the views of the so-called professional philosophers differ on many points, there is among them a marked tendency to disparage ethnophilosophy, to import Western philosophical methods and problems, and to think of philosophy as a scientific discipline. Views about the existence or nonexistence of African philosophy hinge largely on what is taken to be the nature of philosophy – that is, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for anything to be called “philosophy.” Is philosophy “universal” in the sense that it is the product of a Reason that is of the very essence of humanity, or is it “particular” in the sense of being unique to the culture of which it is an expression? Are logic, rationality, and argumentation intrinsic and necessary features of anything claiming to be philosophy, or are these traits just peculiar to Western philosophy? Those who take a universalist view, especially common among the professional philosophers, argue that philosophy is essentially the same wherever and whenever practiced. While philosophical problems may vary contextually, philosophy is essentially critical rationality and, as such, distinguishable from uncritically held folk wisdom and communal worldviews. Although there are significant differences among them, the following philosophers are generally placed in the universalist camp: Peter Bodunrin, Kwame Gyekye, Paulin Hountondji, H. Odera Oruka, and Kwasi Wiredu. Those who take a particularist view, especially common among those more sympathetic to ethnophilosophy and traditional thought generally, regard philosophies as expressions of specific cultural and historical situations, and of the problems and worldviews to be found in them. They think that African philosophy must be relevant to Africa in both content and in method, and some reject the “logocentrism” of the West in favor of an intuition claimed to be more appropriate and natural for Africans. K.C. Anyanwu, Lucius Outlaw, Leopold Senghor, Wamba-dia-Wamba, and the intellectual heirs of Placide Tempels and John Mbiti may be seen as examples of a particularist orientation.

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Both universalists and particularists see each other as playing into the hands of colonial and neocolonial oppression. The universalists think the particularists are opting for philosophical idiosyncracy and inferiority and, thus, virtually guaranteeing the marginalization of African philosophy. The particularists think the universalists are allowing the particularity of Western philosophy to claim universality and, thus, to dictate the rules and agenda of the whole philosophical enterprise. While there appears to be no entirely acceptable resolution to this debate on the horizon, the work of several African philosophers may be seen as working toward building bridges of understanding between these two strands in the current debate. Philosophers like K. Anthony Appiah, Kwame Gyekye, V.Y. Mudimbe, H. Odera Oruka, and Kwasi Wiredu – to name just a few – have attempted both to recognize the universal validity of critical rationality as constituting the essence of the discipline of philosophy, while also recognizing the importance of appreciating, understanding, and analyzing the beliefs and values in the African tradition.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy in America ▶ African Philosophy, Search for Identity of ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Hountondji, Paulin ▶ Oruka, H. Odera ▶ Philosophy, Sage ▶ Sodipo, John Olubi ▶ Wiredu, Kwasi

Bibliography Appiah, K.A. 1992. In my father’s house. Oxford. Eze, E.C. 1997. Postcolonial African philosophy, a critical reader. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers. Floistad, Guttorm Floistad, ed. 1987. African philosophy (Vol. 5 of Contemporary philosophy: A new survey). Martinus Nijhoff.

African Philosophy: The End of a Debate Gyekye, K. 1987. An essay on African philosophical thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Masolo, D.A. 1994. African philosophy in search of an identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Oruka, H. Odera. 1990. Sage philosophy. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Serequeberhan, Tsenay, ed. 1991. African philosophy: The essential readings. New York: Paragon. Wiredu, K. 1980. Philosophy and an African culture: The case of the Akan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996. Cultural universals and particulars, an African perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

African Philosophy: The End of a Debate Henry Odera Oruka Nairobi, Kenya

In the last three decades, the problems that have sustained the debate on African Philosophy could be framed in such questions as: What is philosophy? What is African Philosophy? In their typical traditional cultures, did the Africans ever engage in philosophical discussions? Whatever the nature of an African Philosophy, is it a unique thoughtsystem distinct from philosophies of other cultures, or does it overlap in significant ways with the others? These questions were asked and discussed in the 1960s, 1970s, and the greater part of the 1980s. Numerous articles were published during this period debating and evaluating the subject of African philosophy. Some scholars who produced books about this debate were: Paulin J. Hountondji (1977, 1983), Kwasi Wiredu (1980), Claude Sumner (1980), P.O. Bodunrin (1983), H. Odera Oruka (1990), and V.Y. Mudimbe (1988). This debate has produced a number of interesting and significant

Henry Odera Oruka: deceased.

African Philosophy: The End of a Debate

theories about philosophy in general and African Philosophy in particular. Nevertheless, some scholars have narrowed the scope simply to being a fruitless debate on the definition of a philosophy, which, to them, is not equivalent to being philosophical. From the late 1980s to the present, there have been various writings by African philosophers showing that the debate on the nature of the subject has ended and that a period of new “philosophizing” has begun. The contributions during this period exemplify the various methodologies, heritages, research agendas, schools of thought, and philosophical theories. These contributions can be expected in any developed philosophical tradition. Writers of this period include: B.H. Hallen and J.O. Sodipo (1986), Kwame Gyekye (1987), V.Y. Mudimbe (1988, 1991), Claude Sumner (1986), H. Odera Oruka (1990, 1991, 1992), L.D. Keita (1992), Kwasi Wiredu (1992), and I.D. Osabutey–Aguedze (1990). Works by Hallen and Sodipo, Gyekye, Oruka, and Sumner generated special programs on the sagacious thoughts of indigenous African thinkers. Oruka specifically refers to them as Sages, and his 1990/1991 text is a dedication to them. Mudimbe’s text (1988) is an evaluation of what he regards as general contemporary African scholarship, and African Philosophy is treated as one significant part of this scholarship. There can be no doubt that a diversity of philosophical theories and methodologies has been advanced, marking the end of a debate on the definition of African Philosophy, which had been the vogue in 1960–1980s. These texts have become the subject of research and pedagogy on African philosophy in the 1990s. However, it would be wrong to construe the definitional question in philosophy as being unique to Africa. Indeed, in the last 60 to 70 years, the West also has been debating implicitly the question of the nature of philosophy. This is most explicit in the long transition from the so-called “Modern Western Philosophy” to the now emerging trend known as “postmodernism.” Major examples of postmodernist thinking include L. Wittgenstein (for whom philosophy is not any of the sciences),

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R. Carnap and A.T. Ayer (logical positivists who define metaphysics away from philosophy), and R. Rorty (for whom philosophy is never a mirror of reality).

See Also ▶ African Philosophy in America ▶ African Philosophy, Search for identity of ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Hountondji, Paulin ▶ Odinga Ajuma Oginga ▶ Oruka, H. Odera ▶ Philosophy, Sage ▶ Sodipo, John Olubi ▶ Wiredu, Kwasi

Bibliography Bodunrin, P.O., ed. 1983. Philosophy in Africa. Ibadan. Gbadegesin, S. 1991. Contemporary African realities. New York: Peter Lang. ———. African philosophy: Traditional Yoruba philosophy. Gyekye, Kwame. 1987. An essay on an African philosophical thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hallen, B.H., and J.O. Sodipo. 1986. Knowledge, belief and witchcraft: Analytic Experiment in African Philosophy. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Uniuversity Press. Hountondji, P. 1977. Sur la philosophie africaine. Critique de I’ethnophilosophie, Paris, Maspero. Hountondji, Paul J. 1983. African philosophy: Myth and reality. London: Hutcheson. Keita, L.D. 1992. Science, rationality and neoclassical economics. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The invention of Africa, gnosis, and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. ———. 1991. Fables and parables. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Oruka, H. Odera. 1990. Trends in contemporary African philosophy. Nairobi: Shirikon Press. ———. 1991. Sage–philosophy: Indigenous thinkers and modern debate in African philosophy. Leiden/Nairobi: E.J. Brill/ACTS Press.

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26 ———. 1992. Oginga Odinga: His philosophy and beliefs. Nairobi: Initiatives. Osabutey–Aguedze, I.D. 1990. The principles underlying the African religion and philosophy. Nairobi: Maillu Publishing House. Sumner, Claude, ed. 1980. African philosophy. Addis: Chamber Printing Press. ———. 1986. The sources of African philosophy: The Ethiopian philosophy of man. Stuttgart: Franz Steener, Verlas Wiespaden. Wiredu, K. 1992. Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies. New York: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

African Spiritual Beliefs D. N. Kaphagawani Zomba, Malawi

This entry aims to discuss some of the most representative spiritual and religious African belief systems. In order to present such a synthesized discussion, two important considerations should be elaborated. Firstly, the diversity of these systems and their moral entailments. This observation is illustrated in the following examples and it discards any essentialist or culturalist reading. Secondly, this diversity is also a testimony of the historical and complex cultural fluxes that profoundly mark the history of a region. Finally, as a testimony, this second observation emphasizes the processual and historical character of any belief system. One of the most fundamental beliefs among Africans, both traditional and modern, is the belief in the existence or subsistence of disembodied beings known as either the Supreme Being or ancestral spirits. The Akamba of East Africa call these spirits Aiimu (Imu singular), the Kikuyu call them Ngoma, and the Shona and Chewa of Southern Africa call them midzimu and mizimu, respectively. Interestingly, the Kikamba term for the ancestral spirits shares some similarities with

D. N. Kaphagawani: deceased.

African Spiritual Beliefs

those of a number of cultures in Central and Southern Africa, which is connected to the fact that all these cultures are regarded as belonging to the group of Bantu cultures. Although the Kikuyu refer to the ancestral spirits as ngoma, they strongly believe that the ngo – the life breath – transforms itself into an imu at death. Once a person has died, it is believed that one’s mzimu departs somehow the body and chooses a habitat. This habitat varies from one African culture to another. Some cultures like the Kikuyu, for example, believe that at death when the person has had a proper burial, one’s mzimu enters the underworld, whereas the Akamba believe that the aiimu inhabit certain sacred fig trees. But in most of Central and Southern African cultures, these ancestral spirits are believed to inhabit mountains and hills. Mulanje mountain in Malawi, for example, is believed to be so infested with numerous ancestral spirits that no individual can climb it at will, or in defiance of their subsistence/existence without dire consequences. The realm of spirits is hierarchical in African thoughts and beliefs, the apex of which is occupied by the Supreme Being, the high God, followed by a hierarchy of ancestral spirits, ranging from those held in high esteem to those dead but of insignificance. In Shona culture, the Supreme Being is called Mwari. In Chewa, this being has a number of names, but the most referred to name is Mulungu; other names are Mphambe, Chiuta, Namalenga, Chisumphi, and Leza. The fact that a number of African cultures possess several names for this Supreme Being has mistakenly led a number of scholars to conclude that Africans do not believe in the existence of such a being; rather, so it is claimed, Africans But the truth is that the multiplicity of names denoting God is, as Daneel rightly points out, an indication of “a variety of functions and the association of the divine with different phenomena of nature rather than suggesting existence of a number of deities” (Daneel 1971). The Mulungu is the final authority above and behind the ancestral spirits. The Chiuta is, in fact, believed to be responsible for arranging the ancestral spirits in “rows and tiers.” The Mphambe is a being not as

African Theology: Manifestoes and Positions 1960–1980

directly involved in the activities of the living as ancestral spirits are believed to be; rather, this is a being whose counsel and decisions are sought on matters concerning the society as a whole. It should be first noted that although ancestral spirits are held in high regard and are objects of religious homage, the worshipping of such mizimu is limited to those with which one is directly acquainted or remembered. Nevertheless, at public ceremonies of ancestral worship, reference is made to all ancestral spirits. Secondly, the ancestral spirits are believed to be in constant communication with the living, either through dreams or by inflicting diseases or misfortunes on the society as a whole through a possessed individual or animal or some living objects. Cultural beliefs vary from one culture to another, but what appears to cut across all African cultures is the belief in respecting one’s elders and whatever they say. Thus, belief seems to follow from the epistemological belief that the elders inhere all knowledge and wisdom. Yet, that is not to say that Africans are incapable of distinguishing the knowledgeable from the wise, for some elders are merely knowledgeable but not wise, whereas it is impossible for an elder to be wise without being knowledgeable. In Chichewa, for example, the word “to know” is kudziwa, but there is no equivalent for the word “knowledge.” Instead, there is Nzeru, which is more equivalent to “wisdom” than to “knowledge.” However, ways do exist in Chichewa through which distinctions are made between the wise and the knowledgeable. Thus, experience is what seems to be valued more in the sociocultural setup of the Africans than anywhere else, which appears to be true in both traditional/rural and modern/urban Africa.

Bibliography Daneel, M.L. 1971. Old and new in southern Shona independent churches. Vol. I. The Hague: Mouton. Hobley, C., and W. Bantu. 1967. Beliefs and magic. London: Frank Cars. Mbiti, J. 1975. African religions and philosophy. London: Heinemann. Werner, A. 1906. The natives of British Central Africa. London: Archibald Constable.

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African Theology: Manifestoes and Positions 1960–1980 V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

The concept of an African Christian Theology is used for the first time by the Cameroonian Meinrad Hebga in a 1956 Manifesto published in Paris as Les Prêtres noirs s’interrogent. This volume, the proceedings of a collective reflection of a number of clergymen, suggests highly circumspect ways of actualizing Christian Theology regionally. Explicitly submitted to the organic historical development of theology in the Western tradition and its canonical expressions, it subsumes, insofar as Africa is concerned, the norms of both the missionary Theology of Salvation and that of Stepping Stones, thus favoring a conversion of Paganism, or, at any rate, a discerning examination of what in its aspects and statements could qualify for a Christian adaptation. One can distinguish two interdependent orders of preoccupations in African Christian Theology: an epistemological quest for the foundation of an African voice in Christ as the site where all differences are transmuted and cohere; and, consistent with this project, a search for ways of expressing a will to liberation as enhanced by a critical inscription in the Christian Tradition and determined in a socio-historical context. Three major studies sum up well the complexity of these issues: a history, Adrian Hastings, A History of African Christianity 1950–1975 (1979); an act of faith, Albert Nolan’s Jesus before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976); and an epistemological exposé, Th. Tschibangu’s La Théologie Africaine Manifeste et programme pour le développement des activités théologiques en Afrique (1987). At the intersection of African Religions and Christianity, scholars explore ways of integrating regional data in the Christian economy of concepts and values. This is evident in the work of David Barrett, Newelle S. Booth, Peter Sarpong, and Harry Sawyer throughout the 1960s and the

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African Theology: Manifestoes and Positions 1960–1980

1970s, and one may consider as their completion the interdisciplinary reflections of the 1970s and the 1980s, including the combative collections edited by Kogi Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres, African Theology en Route (1979), Sergio Torres and Virginia Fabella, The Emergent Gospel: Theology from the Underside of History (1978), and, by the same editors, Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to Theology (1983). Closer to a more traditional vocation of the Christian mission and attentive to African cultural contexts are biblical studies exemplified in the collection of studies edited by Kwesi A. Dickson and Paul Ellingworth, Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs (1971), and those included in New Testament Christianity for Africa and the World (1974) edited by Mark E. Glasswell and Edward W. Fashole-Luke. Of the same amplitude is the individual research of Malcolm J. McVeigh, God in Africa: Conceptions of God in African Traditional Religion and Christianity (1974). Through the 1970s and beyond, John S. Mbiti remained a leader in the field. Tested in African Religions and Philosophy (1970) and in Concepts of God in Africa (1970), his methodology governed his dissertation on New Testament Eschatology in an African Background (1972). It is strictly a concordance method that puts a biblical index of concepts in agreement with African conceptualities on the basis of their semantic proximities, and then draws pastoral lessons for the Christianization of an African culture. Although its concordance is based on a rigorous linguistic grid, John Mbiti’s technique doubles fundamentally the perspective of procedures used by J.V. Taylor in The Primal Vision (1959 and 1963), and both methods can be compared to Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy. All of them employ a basic process, pairing and comparing a number of features as a way for sorting out a difference that Christianity can summon up. It is a similar method that has been animating the Research Center of African Religions at Lovanium University in Kinshasa and its journal initiated in 1966 by Vincent Mulago, the theologian and cultural anthropologist. The question of an African theology was thematized in a 1960 dialogue between Alfred

Vanneste and Tharcisse Tshibangu. At issue was, on the one hand, the integrity in the practice of the discipline and the paradigmatic unity of Christian Truth and on the other, the validity of regional interpretations of Revelation, Scriptures, and Christian Tradition. From the 1960s onward, one distinguishes three main orientations transcending doctrinal differences. First, there is a plurality in the interpretation of the tradition of Christian experiences, and this difference posits itself as part of a general and universal theology of history, as illustrated explicitly in the name of the institutional organ created in the Kinshasa Catholic School of Theology, Revue Africaine de Théologie, African Journal of Theology. A second orientation runs against, or parallel to, an axiomatic axis legitimating an interconnection between Christian Revelation, the incarnation of the Logos and Western history. It emphasizes the fact of a plural story of being and existing as a Christian Dynamic, and it has been, in inter-Faith explorations, expounding ways of affirming the validity of an African Theology. Some of its steps are presented in proceedings from colloquia and symposia: Ibaden, Nigeria, 1966, Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs (1969); Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1976, Théologies du Tiers-Monde (1978); Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 1977, Civilisation noire et Eglise Catholique (1978); Kinshasa, Congo-Zaïre, 1978, Religions Africaines et Christianisme (1978). By the mid-1970s, antagonistic stances of a theology of difference have transposed themselves into propositions on terms of exchanges in a shared faith as witnessed to by two meetings, the first in Brazzaville, Congo, 1973 and, the second, in Paris, France, the following year. They brought together Africans and Europeans and issued La Reconnaissance des différences, chemin de la solidarité (1978) with the support of Italian friends of Présence Africaine. In 1981, Concilium, the International Journal of Theology devotes its Project X, 166 to a critical overview of the Church, which includes an important subsection on messianic signs in history. Along with Third World male contributors such as D.S. Amalorpanadass from Bangalore, India,

African Theology: Manifestoes and Positions 1960–1980

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Alphonse Ngindu-Mushete, from Kinshasa Congo, and Carlos Alberto Libanio Christo (Frei Betto), from São-Paulo, Brazil, stands the Norwegian Kari Børresen, a philosopher and a specialist in theological anthropology, with an article on “Women and Men in Creation and Within the Church.” She represents a growing number of female theologians in mainline Christian Churches. Some of their interventions constituted significant events, as in the case of the following publications: in a special issue devoted to Catholicism by the Cahiers des Religions Africaines (14, 27–28), the analysis by Sr. Buanga Zinga of blood pact as a sign of commitment and faithfulness to a perpetual consecration in a religious Order; two studies on women’s questions: the first addressed to the Church by R. Zoë Obiange in The Bulletin of African Theology (7, 13–14, 1985); and the second, a critical reflection on the practice of Theology from the viewpoint of African women was published in Les Nouvelles Rationalités Africaines (4, 14, 1982) by Sr. MarieBernadette Mbuy Beya, President of Committee of African Women of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians. Finally, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, a familiar thinker in the world of international theology published during the same period her acclaimed Hearing and Knowing. Theological Reflections on Christianity in Africa (1986), and in the same spirit of a process theology another contribution of hers had been issued five years before in The Bulletin of African Theology (4, 7, 1981) as “In the image of God. A theological reflection from an African perspective.” The third orientation has been linking the theological effort to a political privilege for the poor and the exploited. As it has been noted by students of African Christianity, it was only natural that the impact of ideologies of cultural difference and Liberation Theology would have a formidable impact in South Africa under Apartheid. There are several significant characteristics of South African Theology. To begin with, one remarks the programmatic conception of a specifically African agenda within the All Africa Conference of Church (AACC) since its creation in 1963, and secondly, its proximity with theoretical

initiatives of the Latin American Liberation Theology. It is noteworthy that two international leaders of this school of thought, Giuseppe Alberigo and Gustavo Gutierrez, are the editors of the 1981 special issue of Concilium on the state of the Christian Church. Finally, there is a connection between these trends and North American Black Theology, of which, in the 1970s, James H. Cone is one of the best known thanks to his three main books: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), and God of the Oppressed (1975). In 1975, in collaboration with Gayrand Wilmore, James H. Cone edited a comprehensive Manifesto, Black Theology: A Documentary History 1966–1979. More specifically, among works addressing the South African situation, there are Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s theological and pastoral interventions, some of which were published in the early 1980s as Crying in the Wilderness (1982), Apartheid is a Heresy (1983), and Hope and Suffering (1983 and 1984). Publications by Allan Boesak, Farewell to Innocence: A SocioEthical Study on Black Theology and Power (1977), and Basil Moore, Black Theology: The South African Voice (1973) and The Challenge of Black Theology in South Africa (1974), should also be mentioned. The South African theological activity also manifested itself in professional journals such as Africa Journal of Theology, the Bulletin of African Theology, The Ecumenical Review, and Journal of Theology for Southern Africa.

See Also ▶ Apartheid and Religion ▶ Theology, Black ▶ Theology, Feminist Critique of

Bibliography Adoukonou, B. 1980. Jalons pour une théologie africaine. Paris: Lethielleux. Bühlmann, W. 1963. Afrika: Die Kirche unter den Volkern. Mainz: M. Grünewald.

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30 Hastings, A.A. 1979. History of African Christianity 1950–1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luneau, R., and A.T. Sanon. 1982. Enraciner l’Evangile. Initiations africaines et pédagogie. Paris: Cerf. Ngindu, M.A. 1989. Les Thèmes majeurs de la théologie africaine. Paris: l’Harmattan. Nyamiti, C. 1973. The scope of African theology. Kampala: Pastoral Institute. Shorter, A. 1977. African Christian theology. New York: Maryknoll. Singleton, M. 1976. African theology and theologizing in Africa. Brussels: Pro Mundi Vita. Ntedika, Konde J. 1970–1982. Théologie africaine: Bibliographie sélective 1925–1975. In Revue Africaine de Théologie, vol. 1, 2, 4, 6.

African Traditional Religions, Philosophy of Segun Gbadegesin Department of Philosophy, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA

A number of questions are raised by a philosophical focus on African religious beliefs and practices. First, are the conceptual questions raised in Western philosophy of religion applicable to African traditional religions? Second, does an adequate understanding of African traditional religions require a translation of their concepts into the Western conceptual scheme? Third, what is the distinguishing character of religious rituals among traditional Africans? Fourth, what is the significance of religion for peace and development in Africa? As should be expected, there are opposing positions with regard to each of these questions. For instance, on the first issue, differences exist between scholars influenced by Christian theology, for example, Robin Horton’s “Devout opposition” and those who have been influenced by agnostic and atheistic beliefs. While the former sees Christian parallels in African religions and defines African God(s) in terms understandable to Christians, the latter insist on the uniqueness of African ideas of God. For instance, the fact that the African orisa are independent realities in the

African Traditional Religions, Philosophy of

minds of their worshippers – rather than mere manifestations of the supreme being – makes a difference. It may well be then that, though God is all good, since the orisa are independent realities who could be mean and capricious, evil can be explained by reference to them; and this might take care of the problem of evil. Differences have also been identified between concepts in African religious discourse and those of Judaeo Christian religion. Some philosophical opponents of “Devout opposition” (e.g., Wiredu) have queried the applicability of the concept of spirit to African religious discourse. The argument here is that while the concept of spirit in Western philosophy refers to a bundle of consciousness with no spacial or temporal location, African ideas of spirit have spacial characteristics, and there is no clear-cut distinction between the supernatural and the natural. On this latter point, even some members of the “Devout Opposition” (e.g., Mbiti) concur. On the issue of an adequate methodology, not everyone feels the need for a “translational understanding” of African religious discourse in terms of Western language and conceptual system. While it appears true in the case of the two groups Horton has identified, “Devout opposition” and “Orthodox Anthropologists,” it may not be true of the new wave of African scholars, including the late Okot p’Bitek. Part of the quarrel of the latter group is that justice cannot be done to African religious thought if it is understood simply in terms of Western categories, and this is why some radical African scholars have even suggested the idea of using African languages in written communication. On the third issue, there are opposing views on an adequate characterization and evaluation of religious rituals. Symbolists (e.g., John Beattie) argue that religious objects and religious practices are symbolic representations of something else. Intellectualists (e.g., Robin Horton) argue that religious practices and beliefs, like science, can be understood as attempts to explain, predict, and control, albeit using different models of explanation (humans as opposed to physical objects) and with differing degrees of accommodativeness. Rationalists (e.g., Wiredu) argue that African

Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West

religious practices, like all religious practices, are simply elements of superstitious beliefs which have no basis in reason. On the final issue, the growing prominence of religion in the political arena is causing concern over the potentials for religious violence, raising the question of the nature of religion and its prospect for promoting peace. Since the potentials for violence exist in the context of a plurality of religions or sects, there is a philosophical interest in the tenets of these various religions and sects. A pertinent philosophical question then is how compatible the tenets of African religions are with the promotion of social peace, compared with other major religions. One major difference between African religions and other major religions is that while the latter require propagation by their adherents, African religions do not; and it is in the effort to compete for the souls of “nonbelievers” that conflict arises in a plural society. For obvious reasons, this issue deserves serious philosophical attention.

See Also ▶ Bantu Philosophy ▶ Kikuyu: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals ▶ P’Bitek, Okot ▶ Religion, African Scholars of

Bibliography Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter Six. Beattie, John. 1974. On understanding ritual. In Rationality, ed. Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Blackwell. Busia, K., and A. The. 1962. Challenge of Africa. New York: Fredrick Praeger. Gbadegesin, Segun. 1991. African philosophy: Traditional Yoruba philosophy and contemporary African realities. Bern/New York: Lang. Chapter 4. Horton, Robin. 1967. African traditional religion and Western science. Africa 37: 197–220. ———. 1993. Patterns of thought in Africa and the West: Essays on magic, religion and science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

31 Idowu, E. Bolaji. 1973. African traditional religion: A definition. New York: Orbis. Mbiti, John S. 1969. African religions and philosophy. London: Heinemann. p’Bitek, Okot. 1970. African religions in Western scholarship. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1990. Universalism and particularism in religion from an African perspective. Journal of Humanism and Ethical Religion 3 (1): 85–108. Zahan, Dominique. 1979. The religion spirituality and thought of traditional Africa. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West Lucius Outlaw Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

“Africana Philosophy” is meant to refer, collectively, to the forms of understanding and knowledge of Africans and African descendants, as well as to the way these traditions and practices have been and are pursued and expressed. Contributions by persons who are neither African nor African descended but whose works contribute to Africana Philosophy are also included. As African and African descendants are ethnically and culturally diverse and dispersed widely in space and time, even while sharing some distinguishing commonalities, Africana Philosophy does not refer to a shared fixed essence – racial or otherwise – that determines the identical cultural characteristics of all African peoples. Rather, “Africana” takes its departure from the socially conditioned anthropological fact that the varying raciality of African peoples share not only a relatively distinct gene pool, but, more importantly, share constitutive aspects of social and cultural life-worlds. The identification, study, and understanding of a wide range of discursive practices and their results, along with appropriate considerations of their social and historical situations, are of particular concern. Africana Philosophy, then, is the umbrella term for ethnically and nationally distinct philosophizings: African–American,

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African–Caribbean, Nigerian, Kenyan, etc., with further subdistinctions as necessary. The objective is to come to a greater appreciation of these philosophizings and the people producing them, of ourselves, and of others by comparing them to the knowledge of the philosophizing characteristic, under particular conditions, of persons of other racial, ethnic, and national groupings. The American Philosophical Association, the main organization of professional philosophers in the United States of America, added “Africana Philosophy” to its list of fields and subfields in the discipline of Philosophy very recently. In doing so, this organization officially recognized what a handful of pioneering African and African descendant thinkers and scholars, along with others not of African descent, have been arguing for more than a century on continental Africa and throughout the African Diaspora. That argument is not simply that Africans and African descendants are not only capable of philosophizing, but they have been producing philosophical articulations for as long as those European philosophers of the so-called West and, in some cases, even longer. In the case of Ancient Egypt, they have even influenced developments in the thinkings and expressions that have been recorded as the beginnings of philosophizing in the West. After the development, institutionalization, and dispersal of virulent, violent prejudices against races identified by skin colors particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries especially, virtually all of the major histories of Philosophy make no mention of Egypt in particular, or Africa in general, as sources or contributors of or contributors to “proper” philosophizing. (“Proper” philosophizing was developed as part of “the Greek miracle” of supposedly altogether unique intellectual developments that, over time, came to characterize peoples of Europe as civilized. Only recently has it become necessary to add the qualifier “Western,” since Philosophy was long claimed to have begun and been found only in the West.) Among these were histories by Frederick Copleston, Emile Bréhier, W.T. Stace, Bertrand Russell, and Will Durant. For generations for many persons of European descent (and others as well), the centuries-long propagation of

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characterizing African peoples as a race of deficient human beings – even, in some accounts, by nature incapable of becoming fully human – effectively canceled the thought that African and African descendants philosophized, the activity par excellence of Rational Man. Hegel was decisively instructive: in the introduction to publication of his lectures on “The Philosophy of History.” Hegel declared Africa – except for Egypt, which, he said, must be separated from the rest of the continent and “annexed” to Europe – a land of nonhistorical people to be completely disregarded when assessing the historical significance of various peoples and nations. The publication of Placide Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy in 1945 marks one of the axial events in a long line of continuing struggles to annul this cancellation and reclaim, recognize, and assert the humanity of African and African descendants. This book did much to initiate contemporary discussions of the philosophizing of African peoples – discussions which have led to the formal training of several generations of African and African descendants as philosophers and to the now ongoing production of philosophizing ventures and bodies of literature throughout Africa and the Diaspora that comprise Africana Philosophy. These developments, which include the addition of African, AfricanAmerican, and Africana Philosophy to canonical lists of distinguishing areas, forms, and traditions of philosophizing, thus compel studied consideration of the need to revise historical accounts for all areas of the globe in which African and African descendants have been long-settled residents. Among these populations have been those men and women who have devoted significant energies to the achievement of understandings which would help to insure the well-being of African people – understandings to be appropriately regarded as instances of Philosophy.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy in America ▶ African Philosophy, Search for identity of ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate

African-American Philosophy (1)

▶ African-American Philosophy (1) ▶ Bantu Philosophy ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Tempels, Placide

Bibliography Jefferson, N.C. 1997. Africana studies: A disciplinary quest for both theory and method. Ed. James L. Conyers. McFarland.

African-American Philosophy (1) Leonard Harris Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

The nature of knowledge, civilization, and God occupied early American philosophic thought. Just as the Spanish, French, and Irish were transformed by the interface of cultures and religions in the cauldron that became America, so too were the Asante, Fulani, and Yoruba. In the late-eighteenth century, a massive increase in the importation of Africans as slaves, and threats to the freedom of already established Africans, shaped the themes that would receive attention by intellectuals. Concepts of honor, dignity, temperance, abolition, manumission, community, and methods of liberation became the focus for African American thinkers. In Carter G. Woodson’s Negro Orators and Their Orations, a collection of tomes from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, these concepts figure prominently. Against the idea that slavery was justified by conquest or the idea that the nature of certain groups was best suited to servitude, abolitionists were characteristically humanitarians opposing both ideas. Humanitarians appealed to notions of natural rights. Natural rights are goods that persons have independent of their statuses, skills, or endowments. The common features of normal persons, such as forethought, reflection, capacity for greater happiness or misery, desire for liberty,

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property, notions of right, impulse to mate, maintaining family ties, endearment of offspring, and desire for safety were often emphasized by abolitionists as traits corrupted by servitude. No acquired or inherited skills for humanitarians warranted denying persons natural rights or liberties. However, there were important philosophical differences between competing abolitionist schools of thought. William Whipper, author of Non-resistance to Offensive Aggression (1837), Prince Saunders, and Richard Allen are examples of abolitionists. Their rejection of slavery and segregation often pitted them against members of their own denominations, whether Evangelical Baptists, Congregationalists, or Methodists. Unlike many of their fellow Christians, some abolitionists such as Whipper were moral suasionists. Moral suasionists believed that moral arguments provide or enrich our understanding of the nature of right conduct and character virtues; they believed that moral arguments are sufficient, or at least should be sufficient, to convince society to end unjust practices. Benevolence or conscience, for suasionists, are considered substantive motivating forces. These beliefs were used against instrumental reasoning approaches that justified slavery on grounds that the institution was utilitarian (providing the greatest good for the greatest number at the expense of a few), that it was in the natural interest of the master and slave, or that the plight of the conquered and their progeny was just bondage to the victors and their progeny. Opposing moral suasionists, and less associated with romantic enlightenment ideals of human perfectability, were moral realists. David Walker, author of Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1823), is an example of a moral realist because he argued for the entitlement of Africans to defend themselves against their aggressors and to take positive action to free themselves from what Walker considered the worst form of slavery known to humankind: American slavery. It denied, indeed, the inherent humanity of the slave and it provided no way for the slave to ascend from a decadent condition to full citizenship and honor. For Walker, as with other realists, self-respect was achieved through self-reliance and was dependent on the community being

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respected by others. Henry Highland Garnet and Alexander Crummell are also examples of moral realists. The death of American slavery in 1865 afforded pursuit of ideals promoted by Frederick Douglas as expressed in his famous Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. Douglas avoided stringent commitment to either the moral suasionist or moral realist positions. Douglas hoped that African would be free to compete in the marketplace of commerce without regard to race. Rufus L. Perry (1833–1895) continued a long tradition of reclaiming Egypt as Black, foregrounding the history of Black civilization building, and wedding a concern with ancient Greek philosophy with African American uplift. Perry received an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1887 from the State University of Kentucky, Louisville. He authored such works as Sketch of Philosophical Systems and The Cushite or the Descendants of Ha (1893). Thomas N. Baker (1860–1940), ordained a minister of the Congregational faith in 1897, New Haven Connecticut, and graduating from Yale University in philosophy, 1903, is recognized in Holders of Doctorates Among American Negroes as the first to receive a doctorate in philosophy. Baker’s interactionalism and realism in his 1903 dissertation, Ethical Significance of the Connection Between Mind and Body, was compatible with the practicality of his Congregationalist faith, but his mature philosophy would venture into unique areas. Baker argued for an “ethicized religion,” a concept of self-respect in Not Pity but Self Respect, 1906, because “not where we are, but what we are is the great and final question that should concern us.” Baker, and the young W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1903 The Souls of Black Folks, required the successful formation of an ethnic/racial identity among Blacks that would allow both the celebration of Emersonian individualism, individuals rights, and yet give recognition to cultural pluralism. Alain L. Locke (1885–1954) became the first noted professional philosopher and activist,

African-American Philosophy (1)

effectively spelling the end of philosophy among African Americans as the province of theologians and community activists. Locke was raised an Episcopalian, but later was attracted to the Bahali faith, and eventually became a free thinker. While attending Harvard University, he became the first African American Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, England. His first major presentations occurred in 1915 and 1916 in a series of lectures sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), entitled Race Contacts and Inter-racial Relations: A Study of the Theory and Practice of Race. Locke held that races were socially constructed and cultures the manifestation of stressed values, always subject to transvaluation and revaluation. Locke authored in 1925 The New Negro, a book that heralded the Harlem Renaissance. In 1935, Locke authored Values and Imperatives, claiming that “All philosophies, it seems to me, are in ultimate derivation philosophies of life and not of abstract, disembodied ‘objective’ reality; products of time, place and situation, and thus systems of timed history rather than timeless eternity.” Locke criticized metaphysics through argument methods of reversal – showing that commitment to absolutes generated actual commitment to particulars; that unity of social groups was obtained at the cast of universality. Locke developed a philosophy of radical pragmatism and critical relativism while simultaneously arguing for the importance of African American folk traditions. He thus spoke to two audiences: the world of grand theory in philosophy of the social sciences and the world of race conscious cultural studies. An impressive generation of philosophers followed Locke’s entrance onto historical space. The philosophy of history scholar, Earl Thorpe, for example, has developed a school of thought regarding the import of historical agency; Eugene C. Halmes, a colleague of Alain L. Locke, was a noted Marxist; William T. Fontaine, authored works in the sociology of knowledge and civil rights; and Broadus N. Butler, former Vice President of the University of the District of Columbia,

African-American Philosophy (1)

continued the civil rights tradition of linking moral argument to political activism. In addition, the noted theologian and philosopher representing the suasionist tradition, Howard Thurman, predated the most influential of African American Christian philosophers – Martin L. King Jr. Martin L. King Jr. authored one of the most controversial and action orientated philosophies of the twentieth century. The concept of nonviolent direct action, nonviolent civil disobedience, agape (communal love), absolute pacifism, and a belief that Christians were duty bound to actively confront evil helped to enliven not only a civil rights movement, but numerous debates. Is God a White Racist? William R. Jones is a challenge to King’s approach. The humanist tradition, consisting of African American atheists and agnostics that believe in the inherent dignity of humankind, has an impressive heritage. African Americans that reject either doctrinaire religions have been a continuing feature of the history of African American philosophy. This feature of African American intellectual life has not always received recognition because its authors criticize one of the most powerful motivating forces in Black history – doctrinaire religions and appeals to spiritual forces. Such notables as Hubert Henry Harrison, James Baldwin and Richard Wright, for example, wrote actively against organized religion. Norm Allen’s African American Humanist establishes that despite stereotypes of Blacks as always religious or authentic if and only if they are spiritual, stands as testimony to a rich tradition of secular life. The contemporary world of African American philosophy is far more diverse than its origin in the battle against enslavement and slavery. There are, for example, several organizations of philosophers: The Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession, American Philosophical Association (APA); the Society for the Study of Black Philosophy; the North American Society for African Philosophy; the International Society for African and African Diaspora Philosophy and Studies. There are newsletters of particular importance, for example, the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and

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the Black Experience and the African American Humanists. Important annual conferences provide opportunities for personal contact and debate, for example, The Annual Philosophy Born of Struggle Conference, and the Alain L. Locke Lecture, Howard University. There is an Alain L. Locke Society and valuable special editions of philosophy journals on the history of African American philosophy, such as the Philosophical Forum, Winter 1977/78, and Fall/Spring 1992–1993 and Robert Gooding-Williams, The Massachusetts Review, 1994, edition on W.E.B. Du Bois, R.W. Emerson, and G.W.F. Hegel and anthologies revealing competing philosophic orientations by John McClendon, Leonard Harris, Philosophy Born of Struggle, Fred Hord, I Am Because We Are, Tommy L. Lott, J.P. Pittman, A Companion to African-American Philosophy, John McClendon, S.C. Ferguson, African-American Philosophers and Philosophy. American philosophy, whether in the academy or practiced by public intellectuals, has been bedeviled by segregation. Issues receiving frequent attention included include feminism, misandry, reparations, decarceration and correlative luminaries include Angela Davis, Tommy Curry, Anita L. Allen, Lee McBride, Jacoby A. Carter, V. Denise James, George Yancy. Although the history and heritage of African American philosophy is best understood as A Philosophy Born of Struggle, (Leonard Harris) it is by no means confined to issues of liberation. It is, however, always prefigured on a background of conflict and contestation over honor, dignity, manumission, community, and methods of liberation – the leitmotif of an American genre of philosophy.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy, Search for identity of ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ African Philosophy in America ▶ Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt ▶ Garvey, Marcus Mosiah

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African-American Philosophy (2) Lucius Outlaw Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

Over the past 30 years or more, there has been a significant increase in the number of persons of African and African descent completing advanced studies and setting out on careers as professional teacher-scholars of Philosophy. Many of these persons were motivated, to a significant degree, by the movements for Civil Rights and Black Power in the USA as well as by the increased knowledge and inspiration gained from the historical studies of black struggles for national independence in Africa and the New World(s) of the African Diaspora. Critical thinking by AfricanAmericans precedes, by centuries, Americans of African descent taking advanced degrees in Philosophy. The crucible for New World Africans, in general, and the United States, in particular, continues to be life-worlds made complex by situations involving various forms of racial oppression, social discrimination, and class exploitation – all further complicated by social prejudices regarding sexuality and gender. While engaged in the processes of survival and reproduction in this social matrix of racist impositions and creative responses, New World African American descendants have had to use insight and creativity in forming, perpetuating, and fashioning lives of well-being and flourishing against all odds. In so doing, a recurrent feature of life has been the struggle to resolve major tensions affecting identity formation. More importantly, this identity formation involves the ambiguities and ambivalences of being both “African” and “American” in a society structured by white supremacy, which has devalued virtually all things African, while constructing a racial hierarchy wherein African descendants were relegated to secondclass citizenship at best. These tensions have been negotiated by New World Africans through

African-American Philosophy (2)

the crucial forging of personal and social identities by forming, sharing, and organizing agendas for participating in social struggles devoted to securing freedom and justice. Efforts to conceive and give articulate expression to forms of life in which African descendants in America might enjoy lives of well-being have been equally crucial. The studied articulation of means and ends programs to guide efforts to conceptual realization comprises a great deal of the philosophizing of African descendants in the New World of America and, indeed, makes such efforts a “philosophy born of struggle.” Rich resources of different traditions of thought and practice, organizations, and institutions have resulted from the inherent differences among thinkers of African descent in the USA – that is, diverse goals, strategies, and objectives concerning struggles for freedom, justice, and the well-being of the race. This can be seen in some examples of social and political philosophies, which include: various forms of Black Nationalism, such as racial solidarity and self-help, emigration, and other separatist agendas (Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, Henry McNeil Turner, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church); cultural, economic, and political nationalisms whose central concerns were generally the meaning and relationship of Africa and Africans to Blacks in the USA, and vice-versa (Maulana Karenga, Molefi Asante); philosophies aimed at race-blind assimilation into the social order (Frederick Douglass); the seeming accommodation to prevailing racial politics (Booker T. Washington’s nation-wide organization of black businesses, newspapers, farmers, and Tuskegee [Alabama] Institute and other educational institutions); the democratic, pluralist integration of different identifiable racial cultural groups into a more or less reformed America (W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Leroy Locke, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Urban League); the radical (perhaps revolutionary) transformation of the American political, economic, and social orders along socialist or communist lines (Paul Robeson, Angela Davis, James Boggs, and W.E.B. Du Bois); and the elevation of black women and the nurturing of strong families as necessary contributions to the

African-American Philosophy (2)

well-being of the race (Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, the National Council of Negro Women). There are, however, many other forms of thought and praxis – the social bases of which are found in numerous organizations and African-American institutions – that warrant philosophical attention, including critiques of how racism and sexism infect various disciplines (history, sociology, political science, art, music, psychology, literature, religion and theology, and dance). In particular, there is the work of the professional philosophers (i.e., persons with advanced degrees in the discipline and, in most cases, based in colleges and universities). During the last two decades, a major concern among an important group of philosophers of African descent has been to construct a field of African-American Philosophy. Greatly assisted by numerous conferences over the years and the continuing meetings of the Society for the Study of Africana Philosophy (New York), a number of related efforts involve: the identification, appropriation, refinement, and institutionalization of literatures and traditions of intellectual praxis as forms of philosophizing. As a result of these efforts, a growing body of literature and other accomplishments now mark the contributions of African descent philosophers and support teaching, research, and scholarship. These include the works of pioneer Alain Leroy Locke (the first African-American to have received the Ph.D. in Philosophy), William T. Fontaine, Broadus N. Butler, Robert C. Williams, Bernard Boxill, Cornelius L. Golightly, Blanche Radford Curry, Johnny Washington, Cornel West, Anita Allen, Angela Y. Davis, Laurence Thomas, Howard McGary, Jr., William Lawson, Adrian Piper, Albert G. Mosley, Leonard Harris, Michele Moody-Adams, and Frank Kirkland. Many of the concerns regarding the well-being of African descendants are central to the work of most of these philosophers, but not exclusively. Ranging well beyond the boundaries of race, their interests lead them and others to explore matters in such areas as philosophy of art (Piper), philosophy of natural and social sciences (Lorenzo Simpson, and Mosley), ethics (Moody-Adams,

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Jorge Garcia, and Thomas) feminist theory (Radford Curry), philosophy of law (Allen), slavery (Lawson and McGary), epistemology (Lee Brown), American philosophy (Harvey Cormier), nineteenth-century European philosophy (Robert Gooding–Williams), phenomenology and existentialism (Eric Hill), racism and antisemitism (Thomas), philosophy of religion (William Jones, Robert C. Willliams), philosophy of logic and mathematics (La Verne Shelton), medieval European philosophy (Georgette Sinkler), metaphysics (Joseph Tolliver), and continental European philosophy (Robert Birt and Lewis Gordon). As more works are produced and published by these philosophers over a longer period of time, there will be more compelling opportunities to study and prepare careful overviews of their philosophies. The preceding listings by no means exhaust the forms, agendas, and practices of philosophy by African-Americans. Thus, the phrase “AfricanAmerican Philosophy” does not connote a single form or agenda of philosophy that is definitive of and thereby shared by all African-Americans philosophers. Variety prevails and the labeling for this variety works only to organize a wide range of intellectual activities and their results under a single heading, which engages Americans of African descent and more or less satisfies (though far from settled criteria even among professionals in the discipline) what constitutes “philosophy.” Still, the designation is of significant benefit because it allows for the organized study of articulate expressions of disciplined, committed, and engaged thoughtfulness on the part of persons of Americans of African descent, and the comparison of such endeavors with those of other racial/ ethnic cultural groups.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy, Search for identity of ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ African Philosophy in America ▶ Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt ▶ Garvey, Marcus Mosiah

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Bibliography Asante, Molefi Kete. 1990. Kemet, Afrocentricity and knowledge. Trenton: Africa World Press. Crawford, Jeffrey. 1995. Cheikh Anta Diop, the ‘stolen legacy’, and Afrocentrism. In African philosophy: Selected readings, ed. Albert G. Mosley. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Lemelle, Sidney J. 1994. The politics of culture existence: Pan-Africanism, historical materialism and Afrocentricity. In Imagining home: Class, culture and nationalism in the African diaspora, ed. Sidney J. Lemelle and Robin D.G. Kelley. London: Verso. Harris, Leonard, ed. 1983. Philosophy born of struggle: Anthology of Afro–American philosophy from 1917. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt. Mazrui, Ali Amin. 1993. Afrocentricity versus multiculturalism?: A dialectic in search of a synthesis. Los Angeles: UCLA. Fall-Spring 1992–1993. African-American perspectives and Philosophical traditions. Spécial Issue of The Philosophical Forum. XXIV (1–3).

Afrocentricity K. W. Asante Department of African-American Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Afrocentricity emerged in the late 1970s as a philosophical and theoretical perspective distinct from a system with origins attributed to a trilogy of works by Molefi Kete Asante. These books (Afrocentricity, The Afrocentric Idea, and Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge) form the essential core of the idea that interpretation and explanation, based on the role of Africans as subjects, is most consistent with reality. It became a growing intellectual idea in the 1980s as scores of African-American and African scholars adopted an Afrocentric orientation to data. Afrocentricity is generally opposed to theories that “dislocate” Africans in the periphery of human thought and experience. Consequently, the adherents of the Afrocentric perspective find the historical works of Cheikh Anta Diop and the linguistic works of Theophile Obenga locatable as bases for their own works.

Afrocentricity

Afrocentricity is not the counterpoint to Eurocentricity but a particular perspective for analysis, which does not seek to occupy all space and time as Eurocentricism has often done. For example, classical music, theater, or dance is usually a reference to European music, theater, and dance. However, this means that Europeans occupy all of the intellectual and artistic seats, leaving no room for others. The Afrocentrists argue for pluralism in philosophical views without hierarchy. In the Afrocentric view, the problem of location takes precedence over the topic or the data under consideration. The argument is that Africans have been moved off of social, political, philosophical, and economic terms for half a millennium. Consequently, it becomes necessary to examine all data from the standpoint of Africans as subjects or human agents, rather than as objects in a European frame of reference. Afrocentricity has implications for fields as different as dance, architecture, social work, literature, politics, and psychology. Scholars in those fields have written extensively about the motifs of location and the constituents of decenteredness in various areas. Afrocentrists contend that human beings cannot divest themselves of culture; they are either participating in their own historical culture or that of some other group. A contradiction between history and perspective produces a kind of incongruity which is called decenteredness. Thus, when an African-American writes from the viewpoint of Europeans who came to the Americas on the Mayflower, or when literary critics write of Africans as the Other, Afrocentrists claim that Africans are being peripheralized, sometimes by Africans themselves. Consequently, continental Africans who speak of Mungo Park as the discoverer of the Niger River, or who accept David Livingtone’s naming of Musi wa Tunya as Victoria Falls as their own reality, are dislocated. In such situations, the Afrocentrists call for a re-centering or a relocating of Africans in an agent position. Metaphors of location and dislocation are the principal tools of analysis as events, situations, texts, buildings, dreams, and authors are seen as displaying various forms of centeredness. To be

Afterlife

centered is to be located as an agent instead of as “the Other.” Such a critical shift in thinking means that the afrocentric perspective provides new insights and dimensions to the understanding of phenomena. Contemporary issues in Afrocentric thinking have involved the explanation of psychological misorientation and disorientation – attitudes which affect Africans who consider themselves to be Europeans or who believe that it is impossible to be African and human. Severe forms of this attitude have been labeled “extreme misorientation” by some Afrocentrists. Additional issues have been the influence of a centered approach to education, particularly as it relates to the revision of the American educational curriculum. A growing group of Afrocentric writers at major universities in North America and Africa has established several professional associations and journals. The premier center for the Afrocentric Movement is the Temple University School of Scholars, frequently referred to as the Temple Circle. Among the Temple Circle of Afrocentrists, which include C. Tsehloane Keto, Kariamu Welsh Asante, Abu Abarry, Ella Forbes, and Terry Kershaw, there is a strong emphasis on aesthetics, behavior, and ethics with Afrocentric location as the key component to interpretation.

Bibliography Asante, Molefi Kete. 1990. Kemet, Afrocentricity and knowledge. Trenton: Africa World Press. Crawford, Jeffrey. 1995. Cheikh Anta Diop, the ‘stolen legacy’, and Afrocentrism. In African philosophy: selected readings, ed. Albert G. Mosley. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Jean, Clinton. 1991. Behind the Eurocentric Veils. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Keto, C. Tsehloane. 1989. The Africa centered perspective of history. Blackwood: K and A Publishers. Lemelle, Sidney J. 1994. The politics of culture existence: Pan-Africanism, historical materialism and Afrocentricity. In Imagining home: Class, culture and nationalism in the African diaspora, ed. by Sidney J. Lemelle and Robin D.G. Kelley. London: Verso. Mazrui, Ali Amin. 1993. Afrocentricity versus multiculturalism?: A dialectic in search of a synthesis. Los Angeles: UCLA. Richards, Dona Marimba. 1992. Yurugu. Trenton: Africa World Press.

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Afterlife Wyatt MacGaffey Department of Anthropology, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA

Most Africans at least nominally adhere to either Christianity or Islam and accept the teachings of those religions concerning the afterlife. Indigenous religions, also generally accepted, present a variety of beliefs, or the lack of them, so wide as to raise epistemological questions about both “life” and “death.” Many African peoples (even those who believe in the continuing influence of their ancestors) have very vague ideas about the manner and location of their existence and, indeed, are generally uninterested in the subject. The Tiv (Nigeria) believe casually in ghosts and think that a man’s soul abides in his children, but have no ancestor cult. A continuum could be drawn between those who have essentially no concept of the continued existence of a soul (the Maasai of Kenya, for example) and those who describe the village of the ancestors as very much like that of the living (such as the Kikuyu of Kenya). The Bete (Ivory Coast) and the Kaguru (Tanzania) think of the relationship of the two villages as reciprocal, so that souls are recycled and a birth in one of them is mourned as a death in the other. Similar cyclical or partly cyclical cosmologies are noted among the Fang (Gabon), the Igbo (Nigeria) and many more. It is widely held that the spirits of those who were malefactors in life are excluded from the village of the good ancestors and condemned to wander malevolently in the bush. In this and many other instances, the “afterlife” might better be called the “otherlife,” life continued in another place; the Luo (Uganda) think of the dead, whom they encounter at lineage shrines, not as spirits but as invisible versions of the people they were in life. The other place may well be thoroughly terrestrial, accessible to travelers who go there and return in the course of ritual or even of ordinary commercial activities. Among the Ewe (Ghana), the dead are popularly believed to

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go to Nigeria, where they may be recognized by visitors from home. Similarly, in the Kongo, strangers from the United States are asked for news of deceased relatives, and traders who went to the coast in the nineteenth century underwent, on their return, a ritual to “return their souls.” To capture this sense of “death,” some African scholars use the term “the livingdead.” From the seventeenth century onwards, Christian missionaries who reported difficulty in convincing Africans of the reality of life after death might have done better if they had seen that their task was to explain that there was death after life. Concepts of the afterlife arise not from eschatological speculation but from ritual practice, through which the dead become known to the living. Among the Mende (Sierra Leone), initiates in the Poro and Sande societies are considered to have died and been reborn; in Central Africa, similar ideas about initiation into special powers acquired by a journey to the land of the dead cannot adequately be understood as mere metaphors. Those who have “in fact” died are believed to hang about, invisibly and perhaps with grievances in mind, until burial has been carried out, or perhaps even until a second funeral has been completed. For the Kuranko (Sierra Leone), the purpose of a funeral is to usher the deceased out of this world rather than into the next. In the afterlife, there may be further degrees of death: groups who practice some sort of ancestor cult often distinguish, like the Edo (Nigeria) and the Komo (Zaire), between the recently dead (named and known) and the anonymous and collective dead of earlier generations, who may be thought of as dying additional deaths in a spiral of increasing remoteness. The most remote may come to be identified with striking features of the natural landscape. The dead at various levels may make themselves known through visions, divinatory practices and spirit possession (Shona, in Zimbabwe), or simply through misfortunes taken to be evidence of their displeasure. Sometimes, they are believed to manifest themselves in particular species of animals or in animals that behave in an unusual manner.

Afterlife

The afterlife is probably best understood not as a place but as a philosophical domain. For the Sisala (Ghana), faafaa is both the habitation of occult beings and a time period; it is also the source of the causes and moral rules that govern the experience and conduct of the living. The absence of a concept of the afterlife is, likewise, part of a way of thinking about human nature and morality. Even when the afterlife is represented as a location, the relational and transformational thinking of many African peoples makes it possible for that place to be, simultaneously, underground, in the forest, at night in the houses of the living, reincarnation in the bodies of descendants, and in another country. Each of these descriptions is a term of one of the dimensions which define life “on earth”: the village as opposed to the forest, the lineage as opposed to other lineages, the morally approved versus the disapproved, things seen and their occult causes. Experience, rather than reflection, conveys the truth of these constitutive oppositions. The afterlife is never a matter of undergoing divine judgment or of dwelling immortally in the presence of God.

See Also ▶ Beliefs, Economic and Religious ▶ Eternity ▶ Immortality ▶ Kongo ▶ Mourning ▶ Reincarnation ▶ Religion, Anthropology of ▶ Soul

Bibliography Holas, Bogumil. 1968. L’Image du monde Bete. Paris: Presses Universitaires. Okot p’Bitek. 1971. Religion of the Central Luo. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Uchendu, Victor. 1976. Ancestorcide! Are ancestors dead? In Ancestors, ed. W.H. Newll, 253–296. The Hague: Mouton.

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Bibliography

Agent (Ethical) Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

The belief in fate and predestination is basic to the metaphysics of many African peoples though, if p’Bitek (1971) is right, the Central Luo are somewhat of a counter example. Besides, causal determinism is not at all uncommon among African societies. The question is: are free choice and moral responsibility, as presuppositions of the notion of an ethical agent, compatible with these conceptions? At least in the Akan framework of categories, the problem is apparent but other African comparisons are welcome. An individual of ethical standing is a person of free will who possesses reasonable motivation and industry and whose actions evince a sense of obligation to self, family, and community, as well as being amenable to moral persuasion or to social sanctions. The point is that all these types of individual effort and communal interactions are possible because of the causal order that is believed to be preordained by the divine architect. Within this outlook, not all adult individuals are assumed to be moral agents, for all kinds of conditions such as neuroses and obsessions, which derogate from free will, are recognized and dealt with therapeutically rather than moralistically.

See Also ▶ Act (Mental) ▶ Conduct ▶ Free Will ▶ Individual as Community Member ▶ Morality ▶ Morality and Religion ▶ Morals ▶ Obligation ▶ P’Bitek, Okot ▶ Subject ▶ Wiredu, Kwasi

Gbadegesin, Segun. 1991. African philosophy. New York: Peter Lang. Oruka, H. Odera. 1990. Ethics. Nairobi: University of Nairobi Press. p’Bitek, Okot. 1971. Religion of the Central Luo. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1992–1993. African philosophical tradition: A case study of the Akan. The Philosophical Forum 14: 1–3, 52–55: “Free Will as Responsibility.”

Aggrey, James Emman Kwegyir Kofi Agawu Department of Music, Lincoln Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Born in Anomabo, Gold Coast, James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey was a Ghanaian educator, orator, and self-appointed ambassador for Africa. The seventeenth child of a royal spokesman (known in Twi or Fanti as Okyeame), Kodwo Kwegyir, he received his early education at Cape Coast, a thriving industrial and administrative city of the Gold Coast. Aggrey was strongly influenced by Wesleyan missionaries and retained a core of Christian values throughout his life. As teacher, organizer, community leader, and secretary of the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, Aggrey was well established in and around Cape Coast until 1898, when he left for the United States of America. Thanks to contacts made earlier with the Methodist Zion Church, Aggrey entered Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, a small college sponsored by the Negro branch of the church. He took the B. A. degree in 1902, following a predominantly classical curriculum. He remained at Livingstone as an administrator and teacher, where he was active, from 1914, as pastor of two

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churches, Miller’s Chapel and Sandy Ridge. He married an African-American, Rosebud Rudolf Douglass, with whom he had four children. He received two honorary degrees, an A.M. from Livingstone and the D.D. from Hood Theological Seminary. In 1920, he was appointed member of the Phelps-Stokes Commission on education in Africa. This enabled him to travel extensively throughout west, central, and southern Africa, speaking to church, community, and political groups on the importance of formal education, the need for inter-racial cooperation, and the value of Christian teaching. During a second trip to east and southern Africa in 1924, Aggrey accepted the post of Assistant Vice-Principal of Achimota School and returned to the Gold Coast that year. In 1927, the year in which Achimota was formally opened, Aggrey took a leave to visit the United States of America, partly to see his family and partly to write the thesis for a Ph. D. degree at Columbia University, where he had worked intermittently since 1904, passing the requisite examinations by 1923. He took ill suddenly in New York and was rushed to a Harlem Hospital where he died of pneumococcus meningitis. He was 52. Aggrey is part myth and part reality. An orator rather than a writer, an improviser rather than a logical thinker, Aggrey’s thoughts have circulated mainly through oral accounts. He has been portrayed as an outstanding example of an African, who not only benefitted enormously from a European education but remained an advocate of it. His extensive international experience (especially his work in the American South) and pan-Africanist impulses have remained an inspiration to many. On the other hand, his reasoned views on race pales beside the more strident tone of Marcus Garvey, and he has been criticized for “sleeping with the enemy.” He is memorialized by a chapel and a student dormitory in Achimota School, by numerous aphorisms that circulate by word of mouth among school children throughout English-speaking West Africa and by the famous story of the eagle, of which his own performances were legendary.

Akan Philosophy

Bibliography Aggrey, James Emman Kwegir. 1992. Ebobo bra den. bureau of Ghana Languages. Howard, Thomas C. 1975–1976. West Africa and the American South: Notes on James E.K. Aggrey and The Idea of a University for West Africa. Journal of African Studies 2: 445–465. Macartney, William M. 1949. Dr. Aggrey: Ambassador for Africa. London: SCM Press. Ofosu-Appiah, L.H. 1975. The life of Dr J.E.K. Aggrey. Accra: Waterville Pub.House. Roome, William John Waterman. (1930). Aggrey, the African teacher. London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott. Smith, Edwin W. 1930. Aggrey of Africa: A Study in Black and White. New York: Richard R. Smith.

Akan Philosophy V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Akan philosophy has been expounded by research of the Akan cultures of Ghana and Ivory Coast whose language, Twi, includes a number of regional varieties (Akyem, Akwapem, Asante, Fante, and Kwahu). In 1995, Safro Kwame, originally from the Akwapem region and educated in philosophy at the University of Ghana et Legon, published an Akan collection in which one finds English language texts by Akan philosophers, informed by Western practices of philosophy, dealing explicitly or implicitly with issues related to philosophies of cultures in conjunction or disjunction with Akan experiences. Kwame divides the collection into four parts, each one being introduced by a thematic entry: (a) philosophy and traditional Africa societies; (b) metaphysics; (c) logic and epistemology; and (d) moral and political philosophy. This thematic organization leads to a distinction of three types of philosophical questions. The first is about necessary questions and African philosophy. As such, it reformulates the debate on the practice of philosophy according to the norms of its Western

Aladura Churches: Women’s Role

tradition and the search for African regional paradigms. It thus constructs a silent dialogue between generations of Akan philosophers, from the seventeenth century’s Amo to the Twentieth Century. This simple schema raises a question of method, of how to express validly a regional experience of philosophy. The second type of question raised by Kwame’s organizational scheme concerns the objective and meaning of philosophy, and it enables a pedagogical distribution of Akan philosophers, an ensemble of didactic intersecting classes demanded by the content of anthologized texts: on ethnophilosophy, epistemological weaknesses of K. Anthony Appiah, Kobina Oguah, Kwasi Wiredu; on metaphysics, logic and epistemology, Anthonius-Guilielmus Amo, Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu and, finally, on moral and political philosophy, two completely different types of discourses, the political one by Kofi Abrefo Busia and Kwame Nkrumah, and a very modern interrogation of feminism and the condition of women by Kwame, the editor of the collection and Florence Abena Dolphyne. The third type of question addresses the very project of the collection and specifically concerns three main issues: the collection as a faithful translation of collective experience; its authenticity; and the singularity of the Akan voices represented, as premised by the work of W. Emmanuel Abraham and Kwasi Wiredu. The arrangement as a totality transcends the divide between folk and formal philosophy, posits itself as a second order discourse, as made explicit by Appiah’s excerpts, legitimates itself as a critique of a traditional (unwritten) philosophy and a nontraditional (written) philosophy, and from this, witness a rewriting and interpretation of a singular culture, the Akan, in its socio-historical dimensions as well as contemporary disseminations.

See Also ▶ Act (mental) ▶ African Philosophy, Search for Identity of ▶ Agent (ethical) ▶ Appiah, Anthony Kwame

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▶ Dialectic ▶ Essence ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Wiredu, Kwasi

Bibliography Hallen, Barry. 2002. A short history of African philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Masolo, D.A. 1994. African philosophy in search of identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Safro, K. 1995. Readings in African philosophy. An Akan collection. New York: University Press of America. Wiredu, K. 1980. Philosophy and African Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aladura Churches: Women’s Role Elizabeth A. Eames Department of Anthropology, Bates College, Lewiston, ME, USA

Nigeria is the current locus for many of the most exciting religious changes occurring on the African continent. Rosalind Hackett estimated 1500 distinct new religious movements at work in that one country in the mid-1980s (Hackett 1987). Furthermore, she cautions that these “aladura” churches (also known as prayer, or prophethealing, or spiritual churches) should not be seen as merely defensive responses to the impact of Western religion and culture, but as creative indigenous developments with their own spiritual dynamic. The term “aláàdúrà” is a Yoruba word meaning, literally, “owners of prayers” or “owners of blessings,” but it is now used by people from all parts of Nigeria to designate more or less organized groups practicing a form of African Christianity, whose important characteristics include: close attention to prophetic visions; reliance on faith healing; expressive and exciting ceremonies; recognition of polygynous marriages; regular

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ablutions; routine lighting of candles; wearing of special white cassock-like uniforms; and the use of a blended Christian and indigenous cosmological symbolism. The earliest wave of such spiritual independence occurred between the two world wars and was located in the Yoruba-speaking areas of southwestern Nigeria. In fact, three of the largest and most important aladura churches at work today derive from that place and period: Cherubim and Seraphim (1925), Christ Apostolic Church (1930), and The Church of the Lord [Aladura] (1930). Yet, two of the fastest growing movements on the scene today are of more recent vintage and were imported into Yorubaland: The Celestial Church of Christ (from Porto Novo in 1952) and The Brotherhood of the Cross and Star (from Calabar in 1956). It must be remembered that each of these major organizations has spawned splinter groups, and new prophets arise continually. Within one generation of Christianity’s arrival, churches with an African flavor had begun to spring up throughout Yorubaland. The earliest movements (1880 to 1917), known as the “African Churches,” maintained the liturgy of their parent churches while advocating African leadership. The more radical stand against Missionary Christianity with which we are concerned began when, just after the trials of WWI and during a terrible influenza epidemic in coastal Yorubaland, a variety of indigenous prayer groups (called the “praying band” or “egbe aladura”) was organized. The members of these groups had been as shocked by the hypocrisy and racism of the missionaries as had the previous generation. They were, furthermore, dissatisfied with the missionaries’ intolerant views on divination, leadership roles for women, polygyny, drumming, dancing, and the use of herbal medicines. Whereas it was customary to ascertain a person’s destiny or probe the cause of disorder in a person’s life by consulting the Ifá oracle (see Ifá Divination), the missionaries insisted that there were no malevolent spiritual forces seeking to undermine God’s plan for individual believers; hence, they disallowed divination. Mission

Aladura Churches: Women’s Role

Christianity could offer no solution to such spiritual afflictions as bewitchment, insanity, possession, or barrenness; nor could it offer assistance for such problems as marital disharmony or economic insecurity. A vacuum was created in social and religious life. Aladuras strive to create an environment where evil forces may be interdicted and where divine blessings may be received, so their place of gathering is maintained as sacred and pure. To this end, members of the group wear special gowns, and special ablutions are required before entering. Women are prohibited from church premises during their menstrual periods, and for 40 days after childbirth because, according to the Book of Leviticus, blood is dangerous and polluting. (Note also that it coincides with indigenous cosmological symbolism). Within this sacred space, then, special exorcism, prayer, and healing sessions may be executed. While aladura religious practice is markedly Christian, one central element of orthodox Christian practice appears to be wholly absent – the sacrament of the eucharist. Nevertheless, the notion that water, when sanctified, becomes infused with the blood of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit leads us to conclude that the act of ablution has been transformed into a divine sacrament. Aladura practice is emphatically Pentecostal. Virtually any member of any social status may become a “visioner,” a receiver of revelations. During worship services such prophecies, usually accompanied by shaking and spoken “in tongue,” are taken down in notes by appointed “interpreters” who pass them on to the church elders to execute. Prophets and charismatic leaders are expected to deliver divine messages about impending dangers. Members of the society consult the prophets and the prophetesses for guidance during all life crises, much as they would have customarily consulted an Ifá practitioner. The prophetic vocation is open to exceptionally gifted members, especially older women. Despite the restrictive effects of the taboos already mentioned, women enjoy greater responsibility in this type of church than in the mainline churches or in Islam. In fact, it has been argued

Aladura Churches: Women’s Role

quite frequently that the success of these new movements rests precisely on the important role given to women members, in opposition to the absence of such roles in the mainline churches. This question of women’s role is a complicated one. The crux of the matter is the indigenous belief that due to their powers over life and death, women (especially older women) have more direct spiritual access than men. An accompanying expectation is that men have more interest in worldly affairs. These tenets result in the notuncommon irony of spiritual movements founded by women on the strength of their convictions and revelations, yet whose bureaucratic institutional structure subsequently becomes dominated by men. Whether founded by male or female, in all aladura churches, women prophesize, sing, and dance. It seems that the Christ Apostolic Church places no official restrictions on its female members. In contrast, the Celestial Church of Christ, for example, disallows women from performing any significant ritual role and even bars them from the area surrounding the altar. One might add that attendance at CCC meetings is much less heavily female-dominated than other aladura groups. Within the framework of the aladura belief in the supremacy of the Holy Spirit, and in the context of the indigenous Yoruba philosophical connection between supernatural power and menstrual blood, the taboos surrounding women’s reproductive functions seem inextricably linked to male fear of women’s greater spiritual power. Men and women generally sit on opposite sides of the center aisle. Two-thirds of those in attendance are women, although the number of men who seek divine intervention in more private sessions should not be underestimated. It will be interesting to see how several internal tensions play themselves out in the coming years: (1) the tendency towards democratization of spiritual power and the contrary tendency towards spiritual elitism, with close attention paid to matters of rank, insignia, and privilege; (2) Max Weber’s question concerning the routinization of charismatic authority into bureaucratic authority; and (3) the relationship between pentecostal

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practice and the more formally structured liturgical model of worship. Unlike many other “religious” movements on the African continent with their inextricably political content, the aladura movement is generally apolitical. Aladura aims for “revolution” at the level of individual behavior, albeit in the context of a caring community. The spiritual leaders of the aladura movement provide an explanation for and a means of controlling disorder and suffering in times of rapid social change and dislocation.

See Also ▶ Church, Women Founders of ▶ Churches, Indigenous ▶ Ifa, Divination System of ▶ Movements, African Religious ▶ Movements, Pentecostal and Charismatic ▶ Yoruba, Concept of Human Personality ▶ Yoruba, Conception of Wealth ▶ Yorubaland, Female Deities

Bibliography Crumbley, Deirdre Helen. 1989. Indigenous institution building in an Afro-Christian movement: The Aladura case. Ph.D, Northwestern University, Ann Harbor MI, University Microfilms International ———. 1992. Impurity and power: Women in Aladura churches. Africa International African Institute 62 (4): 505–522. Hackett, Rosalind I.J., ed. 1987. New religious movements in Nigeria. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Manus, Ukachukwu Chris. 1991. King-Christology: The example of some Aladura Churches in Nigeria. Africana Marburgensia 24 (1): 28–46. Mitchell, Robert Cameron. 1967. The place of African independent churches in the analysis of religious change, the case of the Aladura Churches in Western Nigeria. Congrès international des Africanistes, deuxième session, Dakar, 11–20 septembre . Ogungbile, David Olu. 1997. Meeting point of culture and health: the case of the Aladura Churches in Nigeria. Nordic Journal of African Studies 6 (1): 98–112. Olayiwola, David O. 1987. The Aladura: Its strategies for mission and conversion in Yorubaland, Nigeria. Orita 19 (1): 40–56. Omoyajowo, J. Akinyele. 1982. Cherubim and Seraphim: The history of an African Independent Church. New York: Nok Publishers.

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Ambiguity and Religion Allen F. Roberts Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

In many African religions, ambiguity is not only tolerated but often sought, in distinct contrast to the manner in which it is eschewed in the Cartesian logic dominating Western philosophies. Indeed, it has been said that some Africans “not only live easily with contradictions, they cannot live without them.” For Fang of Gabon, ambiguity “is central to their aesthetic—their notions, that is, of preferred form in object and action,” and constitutes the society’s very “vitality” (enin, “the capacity to survive”). Gods and spirits personify ambiguity in many African religions. For Yoruba of Nigeria and Bénin, the trickster god Eshu (also called Legba) is messenger to the other Orisha, forever between, never one place or another. Eshu challenges and tricks people by breaking rules, causing quarrels, and doing the opposite of what is expected. The presence of Eshu is felt at “every moment of meeting and commerce,” and “at all the joints and crossings of the social order.” His centrality to life is seen in the placement of his shrines at the entrances to compounds, at crossroads, and in marketplaces – wherever there is change and transition, and choices and decisions must be made. The paradox that Eshu embodies is illustrated in Janus-faced shoulder crooks worn by adepts of the trickster’s cult. Sometimes one face is that of

Ambiguity and Religion

a mischievous boy and the other the wrinkled face of a wise old man. Capriciousness and wisdom are both attributes of Eshu, “Mr. In– Between” himself, who “enjoys the natural license of the innocent and the privileged license of the aged.” Eshu subsumes in his person both uncertainty and certainty but, paradoxically, in so doing, he reaffirms what ordinary behavior ought to be. Furthermore, the crook worn over the shoulder looks forward and back; in wearing such an object, Eshu’s adept places herself in the fretful “present” between the youthful and aged figures – and so between assertions of possibility, however reckless they may be – and the security of what has been. Rituals of different groups dramatize ambiguity. As Victor Turner (1970) described, based upon his fieldwork among Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia, ritual plays a significant role in the social dramas by which people delineate their lives and solve their problems. Following the earlier models of Émile Durkheim and Arnold van Gennep, Turner suggested that ritual allows people to remove themselves from the ordinary preoccupations of everyday life and to frame sacred experience through a three-part structure of separation, liminality (the condition of being between states), and reaggregation. Ritual is transformative and, through its process, people become something they were not, thus obtaining knowledge and abilities that will alter their lives permanently – and, hopefully, make it more fruitful and fulfilling. In separation, those being initiated to the ritual’s secrets and powers are snatched from their everyday lives, often literally by force. They are removed to a sacred space and across boundaries, dividing this from any usual activity or place. Often, they must leave aside all indication of their particular social identities for, during the ritual, the initiates suffer symbolic death, become “structurally invisible,” and are made equal to each other – a reductive device that engenders solidarity among those sharing the experience. Once separated from past lives, the initiates are in a liminal state: neither here nor there, on a threshold betwixt and between who they have

Amo, Antonius Guilielmus

been and who they will become. In the “peculiar unity of the liminal,” “that which is neither this nor that . . . is both.” Such “interstructural” ambiguity “enfranchises speculation,” as Turner wrote (1970), for the liminal period is one of hypothesis during which neophytes are “startled into thinking about objects, persons, relationships, and features of their environment hitherto taken for granted.” One means of achieving this important educative goal is through “exhibitions” of masks, figures, and other sacred objects or performances. These illustrate odd juxtapositions and exaggerations of features and relationships, thus defying ordinary expectations. As with Eshu’s tricks, one must know what is ordinary, however, to recognize its subversion; in this way, the experience is both radically different and conservative. As Turner suggests, “the communication of sacra” during the liminal process “teaches the neophytes how to think with some degree of abstraction about their cultural milieu and gives them ultimate standards of reference.” The ambiguities so encouraged become part of intellectual reasoning, as decisions must be made in the course of later life. Once such critical knowledge and sometimesawesome powers are acquired, the initiates are symbolically reborn into their communities. Babies have been introduced to the community, boys have become men, girls are now ready for courting, the sick are healed and can now help others suffering their same affliction, and the dead have been transported to a next life. Successors have been transformed into kings, intellectually curious individuals have become gifted diviner-healers, and old men have attained the final plateau of esoteric knowledge and power. The transformative ambiguities experienced through ritual have assured the continued vitality of society.

See Also ▶ Dialectic ▶ Divination and Possession

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Bibliography Fernandez, James. 1982. Bwiti. An ethnography of the religious imagination in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Turner, Victor. 1970. The forest of symbols. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wescott, Joan. 1962. The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu– Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster. Africa 32: 336–353.

Amo, Antonius Guilielmus V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Born in Axim, Ghana, Antonius Guilielmus Amo was sold as a slave. It is likely that he was captured by Dutch merchants. By 1707, he was the protege of the Dukes of Brunswick–Wolfenbrittel in Amsterdam. Amo was baptized on July 29, 1708, in Holland. In 1727, he was registered at the University of Halle as a student in Law. Two years later, he presented a dissertation on the rights of Africans in Europe, Dissertatio inauguralis de jure Maurorum in Europa, in which he addressed issues concerning the freedom of Africans in general and slavery in particular. In September 1730, he was at the University of Wittenberg in Pneumatology (psychology) and defended a second dissertation entitled De Humanae mentis apatheia, which focused on the contradictions of the human spirit. In 1738, Amo published a major book on Logic and Psychology, Tractatus de arte sobrie et accurate philosophandi (A Study of the Art of Philosophizing Soundly and Truthfully). From June 27, 1729, he taught philosophy at the University of Iena and participated in the philosophical debates of his time in which he opposed Descartes’ Idealism. For Amo, philosophy was an attitude of intelligence and will, thanks to which one tries to know things in themselves as precisely and clearly as is possible. It is through this method that the human being can progress toward perfection. His main publications are all in

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Latin and his Dissertatio Inauguralis de jure Maurorum in Europa (1729) was republished by Kraus-Thomson in 1971. In 1753, Amo returned to Africa, perhaps to Axim in Ghana, to live among his people, and there he passed away.

See Also ▶ Blyden, Edward ▶ Kaoze, Stephano

Bibliography Abraham, William. 1964. The life and times of Anton– Wilhelm Amo. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 7. Bess, Reginald. 1989. A.W. Amo: First Great Black Man of Letters. Journal of Black Studies 19 (4): 387–393. Hountondji, Paulin J. 1973. Mise au point sur le philosophe “gnanéen” Amo. In Libertés, Contribution à la révolution dahoméenne. Editions Renaissance: Cotonou. ———. 1983. African philosophy: Myth and reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1997. Combats pour le sens. Editions du Flamboyant: Cotonou. Sephocle, Marylin. 1992. Anton Wilhem Amo. Journal of Black Studies 23 (2): 182–187.

Ancestors Igor Kopytoff Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

There are two complementary approaches in the literature to the African complex of beliefs about ancestors. One is sociological and stresses its contribution to the functioning of the kin group (e.g., Fortes 1965). The other is cultural and emphasizes that Africans see ancestors as dead elders and that their relationship with ancestors is a continuation of their relationship with living elders (e.g., Kopytoff 1971). The ancestor complex is remarkably uniform throughout Sub-Saharan Africa: ancestors have

Ancestors

power over their descendants, protect them from calamities, promote their health and fertility, assure their success in economic, social, and political activities, and ward off assaults on them by witches and malevolent spirits. Periodically and especially in times of crisis, the living communicate with their ancestors, keep them informed of important events, propitiate them by ritual “feeding” or sacrifice, fear their anger, and blame them for misfortunes. Generally, there are two kinds of ancestors – those of one’s own kin group and those of the larger “ethnic” group or polity. The latter, “founding ancestors,” are mytho-historical figures whose powers extend to the ethnic group or polity as a whole; in chiefdoms and kingdoms, they are often the ancestors of the ruling kin group, which manages them on behalf of all the people. The other kind of ancestors – of most relevance in everyday life – are those of one’s own kin group; and the relationship with them is mediated by the kin group’s elders acting as ritual intermediaries. From a Western perspective, the ancestors’ influence on the living may be called “mystical” and evokes religion. Yet, viewed in its cultural context, the ancestor complex is governed by a mundane logic rooted in African notions about the nature of the kin group (lineage) and about the relationship between the living and the dead. In most African societies, the fundamental social unit is the exclusive kin group, which consist of specific relatives (paternal, or maternal, or by way of some other variations on descent) who are believed to share a common unifying essence. As a corporation, the kin group persists over the generations; acts as a unit in various social, economic, legal, and ritual natters; and gives its members their principal social identity. The group is administered by its elders, who are responsible for its general success and provide physical and mystical protection to their juniors. The juniors, in turn, give deference and gifts to the elders and can be mystically punished (e.g., cursed) if they fail to do so. The relationship is ambiguous: when misfortune strikes, the blame may lie with the elders’ ill will or neglect, or with the juniors’ disobedience.

Ancestors

In traditional African belief, people continue to exist after death and maintain their social relationship with the living, particularly with kinsmen. Consequently, it is assumed that deceased elders of the kin group – that is, ancestors – retain their interest in their kin group. They are believed to continue to wield their powers over their juniors, to expect reverence and gifts from them, and to protect and punish them, sometimes capriciously. In effect, the operative kin group is seen to include both the living and the dead. The active role of ancestors in the affairs of the kin group reinforces its solidarity, thereby concretely attaching it to active and powerful (even if dead) persons. The unity of living and dead elders is evident in many African languages, in which the term used for ancestors is related to and sometimes identical to the term for elders. What Westerners are likely to call the “ritual” behavior toward ancestors is, in fact, a formalized version of appropriate behavior toward living elders. As with the latter, the relationship is reciprocal and lively, a dialogue rather than the one-way abject submission characteristic of Western prayer and worship. With both living and dead elders, juniors may adamantly demand favors, as well as beseech for them; scold them for permitting misfortunes, as well as praise them for bringing good fortune; remind them of their duties, as well as honor them with gifts; and expostulate to them about their failings, as well as confess to one’s own lapses of respect. Just as the dialogue with living elders is free-flowing yet constrained by etiquette, so is the dialogue with the ancestors. This unity of ancestors and elders accounts for certain variations in the ancestor complex. Thus, in societies where the power of living elders over their junior kinsmen is weak (e.g., Tiv or Nuer), the power of ancestors is similarly weak. The continuity between living and dead elders also results in gradations within the line of ancestors: relations with recently deceased elders retain their personal flavor and are, in a sense, more like relations with living elders than are those with more distant ancestors, who have lost their individuality and with whom relations have become undifferentiatedly formal. Despite all this, Africans do distinguish between ancestors and living elders. The dead

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elders are recognized as existing on another plane, so that the normal powers of eldership are further enhanced. For example, they can know about witches planning to do harm to their relatives, and they can prevent it or, if angry, ignore it. If they are neglected by their juniors, they can, like living elders, visit misfortunes upon them, but the misfortunes at their command are apt to be more powerful. Also, juniors can interact with the living elders face-to-face. By contrast, ancestors (being dead) must be reached in special ways and at special places – at grave sites, or at shrines, or by way of special ritual objects (e.g., stools among the Asante). Since the relationship with the ancestors is less personalized than with the living, the etiquette of dealing with them is more formulaic and appears “ritualistic” in Western eyes. Since Western scholars are generally agnostics on the question of life after death, they tend to regard only the actions of the living as real, while the dead and their actions are seen as “mystical.” But in the traditional African perspective, both parties to the relationship are real. Therefore, where Africans see a continuation of their relationship with elders after they die, Western scholars might discern a “projection” of feelings about living elders onto imagined “supernatural” entities. This poses a problem of terminology. Does one speak of African “respect” for dead elders or of an “ancestor cult” and “ancestor worship”; of a “gift” of food to a dead elder or of “sacrifice”; of a “dialogue” with dead elders or of a “prayer” and an “invocation”? One set of terms endows the African ancestor complex with a religious aura, while the other makes it a mundane and socially rational phenomenon.

See Also ▶ Afterlife ▶ Dreams ▶ Essence ▶ Kikuyu: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals ▶ Kuba ▶ Medicine and Religion ▶ Pende (Religion, Sacrifice, and Rituals)

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▶ Possession Cults ▶ Rainforest, Cultural Ecology of the ▶ Witchcraft/Sorcery

Bibliography Correspondence by James L. Brain, C. J. Calhoun, Susan Drucker–Brown, Meyer Fortes, Igor Kopytoff, and Malcolm Ruel in Man (1981), 135–138, 300–302, 475–476; 17 (1982), 546–548. Fortes, Meyer. 1965. Some reflections on ancestor worship. In African systems of thought, ed. M. Fortes and G. Dieterlen, 122–144. London: Oxford University Press. Kopytoff, Igor. 1971. Ancestors as elders in Africa. Africa 41: 129–141. Parrinder, Geoffrey. 1954. African traditional religion. 3rd ed. London: Hutchinson’s University Library. London: Sheldon Press, 1974.

Androgyny Philip M. Peek Madison, NJ, USA

Androgyny may seem a recent and problematic idea in Western thought and, thus, even more hazardous if applied to other cultures’ systems of thought. Nevertheless, this concept seems exactly what is manifest in many African cultures through cosmologies, expressive behavior, and social customs. Although bisexual, even hermaphroditic representations (depiction of both male and female sex organs on one individual) exist, we focus here on androgyny as the presence of male and female principles and characteristics in one individual – that is, the concern is with gender rather than biological sex, although the distinction is often problematic. These male and female elements may be presented in opposition but, more often, there appears the process Jung identified (in his analysis of anima and animus) as syzygy, a joining together of the two. Dynamic representations of androgynous beings and behavior can be found in myths and cosmologies, with priests in religious worship and

Androgyny

diviners in sacred communication and in initiation and marriage rituals. Myths of creation among numerous West African peoples are replete with androgynous beings (de Heusch 1985). The primordial androgynous Nommo of the Dogon are an obvious example (Griaule and Dieterlen 1986). These twinned ancestor pairs are similar to spiritual beings found among neighboring Mande speakers. Several West African peoples, such as the Ashanti and Fon, have Supreme Beings who share female and male characteristics in their creator and nurturing roles. Such concepts of original and/or sacred states of androgyny need to be better studied, because they appear to underpin many human behaviors. Often priests manifest androgynous behavior from cross-gender dressing to merging, via “marriages,” with the deities they serve. Sango priests among the Yoruba attire themselves as women (Drewal 1992). These actions should not be confused with transvestism or homosexuality in Western tradition. Instead, one might understand them better as seeking the sexual completeness of those other world beings whom the priests serve. A similar process seems present in African divination systems, where virtually every aspect (from the divining apparatus to diviner’s behavior) has male and female dimensions which are emphatically distinguished and then mediated (Peek 1991). Such dialectics of gender serve to enhance communication with the other world in much the same manner as for priests. Artistic representations may also depict a merging of female and male. The Ogboni Society of the Yoruba use male/female janus figures in their services to honor the earth. Masqueraders often appear in contrasting pairs – Wilderness versus Cultured Beings, Beauty and the Beast, as well as Male and Female (Cole 1989). The intended complementarity is best illustrated by such examples as the Goli masquerade of the Baule, where both masks represent the same being. Many critical aspects of social ritual demonstrate similar attention to the wholeness of an androgynous state. Initiation rituals do not simply make women of girls and men of boys, but dramatically move individuals from androgynous,

Animism

bisexual states to sexed adult status. Throughout these ceremonies, there is also dramatic interplay of sexed and androgynous beings and activities. It is possible to understand much social behavior that follows this declaration of single-sexed humanness as attempts to return to an androgynous state. Some have understood marriage in this vein, as the reuniting of male and female (Zahan 1983). The complementarity (if not union) of female and male is demonstrated by the “spirit lovers” established by Baule men and women. Such relationships might also be understood as projected alter egos where one’s “other side” is accepted but not internalized. Further, ritual abstinence from sexual intercourse may be considered a denial of sexed status and, thus, a return to an androgynous state. For too many years, rash stereotypes of African cultural practices have been perpetuated by European and American sexual biases, which focused on the distinction of femaleness and maleness. In actual fact, African peoples are far more concerned with the complementarity of male and female principles and the undeniable wholeness of androgyny, demonstrating once again that the strict dichotomies of Western thought are not universally applicable. “The idea of androgyny, the ideal form of the human being, reflects the concern for perfect equilibrium between male and female and for their total reciprocity in equality” (Zahan 1983).

51 Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1992. Gender play. In Yoruba Ritual: Performers, play, agency. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Griaule, M., and G. Dieterlen. 1986. The Pale Fox. Chino Valley: Continuum Foundation. Peek, Philip M. 1991. African divination systems: Non– normal modes of cognition. In African divination systems, ed. P.M. Peek, 193–212. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Zahan, Dominique. 1983. The religion, spirituality, and thought of traditional Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Animism John Middleton Guilford, CT, USA Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Bibliography

Animism is a term coined by Sir Edward Tylor when referring to his minimal definition of religion as “the belief in spiritual beings.” He considered it to be a universal basis of all religions and, thus, the “original” form of religious belief, a belief in both soul and spirits, notions conceived by archaic cultures as cognitive means to explain the difference between death and life and the appearance of human beings in dreams and visions. Religion was, therefore, due to human cognition and not to supernatural activity. Tylor developed a narrative in which the notion of soul was first extended to nonhuman animate and inanimate things; there then arose the belief in spiritual forces that control natural phenomena and from that arose polytheism and finally monotheism. Tylor insisted that animism formed a rational set of beliefs: “primitives” were rationally thinking people. Although later writers, such as Evans-Pritchard, validly protested that no historical evidence supported Tylor’s view of animism as the basis of human religious thinking, there has been no more demonstrable hypothesis, and Durkheim’s functional explanation has inhibited other thinking about origins.

Cole, Herbet M. 1989. Icons: Ideals and power in the Art of Africa. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. de Heusch, Luc. 1985. Sacrifice in Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

John Middleton: deceased.

See Also ▶ Dualism ▶ Excision ▶ Masquerade ▶ Order ▶ Philosophy and the Arts ▶ Reciprocity ▶ Soul

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Frazer essentially followed Tylor in this matter, and his personal influence has been far greater. Freud took over the concept of animism to refer a neurosis based on the “omnipotence of thought,” in which thought constructs “reality.” As neurosis, it could hardly be a basis for religious belief unless all religion is a neurotic illusion. Animism was long forgotten in anthropology because it was unable to explain the concept of social and cultural phenomena and behavior. However, writers such as Horton and Hallpike have considered animism in their discussions of “modes of thought.” Following Levy-Bruhl, they distinguish concrete, affective, analogical, culture-bound, and “closed” thought from impersonal, objective, “open,” and “scientific” – the first is animism and the second is “science.” Modern anthropology and religious history rarely mention animism: It implies a psychological explanation of social behavior, and its place as the origin of religious thought can be no more than conjecture.

See Also ▶ Being ▶ Essence ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Inculturation and Anthropology ▶ Religion, Anthropology of

Bibliography Dzurgba, Akpenpuun. 1995. Religion and anthropological studies in Africa: The scope of social anthropology of religion. Journal of Asian and African Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 50: 111–122. Kamalu, Chukwunyere. 1998. Person, divinity and nature: A modern view of the person and the cosmos in African thought. London: Karnak House. p’Bitek, Okot. 1970. African religions in Western scholarship. Kampala: East African Literature Bureau. Renouf-Stefanik, Suzanne. 1978. Animisme et Islam chez les Manza (Centrafrique): influence de la religion musulmane sur les coutumes traditionelles manza. Paris: Societe d’Etudes Linguistiques et Anthropologiques de France.

Anthropocentrism Van Niekerk, Marlene. 1998. Understanding trends in ‘African thinking’: A critical discussion. In Philosophy from Africa: A text with readings, ed. by P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux. Johannesburg: International Thomson Publishing.

Anthropocentrism Wyatt MacGaffey Department of Anthropology, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA

Anthropocentrism in African religions seems to reduce the supreme being to a deus otiosus or absconditus (an irresponsible or absent god), to use terms once favored by European inquirers. Putting it more positively, we may say that African thought represents both time and space primarily as they are organized by the human life cycle and the succession of generations and by the disposition of the community on the surface of the earth. At least two models result. In the first model, found generally among speakers of the NigerCongo languages, the contrast between human and spiritual beings is understood as one of separation in space and time; the spiritual beings (ancestors, founding heroes) resemble the living because they have characters and biographies. Descent groups are often said to include both living and dead members, with the latter having merely moved elsewhere. In the second, which occurs among speakers of Eastern Sudanic languages, there is no other world than that of the living; spiritual forces differ from human beings in their essential nature. In both models, God is vaguely defined by comparison with intermediate spirits who correspond to units of social and local organization or to experiences regarded as abnormal and calling for explanation, such as diseases. There is no unified representation of evil, and the criteria of morality are derived from civil duties and the protocols of rank.

Antony of the Desert

See Also ▶ Anthropomorphism ▶ Ethiopia, Christianity and Philosophy in ▶ Religion, Anthropology of

Bibliography Lienhardt, Godfrey. 1961. Divinity and experience. Oxford: Clarendon. Mendonsa, Eugene L. 1982. The politics of divination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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color, an animal, or vegetable species symbolize the vodu better than a statue.

A See Also ▶ Anthropocentrism ▶ Metaphors, Religious ▶ Religion, Anthropology of

Bibliography Augé, Marc. 1988. Le Dieu-objet. Flammarion: Paris.

Anthropomorphism Antony of the Desert Wyatt MacGaffey Department of Anthropology, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA

Africans vary considerably in the degree of anthropomorphism that they attribute to spiritual beings. The Nuer and Dinka of Sudan speak of forces so highly abstract that ethnographers have preferred to call them “powers” rather than “divinities.” Refractions of such powers may become relatively anthropomorphic in the context of their direct involvement in human concerns. Generally, the principle holds that the closer the spirit is to human beings, in time and in specificity of relationship, the more detailed its human characteristics (appearance, biography, and mode of existence) are likely to be. Many works of art represent spiritual beings anthropomorphically, but only in an ambiguous fashion. The portrait realism that Europeans classically admired in art is rare because sculptors use the features of the human body (particularly the head) as sources of metaphorical material to express abstract qualities and ritual values, rather than as objects of interest in their own right. The canon of “art” is itself created partly in response to the European preoccupation, which caused many other representations to be overlooked. In Dahomey (Benin), a lump of earth, a special pot, a

Norbert Brockman International Relations, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, USA

Antony of the Desert, the prototype and model of Christian monasticism, was a hermit in the Egyptian desert. The son of prosperous Coptic merchants, he was converted upon hearing the text of Mark 10:21: “Go, sell what you have, give to the poor, and come follow me.” Antony followed this literally, living in a desert tomb and acquiring a wide reputation for holiness and austerity. He attracted many imitators even though he accepted few disciples and lived in solitary. His teachings are found only in his example and in the oral tradition of his rare sermons, which center on the primacy of purity of heart and self-discipline in the spiritual quest, and the ability to discern the seduction of evil. At some point, he befriended Athanasius of Alexandria and, during the Arian controversy, Antony left his hermitage and journeyed to Alexandria to lend his immense prestige to the Orthodox party. The monks became the main support of Orthodoxy, and Antony’s position cemented unity between Greek and Coptic Christianity, ending decades of animosity. Athanasius was an unabashed admirer, who wrote Antony’s

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biography with a western audience in mind and whose legends swept Christianity. Egyptian monasticism was carried everywhere, going into Ethiopia during Antony’s time and, shortly after, to Jerusalem and France. Evidence indicates that it is the basis of Celtic Christianity in Ireland. Egyptian forms of monasticism were normative in Europe until the Benedictine renewal in the sixth century.

See Also ▶ Athanasius ▶ Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic ▶ Nubia, Christianity in ▶ Pachomius

Bibliography Athanasius. 1950. Life of Anthony [sic]. Westminster: Newman Press.

Apartheid and Religion Edward P. Antonio Iliff School of Theology, 2201 S. University Boulevard, Denver, CO, USA

The word “apartheid” literally means “separateness,” which denotes the condition of being apart. It is the political doctrine formulated by Afrikaner nationalists in South Africa to express the idea that whites and nonwhites should develop separately. Apartheid was a legally enshrined racist “ideology,” which classified people according to the combined criteria of color of skin and ethnic affiliation and allocated economic and political resources on the basis of those criteria. Under apartheid, blacks (who constituted the majority of the population) were systematically segregated and denied formal political representation in parliament and other political structures.

Apartheid and Religion

Apartheid presupposed that each racial or ethnic group has a distinct biological essence, which constitutes the basis for its unique social and cultural institutions. The latter are corrupted by ethnic and racial mixing. Afrikaner nationalists invented apartheid in order to preserve the racial identity of their ethnic group by emphasizing the supposed purity of its blood. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and the Immorality Act (1950), which outlawed sexual intercourse between whites and nonwhites, was clearly intended to serve that end. Of course, officially, an elaborate edifice of many other laws that sought to control, restrict, and confine the movements of blacks, colored people, and Indians buttressed apartheid. A few examples will illustrate: the Group Areas Act (1950) defined residential areas in terms of race; and this Act was backed by another, the Resettlement of Natives Act (1954), which gave the government the legal instrument for mass removal of blacks to designated zones. Movement in and out of areas defined as white was tightly monitored through the pass laws requiring blacks to carry and produce pass books on demand. Apart from the legal and political structures that sustained the policy of separate development, there was also the religious and theological rationalization produced by leading Afrikaner intellectuals. A certain interpretation of Calvinism was developed, so that John Calvin’s division between the elect of God and the rest of humankind was assimilated to groups and nations. The Afrikaners thought of themselves as God’s people, who had been given the special mission of being guardians of the nonwhite. In fact, from its inception, apartheid was ideologically dependent on the support of religion and reflected the thinking of the Dutch Reformed Church. For example, in 1944 the Nederduitse Gereformeerede Kerk (NGK) or Dutch Reformed Church Synod stated that the church supported racial separation, and that this was consistent with scripture. Three years later, the same church held a national Congress on the theme of “Our Church and the Color Question,” at which it called for more land to be allocated to Africans (blacks) in order to facilitate black “selfdetermination.” Behind that call was the ideology

Apparition

of balkanization, which involved partitioning the country into Bantustans – that is, nominally independent African States made up of some of the poorest land reserved for blacks. The Policy was, again, confirmed in 1950 by the three sister churches of the NGK Congress, which declared territorial apartheid as the best means to preserve “Christian civilization” in South Africa. Blacks were, of course, not blind to the fact that although religion was being culturally and politically domesticated, it could be made to serve radically different ends. The emergence of Black Theology in the 1970s is a good example. Black Theology stressed the psychological liberation of blacks and drew upon the insights of the Black Consciousness Movement to create symbols and images, which gave blackness a positive religious value. Thus, it became one of the most critical voices against apartheid and subsequently contributed to the theology of the Kairos Document: Challenge to the Church. The document is a trenchant critique of the use of religion by the NGK and the State to sanction apartheid. First published in 1986, it critiqued and rejected what it called “State Theology” and “Church Theology.” The first is described as “theological justification of the status quo”; the second consists of the liberal statements of English- speaking churches on apartheid. These statements tended to be about justice, reconciliation, and peace. The document argued that these statements did not go far enough in challenging apartheid. Their call for justice and reconciliation left the structures of that institution intact. In South Africa, then, religion has been used in two ways: to maintain apartheid and to challenge it.

See Also ▶ Christianity, Historiography in Africa ▶ Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic ▶ Essentialism ▶ Movements, African Religious ▶ Religion, Civil ▶ Theology, Black ▶ Tutu, Desmond

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Bibliography Buis, Robert. 1975. Religious beliefs and white prejudice. Braamfontein: Ravan Press. Graybill, Lyn Shelton. 1995. Religion and resistance politics in South Africa. Westport: Praeger. Hope, Marjorie, and James Young. 1981. The South African churches in a revolutionary situation. New York: Orbis Books. Kinghorn, Johann. 1994. The churches against apartheid. In The long march: the story of the struggle for liberation in South Africa, ed. Ian Liebenberg et al. Pretoria: Haum. ———. 1997. Modernization and apartheid: The Afrikaner churches. In: Christianity in South Africa: A political, social and cultural history, ed. and comp. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport. Oxford: James Currey. Lambley, Peter. 1980. The psychology of apartheid. London: Secker and Warburg. Moore, Basil. 1973. Black theology: The South African voice. London: Hurst. The Kairos Document: Challenge to the Church, 1st ed. Braamfontein: Skotaville Press, 1986. Thomas, Linda Eugene. 1994. African indigenous churches as a source of socio-political transformation in South Africa. Africa Today 41 (1): 39–56.

Apparition T. K. Biaya Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Verdun, QC, Canada

Apparitions are religious phenomena that are solidly anchored in the African universe, wherein diverse spiritual entities, conceived of as living beings, manifest themselves in distinct ways and take different visible forms. Supernatural apparitions, or the vision of spirits, are often found at the edge of social and religious practices and their transformations. Nsembe, the serpent mamelu spirit of the Zaire river, who would be identified later with the siren Mami wata by the river people of middle Zaire, will bring brass bracelets and establish a dowry by asking for the hand of the daughter of chief Lokele. On the Oguta river,

T. K. Biaya: deceased.

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Ogbwide, the god Urash’s wife, is the divinity of free trade for the Igbo women, before whom she appeared and established her own cult of feminine dominance, also associated with the divining and healing arts. While dreams remain in the realm of slumber, apparitions belong to the state of waking and are often found in nature – the domain of spirits. Although variations differ, apparitions always have the same significance: They all represent the need of beings from the other world to transmit messages to humans. In opposition to dreams in which the subject participates in the oneiric scene, apparitions do not engage in dialogue with the subject. Instead, they provoke a strong emotion and a confused response in the person who is visited (fear, fainting, possession, etc.), because they constitute the manifestation of the sacred. In traditional religions, apparitions take diverse forms, modalities, and meanings ranging from phantom visions of the deceased to genies and spirits whose representations are multiple and varied. Wanaisa, Mahorais dwarf spirits (50 cm) live near river rocks or lagoon beaches and are covered from head to foot with hair; they come only at night to heal bone fractures or to transmit therapeutic knowledge to small children. Luba spirits and genies, the mvidye, appear in the form of a sea of blood or an anthill crossing the path of a hunter; this signifies that the hunter is invited to join the professional organization Buyanga. Certain floral essences found in the forest, such as the fig tree, signal the dwelling place of ancestral or natural spirits, like Cinkunku Nsanga bilembi of the Luba-Luluwa. Others become spirits only when they are brought to the village; these are, thus, the objects of a particular cult, because they metonymically symbolize the presence of the spirit who has come to live, henceforth, in the village. The ancestor of the Bwa in Burkino Faso appeared to his descendant in the form of mask-wood (bayiri). After returning to the village, the young man became ill and prophesy revealed the desire of the ancestor: he wanted a mask fabricated in his form. As soon as his wish was granted, the victim was cured (C. Roy). The relationship between the floral essence and the spirit who takes refuge there also suggests life and a therapeutic component (Turner 1968). In certain

Apparition

areas, the odor released by some plants is used to invoke the spirits or can signal their presence at the location in question. Apparitions can also represent a punishment when they follow the breach of an interdiction related to economic activities. A hunter who poaches or a careless housewife who draws water from the spring on the day of rest will “meet a monkey weaving cloth just like a human being.” This strange apparition is the incarnation of the immanent sacred and it precipitates the insanity or death of the transgressor. Conversely, apparitions also contribute to artistic genius and initiatory knowledge since spiritual beings unveiling themselves are represented in art; these recreate figuratively the important symbols, the history, and the related knowledge of the ethnic group in question (Nooter 1993). The dancing mask constitutes a collective vision of witnessing the genie or ancestral spirit entering the public square. Its form and characteristics often illustrate this psycho-religious portrait. In order to make itself quite visible, the spirit penetrates the “holder of the mask” by substituting his personality for that of the dancer. According to the literature, during the performance, a masked dancer, who has been identified and named by his own son, will have killed him. Beyond its factual and moral aspects, this anecdote attests to the violence which accompanies the apparition of spirits and the erasure of the psychic duality between the dancing spirit and the holder of the mask. The performance of the masks is, thus, in itself an apparition. Following the encounter of traditional African religions with Islam and Christianity, new apparitional forms appeared attesting to the changes taking place at the core of the universe of African spirits. Regions with double religious acculturation saw the arrival of jinns, chetaynes, malaikas, and demons along-side the traditional bad spirits which provoke negative possession (J. Mbiti), while Christian divinities and spirits such as Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the virgin Mary, the Saints, etc., extend the line of traditional positive spirits. During the sixteenth century, the founders and prophets of the independent churches evoked Christianized visions, either in order to justify their political triumph and their

Appiah, Anthony Kwame

national conversion (such was the case with Afonso Ier of Kongo – known as the Black Constantine, who conquered his rival Mpanzu, thanks to the apparition of Saint Jacques of Compostelle in 1509), or in order to work miracles or cures and impose a new ethical code on the faithful, like Dona Beatrice Kimpa Vita and the Antonians (1703–1707), John Marank (1917), Simon Kimbangu (1921), Domitila Nabibone, and Esther Kaseka (1990). (Translated by Gayle Levy)

See Also ▶ Ancestors ▶ Dreams ▶ Mysticism ▶ Time

Bibliography Jadin, L., and M. Dicorato. 1974. Correspondance de Dom Afonso, roi du Congo, 1506–1543. Bruxelles: ARSMP. Nooter, P.N., ed. 1993. Secrecy: African art that conceals and reveals. New York/Munich: The Museum for African Art-Prestel. Parkin, D. 1991. The sacred void: Spatial images of work and rituals among the Giriama of Kenya. New York: Cambridge University Press. Roy, C. 1987. Art in the upper Volta Rivers. Paris: Alain et Françoise Chafin. Turner, V.W. 1968. Drums of affliction: A study of religious process among the Ndembu of Zambia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Kant’s thought. In this sense, it is indicative of an attack on the idea of objective knowledge. In religion, appearance is used in the context of unnatural experience, such as divine presence to human experience. In a system which is richly constituted of several divinities and spirits with immanent powers, appearance plays a central role in African religions and is often an important source of divinatory and priestly beliefs and practices. The interdependency between the human and the spiritual worlds is strongly dependent upon the ability of seers, healers, prophets, diviners, or mediums to communicate with divinities and spirits of various categories. The form of divine appearance may also vary from case to case, or from one form of practice to another. It may be only visual or only auditive, such as is the case in spirit possession and mediumship; but the idea of appearance may also include the perception of transmuted bodies, such as of shapeshifters who are believed to transform themselves to conceal their true identities. In the latter cases, however, there seems to be separation between true perception and illusion and reality and trickery.

See Also ▶ Convention ▶ Essence ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Existence ▶ Knowledge and Secrecy ▶ Spirits

Appearance Appiah, Anthony Kwame Dismas Masolo Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

In epistemology, appearance is a sensuous presentation of an object as opposed to how it is in itself. It refers to phenomenon in contradistinction to essence in Greek thought or to noumenon (object as it is) in modern times, particularly in

V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah was born on May 8, 1954, the child of a British mother and a Ghanaian father. He is best known for his representational ethics and his contribution to a

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definition of African philosophy as an intellectual operation dwelling on itself as a critical examination of a concept as well as the relation of such an exercise to the politics of identity. Educated at the University of Ghana and at Cambridge, England, where he obtained a Ph.D. in 1982, Appiah has served in departments of philosophy and AfricanAmerican Studies at Yale (1981–1983), Cornell (1986–1989), Duke (1990–1991), Harvard (1991–2001). Since 2002, he has been the Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. A recipient of many prestigious awards and a fertile theorist in the field of philosophy of culture, he is a prolific thinker who has published scores of articles and books and has written extensively on African and African-American studies. An argument with himself, Appiah has confessed in different ways to being a metafiction of his own: “most of my publications have grown out of my philosophical training, my upbringing in Europe and in Africa.” In his acclaimed, In My Father’s House (1992), he has metaphorized his own existence as a sign of cohesion in sociocultural challenges, and more importantly as a point of both a transcendence and a cosmopolitan testimony: “My first memories are of a place called Mbrom, a small neighborhood in Kumasi,. . . a region of the Republic of Ghana. . . We went from time to time to my mother’s native country, to England, to stay with my grandmother in the rural West Country; and the life there. . .seems. . .to have been mostly not too different.” A key to Appiah’s positions, especially to his ethics as theorized in Ethics of Identity (2005a), is in his antiessentialist a priori, more specifically the Humean view that necessity is basically a linguistic sign. Thus, he expects an argument on any identity to be a process in soul-making submitted to the requirements supplied by the Kantian distinction between imperfect and perfect duties, those which allow latitude in following one’s particular inclinations and those imperatives which do not permit such a possibility. Appiah’s reflection situates itself at the intersection of universalists and relativists. Its aims formulate a double duty: to address the foundation

Appiah, Anthony Kwame

of how folk wisdom provides answers to problems of ordinary life and to address the justification that an intellectual quest might prepare the ground for a systematic analysis and understanding of major issues in human existence. There are, Appiah says, many continuities between conversations of folk-philosophy and formal philosophy. Thus, he affirms: “then philosophy is likely to be found in every human society, past and present – wherever there are people struggling to live and make sense of their lives.” But a difference should be noted, literacy is not a sufficient condition but certainly a necessary one. This follows a distinction between two types of expressions, one reflecting the intellectual modals of a preliteracy context or tradition which would tend to privilege the symbolic and religious while underestimating the role of reason; and a second signifying a scientifically oriented model which overestimates the role of reason. The difference, insists Appiah, is one of emphasis. As such, it does not warrant the classical binary tension of the grand dichotomy between reason and its negation. On a moral basis, he insists that both the model stressing a symbolic rationality and the one stressing a scientific rationality are sound and logical in their own right. Appiah’s theory of culture seems to be a commentary on dialogical intersections of individual and collective identities, of the culturally contingent and the universally human. His contribution to African-American studies, mainly exegetical and made in collaboration with American scholars, demonstrates this. On the whole, Appiah’s originality resides in his faithfully contextual relation with the classics of philosophy. It assumes apropos the concrete experience of existing as a cosmopolitan subject, a sophisticated intercultural conversation along a number of standard theoretical axes. For example, they include a theory of an Akan idem and its uniqueness, which can be qualified diversively in time and space vis-à-vis the principle of the Cartesian apprehension of the Ego or the Hegelian self-definition of the self within a historical structure; and thus, in the name of a pluralistic interpretation, Appiah forwards a theory of difference promoting as a generality the idea of partial identities and, at the

Appiah, Anthony Kwame

same time, stimulating an extremely attentive promise to both the truth of the indiscernibility of identicals and to the controversial cultural implications of the identity of indiscernibles principle. Alert to discrepancies between appearances, meanings, and reality, in ethics as well as in politics, a postmodern student of the diversity of human cultures in the contemporary cosmopolis affirms the complementarity of two tasks for any minority subject to constitute one’s identity from the distinctness and virtues of a regional selfreflexive system and its history and, simultaneously, to project in the sphere of one’s freedom the concreteness of the already existing global village and its demands.

See Also ▶ Act (mental) ▶ African-American Philosophy (1) ▶ Essentialism ▶ Ethnophilosophy

Works Author Appiah, A.K. 1985. Assertion and conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1986a. Deconstruction and the philosophy of language. Diacritics 16 (1): 49–64. ———. 1986b. For truth in semantics. New York: Basil Blackwell. ———. 1989a. The conservation of “race.”. Black American Literature Forum 23 (1): 37–60. ———. 1989b. Necessary questions: An introduction to philosophy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. ———. 1990a. Avenging angel. London: Constable. ———., ed. 1990b. Early African-American classics. New York: Bantam Books. ———. 1991. Altered states. The Wilson Quarterly 15 (1): 20–32. ———. 1992. In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1993. Thick translation. Callaloo 16 (4): 808–819. ———. 1994a. Identity against culture: Understandings of multiculturalism. Berkeley: Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California. ———. 1994b. Nobody likes letitia. London: Constable. ———. 1995. Another death in Venice. London: Constable.

59 ———. 1997. Is the “post-” in postcolonial the “post-” in postmodern? In Dangerous liaisons: Gender, nation, and postcolonial perspectives, ed. A. McClintock, A. Mufti, and E. Shohat, 420–444. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1998a. Cosmopolitan patriots. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and feeling beyond the nation, ed. P. Cheah, B. Robbins, and S.T. Collective, 91–117. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1998b. Afterword: How shall we live as many? In Beyond pluralism: The conception of groups and group identities in America, ed. W.F. Katkin, N.C. Landsman, and A. Tyree, 243–260. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1999. Yambo Ouologuem and the meaning of postcoloniality. In Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial writer, Islamic militant, ed. C. Wise, 55–66. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. ———. 2001a. Myth, literature, and the African world. In Perspectives on Wole Soyinka: Freedom and complexity, ed. B. Jeyifo, 157–171. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ———. 2001b. Liberalism, individuality, and identity. Critical Inquiry 27 (2): 305–332. ———. 2003. Thinking it through: An introduction to contemporary philosophy. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005a. The ethics of identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2005b. African studies and the concept of knowledge. In Knowledge cultures: Comparative western and African epistemology, ed. B. Hamminga. Rodopi: Amsterdam & New York. ———. 2006a. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ———. 2006b. Why there are no human races. In Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, ed. E. Sober, 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2006c. Language, race, and the legacies of the British Empire. In Black experience and the empire, ed. S. Hawkins and P.D. Morgan, 387–409. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007. Does truth matter to identity? In Race or ethnicity? On black and latino identity, ed. J.J.E. Gracia, 19–44. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 2008. Experiments in ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009a. Explaining religion: Notes toward a research agenda. In Games, groups, and the global good, ed. S.A. Levin, 195–296. Berlin/London: Springer. ———. 2009b. Whose culture is it? In Whose culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquities, ed. J.B. Cuno, 71–86. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2009c. Experimental moral psychology. Daedalus 138 (3): 92–102. ———. 2010a. The honor code: How moral revolutions happen. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton.

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60 ———. 2010b. Philosophy in and out of the armchair. In The force of argument: Essays in honor of Timothy Smiley, ed. J. Lear, A. Oliver, and Timothy J. Smiley, 1–18. New York: Routledge. ———. 2010c. Europe upside down: Fallacies of the new afrocentrism. In Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history, and representation, ed. R.R. Grinker, S.C. Lubkemann, and C.B. Steiner, 2nd ed., 48–54. Chichester/Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2010d. More experiments in ethics. Neuroethics 3 (3): 233–242. ———. 2011a. What’s wrong with defamation of religion? In The content and context of hate speech: Rethinking regulation and responses, ed. M. Herz and P. Péter Molnár. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011b. “Group rights” and racial affirmative action. The Journal of Ethics 15 (3): 265–280. Appiah, A.K., and M. Bunzl, eds. 2007. Buying freedom: The ethics and economics of slave redemption. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Appiah, A.K., and H.L. Gates, eds. 1995. Identities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———, eds. 2005a. Africana: The encyclopedia of the African and African American experience. 2nd ed. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. ———, eds. 2005b. Arts and letters: An A-Z reference of writers, musicians, and artists of the African American experience. Philadelphia: Running. ———, eds. 2005c. Civil rights: An A-Z reference of the movement that changed America. Philadelphia: Running. ———, eds. 2010. Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Appiah, A.K., and A. Guttman. 1996. Color conscious: The political morality of race. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Appiah, A.K., H.L. Gates, and M.C. Vazquez. 1997. The dictionary of global culture. 1st ed. New York: Knopf. Appiah, P., I. Agyeman-Duah, and A.K. Appiah. 2007. Bu Me Be: Proverbs of the Akans. 2nd ed. Oxfordshire: Ayebia Clarke. Gates, H.L., and A.K. Appiah, eds. 1993a. Toni Morrison: Critical perspectives past and present. New York: Amistad. ———, eds. 1993b. Alice Walker: Critical perspectives past and present. New York: Amistad. ———, eds. 1993c. Richard Wright: Critical perspectives past and present. New York: Amistad. ———, eds. 1993d. Langston Hughes: Critical perspectives past and present. New York: Amistad. ———, eds. 1993e. Gloria Naylor: Critical perspectives past and present. New York: Amistad. ———, eds. 1993f. Zora Neale Hurston: Critical perspectives past and present. New York: Amistad. Post, R., A.K. Appiah, J. Butler, T. Grey, and R. Siegle. 2001. Prejudicial appearances: The logic of American antidiscrimination law. Durham: Duke University Press.

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About Azoulay, K.G. 1996. Outside our parents’ house: Race, culture, and identity. Research in African Literatures 27 (1): 129–142. Caine, B. 2010. Writing cosmopolitan lives: Joseph and Kwame Anthony Appiah. History Workshop Journal 70 (1): 152–171. Coetzee, P.H. 2001. Kwame Anthony Appiah – The triumph of liberalism. Philosophical Papers 30 (3): 261–287. Müller, L. 2004. A thematic comparison between four African scholars: Idowu, Mbiti, Okot p’Bitek & Appiah: What do they tell us about the existence of “truth” and a “high god”, and why is their work significant? Quest 18 (1/2): 109–123. Slaymaker, W. 1996. Agents and actors in African antifoundational aesthetics: Theory and narrative in Appiah and Mudimbe. Research in African Literatures 27 (1): 119–128. Taylor, P.C. 2000. Appiah’s uncompleted argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the reality of race. Social Theory and Practice 26 (1): 103–128. Trzcinski, K. 2010. Legitimacy and importance of the traditional authority in Africa: K.A. Appiah’s approach and its critique. Africana Bulletin (58): 47–74. Vambe, M.T., and A. Zegeye. 2007. Notes on theorizing black diaspora from Africa1. African Identities 5 (1): 5–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725840701253654.

Architecture, West African Built Environment Jean-Paul Bourdier1 and Trinh T. Minh-ha2 1 Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA 2 Departments of Rhetoric and of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

The study of the traditional habitations of West Africa, specifically of that region south of the Sahara Desert down to the coastal countries from Ivory Coast to Cameroon, may foster a more complete understanding of the central components of architecture, given that these rural dwellings actualize each ethnic group’s collective perception of the place of men and women in the universe, as well as their relationships with the physical, sociologic, and spiritual environments. Although the study of this region covers a myriad

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of cultures, the dwellings found within these share discernible common characteristics that allow us to offer some generalizations about West African vernacular architecture.

The House as Model of the Universe The house, like the human body, is created according to the principles that order the world: the small mirrors the large, and each part possesses all the characteristics of the whole. A well-known example of the human cosmic house is the Dogon dwelling, whose ground floor is understood to represent the earth, and the terrace roof as heaven. It simultaneously symbolizes the union of Sky and the Earth and that of man and woman: the entrance room and the central room ceiling and beams represent the man, with the outside door as his sex; the central room and side storerooms represent the woman outstretched ready for intercourse. The image is that of a man and a woman laying together, whose breath escapes through the opening above the hearth located in the room beyond the central room. Correspondently, the Dogon village structure should, ideally, also reproduce the order of the universe and be arranged like the body of a man lying on his back. The smithy (metal and fire) is located at its head, or in the north, like the hearth (air and water) in the house. Likewise, the houses for menstruating women to the east and the west of the village are the hands; the family houses, the chest, and the belly; the grindstone and the foundation altar are its sex; and other communal altars further south are its feet. Among the Fali (Cameroon), the house is similarly the sign of man and woman in the act of creation and, in the village layout of the Taneka (Benin), the four distinct areas of the village correspond to anatomical parts. As the creation of houses is parallel to the creation of the first human beings, so the composition of the house is likened to that of the human body. The stones of the house are analogous to the bones; the earth to flesh; the water to blood; the plastered wall surface to the skin; and, as seen above, the air or smoke to

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procreation process. As he ages and is no longer able to do so, he and his senior wife may decide to move to a unit situated adjacent to the main entranceway. This position, neither inside nor outside, is the point of transition between family life and the outer world, between life and afterlife, and also between man’s and woman’s domains. The cohesion of the joint or extended family forming the dwelling group within the compound is sustained through the mediation of the oldest male member of the family, known as head of the compound, and through the supervision of his senior wife. This senior man oversees most decisions to do with dwelling spaces and, significantly, acts as the priest of all family shrines, maintaining close communication with the ancestors. While the decisions concerning overall family growth belong to this older man, it is, again, to the senior woman that the women’s role as keepers of the tradition, passed down from the elders, devolves. The same system of mediation prevails on the larger scale of the village. As the direct descendant of the first settler of the territory, the custodian of the earth intercedes for the villagers with the earth spirits who give them the resources to live, thus perpetuating the tie between people and the forces of nature.

The House as Manifestation of Community Identity Despite the apparent similarity to the unfamiliar eye, each house in a village clearly bears the individual stamp of those who live within. This individuality operates within a tradition of building faithfully transmitted and readapted from one generation to another; aesthetic quality, size, spatial organization, relation to site, and method and order of construction are all determined according to principles respected by everyone through collective consent. That all the houses in a village are based on similar plans maintains and encourages feelings of community unity, while the difference between separate groups is marked by the particularity of each built unit.

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The House as Locus of Fertility The earth is an awe-inspiring living complex from which all life springs and to which life reverts (at death); one disrupts the free flow of the spirit of the earth at one’s peril. To enclose and to settle down in a particular space is an act of alteration which scores the body of mother earth, which then requires acts of pacification. In traditional communities, not only may the land not be despoiled for materials, but these are used only in accordance with their accessibility, namely in such amounts and at such times as to cause least harm to the surroundings. The bond between building and dwelling (and so between man and the spoken word) arises from this continuous relationship between people and their built environment, which is one of participation rather than simple use. Permanence and security are not gained through the durability of the building materials, but through the maintaining, expanding, and renewing of the buildings by the family over generations. The primal myth of creation, in which “God shaped man out of earth and water,” as explained by the Dogon (Mali) sage Ogotemmeli (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965) is recounted in the act of building; which is thus a religious act. In West African mythology, air, earth, water, and light are the fundamental elements of the beginnings of the world and of the making of men and women. They are also the elements of building itself, the act of establishing a habitable world amidst primordial “wordless” disorder. Houses, like humans, are fashioned from small balls of earth and are said to be both born of the earth and bound to it. In Nuna (Burkina Faso), Tamberma (Togo), Yoruba, and Dogon myths, for example, God molded the first men and women from clay and then gave them life by breathing into their ears. In Dogon myth, according to Ogotemmeli, “The life–force of the earth is water. God molded the earth with water” (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 19). Water here is the divine seed, whose penetration into the womb of the Earth resulted in the birth of the Pair Nummo (the essence of God or Water, the two spirits of opposing sex who were the origin of the ancestors of men and women). Breath is Nummo

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in motion, the vapor that constituted speech and the moisture (water-word) Nummo brought down to their mother, Earth, thereby giving a language to the Earth and putting an end to the disorder of the universe. This theme linking water (divine seed) and the spoken (fertilizing) word to the process of procreation and birth is commonly found in other West African primal myths, including those of the Ashanti (Ghana), the Fali (Cameroon), and the Mande (Mali, Senegal). It is repeatedly encountered in the concept of dwelling held by a number of groups of this region, the house image being that of a world reproduced from the womb of the earth. In the West African building tradition, access to a source of water is an important consideration in choosing a site for settlement. Each source of water has its own spirits, and the community’s knowledge of its territory involves knowledge of the locations of the major lakes, rivers, and watercourses far beyond their home area. Well-known deities are feared and credited with creation, or endowed with fertility power; examples include the spirits of Lake Bosomtwe in Ghana, those of the river Tano in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, and the spirits Zin and Zin-kibaru among the Songhay of Niger. Whether it is needed for sustenance or for the molding of clay in early construction, women are responsible for the task of fetching and carrying water. In the preparation process, it is crucial that the water provided by the women and the earth collected by the men be combined in the correct proportions for the right consistency (the Tamberma call this proper mixture titati, or “moist earth”). Male and female constantly interact in the construction and details of the house, while the men set the foundations, raise the walls, carry out the carpentry and the roofing, the women complete the house by plastering and decorating the walls and by devising all the built-in features that furnish and give a defined function to the spaces. Also belonging to the domain of women’s creations are the mural decorations that are either painted or incised as bas-reliefs around door frames, on built–in furnishings, or on interior walls; each of these design motifs has a name and a repertoire of significations (most of them

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being objects of particular significance to a woman’s realm of activities). Some of the motifs commonly encountered among the Kassena and Nankani (Burkina Faso) include vertical straight lines, vertical zigzag lines, horizontal triangles, triangles or lozenges filled with alternate oblique hatchings, half-circles (which come in many variations representing calabashes, filed teeth, triangular amulets, guinea corn, and potteries). These designs are often juxtaposed with figurative designs, such as those of the cane, the hoe, and the serpent coiling back on itself or encircling the center of the wall surfaces, flowing from one facade to the other or extending around the circumference of the dwelling unit (see Fig. of Woman’s flat – roof dwelling in Nankani, BF). These motifs, although diverse in quality, composition, and design, when perceived as a whole, emphasize the life-giver idea of the house as body and site of fecundity and longevity (see Bourdier and Trinh 1985), and because it is cyclically dressed, colored and beautified with adornment marks, the house, like the human body, is reborn to the family that inhabits it. Certain architectural features of the house reflect the importance to the family and, thence, to the community of respecting the earth, water, and fertility of women. On entering the dwelling unit of a Nuna woman, the visitor finds himself or herself directly facing a red-varnished pot containing drinking water. The placement of this pot – always immediately in front of the entrance door and so open to the only light source – and its shape and decoration carry connotations of the male–female/water–earth rapport of fertility; woman as water-giver and water-carrier; woman as child bearer and lifenurturer. The Joola (Senegal) impluvium house affords another example, with its intricate architectural form of earth building constructed around an interior court with an inwardly sloping roof. Many interpretations are suggested by the combination of this roof shape and the exposed, circular ground space it defines; but none of these seems adequate when considered alone. Researchers customarily assume, from the name given to this dwelling type, that the form of the house is a question of function – that the roof and round court are used to collect rainwater.

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However, given that many devices for rainwater collection are possible, why does the water fall through the central opening only to be evacuated through the house again by an earthen trough? This arrangement remains open to interpretation, with the variance in interior space from one dwelling to another denying this space a fixed function.

The House as Locus of Regeneration and Social Viability The scarcity of roof and wall openings in West African architecture, as well as their small size, makes it almost impossible to see inside from the outside. The interdependency between light and darkness (consonant with the water–earth rapport) is that of between outside and inside, between the world of the living and that of the departed. To experience the abrupt transition from light to dark on entering the interior realms of a house is to undergo both physical and spiritual change. Penetration into the house involves a renewal of contact with the Earth spirit of fecundity and consequently a resurgence of the life-force. Considerable architectural importance is given to doors and entranceways, with marked emphasis commonly being laid on the size, shape, placement, symbols, adornment, and/or constitution of the entrance door, which is also the locus of rites of passage and also indicates the status of the house and of the occupant. The architectures of the Moba and the Konkomba (Togo); the Massa (Cameroon); the Bisa, the Mossi, the Kassena, the Nankani, and the Kusasi (Burkina Faso), whose peculiar doorways are all furnished with a screen wall, all provide striking examples. Among the three last groups, the system of entry to the women’s dwelling unit is characterized by a low, arched doorway framed by a ridge that projects beyond the outer walls of the room. Usually measuring less than a meter high, the doorway requires one to stoop and move toward the dark in this posture, then, once inside, to half-stand up to step over a small semicircular wall. This type of doorway not only allows the inhabitants to retreat and look out without being seen, but it also requires the act of

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entering and exiting be done only with a marked change of body position. In this way, outsiders are compelled to enter slowly and all intrusions (e.g., a man entering a woman’s space without her consent) are discouraged. Such an entry system marks the passage from the social to the personal and also articulates a concept of the house that belongs to a wider cultural context, in which each dwelling is a materialization of the continuous bond between both the living and departed members of a family. Among the Nankani, the low circular doorway wall marks the different stages of childhood: a child not being taken out of his mother’s room until able to crawl over the wall alone. Among the Kassena, a woman’s final departure is made explicit by knocking a piece off the top of this screen. Furthermore, rites of separation and reintegration or of purification and incorporation related to pregnancy, childbirth, adultery, and death are all performed at the entrance of the house. It is neither the sun nor the earth, neither light nor darkness that constitutes life, but the interactive movement of both. The house lives and is ready to reproduce when its force converges with that of the sun. The darker the space, the brighter the light perceived; therefore, of importance in many West African earth dwellings is the size and location of light sources other than the doorway, such as apertures formed using brokenbottomed post stuck in the roof, or molded on the very top as in the domical Musgum houses. Houses are often built to incorporate the daily movement of the sun across the sky, as exampled by those of the Tamberma in Togo, which are built as sanctuaries dedicated to the Sun (Kouiye). Each house faces the setting sun; at noon, it strikes through the tabote or “house hole” (locus of the house’s life and vitality), located in the terrace roof; and, at dusk, the sun enters the portal to communicate with the family ancestors, bathing their shrines in sunlight. The viability of the family depends both on its guardians and its perpetuators. The presence of the dead is felt strongly by the people; they may grant or refuse entry to the house to those who populate their world. Before making any decision that might bear on the well-being of the house or

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of the village, the family solicits their ancestors’ advice. The ancestors’ responsibility towards their descendants does not end with their demise; their sponsorship is sought, for example, both when a child is born and when a new house is built. To have progeny is to continue to build and have a house “that lasts.” A new unit is built for each woman who joins the family; as soon as she gives birth, she may expect to have a second room built. A beautiful compound is one whose dwelling units keep multiplying, just as a well-to-do family is one whose members keep on proliferating (a family’s wealth and prosperity derives from the number of rooms and dwelling units). Longevity in building derives from the guarantors of continuity who are children.

See Also ▶ Fertility ▶ House ▶ Order

Bibliography Bourdier, Jean-Paul. 1996. Drawn from African dwellings. Bloomington: Indiana U.P. Bourdier, Jean-Paul and Trinh T. Minh-ha. 1985. African Spaces. Designs for Living in Upper Volta. New York, London: Holmes & Meier. Denyer, S. 1978. African traditional architecture. New York: African Publishing. Froelich, J–.C. 1968. Les Montagnards paleonigritiques. Paris: ORSTOM/Berger–Levrault. Gardi, R. 1973. Indigenous African architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Griaule, M., and G. Dieterlen. 1965. Le Renard Pale. Paris: Musee de l’Homme. Lecoq, R. 1953. Les Bamileke. Paris: Editions Africaines. L’Habitat au Cameroun, by the Architecture students of L’Ecole Superieure des Beaux–Arts, Paris, editions de l’Union Francaise, 1952. Maillard, A. n.d. Habitat en Côte d’Ivoire. Abidjan: Centre de Recherches Architecturales et Ubaines. Moughtin, J.C. 1985. Hausa architecture. London: Ethnographica. Nicolaisen, J. 1963. Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuaregs. Copenhagen: The National Museum of Copenhagen. Oliver, P., ed. 1977. Shelter in Africa. Woodstock: Thje Overlook Press.

Asante, Molefi Kete Omokhodion, Dem. 1988. Benin in West African architecture. West African Journal of Archaeology 18: 73–80: ill., krt. Prussin, L. 1969. Architecture in Northern Ghana. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jacques Soulillou, Rives coloniales: architectures de SaintLouis a Douala. Marseille [etc.]: Parentheses [etc.], cop. 1993. Seignobos, C. 1982. Nord Cameroun, Montagnes et hautes terres. Roquevaire: Editions Parentheses. Spini, T., and G. Antongini. 1981. Il Camino degli antenati. I Lobi dell’ Alto Volta. Rome: Editori Laterza.

Asante, Kariamu Welsh K. W. Asante Department of African-American Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Kariamu Welsh Asante began her career in 1971 as a performing artist and choreographer. Because of the integration and interrelatedness of African dance, music, and art, she became interested and involved in African cultural traditions research. In 1979, she then became the curator of an African and African American Art Museum in Buffalo, NY. Her research in 1981–1983 in Zimbabwe led to her development of the theoretical premise that would inform her work both as a scholar and an artist. Located centrally in the Afrocentric school of thought, the “seven aesthetic senses” and the “Nzuri aesthetic model” are the canons by which Welsh Asante examines the cultural traditions of Africa. Dr. Kariamu Welsh Asante is presently a professor of African and African American dance and aesthetics in the Department of African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her baccalaureate and masters degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1971 and 1975, respectively. Zimbabwean Dance: An Aesthetic Analysis of the Jerusalem and Muchongoyo Dances was the title of her dissertation, and she received her doctorate from New York University in 1993. Welsh Asante is the editor of two books, The African Aesthetic: Keeper of the Traditions

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published in 1992 by Greenwood Press and African Dance: Artistry and History published by Africa World Press in 1994. Dr. Welsh Asante has received several dance, choreography, research, and humanities fellowships. She has been the recipient of two Fulbright Awards, both to Zimbabwe to work with the National Dance Company of Zimbabwe of which she was the founding artistic director. She is the creator of the Umfundalai, a contemporary African dance technique. In addition, she serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Black Studies and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania State Council of the Arts dance panel. She is also the editor of the International Journal of African Dance and the Director of the Institute for African Dance, Research and Performance at Temple University.

See Also ▶ Aesthetic, African ▶ Aesthetic, African Dance

Asante, Molefi Kete V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Molefi Kete Asante was born on August 14, 1942, in Valdosta, Georgia, as Arthur Lee Smith Jr. He attended Southwestern Christian College in 1962, Oklahoma Christian College (B.A. 1964), Pepperdine University (M.A., 1965), and the University of California at Los Angeles (Ph.D., 1968). He was appointed a full professor at age thirty. A poet, dramatist, painter, and gardener Asante believes in linking scholarship to activism toward the goal of humanizing the world. He is mainly known as the theorist of Afrocentric philosophical

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movement in the United States. Asante is the founder of the National Afrocentric Institute. Asante’s books include: African and Afro– American Communication Continuities (1975), Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (1980 and 1987), Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge (1990), Classical Africa (1993), and Malcolm X as Cultural Hero and Other Afrocentric Essays (1993).

See Also ▶ Afrocentricity

Works Author Abarry, A.S., and M.K. Asante, eds. 1996. African intellectual heritage: A book of sources. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Asante, M.K. 1975. African and African American communication continuities. Buffalo: Council on International Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo. ———. 1978. Systematic nationalism: A legitimate strategy for national selfhood. Journal of Black Studies 9: 115–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193477800900107. ———. 1983. The ideological significance of afrocentricity in intercultural communication. Journal of Black Studies 14: 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934 78301400101. ———. 1988. Afrocentricity (New rev. ed.). Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. 1990. Kemet, afrocentricity, and knowledge. Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. 1993. Malcolm X as cultural hero, and other afrocentric essays. Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. 1996. Are you scared of your shadow?: A critique of Sidney Lemelle’s “the politics of cultural existence.”. Journal of Black Studies 26: 524–533. https:// doi.org/10.1177/002193479602600409. ———. 1997. Afrocentricity and the quest for method. In Africana studies: A disciplinary quest for both theory and method, ed. J.L. Conyers, 69–90. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. ———. 1998a. The afrocentric idea (Rev. and expanded ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 1998b. Identifying racist language linguistic acts and signs. In Communicating prejudice, ed. M.L. Hecht. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. ———. 1998c. The African American as African. Diogenes 46: 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192 19804618405.

Asante, Molefi Kete ———. 1999a. The painful demise of eurocentrism: An afrocentric response to critics. Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. 1999b. Molefi Asante’s memoirs of the old southern ways. In Black American intellectualism and culture: A social study of African American social and political thought, ed. J.L. Conyers, 1–10. Stamford: JAI Press. ———. 2000a. The Egyptian philosophers: Ancient African voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten. 1st ed. Chicago: African American Images. ———. 2000b. Afrocentricity, race, and reason. In Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals confront the African American experience, ed. M. Marable, 195–203. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2002a. Culture and customs of Egypt. Westport: Greenwood Press. ———. 2002b. 100 greatest African Americans: A biographical encyclopedia. Amherst: Prometheus Books. ———. 2002c. Language and agency in the transformation of American identity. In The changing conversation in America: Lectures from the Smithsonian, ed. W.F. Eadie and Paul E. Nelson. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. ———. 2003a. The African American warrant for reparations: The crime of European enslavement of Africans and its consequences. In Should America pay?: Slavery and the raging debate over reparations, ed. Raymond A. Winbush, 1st ed., 3–13. New York: Amistad. ———. 2003b. Education for liberation: On campus with a purpose. In The black student’s guide to graduate and professional school success, ed. V.L. Farmer, 162–169. Westport: Greenwood Press. ———. 2003c. The afrocentric idea in education. In Afrocentricity and the academy: Essays on theory and practice, ed. J.L. Conyers, 37–49. Jefferson: McFarland. ———. 2004a. Afrocentricity and communication in Africa. In Development and communication in Africa, ed. F. Eribo and C. Okigbo, 3–14. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ———. 2004b. Harold curse and afrocenteric theory. In Harold Cruse’s the crisis of the Negro intellectual reconsidered, ed. J.G. Watts, 235–247. New York: Routledge. ———. 2005a. African elements in African American culture. In Africanisms in American culture, ed. J.E. Holloway, 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2005b. Television and black consciousness. In Channeling blackness: Studies on television and race in America, ed. D.M. Hunt. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005c. Race, rhetoric, and identity: The architecton of soul. Amherst: Humanity Books. ———. 2005d. Blackness as an ethical trope: Toward a post-Western assertion. In White on white/black on

Asante, Molefi Kete black, ed. G. Yancy, 203–216. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ———. 2006a. Sustaining africology: On the creation and development of a discipline. In A companion to African-American studies, ed. J.A. Gordon and L.R. Gordon, 20–32. Malden: Blackwell Pub. ———. 2006b. A discourse on black studies: Liberating the study of African people in the western academy. Journal of Black Studies 36: 646–662. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0021934705285937. ———. 2006c. African renaissance conferences of the 21st century: Dakar and Salvador in perspective. Journal of Black Studies 37: 169–176. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0021934706293281. ———. 2007a. The history of Africa: The quest for eternal harmony. New York/London: Routledge. ———. 2007b. The resurgence of the African world in the 21st century. In Africa in the 21st century: Toward a new future, ed. A. Mazama, 3–16. New York: Routledge. ———. 2007c. An afrocentric manifesto: Toward an African renaissance. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2007d. Barack Obama and the dilemma of power: An africological observation. Journal of Black Studies 38: 105–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470730 4957. ———. 2009a. Maulana Karenga: An intellectual portrait. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2009b. Resisting westernity and refusing development. In On the edges of development: Cultural interventions, ed. K.-K. Bhavnani, 67–76. New York: Routledge. ———. 2009c. Erasing racism: The survival of the American nation (Rev. and expanded 2nd ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books. ———. 2009d. Africology and the puzzle of nomenclature. Journal of Black Studies 40: 12–23. https://doi. org/10.1177/0021934709335132. ———. 2010. Afrocentricity and the argument for civic commitment: Ideology and citizenship in a United States of Africa. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 632 (1): 121–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716210378569. ———. 2011. Haiti: Three analytical narratives of crisis and recovery. Journal of Black Studies 42: 276–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934710395589. Asante, K.W., and M.K. Asante. 1981. Myth: The communication dimension to the African American mind. Journal of Black Studies 11: 387–395. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/002193478101100401. Asante, M.K., and K.W. Asante, eds. 1985. African culture: The rhythms of unity. Westport: Greenwood Press. Asante, M.K., and S. Ismail. 2008a. Akhenaten to origen: Characteristics of philosophical thought in Ancient Africa. Journal of Black Studies 40: 296–309. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0021934707312814. ———. 2008b. Rediscovering the “lost” Roman Caesar: Septimius Severus the African and eurocentric

67 historiography. Journal of Black Studies 40: 606–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934708314380. Asante, M.K., and M. Karenga, eds. 2006. Handbook of black studies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Asante, M.K., and A. Mazama. 2009. Encyclopedia of African religion. Los Angeles: SAGE. Asante, M.K., and Mazama, A. (Eds.). 2005. Encyclopedia of black studies. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Asante, M.K., and E. Min. 2000. Socio-cultural conflict between African American and Korean American. Lanham: University Press of America. Asante, M.K., and H.S. Nooral-Deen. 1984. Social interaction of black and white college students: A research report. Journal of Black Studies 14: 507–516. https:// doi.org/10.1177/002193478401400407. Asante, M.K., and E. Nwadiora. 2007. Spear masters: An introduction to African religion. Lanham: University Press of America. Asante, M.K., and E. Vora. 1983. Toward a grounded theory. In Intercultural communication theory: Current perspectives, ed. W.B. Gudykunst and S. C. Association. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Asante, M.K., C.A. Blake, and E. Newmark, eds. 1979. Handbook of intercultural communication. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Asante, M.K., Y. Miike, and J. Yin, eds. 2008. The global intercultural communication reader. New York: Routledge.

About Chowdhury, K. 1997. Afrocentric voices: Constructing identities, [dis]placing difference. College Literature 24 (2): 35–56. Gwekwerere, T. 2010. From Nat Turner to Molefi Kete Asante reading the European intellectual indictment of the afrocentric conception of reality. Journal of Black Studies 41 (1): 108–126. Lemelle, S.J. 1993. The politics of cultural existence: PanAfricanism, historical materialism and afrocentricity. Race & Class 35 (1): 93–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 030639689303500109. McLaren, J. 1998. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s moving the centre and its relevance to afrocentricity. Journal of Black Studies 28 (3): 386–397. Okur, N.A. 1993. Afrocentricity as a generative idea in the study of African American drama. Journal of Black Studies 24 (1): 88–108. Schreiber, L. 2000. Overcoming methodological elitism: Afrocentrism as a prototypical paradigm for intercultural research. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24 (5): 651–671. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0147-1767(00)00021-3. Strother-Jordan, K. 2002. On the rhetoric of afrocentricity. Western Journal of Black Studies 26 (4): 193–203. Williams, C.J. 2005. In defence of materialism: A critique of afrocentric ontology. Race & Class 47 (1): 35–48.

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Ashe John Gray Black Arts Research Center, Nyack, NY, USA

Ashe

education, initiation, and experience learn to manipulate it in order to enhance their own lives and the lives of those around them” (Drewal and Drewal 1987).

See Also Ashe (a’-Shay) is the term used by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria and followers of Yoruba-derived religions in the African Diaspora to describe the divine power inherent in all things – animate, inanimate, and spiritual – created by the high god, Olorun (Olodumare). Ashe is most frequently defined as “the power to make things happen” and is unleashed through ebo (ritual offerings), songs, dances, and incantations (oriki) to the orisha, or gods, of the Yoruba pantheon. In the interdependent worlds of the Yoruba, the gods and ancestors are strengthened when their followers and descendants sing and drum their praises, create altars to feed them, and dance to excite them. In exchange for this tribute, the gods and ancestors favor their human counterparts with earthly visits in which they, in the medium of a possessed “son” or “daughter,” distribute advice intended to increase the power or ashe of the human family which has called them. The concept is morally neutral, referring simply to the range of vital forces – both constructive and destructive, which is wielded by the orisha (avatars of the natural world) and eguns (ancestors). For example, a business person who neglects to propitiate a powerful orisha, such as Eshu (the Yoruba trickster deity and god of the crossroads), is likely to find his or her ashe diminish and, with it, his or her fortunes as business decisions go awry. In another case, a devoted follower of Yemaya (the mother of the orishas) may find that her tributes have rewarded her with the ashe necessary to conceive a child. Orisha, as the children and messengers of Olorun, are blessed with the most powerful ashe and are, thus, sought out to assist with the most complex of human problems. Ancestors, too, with their ability to bridge the worlds of the dead and the living, are powerful avatars of ashe. However, humans also possess ashe, “and through

▶ Animism ▶ Essence ▶ Ifa, Divination System of

Bibliography Apter, Andrew. 1992. Black critics & kings: The hermeneutics of power in Yoruba society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 5: The Language of Ase. Drewal, Margaret Thompson, and Henry John Drewal. 1987. Composing time and space in Yoruba art. Word and Image 3: 225–233. Gray, John. 1989. Ashe, traditional religion and healing in Sub–Saharan Africa and the Diaspora: A classified international bibliography. Westport: Greenwood Press. Thompson, Robert Farris. 1983. Flash of the spirit: African and Afro–American art and philosophy, 5–9. New York: Random House.

Athanasius Norbert Brockman International Relations, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, USA

Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria for 45 years, was a towering figure in Christian thought and was instrumental in creating a truly Egyptian national sense. Although Byzantine Greek, he was Coptic-speaking and made a firm alliance with the monastic Coptic Church of the Upper Nile. Pharaonic Egyptian nationalism had disappeared after Alexander’s conquest, so the new religious unity brought Greek and Coptic traditions together. Athanasius was a popular heroic figure to the Christian masses of Egypt. These factors elevated the patriarchate into an

Attribute

instrument of social and political power – “veritable pharaohs of the church,” as one scholar called them. Nevertheless, Athanasius presided during a period of great controversy and disturbance. He was embroiled in the religious conflicts of early Christianity, in part because Alexandria was the undisputed center of Christian intellectual life. Athanasius was a staunch defender of orthodoxy, for which he was threatened, deposed and reinstated, and exiled five times. His great contribution to Christian thought was his defense of the divinity of Jesus Christ at the Council of Nicea in 324, three years before being elected Patriarch. He successfully opposed the Arian view that Christ was a created being and less than God. In addition, his Letter 39 (367) is the earliest record of the accepted list of books of the New Testament. His effect on personal religious experience was vast; his Life of Antony was one of the most widely read books of the period and gave great impetus to monasticism, and his Letter to Marcellinus created a tradition of devotional use of the Psalms in prayer.

See Also ▶ Antony of the Desert ▶ Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic ▶ Ethiopic Liturgy ▶ Nubia, Christianity in ▶ Pachomius

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consist of an ontologically independent existent, in which the attributes (qualities, properties, characteristics) that differentiate it from other objects inhere as dependent entities. How one can intelligibly speak of an existent which is intrinsically quality-less was an issue which occasioned some particularly unenlightening debates among the classical British empiricists. Nor has the metaphysical incubus been quite laid to rest in contemporary Western philosophy. On the other hand, if African metaphysicians attend purposefully to their own languages in their philosophical meditations, the chances are that they may escape entanglement in this kind of conundrum. In Akan, for example, an object (an ade) is a full-blooded item of reference of (rather than with) a particular character. The attributes which constitute the character of an object are simply its tebea (ways of being); and it is obvious, even preanalytically, that, to construe a way of being as a kind of entity, is to forsake intelligibility. Of course, no linguistic circumstance can hold in total abeyance the technical intrepidity of a metaphysician, Akan or not; but certainly, because of the nonsubstantive semantics of the notion of attributes in Akan, someone is going to have to work extraordinarily hard to hypostatize the attributes of a thing into any species of entity. Fresh options in ontological thinking may be expected to open up in African philosophy in the wake of considerations like these.

See Also

Attribute Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

Among the time-honored (or more strictly, timedishonored) concepts of Western metaphysics, few are more basic or more incoherent than the dichotomy of substance and attribute. In this style of conceptualization, an object is supposed to

▶ African Philosophy, Search for Identity of ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Existence

Bibliography Wiredu, Kwasi. 1992. Formulating modern thought in African languages: Some theoretical considerations. In The surreptitious speech, ed. V.Y. Mudimbe, 321 f. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Baˆ, Amadou Hampaˆte´ Rigobert Obongui1,2 and Anthony Mangeon3,4 1 Paris, France 2 Lycée Younoussa Bamana, Mamouzou, Mayotte, France 3 Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France 4 Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Amadou Hampâte Bâ was a distinguished oralist and writer, winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature de l’Afrique Noire (1974) and the Prix Littéraire Francophone International (1983). Born in Bandiagara, former capital city of the Toucouleur empire of Macina (founded by El Hadj Omar in 1862), he went to the local French school in Bandiagara, while also being a student of Tierno Bokar, a Sufi master, and later to a Koranic school in Djenné. He graduated from primary school in 1915. In 1921, after refusing to attend the Ecole William Ponty at Gorée, the French governor exiled him to Ouagadougou, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), to be an auxiliary to the colonial administration from 1922 to 1932. Nonetheless, Bâ returned frequently to Bandiagara for 1 month per year to meet with Tierno and, after a 10 years

epistolary exchange, in 1932, he also spent eight full months to be initiated into the esoteric knowledge of the Tidjanniyya way and the secrecy of Sufism. (Bâ was himself a cheikh of the Tidjanniyya Congregation of Black Africa, created in the eighteenth century and restored in 1909 par Cheikh Hamallah). He then worked successively as a private interpreter to the governor, first secretary to the mayor of Bamako, and assistant ethnologist in the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar. In 1951, he received a fellowship to study in France. In 1957, he was appointed administrator of the SOFAROM (Radiodiffusion Française dans les territoires d’Outre-mer). From 1962 to 1966, he became ambassador of Mali in the Ivory Coast and, in 1962, was also seated on the UNESCO Executive Board for 8 years, advocating the preservation of the African heritage and oral traditions. Bâ used to say: “It belongs to Africans to speak of Africa to non-Africans, and not to non-Africans, as knowledgeable might they be, to speak of Africa to Africans.” He died in Abidjan, on May 15, 1991. Two characteristic features require attention in Bâ’s work: on the one hand, his writing bears the influence of the oral traditions with which he has been nurtured and, at the same time, is determined by the ethnographic and sociological gaze he developed while working at the IFAN. On the other hand, he dedicated himself to the study of Islamic thought (and most of all, Sufism) and its cohesiveness to traditional African religions.

© Springer Nature B.V. 2021 V. Y. Mudimbe, K. Kavwahirehi (eds.), Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5

Baˆ, Amadou Hampaˆte´

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Regarding the first aspect, Bâ spent his whole life collecting Fulani and Bambara tales and legends, and to bring them to a large audience. In 1943, with the support of Théodore Monod, he published Kaidara, a narrative translation of a Fulani Initiation tale (awarded Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Occidentale Française). In 1955, in collaboration with Jacques Daget, he released a comprehensive history of the Fulani Empire of Macina based on their oral traditions. In that book, he discussed the origins of his people, who, according to him, came from the Arabic Peninsula and, after a first settlement in Ethiopia and Egypt (as witnessed by their folkstales), moved down to Guinea with their herd. Bâ’s literary works also came from a similar ethnographical perspective. Narrating the life of a former interpreter in the French colonial system, his novel, L’étrange destin de Wangrin [The fortunes of Wangrin], provides a very detailed account of the tensions existing between Africans and Europeans during the colonial period (as did his biography of Tierno Bokar, focusing on the misunderstandings between the administration and Islam). In his own autobiography, Bâ depicts the colonial system from an African point of view and is thus able to give both a ethnographical and sociological analysis on the social order instaured in Africa. On the religious theme, Bâ has also been a prolific and critical writer. He elucidated the Islamic esoterism entailed in oral literature (Kaidara, L’éclat de la grande étoile, Koumen), traced the development of Islamic religious authority before and during the colonization (L’empire peul du Macina), and exposed in Aspects de la culture Africaine the strong bonds uniting Islam and Bambara or Fulani worldviews, while focusing on the compatibilities between Christianism and Islam in Jésus vu par un Musulman. But his major work regarding Islam is probably his account of Tierno Bokar’s life and thinking, where he defends the assets of Sufism, and more precisely Hamallism. Amadou Hampâté Bâ is not only an original writer, but he is considered by critics as a major

contributor to the reshaping of Africanist discourse on Africa and one of the foremost African Islamic thinker of the twentieth century.

See Also ▶ Islamic Thought, History ▶ Orality

Works by Baˆ Bâ, Hampâté. 1961. Koumen, texte initiatique des pasteurs Peuls, with Diertelen, Germaine. Paris: Mouton. Republished by the EHESS, Paris. ———. 1969. Kaidara, récit initiatique Peul. Paris: Classiques africains. ———. 1972. Aspects de la civilisation africaine. Paris: Présence africaine. ———. 1973. L’étrange destin de Wangrin. Paris: Union générale d’édition. Grand Prix Littéraire de L’Afrique Noire de L’ADELF, 1974. Prix Littéraire Francophone, 1983.[The fortunes of Wangrin, Ibadan (Nigeria), New Horn Press, 1987]. ———. 1974. L’éclat de la grande étoile, conte initiatique Peul. Paris: collection “Classiques Africains”. ———. 1976. Jésus vu par un Musulman. Abidjan: NEA. ———. 1977. Petit Bodiel, conte drôlatique Peul. Abidjan: NEA. ———. 1980. Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar, Le sage de Badiangara. Paris: Seuil, collection “Point sagesse”. ———. 1984. L’empire Peul du Macina with Daget, J. Abidjan: NEA/Paris EHESS. ———. 1985. Njeddo Dewal, mère de la calamité. Grand conte initiatique Peul. Abidjan: NEA. ———. 1991. Amkoullel, l’enfant Peul. Memoirs. Paris: Actes Sud. ———. 1994. Oui, mon commandant ! Memoirs. Vol. II. Paris: actes Sud.

Bibliography Aggarwal, Kusum. 1999. Amadou Hampâté Bâ et l’Africanisme. Paris: L’harmattan. Devey, Muriel. 1993. Hampaté Bâ, l’homme de la tradition. Dakar: LivreSud. Ngorwanubusa, Juvénal. 1993. Boubou Hama et Amadou Hampaté Bâ : La négritude des sources. Paris: Editions Publisud. Robert, Jouany, ed. 1994. Lecture de l’oeuvre de Hampâté Bâ. Paris: L’harmattan.

Baˆ, Mariama

Baˆ, Mariama Anthony Mangeon Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Born in Senegal in 1929, Marama Bâ was raised in noble and educated family (her father became the first minister of Health in his country after the decentralization bill – Loi cadre Deferre, 1956). She attended the Ecole normale de Rufisque, near Dakar, directed by Germaine Le Goff, and after her graduation, she worked as an elementary school teacher in Dakar. Married, she gave birth to nine children. After her divorce, she became a successful writer and won the Noma Prize in 1980 for her first novel, So Long a Letter. Her career was unexpectedly shortened by her early death in 1981. Although she wrote only two novels – So long a Letter (1979) and Scarlet Song (posthumously published in 1981), she has been acclaimed by critics and readers in Africa, Europe, and America. She is considered one of the first women writers in Frenchspeaking Africa: “Francophone African women published no works of Literature before the mid 1970s,” as Christopher Miller noted (1990), “and their literature therefore came as belated addition to a pre-established male tradition before it could be seen as an alteration of the tradition.” Indeed, the idea of alteration is very important. Bâ’s first novel, for example, does not fix exactly the theoretical framework established by the literary canon or critics. It is supposed to be a letter addressed by Ramatoulaye to her friend, Aissatou, written during the mourning period of four months and ten days, which traditionally follows the husband death in Islam. Ramatoulaye takes advantage of her confinement to reassess her life, and especially her marital life. The novel, taking the form of a diary, breaks out, finally, with the

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epistolary tradition. Furthermore, it is not an autobiography, despite that many critics tended to emphasize (the author and narrator have a similar familial background; both are Muslims and work as elementary school teachers while raising numerous children). Ramatoulaye is indeed representative of the Senegalese women’s fate and, beyond that, of any woman in Africa or elsewhere who is oppressed in a male-dominated world. Thus, “Une si longue lettre is a peculiar hybrid,” says Miller, “representing an original act of literary creativity, a brilliant departure” (1990). As far as the literary aspect is concerned, Scarlet Song is probably a more conventional novel. The plot is basically the same as in So long a Letter: a woman, after years of marriage, is abandoned by her husband for another spouse. But Bâ deals, this time, with intercultural marriage (a Senegalese Muslim, Ousmane, married a French woman, Mireille), and the multiplicity of point of views enables Bâ to reveal the minds of all her protagonists. For example, the male voices were absent from the first narrative, sometimes arousing criticism as one-sided feminist pamphlet. Nonetheless, the two novels have a great deal in common, because they originated in the same conception of “engaged literature” developed by Bâ in a lecture entitled La fonction politique des littératures africaines. As she stated, “the woman writer in Africa has to present the position of women in Africa in all its aspects . . . As women, we must work for our future, we must overthrow the status quo which harms us and we must no longer submit to it. Like men, we must use literature as non-violent but effective weapon. We no longer accept the nostalgic praise to the African mother who, in his anxiety, man confuses with Mother Africa.” Bâ is clearly a feminist writer, interested in the relationships between men and women. Two central themes require attention in both novels: the search for happiness within the couple relationship, and its opposite, the woman’s abandonment by her husband. Moreover, women are not only victims but sometimes victimizers (the mothers-in-law are the ones who encourage the husband to marry another woman because they profit from the

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situation). Polygeny is at stake, and Bâ is very critical of a tradition she considers anachronistic. Her main characters refuse to give up their personality, or to become a servant for the husband. An unfair social order is denounced, and Islam is criticized for its obvious compromission. Indeed, religion is used hypocritically by men to justify their polygamous instincts, with the Imam’s approval. Education and self-affirmation appear to be necessary steps toward the liberation of women, and a change of mentality seems on its way with rising generation: Daba, Ramatoulaye’s first daughter, or Soukyna, Ousmane’s young sister, express clearly their reluctance for polygeny and refuse to compromise anymore. Mariama Bâ’s novels and their critical reappraisal of traditional values and relationships within African societies remain contemporary issues many years after their publication. They might also be the equivalent, in African literature, of the feminist prise de parole in theology.

Bibliography Bâ, Mariama. 1981a. So long a letter. London: Heinemann. ———. 1985. Scarlet song. New York: Longman. ———. 1981b. La fonction politique des littératures africaines écrites. Ecriture française dans le monde 5 (1): 3–7. Brune, Charlotte. 1983. Unwinding threads: writing by women in Africa. London: Heinemann. Cham, Mbye Baboucar. 1987. Conemporary society and the female inagination: a study of the novel of Mariama Bâ. In Women in African Literature today, ed. Eldred Durosimi Jones. Trenton: Africa World Press. Chemain-Degrange, Arlette. 1980. Emancipation feminine et roman africain. Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines. D’almeida, Irene. 1986. The concept of choice in Mariama Bâ’s fiction. In Ngambika: Studies of women in African Fiction, ed. Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves. Trenton: Africa Worlds Press. ———. 1994. Francophone African women writers: Destroying the emptiness of silence. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Holloway, Karla. 1992. Moorings and metaphors: Figures of culture and gender in Black women’s literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. James, Adeola. 1992. In their own voices: African women writers talk. London: Heinemann. Kolawole, Mary. 1996. Womanism and African consciousness. Trenton: Africa World Press.

Bakary, Diallo Miller, Christopher. 1990. Theories of Africans: Francophone literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mortimer, Mildred. 1990. Journeys through the French African Novel. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Riesz, Janos. 1991. Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue letter: An Erziehungsroman. Research in African Literatures 22 (1): 27–42. Willentz, Gay Alden. 1992. Binding cultures: Black women writers in Africa and the diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bakary, Diallo Rigobert Obongui1,2 and Anthony Mangeon3,4 1 Paris, France 2 Lycée Younoussa Bamana, Mamouzou, Mayotte, France 3 Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France 4 Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Born in Dagana from a Fulani high caste family of cattle breeders, Diallo Bakary was the family’s herdskeeper until 1911, when he was recruited into the French army. After serving for 3 years in Morocco and acquiring basic skills in the French language, he joined the Black African battalion of the Tirailleurs sénégalais in France during the First World War. Wounded in battle, he spent a long period convalescing and was appointed official interpreter of the battalion. He met with Madame Lucie Cousturier, daughter of a colonial administrator in French Guinea, who encouraged him to write his memories, which were published in 1926 under the title Force-Bonté. He returned home to become chef de canton. Diallo Bakary is credited to be the first novelist in French from West Africa. Force-Bonté is a contemplative and romanticized autobiographical narrative about an idealized pastoral life and French generosity. The literary influences of the novel in Black African writing are noticeable with

Balandier, Georges

the introduction of themes of bucolic childhood nostalgia and cultural conflict brought into Africa with colonialism. Ousmane Socé’s Karim (1935), Camara Laye’s L’enfant noir (1953), and Olympe Bhely-Quenum’s Un piège sans fin (1960) bear its direct influence.

See Also ▶ Difference and Literature ▶ France, Image of in African Literature

Works by Bakary Bakary, Diallo. 1926. Force-Bonté. Paris: Reider et cie.

Bibliography Blair, Dorothy Susan. 1984. Senegalese literature. A critical history. Boston: Twayne Publishers. Bourlet, Mélanie. Bakary Diallo, mémoires peules, 2016, CNRS Images, 72 min. Dubreuil, Laurent. L’empire du langage. Colonies et francophonie. Paris, Hermann, 2008. Kesteloot, Lilyan. 1963, 1983. Les écrivains noirs de langue française: naissance d’une littérature. Bruxelles: éditions de l’université. Kom, Ambroise (sous la direction de). 1985. Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires négro-africains de langue française des origines à 1978. Paris: Sherbrook, Namaan. Riesz, Janos. De la littérature coloniale à la littérature africaine. Prétextes, contextes, intertextes. Paris, Karthala, 2007.

Balandier, Georges Anthony Mangeon Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Born on December 21, 1920, in Aillevillers (France), Georges Balandier is one of the major figures in both French anthropology and sociology.

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Ha has achieved an impressive academic carrier. As a professor at the political sciences Institute (Institut d’études politiques) and a director of studies at the School of Advanced studies in social sciences (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, he initiated in the 1950s a course in Sociology of Black Africa and also created the Center for African Studies (still in activity) in 1954. He was then the first scholar in the 1960s to have a chair in Sociology and Ethnology, simultaneously at the École Normale Supérieure (1961–1966) and at the Sorbonne University, where he taught until his retirement in the 1980s. During there years, he trained the contemporary generation of Sociologists and Anthropologists in France, while directing my book series with some major French publishers, As a recognition for his decisive impact on the social sciences, he was also made doctor honoris causa in many foreign universities, including the Free university of Bruxelles, 1979; Cera Universidad, Fartalezza, Brazil, 1982, and the University of Geneva, 1983. Balandier dissociated himself very early from the “Griaule School,” with its particular emphasis on myths and collective representations. From his first fieldwork in Africa among the Senegalese fishermen of Lebou, he became aware of the crucial importance of “history in the making” and showed the limits for social sciences entailed in the comfortable dichotomy between cold, traditional versus hot, modern societies. Focusing instead on “turbulences” (conflicts and tensions, dissidence, and rebel movements among any groups), he introduced some key concept like “colonial situation,” or “dependence situation” for a better understanding of African societies. Thus, he helped to reorient, theoretically and methodologically, the practices of social sciences on and in Africa. Sociology became as important a tool as anthropology to address the issues embedded with decolonization and rise of modernity in Africa (The sociology of Black Africa; Sociology of Black Brazzavilles, both 1955). Blurring the frontiers between anthropology and sociology (Ambiguous Africa, 1957), Balandier’s contribution was responsible for an epistemological break in the field. Not only do both sciences

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interconnect and influence each other – and could, then, be fused in one ethnosociology – but their scope is mutating. (“One should work as a sociologist abroad and as anthropologist at home” kept on saying Balandier.) While actually succeeding as anthropologist and sociologist abroad (Africa, Latin America, Australia), at home (France), Balandier managed also to stay clear from structuralism. While being also a fervent follower of comparative methods, Balandier, nonetheless, prevented himself from studying only what is intemporal or general: praxis is much more interesting to him than structures. Introducing in France the works of British anthropologists (and most of all, Max Glukman) during his classes, he promoted in the 1960s a dynamic conception of societies, which are no longer considered fixed and collective entities, but as never ending, always in the making processes. This new approach certainly bears the influence of Marx (as witnessed also by the focus on inequalities and domination relationships in his books; however, Balandier doesn’t consider the Hegelian or Marxist dialectics as getting progressively closer to an end, being consequently very critical of Marxism with Gurvitch. Dawn from Mauss, the idea that the social phenomenon should always be considered as a whole (where politics, economics, ideology, and culture interact with each other) helped also Balandier to define and practice a political anthropology, analyzing in particular the relationships between the political power and the sacred, the institutions and the violence (Anthropologie politique). His academic work has since focused more and more on the reality of power in our societies. Moreover, in the mirror of Africa and through the spectacles of both anthropology and sociology, Balandier has brought to light three major contemporary issues: namely, the tensions between sexes, generations and North/South, or poor and rich countries. Georges Balandier has also reviewed his intellectual journey in two brilliant autobiographical narratives, Histoires d’autres (1977) and Conjugaisons (1997).

Bamana Religion and History

Bibliography Balandier, Georges. 1968. Daily life in the Kingdom of Kongo from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. New York: Pantheon Books. ———. 1970a. The sociology of Black Africa, social dynamics in Central Africa. New York: Praeger Publishers. ———, ed. 1970b. Sociologie des mutations. Paris: Anthropos. ———. 1970c. Political anthropology. New York: Pantheon Books. ———. 1971. Sens et puissance, les dynamiques sociales. Paris: Presses Universtaires de France. ———. 1972. Georges Gurvitch, sa vie son oeuvre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. (ed. With Jacques Maquet). 1974a. Dictionary of Black African civilizations. New York: L. Amiel. ———. 1974b. Anthopo-logiques. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. 1976 (c1966). Ambiguous Africa, New York, Avon Books. ———. 1977. Histoires d’autres. Paris: Stock. ———. 1980. Le pouvoir sur scène. Paris: Balland. ———. 1985. Le detour, pouvoir et modernité. Paris: Fayard. ———. 1997. Conjugaisons. Paris: Fayard. Bonnafé, Pierre, et al. 1986. Afrique actuelle, Afrique plurielle, Hommage à Georges Balandier. Paris: Karthala. Copans, Jean. La mort de Georges Balandier, sociologue, spécialiste de l’Afrique. Le Monde, 5 octobre 2016, https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2016/10/05/ la-mort-de-georges-balandier-sociologue-specialiste-del-afrique_5008603_3382.html Gosselin, Gabriel (ed.). c 1992. Les nouveaux enjeux de l’anthropologie: Autour de Georges Balandier, Paris: L’harmattan. Maffesoli, Michel, and Claude Rivière, eds. 1985. Une anthropologie des turbulences, Hommage à Georges Balandier. Paris: Berg International éditeurs.

Bamana Religion and History Mary Jo Arnoldi National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA

The Bamana (Bambara), a Mande-speaking people, live primarily in the administrative regions of Bamako, Segou, and Sikasso in south central Mali. They represent 37% of Mali’s population and

Bamana Religion and History

number about seven and a half million people. Unlike their Malinké and Soninké cousins, they have largely resisted Islamic conversion until early 20th century. One folk etymology of Ba-maana, “to refuse a master,” is interpreted as a statement about this group’s resistance to Islamic conversion in the face of intense proselytization in the precolonial period. People who describe themselves as Bamana, whether they are currently Muslims or not, speak a common language and share many cultural and social forms and practices.

Bamana Religion According to the Bamana creation myth, there is one supreme Creator God who created the world in three separate phases. This Creator God is known by various names, including Ngala and Bembe among others. During the first phase, the Creator became incarnate and gave life to Mousso Koroni, who became his wife. From this union issued plants, animals, and human beings. Mousso Koroni is associated with activity, energy, impetus, secrecy, desire, malice, and misunderstanding. While she causes all things to proliferate, she also embodies the cosmic principle of disorder. In the second stage of creation, the androgenous Faro emerged. Faro completed the Creator’s work by organizing the world and setting it into equilibrium. Faro, who is water, light, speech, and life, provides the essential connections among all things. During the third phase of creation, which the Bamana believe is still ongoing, Ndomadyiri emerged. This divine blacksmith and healer embodies the earth and is associated with tradition, stability, and permanence. Closely linked to Faro, Ndomadyiri is described as the master of science and art, who shows mortals how to know themselves, teaching them composure, reconciliation, patience, and perseverance. In this conception of the universe, Ndomadyiri is the force of tradition and stability, and Mousso Koroni is the energy and desire necessary to propel the universe forward. Faro, as order and balance, mediates between these diametrically opposed cosmic principles (Zahan 1974).

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In the late twentieth century, this essential dialectic and its mediation, which is expressed through Ndomadyiri, Mousso Koroni, and Faro in the creation myth, still shape the values and beliefs that underlie religious and social practices in Bamana society. Even among Bamana Muslims (whose numbers have been steadily increasing throughout the last half century), beliefs about the nature of the universe, as well as certain religious practices, have not been totally abandoned, but have been modified and syncretized with Islamic beliefs and practices. Bamana participate in individual and family rituals, communal village rites, and in men’s initiatory societies. The foundation of all Bamana religious practices involves prayers, offerings, and sacrifices. Adult men keep personal altars in their houses and regularly perform rites to Faro to assure the stability of physical and social forces and to protect themselves and their families from external dangers. Among non-Muslims, a man’s altar serves as the provisional receptacle for the soul or spirit (ni) at the moment of death. Male heads of families also own various power objects (bolini) to which annual offerings and sacrifices are made at the beginning of the farming season, when the family is engaged in auspicious affairs, or when there is an illness in the family (Dieterlen 1951; Pâques 1954). Rituals for ancestors are performed at various sites within the community. Ancestor altars consist of a stone or group of stones placed at the entry vestibule of a house, in the courtyard, in the public plaza, or in a family field. The eldest male in the lineage presides at the annual ancestral rites. Through a series of prayers and offerings, the ancestors are invoked in order to gain their positive involvement in lineage affairs. Offerings and sacrifices regularly include millet flour mixed with water, masticated kola nuts, millet beer, and the blood of a chicken or goat. Offerings are poured over the stone altars and sometimes smeared on the wooden supports of the main doorway to the house (Dieterlen 1951; Zahan 1974). Rites are also performed for the village’s protective spirit (dasiri). The protective spirit, who inhabits either a spring, rock, or tree, is associated

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with the founding of the village and the ground which the community occupies. An animal is designated as the spirit mount, and it is protected until it is sacrificed during the annual ritual. The senior male from the founder’s lineage presides over all dasiri rituals and, during the annual rite, the village’s founding is reenacted and the community is symbolically renewed. Offerings and sacrifices to the protective spirit are also made throughout the year, when the village is involved in any intense labor connected with the land, including farming, fishing, hunting and surface mining (Zahan 1974). Many Bamana men regularly participate in one or more initiatory societies throughout their lifetimes. Annual society rituals are contexts for the exploration of arcane knowledge. The prayers and sacrifices that constitute these rites are intended to harness and control physical and social forces for the benefit of the members and the community at large. The forces harnessed by these various men’s associations are materially manifested in their various masks and shrine objects (boliw). In many Muslim Bamana villages, initiatory societies are defunct, although in non-Muslim communities, these men’s associations are still active and play a central role in the religious life of the community. Historically, every Bamana community had a Ndomo society. Its members were uncircumcised boys and the society’s primary objective was to foster a spiritual awakening in its members and to socialize boys into adult men. The boys were circumcised in the final year of their participation in the Ndomo society. Zahan interpreted the five stages of Ndomo and their distinct emblems as symbolizing the creation myth and the awakening of the spiritual and social aspects of the individual (Zahan 1974). After leaving Ndomo, young males could be initiated into one or more of the men’s societies (Komo, Nama, Nya, Jo, and Korè). These societies provided men with access to knowledge about the human condition and the nature of the universe. Zahan suggested that these men’s initiatory societies were organized hierarchically and formed an organic whole (Zahan 1974). However, more recent studies by McNaughton among

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others suggest that while Ndomo was ubiquitous throughout the Bamana areas, the different men’s associations were unequally distributed throughout south-central Mali. There seems to be a high degree of interchangeability of ideas, responsibilities, and activities among several of the different men’s associations which flourished in Bamana communities. For example, Komo, Kono, and Nya associations were all charged with controlling sorcery which threatened the stability and continuity of the community (McNaughton 1979).

Bamana History The origins and early history of the Bamana are obscure. The term kuffâr banbara appeared in the Tarik al Sudan written by Al-Sa di, a Muslim cleric living in Djenne around 1652. The term was used to describe war-like non-Muslim populations living in the savannah zone south of Djenne (Al-Sa di [translated by Houdas, 1964]). Early French ethnographers tied the etymology of Bamana (to refuse a master) to migration histories, which claimed that the Bamana originally left their country of origin in southern Mali and moved into their present location to escape domination by the Mali empire sometime prior to the seventeenth century (Delafosse 1912; Monteil 1924). It was in the early eighteenth century that the Bamana consolidated political power in the zone and created the warrior states of Segou and Kaarta. Segou was the more powerful and influential of the two Bamana states and, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Coulibaly rulers of Kaarta were at various times allies or enemies of Segou. Today, many Bamana share a historical identification with these powerful precolonial warrior states. The Segou state emerged in the early eighteenth century. Its founder was Mamari Coulibaly (also known as Biton Coulibaly) and he ruled from 1712–1755. Essentially a warlord, Coulibaly organized a large standing army (tonjon), whose numbers were continually augmented by the incorporation of slaves into the fighting force. Following Biton Coulibaly’s death, his son, Dekoro, became the

Bantu Philosophy

faama (warlord), but he was soon assassinated by his own troupes. Dekoro was followed by Biton’s second son, Ali, who ruled for only a few weeks. A period of anarchy followed during which there were continual wars over succession. During this 30-year period, several military leaders took temporary control of the state. In 1766, Ngolo Diarra became the faama. He quickly instituted administrative reforms, which undermined the authority of the military leadership and firmly established his lineage as the ruling dynasty. Through continual warfare, Ngolo Diarra extended Segou’s authority over trading towns north to Timbuktu, south into the Malinké areas of Kangaba (in present day Mali) and over the gold fields of Siguiri (in present day Guinea). He also fought a series of wars with Kaarta to the west and with the Mossi state to the east, striking deep into their territories (Roberts 1987). His son, Monzon, led from 1792 to 1808, and Monzon’s son, Da Monzon from 1808 to 1827, maintaining Segou’s political authority over this large area; but, after 1827, Segou began a slow decline. Segou was defeated in 1862 by the invading Toucouleur armies of El Hadj Oumar Tall. The Diarra rulers became a dynasty in exile, although men loyal to them continued to wage a guerilla war against the Toucouleur. In 1890, the French forces defeated the Toucouleur and took Segou City. Colonel Archinard reinstated Mari Diarra, the son of Da Monzon Diarra, as faama. However, 2 years later, the French executed Mari Diarra for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Captain Underberg and the French troups resident in Segou City. Despite the demise of Kaarta and Segou, the Bamana continued to play important roles in local and regional politics throughout the colonial period. They continue to play a central role in the national political life of the postcolonial Malian republic.

See Also ▶ Mande Area: The History of Religious Systems ▶ Order

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Bibliography Al-Sa’di, Abd Al-Rahman Ibn Abd Allah. Tarikh es-Soudan. ed. and trans. by O. Houdas, Rpt. of 1898 to 1900 edition. Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1964. Belcher, Stephen Paterson. 1998. Heroes at the borderline: Bamana and Fulbe traditions in West Africa. Research in African Literatures 29 (1): 43–65. Couloubaly, Pascal Baba. 1993. The narrative genre among the Bamana of Mali. Research in African Literatures 24 (2): 47–60. Delafosse, Maurice. 1912 Haut Sénégal-Niger. 3 vols. Paris: Emile Larose. Dieterlen, Germaine. 1951. Essai sur la Religion Bambara. Paris: Presses Universitaires. Imperato, Pascal J. 1986. The historical dictionary of Mali. 2nd ed. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press. Jonckers, Danielle. 1993. Autels sacrificiels et puissances religieuses: le Manyan (Bamana-Minyanka, Mali). Systemes de pensee en Afrique noire; cah. 12, p. 65–101: foto’s. Konare, Alpha, and Adam Ba Konare. 1983. Grandes Dates du Mali. Bamako: Editions Imprimeries du Mali. McNaughton, Patrick. 1979. Secret sculptures of Komo art and power in Bamana (Bambara) initiation associations. Working papers in the traditional arts. IV. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Monteil, Charles. 1924. Les Bambara du Séqou et du Kaarta. Paris: Emile Larose. Pâques, Viviana. 1954. Les Bambara. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Roberts, Richard. 1987. Warriors, merchants and slaves: The state and the economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zahan, Dominique. 1974. The Bambara. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Bantu Philosophy Jan Knappert Harpenden, Herts, UK Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Reverend Placid Tempels, who spent many years among the Luba people of the Kasai province of Zaïre, published Bantu Philosophy (1946), presenting his interpretation of their cosmology. This book, which has never been translated adequately into English, has been both highly praised and criticized. Debates have centered around Jan Knappert: deceased.

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issues of representation and the extent to which Luba cosmology corresponded with Tempels’ interpretation, or whether Bantu Philosophy was a creative invention of a sympathetic European missionary. Tempels undeniably touched on profound aspects of many African traditional thought. This is the concept of strength-to-live, in the French translation force vitale, in English “life force,” and in Luba, ngulu. The Swahili word, nguvu, which corresponds to “strength to live” refers to the force that a living being requires to continue life against all odds. A careful comparison of the sources suggests that this concept of life-strength among Bantu-speaking peoples is identical to the Polynesian concept of mana, that is, strength, wisdom, and skill. These assets may derive from the ancestors; consequently, a wise person will stay on good terms with his or her ancestors by means of sacrifice. In return, the ancestors provide life-force. In contrast, should the ancestral spirits feel neglected, they will withdraw their blessing (Swahili: radhi) and sickness will ensue. In sum, there is a continuity of reciprocal relations from generation to generation. A person who possesses this élan vital is not only strong in the physical sense, but also powerful. In Swahili, they say ana nguvu for “he has strength” or “he has power.” In the case of a man, he will be influential in his village, hold a healthy herd of cattle and crops, and have many wives, children, and friends. He will be healthy and rich. Such a man is admired and envied, but never crossed. In the case of a woman, ana nguvu, it means she has had many children who are all healthy so that they will support her in old age. A child is said to have hana nguvu when “it has no strength” or is expected to die soon. Children learn, through proverbs, that each living being has an asset by which it survives. This may be strength or vital force as well as authority, as in the Zulu word amandla, the secret of influencing people. The possession of magic is also considered an asset, which adds to a person’s life and health or may be used to destroy enemies, as when the spitting cobra blinds a man. As construed by Tempels, Bantu Philosophy is an articulation of the close relationship between people and nature.

Bantu Philosophy

Bantu Cosmology Cosmology, in the traditional anthropological context, refers to the total worldview of a given people in a given period of their history, including concepts of both the physical and spiritual world. This is contrasted to a modern, scientific world of materialism in which matter is privileged as existence; nor does God have a place in the philosophy of evolutionists and historical materialists. Theories of Bantu Philosophy assumed that two worlds were taken for granted within the sphere of traditional African cosmology – the visible and the invisible. The visible world is supposed to be only appearance, while the invisible world (which is more important) governs people’s lives. This is the world of the spirits who are always around and who may be good, benign, rational, evil, dangerous, or whimsical. The character of the spirits that populate the invisible world differs greatly according to local African contexts. These are adapted to areas undergoing Islamization or Christianization, and new rituals are introduced to appease spirits perturbed by the influence of missionaries who unsuccessfully, in turn, attempted to terminate these practices.

Localization and Categorization of the Spirit World Much of the anthropological focus of attention on spirits supposes that traditional African thought perceives them to be all around and invisible except through magic incantations. The presence of spirits (particularly those of ancestors) does seem to be concentrated in the earth. The site may not necessarily be the grave but rather inside caves, at the bottom of deep pits or crevasses which may be gates to the Underworld. Offerings may be brought, oracles heard, and a brave man may even descend there to meet his ancestor in the corridors, in like manner as Ulysses, Aeneas, and Orpheus. The spirits may be consulted regarding the future which they know for, unlike mortals, they are supposedly superior.

Bantu Philosophy

Many spirits are thought to live under water. Some African narratives tell of a hero or heroine diving into a river and reaching the Other World, where the inhabitants know more than human beings. As in ancient Rome, the “house spirits” (Lares and Penates) live in areas of a house visited infrequently by humans. They may appear as snakes, mice, spiders, or, particularly, birds. Anyone familiar with the language of birds may learn the future, the cause of illness, famine, or other disasters. Not all spirits are ancestral. Some are nature spirits who belong to the earth, the water, or the forest; some are so powerful that they are called gods as in the great rivers or oceans. The Nile was revered in Egypt as a god, and the Itoeru and the Bangala of Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) revere Libanza as the god of the river Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The coastal peoples of Angola and Natal revere the ocean as a god, while many Bantu-speaking peoples honor the earth as Mother Goddess or the forest as god or goddess with individual trees as either spirits or inhabited by spirits. Bantu Philosophy, as it has been represented by western anthropology, is based on the acceptance of the spirit as first reality, where the physical world is the expression, the apparent form of the invisible spirits’ will and intelligence. In the same way as a person’s actions reflect the will of his own spirit (mind, soul), so the spirits may manifest themselves by physical means, causing rain or drought, good failed crops, disease or good health, fertility or infertility. Spirits may also appear in the shape of a person, either someone who has died or possessing and speaking through a living person (compare Luke 8:30). The invisibility of spirits makes it impossible to count them, so they may be seen as a collectivity. In addition, their behavior is unpredictable; consequently, they must be approached in fear. Above all the spirits and gods, there is the Creator who is everywhere.

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not philosophy in the same way as that of Hegel and Kant. This is inaccurate, for philosophy cannot be monopolized. Philosophy is a profound and logical reflection about life, the spiritual world, the position of human beings in the cosmos, and their relations with the environment. Real philosophy – if there is such an entity – is rooted and developed over centuries in each culture and country. In Africa, philosophy as a field of study is still being created as oral traditions are slowly recorded and documented. Brilliant pioneers in these areas include Abimbola, Awolalu, Danquah, Mbiti, Idowu, Nketia, Shaaban Robert, Vilakazi, and Laye. The concept of Bantu Philosophy, which Placid Tempels advanced, is a spiritualist philosophy because it recognizes the spirits of human beings as the primary agents of conception, perception, comparison, distinction, and classification. The unique structure of the Bantu languages already offers the classification of all categories of beings in the universe in a readymade system – a philosophy of language. Neither does Bantu Philosophy deny (as in Western philosophy) the validity of the spirits of the animals as thinking beings along with human beings, yet distinct from them. On this topic, western philosophy is only just catching up.

See Also ▶ African Language, Prayers and Hymns in ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ Being ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Religion, African Scholars of ▶ Tempels, Placide

Bibliography Conclusion The phrase, Bantu Philosophy, has been criticized by some western philosophers, who claim that it is

Fernandez, James. 1982. Bwiti: An ethnography of the religious imagination in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jacobson-Widding, Anita, ed. 1991. Body and space: Symbolic models of unity and division in African cosmology

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82 and experience. Uppsala studies in cultural anthropology. Vol. 16. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Kagame, Alexis. 1956. La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l’Etre. Bruxelles: Academie Royal des Sciences Coloniales. ———. 1989. The problem of “man” in Bantu philosophy. The African Mind 1 (1): 35–40. Luaka lu Meno. 1976. L’etre des bantu: manuel de metaphysique bantu. Kinshasa: s.n. Mujynya, Edmond N. 1978. L’homme dans l’univers des Bantu. 2nd ed. Kinshasa: Presses universitaires du Zaire. Neugebauer, C. 1990. Ethnophilosophy in the philosophical discourse in Africa: A critical note. Quest 4 (1): 43–64. Nkurunziza, Deusdedit R.K. 1989. Bantu philosophy of life in the light of the Christian message: A basis for an African vitalistic theology. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Tempels, Placide. 1959. Bantu philosophy. Paris: Presence Africaine. ———. 1977. Le concept fondamental de l’ontologie Bantu: texte inedit. Kinshasa: Departement de philosophie et religions africaines, Faculte de theologie catholique.

Bapostolo, Apostolic Church of John Maranke or Vapostori Bennetta Jules-Rosette Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

The Bantu term “Bapostolo” means Apostles. Although this appellation may be applied to various churches of the Apostolic type involving faith-healing, it is generally used with reference to a specific group, the Apostles of John Maranke. John Maranke, an indigenous Shona prophet, founded the Apostolic Church in the Umtali district of Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in 1932. This prophetic and visionary movement includes faith-healing, prophecy, and a syncretic interpretation of the Bible with emphasis on the Old Testament. The group consists of a leadership hierarchy of 12 members, based at the Zimbabwean center, and over 500,000 members, called

Bapostolo, Apostolic Church of John Maranke or Vapostori

Apostles (Bapostolo or Vapostori), across several African nations – Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Congo (DRC), Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Apostles are ordained with spiritual gifts (healing, evangelism, prophecy, and baptism). Within each gift, Maranke designated ranks derived from the sacred word Lieb-Umah (meaning rabbi of the congregation). Each congregation contains three Lieb-Umahs, or spiritual leaders, for each of the four gifts. All rank-holders in a congregation constitute its Committee of Twelve Elders responsible for church governance. Local congregations are overseen by the central leadership based in Bocha, Zimbabwe. Apostolic theology involves a direct reaction to local mission churches. Maranke considered himself to be a mutumwa, or messenger, and reinterpreter of Christian doctrines. The church condones voluntary polygyny and encourages members to avoid Western medical treatment in favor of faith-healing. Confession, prophecy, and healing are at the core of Apostolic beliefs and practices. An annual Eucharist is administered at the Passover or Pendi ceremony, held on July 17 of each year at the church center in Zimbabwe, and performed in outlying regions until October of each year. Spiritual gifts and ranks are conferred by the head of the church at the Pendi. Women are ceremonial leaders of song, prophetesses, and healers. Although they hold important spiritual positions, women do not participate directly in political decision-making. During the 1940s, the Apostolic movement spread throughout Zimbabwe. Proselytizing along the line of rail, Apostles converted new members in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) and Malawi (then Nyasaland) as early as 1948. The first Congolese member of Lunda origin, Nawezi Petro, joined the church in Southern Rhodesia in 1952. After a series of healing and visionary experiences, Nawezi and his wife, Marie Tshibola, returned to the Katanga Province, where they converted family members and associates. By 1956, the church had spread to the Kasai provinces of Congo and as far north as the capital, Kinshasa (then Léopoldville). Several

Bapostolo, Apostolic Church of John Maranke or Vapostori

schisms eventually developed in the Zairian branch of the Apostolic movement, including a major rift between Nawezi and his brother-in-law, Musumbu Pierre. Musumbu’s status as the official leader of the Congolese branch was confirmed at the Bocha church center in 1974. A similar pattern of growth and schism took place in Angola and Mozambique, where the Apostolic Church grew rapidly during the 1970s and early 1980s. The largest congregations are located in southwestern Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, and the Shona areas of eastern Zimbabwe. Maranke established the framework for Apostolic liturgy in the 1930s. The weekly Sabbath service consists of hymns in Shona, intermixed with songs in local dialects. Ceremonies outside of Zimbabwe are held in multiple languages and vary from one congregation to another, while retaining a basic format and order of worship established by John Maranke. All congregations recognize Maranke as a prophet and founder. The movement, however, is not messianic, and Maranke does not occupy a divine status. Apostolic doctrine and beliefs combine local traditional customs – in particular, marriage and healing patterns derived from the Shona, with elements of Christian doctrine. The charismatic appeal of the church centers around its faithhealing activities. After Maranke’s death in 1963, leadership of the church passed to his two eldest sons, Abel and Makebo, who continued the pattern of centralized control. Makebo died in the mid-1980s, and Abel continued to head the church until his death in 1992, followed by Clement Sithole, a younger son of John Maranke. A smooth succession took place within the church hierarchy at Bocha. Within the framework of its established doctrines, the Apostolic Church adapts itself to changing conditions of the wider society. During the 1980s, some members of the Apostolic Church were involved in the chimurenga (Zimbabwean liberation struggle). Although, as pacifists, they could not bear arms, some members, nevertheless, supported various sectors of the liberation movement. More recently,

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Zimbabwean Apostles have become involved in the ecology (“Green”) movement in Zimbabwe, viewing the replanting of trees as a holy act. Since the 1970s, the Bapostolo of Congo (DRC) underwent persecution under the dictatorship of President Mobutu Sese Seko. Their civil status was removed in 1971, although they continued to worship clandestinely. Selected congregations of the church are now recognized by the Congolese government, but they are under constant scrutiny. In the other nations to which the church has spread, membership is on the rise, with an amalgam of rural and urban and proletarian and elite members. The Apostolic Church is an example of doctrinal and ritual innovation in African Christianity. Its cultural and political resiliency is indicative of the changing theological and organizational trends of Africa’s new religions.

See Also ▶ Maranke, John ▶ Movements, African Religious ▶ Movements, Pentecostal and Charismatic

Bibliography Aquina, Mary O.P. 1967. The people of the spirit: An independent church in Rhodesia. Africa 37: 203–219. Daneel, M.L. 1971. Old and new in southern shona independent churches, Vol. I: Background and rise of the major movements. The Hague: Mouton. Heimer, Haldor Eugene. 1971. The Kimbanguists and the Bapostolo: a study of two African independent churches in Luluabourg, Congo, in relation to similar churches and in the context of Lulua traditional culture and religion. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1973. Bapostolo ritual an African response to Christianity. Waltham: ASA. ———. 1975. African apostles: Ritual and conversion in the church of john Maranke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———, ed. 1979. The new religions of Africa. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Maranke, John. 1953. The new witness of the apostles. Translated by J.S. Kusotera. Bocha, Rhodesia. Murphree, Marshall W. 1969. Christianity and the Shona. New York: Humanities Press.

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Bebey, Francis

Works by Bebey

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Rigobert Obongui and Anthony Mangeon 1 Paris, France 2 Lycée Younoussa Bamana, Mamouzou, Mayotte, France 3 Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France 4 Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Francis Bebey is a writer and musical performer, winner of the Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire (1967). Born in Douala, he attended primary and secondary schools in Cameroon. He was granted a scholarship to study in France, where he graduated from high school and received a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the Sorbonne. In 1957, he was a member of the francophone staff of Radio-Ghana in Accra. In 1958, he was trained in radio broadcasting in France and later in New York. In 1961, he entered the department of communication at UNESCO and was appointed chief of the music program in the department of culture. In 1963, He began giving musical performance and undertook a study on modern African music while touring African countries. This work was published in 1967 and won him the qualification of musicologist from some critics. In 1974, he resigned from UNESCO and now devotes his life to writing and performing around the world. Francis Bebey has developed an original style with a double blending of literature and traditional African music with European genres. His award-winning novel, Agatha Moudio’s Son (1967, 1971), also became a hit song all over Africa.

Bebey, Francis. 1963. La radio-diffusion en Afrique noire. Paris: Saint Paul. ———. Le fils d’Agatha Moudio. Yaoundé, Clé, 1967. Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique noire. (Trans. Agatha Moudio’s Son, Ibadan: Heinemman, 1971). ———. 1969. Musique de l’Afrique. Paris: Horizons de France. ———. 1970. Embarras et Cie. Yaoundé: Clé. ———. 1972. Trois petits cireurs. Yaoundé: Clé. ———. 1973. La poupée Ashanti. Yaoundé: Clé. ———. 1977. Le roi Albert d’Effidi. Yaoundé: Clé. ———. 1982. Concert pour un vieux masque. Paris: Harmattan. ———. 1989. La lune dans un seau tout rouge. Paris: Hatier. ———. 1992. Le ministre et le griot. Paris: Sepia. ———. Propos sur l’écriture et la musique. In Black accents: Writing in French from Africa, Mauritius and the Carribean, ed. Janet and Roger Little, 1997. London: Grant and Cutler.

Bibliography Ackard, Josette. 1985. Le roman cemerounais et la critique. Paris: Silex. Bebey Kidy (dir.). 2002. Francis Bebey : l’homme orchestre. Paris: L’Harmattan. https://fr.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Kidi_Bebey Bjornson, Richard. 1991. The African quest for freedom and identity: Cameroonian writing and the national experience. Bloomington, Ia [etc.]: Indiana University Press, cop. Eno-Belinga, Baratte Thérèse. 1978. Ecrivains, cinéastes et artistes camerounais, biobibliographie. Yaoundé: Centre d’édition et de production pour l’enseignement et la recherche. Ibnlfassi, Laila. 1996. African francophone writing: A critical introduction. Oxford: Berg. Mukobo, Manzanza, and Ngabala Bubengo. 1990. La tradition negro-africaine vue par Mongo Beti et Francis Bebey. Annales aequatoria 11: 327–349. Ndachi Tagne. 1993. Francis Bebey. Paris: L’Harmattan. Rial, Jacques. 1972. Littérature camerounaise de langue française. Lausanne: Payot.

Being George Joseph French and Francophone Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA

See Also ▶ Music, Philosophy, and Culture

Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy began a major trend in studies of African philosophy and

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religion. Despite internal technical disagreements, the Tempels school has come to stand for the claim that a concept of dynamic “vital force,” revealed in the Bantu root syllable ntu, is an African counterpart to the Aristotelian understanding of static “being” derived from Greek uses of the verb “to be.” Ntu implies that force is being rather than a mere property of being. Grammatically, ntu never exists alone but always in combination with prefixes that determine specific class and tonality. Muntu (pl. Bantu), for example, signifies any force with intelligence, including ancestors and the supreme, uncreated God. Opposed to an ontology of distinct and independent beings, ntu is a generic term for a hierarchical system of interacting forces, which grow or diminish at the expense or to the advantage of each other. Dead bantu have less being than the living, but continue to manifest themselves through their descendants – hence the importance of ancestors. Among the living, relations of force follow principles of primogeniture. Furthermore, intelligent beings can capture the forces of things, as well as intelligences. Thus, a ruler draws political force from both possessions and people. Ethically speaking, good is that which increases force, and evil is that which diminishes it. Tempels intuited the concept of vital force out of his local experience with the Luba people, as a hypothesis to be tested on a larger scale. He immediately found a favorable response among such influential Africans as Alioune Diop, Cheikh Anta Diop, and L. S. Senghor, for whom the concept of vital force is generalizable as a major aspect of African “difference.” The European anthropologist Griaule sees parallels between the Bantu and the Dogon. Sadji finds similarities with Wolof. Kagame, Mulago, and Mujynya apply a more sustained and rigorous method based on linguistics. Critics of Bantu philosophy (e.g., Hountoundji and Wiredu) oppose a strict definition of philosophy to Tempels’ “ethnophilosophy,” which derives implicit philosophies from traditional African thought-systems. Césaire denounces the missionary agenda of Bantu philosophy to convert the “primitive” Bantu to Christianity. Others such

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as p’Bitek or Tshiamalenga deny that “vital force” has a general validity for all of Africa, whereas Beti finds it simply an example of a “vitalist animism” that can be found in all cultures at a certain stage of their development. Despite the methodological weaknesses of its founder, the Tempels school, nevertheless, provides a philosophical justification for aspects of African culture that are inexplicable in EuroAmerican terms. Some examples: a traditional African ruler can lose legitimacy if there is a drought; someone is always held responsible when someone else dies; and genealogical praise songs traditionally caused warriors to throw themselves against overwhelming enemies.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ Animism ▶ Bantu Philosophy ▶ Ethnophilosophy ▶ Religion, African Scholars of ▶ Tempels, Placide

Bibliography Appiah, K.A. 1992. In my father's house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York/Oxford: Oxford U.P. Beti, M., and O. Tobner. 1989. Dictionnaire de la négritude. Paris: Harmattan. Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations with Ogotemmêli (1948). Oxford: Oxford U.P. Joseph, George. 1979. “The Wolof Oral Praise Song for Semu Coro Wende.” Research in African Literatures. 10(3):145–178. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. N'Daw, A. 1983. La Pensée africaine. Recherches sur les fondements de la pensée négro-africaine. Dakar: NEA. Témoignages sur La Philosophie bantoue. Présence Africaine 7: 252–278. (1949–50) Tempels, Le P. Placide La Philosophie bantoue (1945) Pref. A. Diop. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1949. (Bantu Philosophy. Paris: PA, 1959).

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Belief, Anthropological Studies of Rene Devisch Deptartment of Anthropology, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

The scientific preoccupation with studying beliefs, as representations or as dispositions, manifested by “others” paradoxically prevents the researcher from recognizing whatever truth there may be contained within them, as FavretSaada (1977) so aptly stressed. Auge (1979) provided a review of idealist, materialist, Marxian, and Durkheimian sociological perspectives, which presuppose that a more fundamental reality lurks behind people’s shared beliefs and their dispositions to act or feel in certain ways. These studies are concerned with topics of conviction or commitment such as deities, spirits, ancestors, and the after-life, sorcerers, and objects associated with powers (which older terminology called fetishes and magic). From this viewpoint, beliefs and inner dispositions are reduced to mere epiphenomena, for they are held as imaginary constructs or mistaken commitments, ignorant of their very functions. It is claimed that the raison d’etre, or principal function of belief, pertains to cultural evolution (the law of progression from magic to religion and then to science) and factors such as material conditions of production, basic human needs, and/or the natural tendency of a group towards social integration. For the most part, these objectivist scientific approaches draw on modernist epistemological approaches regarding experience and factuality. Despite a basic reliance on observation, the social scientist paradoxically adopts a visual approach to beliefs, whereas the latter involves an inner mental act related to the nonmaterial. Unable to observe people’s inner dispositions to act or feel in certain ways, most sociologists limit themselves to studying beliefs as mere representations and occurrences, which they regard to be social facts somehow external to the individual. Beliefs

Belief, Anthropological Studies of

are seen as either expressive (such as the ancestral cult) or operative facts (such as blessings and puberty or initiation rituals that undergird social concerns). Structural and functionalist anthropological approaches claim to reach beyond people’s beliefs, bypassing their cosmological or supernatural constructs in order to explain social beliefs. They, therefore, postulate that notions of deities, spirits, or supernatural intervention are nothing more than uncritical or irrational popular discourse on society’s attempt to impose regularity, determinism, social divisions, inequality, and privileges on group members. Mary Douglas (particularly her studies of 1970, 1975, and 1978) has put forward a sociological theory of knowledge offering a hypothesis that would provide a framework for the crosscultural comparison of beliefs. Douglas operates within the functionalist tradition of British social anthropology and has been very much inspired by Durkheim and the methods of the physical sciences. She has dealt with recordable beliefs as mere observed occurrences pertaining to social structure and behavior patterns. Desirous of overcoming scientific determinism, she has employed an interpretive approach to individual and communal experience that has been termed socialaccounting. In this perspective, an individual holds beliefs in common with other persons belonging to his group; these beliefs constitute shared assumptions – some of which are beyond argument – utterly basic to the thought processes of every member. For Douglas, the goal of the investigation is to uncover the relationship between social structure and cosmological constructs, and those social factors that place pressures upon and mold belief systems and mold. She holds that the results of such inquiry must be open to validation, in spite of the fact that the objects of analysis are subjectively held beliefs. How are we, then, to compare cultures objectively? Douglas proposes that we identify each belief with particular rules of behavior. Beliefs, thus examined, are no longer understood to be mere noble sentiments, but applied beliefs – beliefs in action or moral principles invoked to some socially useful end. Norms may, in fact, be derived, she maintains, from concrete, observable patterns of behavior

Belief, Anthropological Studies of

and from beliefs in the sorts of automatic sanctions, which are held to account for misfortune; cultures can, therefore, be compared in their very responses to misfortune. Further, an individual appeals to assumptions commonly held by all members of a group in the effort to justify his own behavior, or to pass judgments on the actions of fellow society members. These are the social principles that an observer seeks to uncover in processes of social accountability, that is, the attribution of social blame and responsibility; the most predominant concerns are, of course, disclosed through actions of mutual coercion. Social systems of control are, in turn, validated by society’s appeal to these fundamental assumptions. In cases related to reproductive afflictions, for example, a sacrifice intended to appease some supernatural entity is offered, thus revealing belief in a vengeful superhuman power. On another level, wives are persuaded to remain faithful by invoking the sanction of miscarriage. The Lele of Kasai in Zaire believe that they can, in fact, do something to bring on the rains; this becomes an instrument of control useful for goading lazy farmers into life. The social scientist should not ask whether or not these beliefs are valid, but uncovers these in an objective way by looking at their practical application within their social context. The researcher may infer the institutionalized, actionable, and moral values through observation of their use, products, and functions to deduce certain beliefs, which that society maintains as attributes of superhuman or divine power. In any event, the range of an individual’s beliefs is determined by the social structure, since coherence within the group is a fundamental necessity; further, a society is obliged to adhere to the whole bundle of convictions. The Zande of Sudan, for example, are open to a wide variety of propositions regarding the nature of God, precisely because they do not impinge immediately upon group life. Yet, the Zande are utterly adamant in their adherence to witchcraft beliefs since they are perceived to be socially relevant. There is clearly a large amount of selectivity in adherence to, or compliance with, particular affirmations or beliefs, and the principles of choice are embedded in the social institutions.

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In order for the system of social accountability to function properly, explanations and qualities are attributed to invisible powers and agreed upon by members of the group. Colin Turnbull (1961) has suggested that the Bambuti in the Ituri forest of Congo scorn threats of misfortune, which their Bantu neighbors take so seriously. An individual member of the group cannot appeal to or effectively lay down any particular social constraint, unless there is certain determinism involving moral rights and sanctions that is recognized by others. By studying how people handle their society’s institutions and create the conditions within which their beliefs acquire some plausibility, we can arrive at a certain knowledge of their belief system in its social context. The version of reality offered by the group is naturally anchored to the local system of accountability. Douglas suggests that we look for coherence between the social and belief systems, between the social structure and the symbol system, in relation to social activity. Thus, the study of beliefs is carried forward to an investigation of social relation and social meaning, for cognitive assumptions follow behavioral patterns and all meanings are social meanings in the end. What does it mean, then, to talk of witches and demons? Douglas maintains that cosmologies are privileged domains protected by social process. She claims that Evans– Pritchard’s research on the Zande clearly demonstrated the social construction of knowledge. Zande beliefs sustain the group’s moral values and institutions: the use or application of beliefs is circumscribed by the social structure. Thus, magic and witchcraft become vehicles for social concern. The Zande witchcraft system, for example, allows neither commoners to accuse aristocrats nor sons to accuse fathers of witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard (1951) himself describes his Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande as an attempt to make a number of Zande beliefs – which otherwise might easily be dismissed as mere superstitions – intelligible to European minds. In that work, he sought to expose the logic of the conceptual structures underlying Zande perception and classification of disastrous events. He supposed Zande society to be a moral system and attempted to show how beliefs form a

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comprehensible system related both to the social structure and to the individual’s everyday life. Zande do not see witchcraft as anything supernatural or paranormal – for them, it is a regrettable feature of everyday life. “There is nothing remarkable about a witch,” he stated, for witchcraft “is part of a Zande’s ordinary world” (1937). Winch (1977) has criticized Evans-Pritchard’s position which, while attempting to do justice to the logic of the Zande conceptual scheme, now and then betrays itself with comments such as: “obviously there are no witches.” In the end, Evans-Pritchard makes of science a norm for his conclusions: the scientific conception agrees with what reality actually is like, while the Zande – magical – conception does not. He appears to assume that the method for demonstrating the reality of any particular phenomenon belongs only to scientific investigation. In other words, while Evans-Pritchard is among the first to take Zande thought patterns seriously, weighing them in their own right and affirming their coherence, he, nevertheless, approaches their belief system with preconceived notions as to the “real” way to achieve knowledge of reality. When all is said and done, one knows that Zande witchcraft beliefs are not “true.” In his Marett Lecture, Evans-Pritchard (1962) later contended that anthropology should be classed among the humanities rather than among the natural sciences, for it purports to approach societies as moral rather than natural systems. It seeks patterns, not laws, and interprets instead of explaining. Beliefs, Evans-Pritchard (1965) argues, are not to be accounted for as mere representations and occurrences, that is, as facts of observation, but as culture-specific dispositions or interior states displayed through ritual and custom. The Nuer language, in comparison, appears to lack any term corresponding to the English expression, “I believe.” In his discussion of the Dinka concept of self-knowledge, Godfrey Lienhardt (1961) indicates how the whole area of “mind” and “experience” is construed quite differently compared to Western cultures. For these reasons, Rodney Needham (1972) has offered a fundamental reflection on the concepts

Belief, Anthropological Studies of

of belief and has assembled lexicons related to belief in several languages, with a particular concern for illuminating the relation between belief and experience. Needham has also been preoccupied with the question of whether the capacity for belief is a phenomenon common to all of humankind and concluded that the Western concept of belief should not be accorded the status of an anthropological concept. There is, he contends, no distinct experience that may be considered naturally typical of the human species, and belief, in particular, is not a behavior shared by all humankind. Further, since there is no single definition of experience that is universally applicable, Needham proposes that the concept of “belief” be dropped from ethnography or any comparative epistemological study. Two other anthropologists, Edwin Ardener (1978) and Malcolm Crick (1976), have defended a semantic approach. They situate cultural reality in the articulation of meaning and, therefore, insist that beliefs be dealt within their own cosmological context and according to their symbolic efficacy. The purpose of studying beliefs is to gain insight into the cultural process. These authors have stressed the extent to which anthropology constantly employs certain basic semantic concepts – such as thought, cause, experience, person, or witchcraft – belonging to given worldviews that determine reality and its meaning for the Western observer, rather than the groups being investigated. In their view, the socio-cultural process implies a construction of reality; beliefs, therefore, are shared behavioral and representational realities that are developed in the quest for power. Crick (1982) further sought to demonstrate that it is inappropriate to confuse distinct domains of discourse – recasting the beliefs of one group in terms of another’s is an error. English witchcraft, for example, existed in a culture possessing such categories as natural philosophy and theological discourse; however, it is fundamentally misleading to employ these categories to compare English with African witchcraft beliefs. Victor Turner’s (1974) cognitivist perspective investigates Ndembu beliefs in spirits, divination, therapeutic ritual, and sorcery as integral parts of the social drama, which he has called the

Beliefs, Economic and Religious

pragmatics of social transformation. Symbols transmit beliefs, values, and affects: they help to guide social or ritual actors, prevent or correct deviation, resolve social contradictions and conflicts, and instill in the actors the categories and norms belonging to their society. For Turner (1974), beliefs are but a function of the social drama and serve the purpose of social engineering. Devisch (1993) has advocated an alternative approach, which might be characterized as internal and praxiological, and aims at the empathetic disclosure of otherness in its own terms. In this perspective, beliefs are held to represent more than a cognitive system, more than communication and meaning; they are, rather, part of a highly articulated scheme of practices, events, and forces. Beliefs belong to the process of transmission of messages and forces entailed in sorcery, divination, rituals, and other social actions that both generate and disclose modes of world-making. Ultimately, beliefs are rooted in nonverbal and sensory corporeal awareness. Favret-Saada (1977) outlines a new understanding of beliefs by pointing to and revealing the practices to which they belong. She contends that the anthropologist should abandon any attempt to interpret beliefs at a distance and, instead, enter into the very fields of forces they denote. According to this last perspective, beliefs entail force fields which intertwine subjective and libidinal logics in a process that weaves together individual and collective moods of deflation, passion, aggression, and self-assertion, in and between the individual, the group, and its weltanschauung.

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Bibliography Ardener, E. 1978. Some outstanding problems in the analysis of events. The Yearbook of Symbolic Anthropology 1: 103–121. Auge, M. 1979. Symbole, fonction, histoire: Les interrogations de l’anthropologie. Paris: Hachette. Crick, M. 1976. Explorations in language and meaning: Towards a semantic anthropology. London: Malaby. ———. 1982. Anthropology of knowledge. Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 287–313. Devisch, R. 1993. Weaving the threads of life: The Khita Gyn–eco–logical healing cult among the Yaka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Douglas, M. 1970. Natural symbols. London: Barrie and Jenkins. ———. 1975. Implicit meanings. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1978. Cultural bias. London: RAI. Evans-Pritchard, E. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the azande. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1951. Kinship and marriage among the Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1962. Essays in social anthropology. London: Faber. ———. 1965. Theories of primitive religion. Oxford: Clarendon. Favret-Saada, J. 1977. Les mots, la mort, les sorts: La sorcellerie dans le Bocage. Paris: Gallimard. Lienhardt, R.G. 1961. Divinity and experience: The religion of the Dinka. Oxford: Clarendon. Needham, R. 1972. Belief, language and experience. Oxford: Blackwell. Turnbull, C. 1961. The forest people. New York: Simon and Schuster. Turner, V. 1974. Dramas, fields and metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Winch, P. 1977. Understanding a primitive society. In Rationality, ed. B.R. Wilson, 78–111. Oxford: Blackwell.

Beliefs, Economic and Religious See Also ▶ African Anthropology ▶ Ambiguity and Religion ▶ Beliefs, Economic and Religious ▶ Ifa, Divination System of ▶ Inventions, Religious ▶ Lienhardt, Godfrey ▶ Problem-Solving and Religion ▶ Religion, Anthropology of

Janet MacGaffey Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA

Anthropologists have traditionally emphasized a holistic approach to the study of society: an understanding of the integration of culture, politics, kinship, economic activities, and systems of beliefs as single complex totalities. In 1920,

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Mauss emphasized that, in small-scale societies, “exchanges and contracts concern not only men and things but also the sacred beings that are associated with them” (Mauss 1967). Recent scholarship focuses not only on how the organization of production and other economic activities structure thought, but also the reverse. In studying economics, to ignore culture – a society’s values, categories, and beliefs – is to ignore the context of economic activity. Among many non-Western peoples, modes of livelihood appear as cultural constructions, since activities for gaining a livelihood are carried out according to specific symbolic schemes. In some African societies, all of nature is believed to be under the power of the ancestors: crops, game, fish, land, and the rain are under their control. In others, the fertility of the soil, the size of the harvest, and the coming of the rains are believed to depend upon the favor of a divine ruler. Among all such peoples, economic activity is closely geared to rites that ensure positive exercise of these powers; and processes of allocation, production, distribution, and consumption are formulated through ties to these beings and persons. In such societies, surplus is not accumulated but reallocated, thus recreating the social relations on which production is based. The degree of assimilation and adaptation of these belief systems to economic change with the growth of trade, state formation, colonialism, and neocolonialism is disputed; the people concerned certainly feel deeply ambivalent about it. Among some people, new concepts of misfortune emerge in response to social and economic changes as, for example, when the drop of world commodity prices and severe unemployment is attributed to the displeasure of the ancestors. For others, beliefs change as the world to which they refer changes, and the old symbolic order is restructured – an example is the emergence of new ideas about witchcraft and sorcery. Then again, some people have resisted traditional ideas of economic redistribution in favor of individual enrichment from new economic opportunities. Changing beliefs, expressed in new cults and churches, can variously be seen to constitute, deny, or counteract the penetration of, and continuing articulation with, the world capitalist economy.

Beti, Mongo

See Also ▶ Acculturation ▶ African Anthropology ▶ Belief, Anthropological Studies of ▶ Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to ▶ Fetish ▶ Religion and Economics ▶ Religion, Anthropology of ▶ Witchcraft/Sorcery ▶ Yoruba, Conception of Wealth

Bibliography Ardener, Edwin. 1979. Witchcraft, economics, and the continuity of belief. In Witchcraft confessions and accusations, ed. Mary Douglas, 141–160. New York: Tavistock Publications. Gudeman, Stephen. 1986. Economics as culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift. Trans. I. Cunnison. London: Norton. Packard, Randall M. 1979. Social change and the history of misfortune among the Bashu of Eastern Zaire. In Explorations in African systems of thought, ed. Ivan Karp and Charles S. Bird, 237–267. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. van Binsbergen, Wim M.J. 1981. Religious change in Zambia. London: Kegan Paul International.

Beti, Mongo Bernard Mouralis University of Cergy-Pointoise, Cergy, France

Born in Mbalmayo (Cameroon), Alexandre Biyidi-Awala took the pseudonym of Mongo Beti, after that of Eza Boto. Mongo Beti began to write novels, willing to substitute to an ethnological and essentialist vision of Africa a sociological vision, which shows the tensions of the colonial society in the novels published between 1953 and 1958, or postcolonial society in the novels posterior to 1974. Main basse sur le Cameroun (1972) ends a long period of silence. Forbidden by the French Home Secretary, this essay on Cameroon from

Beti-Bulu, The Tortoise Trickster

1940 to 1972 will serve as a material for the trilogy-novel: Remember Ruben, Perpetua and the habit of unhappiness. After that, beginning in 1983, a new cycle of novels occurs, centering on the character of Guillaume Ismael Dzewatama. In 1994, Mongo Beti published a new novel, Histoire d’un fou, which shows how democratization can be a new avatar of neocolonialism. Mongo Beti also published other essays: Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais, Dictionnaire de la négritude, La France contre l’Afrique, and many articles in the review he created in 1978, Peuples noirs, peuples africains. Mongo Beti’s interest in politics interferes with an anarchist-type questioning of the roles imposed on people by society; the alliance of brothers and sisters are especially important in his imagery. Auguring the themes developed by V. Y. Mudimbe in The Invention of Africa, Mongo Beti forcefully demonstrates that the “African tradition” is a European invention, which served the aims of the colonizer. The essayist or novelist’s writing often has the sharp tone of the eighteenth-century writers, but he is also able to find the right tone to let these marginal heroes, loved by the novelist, speak.

See Also ▶ Being ▶ Literature, Religious Themes in ▶ Religious Literature in Africa ▶ Sembène, Ousmane

91 ———. 1983. Les deux Mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama, futur camionneur. Paris: Buchet-Chastel. ———. 1984. La Revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama. Paris: Buchet-Chastel. ———. 1985a. Lament for an African Pol. Washington DC: Three Continents Press. La Ruine presque cocasse d’un polichinelle. Rouen: Editions des Peuples noirs, 1979. ———. 1985b. Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um Nyobe. Rouen: Editions des Peuples noirs. ———. 1993. La France contre l’Afrique, retour au Cameroun. Paris: La Découverte. ———. 1994. L’Histoire du fou. Paris: Julliard. ———. 1999. Trop de soleil tue l’amour. Paris: Julliard. Beti, Mongo., and Odile Tobner. 1989. Dictionnaire de la négritude. Paris: L’Harmattan. Boto, Eza. 1953. (pseudonym). Ville cruelle. Paris: Présence Africaine.

Works Bjornson, R. 1990. The African quest for freedom and identity: Cameroon writing and the national experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dramé, Kandioura. 1990. The novel as transformation myth: A study of the novels of Mongo Beti and Ngugi Wa Thiongo. New York: Syracuse University. Kom, A., ed. 1993. Mongo Beti: 40 ans d’écriture, 60 ans de dissidence, Présence Francophone, #42. Québec: Univ. de Sherbrooke. Melone, T. Mongo Beti. 1971. l’homme et le destin. Paris: Présence Africaine. Mouralis, B. 1981. L’œuvre de Mongo Beti. Issy-lesMoulineaux: Editions Saint-Paul. Ndongo, Fame. 1985. Jacques. L’esthétique romanesque de Mongo Beti: essai sur les sources traditionnelles d’écriture moderne en Afrique. Paris: ABC. Ngate, Jonathan. 1988. Francophone African fiction: Reading a literary tradition, Comparative studies in African/Caribbean literature series. Trenton: Africa World Press. Stephen, Arnold, ed. 1998. Critical perspectives on Mongo Beti. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Works by Mongo Beti Beti, Mongo. 1970. King Lazarus. London: Heinemann; e Roi miraculé, chronique des Essazam. Paris: BuchetChastel, 1958. ———. 1971a. The poor Christ of Bomba. London: Heinemann; Le pauvre Christ de Bomba. Paris: Laffont, 1956. ———. 1971b. Mission to Kala. London: Heinemann. Mission terminée. Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1957. ———. 1972. Main Basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d’une décolonisation. Paris: Maspero. ———. 1978. Perpetua or the habit of unhappiness. London: Heinemann; Perpétue et l’habitude du malheur. Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1974. ———. 1980. Remember Ruben. London: Heinemann; Remember Ruben. Paris: UGE, col. 10-18, 1974.

Beti-Bulu, The Tortoise Trickster Karen R. Keim Center for International Studies, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

The tortoise is prominent as an entertaining trickster in the animal tales of the Beti and Bulu, language-based Bantu societies located in South

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Central Cameroon. Kúl or Kúlu is the epitome of intelligence and generally assumed to be male; his independent, skeptical, and fearless behavior is appropriate to the role of men in Beti and Bulu societies. Likened to an elder, Kúlu differs from many African tortoise tricksters, such as those of the Igbo and the Yoruba of Nigeria, because his cleverness is a more dominant trait than his greed; and he rarely appears to be foolish. The tortoise’s intelligence is evident in his talent for improvisation, his skill with language, and his capacity to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of others. As master of the principles taught in the So male initiation rite, Kúlu typically outwits his foes – the most important of which is the leopard. Kúlu tricks for self-gain, social status, personal survival, and the benefit of others, using his intelligence to show the weak to be strong and the strong to be weak (Mviena 1970). The trickster enables his audience to experience vicariously the triumph of one-upmanship, providing relief from the seriousness of life through humorous antics and strategic reversals of status. The moral teachings of the Kúlu tales are as important as the entertainment they offer. According to oral interviews and scholarly writings about Beti and Bulu values, the tales carry both positive and negative didactic meanings. They teach admiration for resourcefulness, disapproval of excess, the necessity of communal decision-making, and the importance of intelligence for survival and resolution of social conflict. They show that dishonesty and thievery will be discovered and punished by those with superior intelligence and that even Kúlu is subject to correction when he is confronted by a superior being or man. They also show that both trickery and gullibility are dangerous; only those with the gifts of Kúlu can challenge others repeatedly and survive, for few are clever enough to trick without bringing harm to themselves. The trickster tales reflect Beti and Bulu beliefs in ancestor and other spirits and in évu – magical power said to exist in the form of an animal and located in its abdomen, available for good or bad purposes to those able to use it (Laburthe-Tolra 1985). Kúlu is a hero considered by the Beti and Bulu to possess évu, because of his success and ability to protect himself from harm in the visible

Beti-Bulu, The Tortoise Trickster

and invisible worlds. The unusual power attributed to the tortoise as an animal is evident in Beti and Bulu ritual practices. For example, in some societies, tortoise meat is considered to possess special attributes and is reserved for specific age groups, such as elders or youth. The tortoise has been an important symbol in burials and in other ceremonies such as the ngi and the melan, believed to bring riches to initiates or provide protection from évu (Laburthe-Tolra 1985). In the tales, however, Kúlu’s relationship to évu is typical of the trickster, for, while he appears to possess dangerous and magical power, he also demystifies évu by showing that his skill is due to none other than practical trickery based on intelligence. Like many African trickster tales, the Kúlu stories illustrate the ambiguity of life – not only in the activities of the animals, but in the character of the trickster himself. Kúlu is physically weak, yet mentally strong, and able to compensate with cleverness. He is comic, yet didactic: portrayed as a slow, wrinkled tortoise with the sagacity and trappings of an elder, he suddenly becomes a severe teacher, who punishes those who are gullible or who assume authority without intelligence. The tortoise is a social outsider and a loner whom the other animals reject; however, he is also lauded as a mediator who emerges master of almost any situation. Finally, as an individualist, Kúlu excels in satisfying his own desires and protecting his life; yet, he functions as a preserver of the community who defends others, challenges inequality, and brings about social renewal. In contemporary Cameroon, Kúlu is a wellknown trickster through the publication of tales by Editions CLE of Yaounde and other Cameroonian presses. Some compare Kúlu to a famous Beti chief, Charles Atangana, who mediated between his people and colonial Europeans. Atangana would take advantage of both the Beti and the Europeans without their knowledge of his deception, because he was as gifted at concealing his own tricks as he was at uncovering the tricks of others. In modern literature, the Bulu writer Ferdinand Oyono alludes to the tortoise in novels that emphasize satirically the African loss of dignity under colonial rule – Une vie de boy (1956) and Le Vieux Nègre et la médaille (1956). Since independence, the theme of trickery in

Black Orpheus

Cameroonian society and literature has become increasingly associated with corruption, thus transforming the traditional meaning of the tortoise trickster into a popular, less admirable image.

See Also ▶ Ambiguity and Religion ▶ Ashe ▶ Conjuring and Clowning ▶ Genesis ▶ Religion and Economics

Bibliography Awouma, Joseph-M. 1970. Littérature orale africaine et comportement sociaux: Etude littéraire et socioculturelle des proverbes et contes bulus du Sud-Cameroun. Diss., University of Paris. Eno-Belinga, Martin Samuel. 1970. Découverte des chantefables beti-bulu-fang du Cameroun. Paris: klincksieck. Keim, Karen Ruth King. 1986. Trickery and Social Values in the Oral and Written Literature of Cameroon. Diss., Indiana University, Bloomington. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1987, 8704040. Laburthe-Tolra, Philippe. 1981. Les Seigneurs de la forêt. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. ———. 1985. Initiations et sociétés secrètes au Cameroun: Essai sur la religion beti. Paris: Karthala. Meva'a M'Eboutou, Michel. 1972. Les Aventures de Koulou-la-Tortue. Yaounde: Editions CLE. Mviena, P. 1970. Univers culturel et religieux du peuple beti. Yaounde: Yaoundensis. Noah, Jourdain-Innocent. 1973. Les contes Beti du SudCameroun: Le Cycle de Kulu la Tortue et le Cycle de Bemë le Phacochère. Dissertation, University of Paris. Towa, Marcien. 1979. L'idée d'une philosophie négroafricaine. Yaounde: Editions CLE.

Black Orpheus V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Written as a preface to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s 1948 Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, Sartre’s Black Orpheus thematized the

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Negritude movement by outlining its foundation and meaning as a political philosophy. Sartre writes: “It was in the name of ethnic qualities that the black was recently claiming his place in the sun; at present, it is upon his mission that he bases his right to life, and this mission, exactly like the proletariat, comes to him from his historical situation. Because he has more than all others, the sense of revolt and the love of liberty.” From his reading of poetry written by black French subjects, Sartre engages in a commitment to a political cause, namely, the freedom of the Black as the transcendence of the violence signified in the Hegelian master-slave representation, and formulates its requirements as not just similar but, in fact, identical to those of the proletarian movement. The argument deploys itself as a concrete rendering of three ektases, three theoretical positions of a consciousness apprehending itself as being outside itself in three successive selfdetachments: (a) temporality, in which it makes itself a particular perception of being a Black in a past or a present here and now and who is, at the same time, fundamentally future-oriented; (b) reflection, or a standing out from itself, in which the particular consciousness of the black poet seizes itself as simultaneously subject and object, as that of a divided-self actualized in its oeuvre as both a reflecting and a reflected upon self; and finally (c) the experience of the consciousness grasping and understanding itself as a being-for-others, an alienated self that tries desperately to get mastery of itself. Such is the frame denoting the paradox of Negritude, an immanent code made to be surpassed in its own antithetical affirmations. These are powerfully expressed in a hellish descent into a self: the poet, now, an existential sign, “falling into trances, thrashing about on the ground like one possessed of himself, signing his wrath, his pain, his revulsion, displaying his wounds, his life torn between ‘civilization’ and his ancient black heritage, in brief, behaving lyrically to the highest degree.” And commenting on such an explosion, Sartre adds that in this process, speaking in his own name, the black poet speaks for all Negroes. Sartre’s representation of the black poet as Orpheus suggests a riddle as to what the ancient Greek myth might symbolically allow. Thus, on

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the one hand, there are the hieratic and prophetic powers of Orpheus, the gifted son of Apollo and a Muse, a master singer whose immense repertoire includes foundational epics, ritual poetry, political oracles, and healing songs; on the other hand, there is the matter of how to join the passion of the Negritude poet to the most known version of Orpheus’ failed quest for Eurydice. The mythic singer has rescued his beloved Eurydice from hell, and, in the excitement of reunion, on their way to salvation, he looks back to contemplate her, thus disobeying the prescript of her liberation, which stands as the predetermined assumption of both an obligation and the condition of their happiness to come. Thus, Orpheus lost Eurydice forever. Some black theorists have interpreted with irritation this tragic ending as a symbolic coda of Negritude which appears in Black Orpheus as a weak moment made for self-destruction in a dialectical process.

See Also ▶ Césaire, Aimé Fernand (1913–2008) ▶ Difference and Literature ▶ Essentialism ▶ Negritude

Blacksmith Patrick R. McNaughton Department of the History of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

There is tremendous diversity among African blacksmiths. In a great many societies, they are credited with knowledge, powers, and capacities well beyond ordinary citizens and very much in line with sorcerers, cult priests, herbalists, and soothsayers. In many societies, they also serve as mediators in all kinds of disagreements and advisors to political leaders. In many central African societies, they are even directly involved in chieftainships and kingships. Metalworking grounds

Blacksmith

their specialness, with its extensive knowledge and expertise, its complex relationships with the spiritual world, its generative orientation and its products, which are in universal demand. Blacksmiths drastically transform matter through extensive and subtly interrelated bodies of technological and spiritual expertise, with the result that a society’s capabilities and power are extended. Two interrelated technologies are used. The first is smelting, a collection of procedures to garner and prepare iron ore, combine it with various types of fuels, and fire it in carefully designed smelting furnaces to create usable iron. Smelting is technologically exacting work. In addition, from mining ore and acquiring fuel to firing the smelting furnaces, smiths generally must involve themselves in complex and potentially dangerous relationships with wilderness spirits, ancestor spirits, and the powerful forces believed to underpin the natural world and enable all activity within it. Smiths negotiate with spirits through ritual and offerings to use the land and its resources and harness the forces of nature to practice their technology successfully. The resulting iron is dramatically different from the ore that entered the furnace. People associate this transformation with ideas about fertility very frequently, imbuing it with sophisticated overtones of human sexuality and birthing. Thus, iron smelting is often experienced as one of nature’s important reproductive processes – one that requires the midwifery of special human intelligence and capabilities. Today, smelting is extremely rare. Smiths re-fabricate older implements and use discarded railroad ties and old car parts. Nevertheless, the aura of knowledge, technical expertise, and spiritual acumen are associated with smelting survives. The second collection of procedures is forging, where iron is heated to very high temperatures and carefully worked on anvils with hammers. Sophisticated abilities to conceptualize form and very refined expertise in manipulating the flow of semi-viscous iron are required, and various special techniques are also employed, such as quenching hot iron in water or using fluxes and clay molds to weld parts. Forging is considered

Blood

arduous and demands extensive special knowledge and expertise. Blacksmiths’ products range from all kinds of farming, hunting and carpentry tools to lamps, locks, weapons, and various types of art. Again, dramatic transformation is involved, as nondescript pieces of iron or old hoe blades are configured into new objects. Thus, blacksmiths are like other powerful society members such as cult priests, soothsayers, herbal doctors, and sorcerers. They all possess the mastery of secret knowledge and techniques, access to the powerful forces believed to underpin nature, familiarity, and often allegiances to deities or spirits, and the ability to make or do things that can have a significant effect on individuals, families, and communities. In many societies, people conceptualize blacksmiths as sorcerers and see them as predisposed to learning divination techniques, herbal medicine, and the ritual expertise needed to interact intensely with the realm of spirits and nature’s powerful forces. Blacksmith power and authority extend into communities in other ways. Many people consider them, their products, their workplaces, or their tools to be charged with the natural forces blacksmiths harness; so they can be used for oath taking, curing illnesses, enhancing fertility, or exacting retribution for antisocial acts. The status of blacksmiths in their societies also varies tremendously. In many areas, they are held in extremely high esteem – sometimes to the extent that they are allied with political leaders. In Central Africa, some leaders must also be blacksmiths, or at least have learned how to work iron. And, in various parts of Africa, smiths serve as advisors to leaders and as mediators in all kinds of social disruptions. In other parts of Africa, particularly among pastoralists, blacksmiths hold very low status. They may be seen as marginal society members, or as outcasts whose work renders them polluted. Sometimes the blacksmiths are organized through social, spiritual, and professional rationales into caste groups, who are restricted in their activities but protected economically. Very frequently, the social position of blacksmiths and the regard in which they are held is complicated and not adequately described as high

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or low. Smiths’ expertise and powers – plus other people’s dependency on them – create deeply ambiguous and contradictory feelings. Many members of a society, including many blacksmiths, become skilled at manipulating these feelings to gain authority or coerce cooperation, so that the conceptualized power and ambiguity of smiths become another aspect of the resources, which they offer to society and use to their own ends.

See Also ▶ Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies ▶ Genesis ▶ Kpelle ▶ Maasai (History, Religious Systems, Rituals) ▶ Mande Area: The History of Religious Systems ▶ Religion and Technology

Bibliography Alexandre, Pierre. 1973. International African Institute French perspectives in African studies: A collection of translated essays. London [etc.]: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute. Barnes, Sandra T. 1980. Ogun: An old god for a new age. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Cline, Walter. 1937. Mining and metallurgy in Negro Africa. Menasha: George Banta Publishing Company. Herbert, Eugenia W. 1993. Iron, gender, and power: Rituals of transformation in African societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McNaughton, Patrick R. 1988. The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, power, and art in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Poston, David. 1994. The Blacksmith and the farmer: Rural manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.

Blood Luise White Professor Emerita, University of Florida, Florida, USA

Like much of western understandings of Africa, the meaning of blood in Africa (as opposed to African

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blood) was related to states or, at the very least, political systems. According to some, blood was said to be the blood of sacrifices in the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century kingdoms, say Ashanti or Buganda, but it was also the blood of the feud. Unlawful deaths were compensated by bloodwealth, usually in the form of cattle. But such a general and statist emphasis on blood obscured a clearer understanding of the meaning of blood in African daily life, as well as the meaning of the various fluids that comprised blood. In most African societies, blood is the substance that signified and transferred life. Blood was mutable. Blood in one’s veins was kind of fluid, but blood outside the body was transformed and gendered by the circumstances under which it was discharged. Bloodshed in hunting or war had one name; the blood of menstruation had another. When blood was expelled with enough heat, it was purified and made clear but thicker – for example, like semen and vaginal secretions, particularly among Luba and Bemba speakers. The heat of childbirth made blood white and transformed it into breast milk. Blood was the fluid of human reproduction. Whatever the system of descent and inheritance, there seems to be key African ideas about gestation over a wide geographical and cultural area. For example, a child is formed not only from its mother’s blood among the patrilineal Azande and patrilineal Iteso, but also among the matrilineal Kaguru and Bemba. The fact that some of these societies trace descent from the mother and others from the father has to do with the social weight attributed to this scientific fact. Semen does not necessarily start a baby; it nurtures it in utero. The Bemba liken semen to rain on their gardens. In Rwanda, semen is said to fortify the woman by strengthening her blood; among the Iteso and Sotho, semen provides the matter of the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. This makes the idea of “conception” perhaps inapplicable to many African societies and suggests that anthropological obsessions with the differences between “pater” (legal father) and “genitor” (biological father) may finesse the unclear role of men in making babies. Indeed, once a child is born, semen can disrupt biological processes: among

Blood

the Mende of Sierra Leone and many East and Central African peoples, semen can overheat the blood of a nursing mother and make her milk unpalatable – hence, the postpartum taboo, whereas in Rwanda, the heat of intercourse – rather than anything to do with semen – melts the fat in a new mother’s breasts to help her produce milk. Voluntarily given or mixed blood was the fluid of affiliation – not unlike voluntarily given semen, or breast milk. Kinship was based on shared substances, with notions of sharing so important that African examples of ideas of blood purity, either at the level of family, lineage, ethnic group, or race are almost impossible to find. But while the workings of ordinary families and kinship systems were competitive, Africans made idealized relations by sharing or exchanging fluids. Milk kinship and wet nursing are virtually unexplored areas of research in Africa, but women in many places seem to have nursed other children in order to make alliances between these children and their own offspring. At the same time, shared blood enabled men to make idealized relationships in which the tensions and contradictions of rank and family were erased. In many parts of East and Central Africa, men made cuts on their arms, their stomachs, or near their nipples to share blood between unrelated men to make them “blood brothers.” Such customs were not homogenized, however: the patrilineal Azande made blood brotherhood in fluid ceremonies, which stressed the magical properties of blood, adding powerful leverage to blood pacts in a society where the role of blood, and things maternal, was reduced. The matrilineal Kaguru made blood brotherhood from blood taken from a cut near the nipple, and then each participant ate his partner’s blood from a piece of sheep’s liver, so that power of blood (on which normal, everyday kinship and its tensions were based) would be diluted. While African thinking about reproduction was challenged in this century by European biomedicine, biological thinking in Africa was dialectical: white women in South Africa deployed African ideas about gestation to secure abortions in the years before World War I. As blood brotherhood waned in this century, new ideas about

Blyden, Edward

blood emerged in African discourses. In many places in East and Central Africa, agents of the colonial state were said to roam cities and rural roads at night, seeking victims from whom they would extract blood. This was not an example of African superstition or confusion about European practices but, instead, a chilling parody of medical systems that extracted blood from the range of fluids and social relations of which it was a part. These were also beliefs in which blood was an idiom to express the violence of the colonial situation and the dependence of Europeans on African bodies. Throughout this century, even before AIDS added unheard of power and menace to African blood, blood remained a charged substance in Africa. In the 1970s, nuns in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took their vows with a blood pact that modified African and Christian practices. Years after a white South African doctor had transplanted the heart of a black woman into a white male; blood banks in South Africa were rigidly segregated.

See Also ▶ Cannibalism ▶ Food ▶ Matrilineality ▶ Purity

Blyden, Edward Pieter Boele van Hensbroek Globalisation Studies Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Edward Wilmot Blyden was probably the most celebrated and influential black intellectual in the nineteenth century, a catching and inspiring orator and writer, and a flamboyant personality. He was born in a family of free, educated blacks on the Caribbean island St. Thomas, which was a Danish

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colony at the time. At the age of eighteen he migrated via the USA to Liberia which had obtained independence as a republic only 4 years before, in 1847. He became a teacher at the Alexander Highschool and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1858. He was self-educated and well-read in Theology, Greek and Latin classics, and in a great diversity of contemporary writings. Blyden was a vivid and outspoken personality and became very active in public life in Liberia where, given the color line between darker and less dark persons, he took sides and propagated full integration of the native Africans who were discriminated against in Liberia. He took high public offices, such as Liberian ambassador to England, and was president of Liberia College, together with his friend Alexander Crummell always opposing paternalism over Africans. In 1871, he fled to Sierra Leone and started the newspaper, The Negro, to encourage “race pride” and Pan-Negroism, and he became involved immediately in the Native Pastorate Controversy about the place of Africans in the church hierarchy. Back in Liberia Blyden ran for presidency in 1885 but failed and lived the rest of his life mostly in Sierra Leone. During travels to the USA, he supported the African Colonisation Society, where he was celebrated as “the heavenly appointed medium for helping solve the (Negro) problem.” On a travel to Lagos, he strongly advocated the establishment of an independent African church, which was actually established after that in the form of the United Native African Church. After 1870 Blyden developed his philosophy of race and grew increasingly skeptical about the role of American immigrants in Africa, especially of “mulattos,” favoring people of “pure Negro blood.” He also travelled to African kingdoms inland and was impressed, and travelled to Egypt to see first-hand the roots of African high civilization. He even learned Arabic and criticized Christian missions, at some point even proposing Islam as the religion for Africa. At the same time, he generally favored colonial penetration inland. This position was not in contradiction with his philosophy of race because of the peculiar elaboration he gave to the idea that races each have their own God-given qualities and tasks. He praised the

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African’s “spirit of service . . . supple, yielding, conciliatory, obedient, gentle, patient, musical spirit” and marked it off sharply from “the Anglo-Saxon” who is “ so dreadfully determined, so intolerant and self-assertive.” He concluded from his race typology that, for the time being at least, there was a leading imperial role for the white race in Africa. Blyden was enormously influential during his long life. With his book Christianity, Islam and the Negro-Race, he attained international fame. His eloquent arguments for “race pride” and his revaluation of African life-forms and cultures inspired generations of African nationalists, such as the key Gold Coast opposition leader J.E. Casely Hayford. Despite these credentials, he is hardly discussed today in literature on African history or philosophy. Initially, Blyden followed the Abolitionist missionary discourse, aiming to “civilize Nigritia” (his A Vindication of the Negro Race). In his poetic style, he could write “raised from the slumber of the ages and rescued from stagnant barbarism” “Ethiopia shall suddenly stretch out her hands unto God.” But soon his acquaintance with inland African societies, readings in African history, and experiences with missionaries and Liberian elites turned him into a critic of Western cultural influence. In a remarkable intellectual exertion, he developed himself a complete Afrocentric approach. He adopted the contemporary vocabulary of race theory, but transformed it by proclaiming the God-given difference between the races and the world-historical mission of the Black race uniquely adapted to its “home country” Africa. He insisted on writing Negro with a capital N as a sign of race pride and agitated for PanNegroism. In a speech in 1895 in Sierra Leone, he advised: “Be yourselves .. if you surrender your personality, you have nothing left to give the world.” He was not the very first to introduce the notion “African personality,” but probably the most eloquent and spirited ever in expounding this position, which has later been called “Nineteenth Century Negritude.” His argument in the elegant essay African Life and Customs (1908) may not have been equaled in any Afrocentrist writing up to today.

Boganda, Life Religion and Politics

See Also ▶ African Philosophy in America ▶ Amo, Antonius Guilielmus ▶ Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt ▶ Imperialism, Cultural ▶ Kaoze, Stephano ▶ Poetics

Works by Blyden Blyden, Edward W. 1862. Liberia’s Offering: being addresses, sermons etc.. New York: John A. Gray. ———. 1887. Christianity, Islam and the Negro race. London: Whittingham. Repr. Edinburgh University Press (1967). ———. 1905. West Africa before Europe, and other addresses. London: C.M. Philips. ———. 1908. African life and customs. London: Philips. ———. 1920. The aims and the methods of a Liberal education for Africans. New York: G. Young.

Bibliography Holden, E. 1966. Blyden of Liberia. New York: Vantage Press. July, R.W. 1964. Nineteenth century negritude: Edward Wilmot Blyden. Journal of African History 1: 73–86. Lynch, H.R. 1967. Edward Wilmot Byden; pan-negro patriot 1832–1912. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———., ed. 1978. Selected letters of Edward Wilmot Byden. New York: Kto Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. E. W. Blyden’s legacy and questions. In The invention of Africa, 98–134. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Odamtten, H.N.K. 2019. Edward W. Blyden’s Intellectual Transformations. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Boganda, Life Religion and Politics Yarisse Zoctizoum El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico

Boganda: His Life and Religion Boganda was born into a traditional family in Bobangi (Lobaye) in the territory of UbangiChari in French Equatorial Africa, known today

Boganda, Life Religion and Politics

as the Central African Republic. According to the legend, he was taken from his peasant parents, who were later killed by soldiers in charge of the rubber production and tortuous work that had already decimated the region’s population. Boganda began his Christian education at Mbaiki in Lobaye. In 1920, he entered the Mission School of Saint Paul in the capital city of Bangi; and, upon his baptism in 1922, the European missionaries gave him the name of the apostle Bartholemew who, according to Coptic tradition, preached the Gospel to black Africans. Thus, Boganda Bartholemew seemed destined for the religious life and, in 1931 he was sent to the Seminary of Yaounde in Cameroon to pursue studies in philosophy and theology. He was ordained a priest on March 17, 1938, by Monsignor Grandin, and became the first ordained priest from Ubangi. The new ecclesiastic was bound to be influential in many missions, especially in Bakala and Grimari, in the territory of Ubangi-Chari. But, after his election as deputy in 1946, he never again served as a priest – only as a political priest. Religion had unleashed his political voice.

Boganda: The Politician Boganda was nominated by Monsignor Grandin to the legislative election for the second electoral college on November 10, 1964. In a decree dated August 14, 1945 (the Lamine Gueye Law), France had provided for the colonies to establish polling lists for two electoral colleges: one for French citizens and one for the colonized noncitizens. For the second college, the list of electors was reduced to an auxiliary of the administration and limited to certain trained civilians drafted for that service. The decree prescribed 12 categories of electors, which included nobility, elected officials, titled and decorated civilians, civil servants, retired military officers, judges, indigenous people, the ministers of the cults, veterans of the world wars, licensed merchants, and chiefs. Only this world of the privileged was to be involved in the political life of the territory.

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Boganda would keep this in mind in his successive glorious political campaigns against the colonists. The law of Lamine Gueye, which was passed on May 7, 1946, declared that “all inhabitants of the French Empire are citizens of the empire,” and greatly aided Boganda to garner the massive peasant vote. This (and that fact that he was a priest) allowed him to be elected deputy with absolutely no difficulty – thus beginning a new political life. He was sworn in in France and joined the Popular Assembly Movement (MRP), the group to which he felt most closely aligned with his Christian and social stances. Before he was seated in the French National Assembly, Boganda had the illusion of fighting colonialism and the little colonists installed by the bias of economic competition and creating, in 1948, the Cooperative Society of Ubangi-Chari Lobaye Lesse (SOCOULELE). Boganda believed in the emancipation of the Ubangians by “the struggle in economic market, the source of liberty and individual prosperity” (Zoctizoum 1983–1984). He declared to his compatriots: “You must organize your own lives, this is why I invite my tribes to organize themselves in cooperatives and together to buy the material and the means to transport the manufactured merchandise and in this way the sale in commune of the products of the earth and of our substratum all this to ease the conditions of life of our tribes” (Pour sauver un peuple, September 1948). After the defeat of this position of contest and of his own cooperative, and because he considered the MRP too detached from the situation in French Equitorial Africa, he decided to create his own party in 1950, the Social Evolution Movement of Black Africa (MESAN). In the eyes of Boganda, the MESAN would be the instrument of liberation from colonial bondage and the instrument of education of the Ubangis. The slogan was “Feed, Clothe, Arm, Educate, House.” That same year, while still a priest, he married the secretary of the MRP, a Ms. Jordan. He succeeded in garnering 10,000 votes for his reelection in June 1951, thanks to the people who supported him at the time of his arrest for protesting against the murder of a chief. Despite being abandoned by the colonial missions and administration, who preferred to help the

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candidate from the former French Popular Assembly of De Gaulle (RPF), he succeeded in being elected Mayor of Bangi in 1956. He was triumphant because the dual college (colonists and autochtons) was abolished for the municipalities by November 18, 1955, and because his opponent represented the colonists. In March 1957, he got 247,000 votes out of 256,000 votes but refused to take part in the first counsel of government of Ubangi, letting the vice presidency go to Abel Goumba. He was named to the grand council of French Equitorial Africa, becoming the principal leader. In 1958, in spite of his problems with the RPF of De Gaulle, he approved, without reservation, their propositions to form a French community with his colonies, for he did not want to sever the lines with France at any cost. Besides, he dreamed of a Latin civilization for Africa – very different from a return to African traditions. According to him, France “was not a geographical location, nor a skin color, France will live on in her culture, her technology, her laws, her ideals” (Kalck 1974). He dreamed principally of making the United States of Latin Africa. He envisioned a federation of Central African States under the name Republique Centrafricaine and composed of Ubangi-Chari, the Middle Congo, Chad, Gabon, the Belgian Free Congo, and, in a last stage, the constitution of the United States of Latin Africa, including also Angola, Cameroon, and Rwanda-Urundi, to create a large and viable economic ensemble. But, in March, he was killed in an airplane accident which was attributed to the French, Belgian, and Portuguese fear of his ambition to unite Central Africa, their colonial properties.

Boganda in the Eyes of the Peasants and the Colonists Boganda’s struggle against colonialism misconstrued and the colonists, as well as by the people, especially the peasants. In the eyes of the peasants and the colonists, he became the symbol of the anticolonial struggle in denouncing daily the extortions of the French. Yet, at the same time, if the colonial administration called him to order,

Boganda, Life Religion and Politics

then he played the game of the legalite and demanded of the French: who breaking the laws imposed by France? Who created a barrier between the whites and blacks? Who respects most the ideal of France? in what is he insolent? Is this the insolence: that a black knows just as well the French laws as a white? He criticized the colonists through a justification of human and civil rights, of the Christian conscience, the Universal France, and the land of the free. Therefore, he distinguished France from the Metropole, the colonial administration, and the values for which France stood in her work in colonialism – thus leaving France and the colonists to their own contradictions. He claimed: France, the free land, and Ubangi-Chari, the Congo land of suffering, it is impossible to bestow the name of France to the acts committed in this place. But because of the impositions, he considered that “the reconciliation will be long and difficult, only one revolution prompt and total will be able to redress the situation, for there has been committed in Ubangi-Chari in general, and in Lobaye in particular, crimes against all of humanity, crimes have been depopulating Africa for a long time and degrading forever Europe in the eyes of Africans . . . the balkanization of Africa is a crime against humanity” (Kalck 1974). The colonists were not able to comprehend that Boganda – who declared himself French and the Latin culture as essential connections between the populations of Central Africa – was able to call for a revolution against them. Africans, themselves, did not understand any longer that Boganda, who was their symbol of resistance, still continued to identify himself with French values. Yet, seeing that Boganda was a product of African tradition, Christian religion, and the politics of the times, the peasants considered him as a new incarnation of Karinou, a hero of the 1927 Gbaya revolution in the Congo. Boganda was invested by the peasants with a religious dimension that went beyond the remote Catholicism of the whites and rejoined the traditional religion. Thus, Boganda was in one place Karinou, in another Berandjoko (Komada 1974–1975), and in yet another Baram Bakie; but elsewhere he was the black Christ. This was how a popular myth on Boganda was created.

Book of the Dead, The

One said that he “walked on water, that he had on his face the star (destiny) noticed by Karinou, that he cured the lepers, that he had the magic of whites and that of the ancient gods” (Zoctizoum 1983–1984). Boganda himself disavowed this whole myth, utilizing it indirectly to mobilize the peasants to liberate themselves from the colonists with work (another myth). And, he died on Easter. For the oppressed populations, Boganda was a black Christ, if not the incarnation of the traditional gods. They did not see any difference between the politician and the religious man or the traditional man. However, the people had never adhered to their contradictory ideas on the French culture, nor on the work myth that, after Boganda’s death, served his successors (such as David Dacko, Bokassa, Kolingba, etc.) in oppressing more Central Africans.

See Also ▶ Gospel (African Religion and Christian)

Works by Boganda Boganda, Barthelemy. 1995. Barthelemy Boganda: ecrits et discours: 1946–1951, la lutte decisive. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Bibliography Cornevin. 1957. Histoire d’Afrique. Paris: Payot. Glélé, Maurice Ahanhanzo. 1981. Religion, culture et politique in Afrique Noire, Présence Africaine. Paris: Economica. Kalck, Pierre. 1974. Histoire de la R.C.A. des origines à nos jours. Paris: Berger–Levrault. ———. 1995. Barthelemy Boganda, 1910–1959: elu de Dieu et des Centrafricains. Saint-Maur-des-Fosses: Editions Sepia, cop. Komada, Nzapa. Guerre de Kongo–Wara. Thèse de Doctorat de troisième cycle. Université Paris VII 1974–1975. Penel, Jean-Dominique. 1993. Sept tentatives, entre 1949 et 1953, pour lever “l’immunite parlementaire” de B. Boganda, depute du deuxieme college de l’Oubangui-Chari. Civilisations 41 (1/2): 443–458. Teuliéres, A. 1953. L’Oubangui–Chari face à l’avenir. Paris: L’union Française. 135 p. Zoctizoum, Yarisse. 1983. Histoire de la Centrafrique tome I et tome II. Paris: L’Harmattan.

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Book of the Dead, The V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

“The Book of the Dead” is an expression used to designate disparate ancient funerary texts of the Pharaonic culture. A creation of nineteenthcentury Egyptologists, it translates Katâb al-Mayyit, or Kitâb al-Mayyituru, appellations that tomb robbers used for papyri found in pyramid tombs. The first and most authoritative philological edition, known as the Papyrus of Ani, was published by E.A. Wallis Budge in 1890 and 1895, as the Hieroglyphic Transcript and Translation into English of the Ancient Egyptian Papyrus of Ani. A synthetic volume of this edition was issued in 1913 by the Medici Society, reproduced in 1960 by University Books, and re-imprinted in 1999 by Gramercy Books of Random House. The funerary texts, referred to in Egyptology as the Saïte and Thebau Recensions of the Book of the Dead, were, as hypothesized by E.A. Wallis, “certainly in general use under the IVth dynasty (about 3700 BCE), and were probably well known under the 1st dynasty, and throughout the whole period of dynastic history. Thot was regarded as the author of the Book of the Dead.” In the tradition, called pert em hru or manifested in the day, revealed in the light, both recensions are formulas encompassing simultaneously spiritual signs for the deceased in the afterlife journey and detailed expositions of the Egyptian religious systems of beliefs and theology. Wallis’ organization of The Book of the Dead divides the content into 190 chapters, adopting thus the system used by Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) for his 1842 edition of the Turin Papyrus. Chapter CXXV (125) enjoys great reputation and concerns “the words which are to be uttered by the deceased when he cometh to the hall of Maâti, which separeth him from his sins, and which maketh him to see God, the Lord of

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mankind.” A number of exegetes have suggested a symptomatic interpretation of the Rubric of chapter CXXV (125), and particularly lines 5-7 of Plato XXXIII: “5 And if a copy of this book be written upon it, he shall rise [again], and 6 his children’s children shall flourish and prosper, like unto Râ, without cessation. He shall be in high favour with the king, and with the shenit nobles of his court, and there shall be given unto him cakes and cups of drink, and portions of flesh, upon the altar-table.” This intriguing chapter CXXV is subdivided in three parts: (a) the introduction, (b) the negative confession, and (c) address of the deceased after the Judgment.

Busia, Kofi Abrefa Kofi Agawu Department of Music, Lincoln Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Born in Wenchi, Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia was a Ghanaian scholar, politician, and prime minister (1969–1972). A member of the Yefre line of the Wenchi Royal Family, Busia had early contact with Methodist missionaries and remained a nominal Christian throughout his life. He attended Mfantsipim School between 1927 and 1939 and trained subsequently as a school teacher at Wesley College from 1931 to 1932, where he also taught for a year immediately upon graduation. He attended Achimota College (1935–1938) and then entered University College, Oxford (1939–1941), for his B. A. degree. He returned to the Gold Coast for fieldwork towards a doctorate in social anthropology. Between 1942 and 1946, he gained some administrative experience as Assistant District Commissioner. Upon completion of his Ph.D. thesis at Oxford, Busia returned to Ghana in 1947. He established the Department of Sociology at University College, serving as research lecturer

Busia, Kofi Abrefa

(1949–1951), senior lecturer and head of department (1952–1954), and Professor (1954). At first, he was able to combine political and scholarly activities, serving as leader of the opposition from 1956 to 1959. In 1958, however, he resigned from the University in order to devote his full energies to politics. He went into selfexile the following year. Between 1959 and 1966, he held several appointments in Europe, culminating in a Professorship at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. He returned to Ghana after the coup that ousted Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, and his own Progress Party won the elections in 1969. His reign as Prime Minister of the Second Republic was brought to an end by a military coup on January 13, 1972. Busia was the author of a number of important and influential books, perhaps the best known of them being his revised Ph.D. thesis, The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti (1951), a work of careful and painstaking ethnography. His intellectual interests were primarily concrete rather than speculative, and he showed an inevitable interest in educational policy in Africa. As a politician, he is remembered for his opposition to some of Nkrumah’s policies, and for an apparently unbridled embrace of European-style democracy. His own reign as prime minister (1969–1972) was not free of some of the same sorts of repressive policies that he had identified with Nkrumah’s government.

Works by Busia Busia, Kofi Abrefa. 1951. The position of the chief in the modern political system of Ashanti: A study of the influence of contemporary social changes on Ashanti political institutions. London: Oxford University Press. ———. 1962. The challenge of Africa. New York: Praeger. ———. 1967. Africa in search of democracy. New York: Praeger. ———. 1968. Purposeful education for Africa. The Hague: Mouton. ———. Busia: a symbol of democracy. [Accra?]: Danquah Memorial Pub. Co, [between 1978 and 1980].

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Bibliography Agyeman, D. 1988. Kofi. Ideological education and nationalism in Ghana under Nkrumah and Busia. Accra: Ghana Universities Press. Donkoh, C.E. [1974?]. Nkrumah and Busia of Ghana. Accra: New Times Corp.

Bwami Catharina Newbury Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA Department of History, emeritus, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

The concept of bwami forms the ritual and moral underpinning to political legitimacy across a broad area of central Africa just south of the equator, from the Lualaba (Congo) River in the west to the Kagera River (and in certain characteristics to Lake Victoria) in the east. Within this region, the term recurs in societies which show a wide range of political organizations. To the west, among the Balega of eastern Congo, bwami refers to a secret initiation association, elaborated into many ranks, an association whose members represented wealth and influence. In this forest society without formal political hierarchy and centralized political institutions, the bwami associations served as the principal arena in Lega society for authority structure. In the far eastern portions of this culture zone, in Buganda, the term also referred to wealthy persons and those with influence, those who “rule” in a generic, not a specific, sense. The similar connotations of bwami in these two different areas, among the Lega and among the Ganda, occurred within very different social formations: Buganda was highly centralized, with a marked degree of social stratification, while Lega society was more egalitarian in ideology and less centralized in its politics. In the central areas of this zone, bwami was associated with specific political office – legitimate kingship. Among the Tembo, who live on the

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western slopes of the Mitumba Mountains in eastern Kivu, a mwami was a largely ritual figurehead, with little effective power over others. Among the Havu and the Shi, east of the Mitumba Mountains, bwami legitimates stronger political power; individual bami (the plural form for those who hold office) delegate authorities and organize courts. Finally, in Rwanda and Burundi, just east of Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika, considerable political power was concentrated in the central court and represented in the person of the mwami, the king: by the end of the nineteenth century, the court had considerable power to demand personal service and extraordinary powers administrative penetration. But the essential power of the kingship derived from the ritual powers associated with bwami – powers represented in rituals strongly parallel to those in societies lacking the high degree of social stratification and political centralization found in Rwanda. In other words, the ritual basis of political office associated with concepts of bwami was remarkably consistent among distinct societies, regardless of differences in the political powers associated with that office. The distribution of the term and its associated rituals suggest that the earlier historical forms of this concept are best represented in societies in the west, the Tembo and Lega. But, the spread of the term among such different political fields testifies to the strong ritual tie-ins in this area, across commonly accepted “culture zones,” tie-ins neglected by studies which focus on political power and social organizational features alone. Thus, tracing such central ritual concepts suggests a deeper layer of cultural perception throughout this region, a cultural unity obscured by more recent differences in political commercial and social forms, and a deeper level of historical interaction in the region than allowed for by most historical constructs.

See Also ▶ Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to ▶ Kongo ▶ Performance, Ritual

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▶ Religion, Tropes in Central Africa ▶ Rwanda

Bibliography Biebuyck, D. 1973. Lega society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bwami d’Hertefelt, and Coupez. 1964. La royauté sacrée. Tervuren: MRAC. Fallers, L. 1964. The king’s men. London: Oxford University Press. Newbury, D. 1989. Kings and clans: Ijwi Island and the Lake Kivu Rift, 1780—1840. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Sigwalt, R. 1975. The early history of Bushi: A study in the historical use of genesis traditions. Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Cabral, Amílcar Silvia Federici Professor Emerita, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, USA

Amilcar Cabral was born in Bafata, Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau). He was an anticolonial theorist and revolutionary. Cabral founded the African Party for the Independence of GuineaBissau and Cape Verde in 1956 and led it through armed struggle to win their independence. Often hailed as the African Lenin, Cabral successfully integrated Marxism with “an autonomous African theory and practice,” rooted in the struggle of the African masses. He challenged the Marxist Eurocentric view that denies historicity to precolonial, classless African societies, arguing that Imperialism was the end rather than the beginning of African history. Cabral also parted from historical determinism. While viewing the intellectuals as crucial to the revolutionary process, he saw their role after independence as undecidable, oscillating between “class suicide” and accommodation to the neocolonial powers. Against a universalistic model of revolution, he stressed that the new society must be “the outcome of local and national elaboration,” for culture is not an ideal reflection of the “productive forces,” but is the unique material product of a

people’s history. He was assassinated by Portuguese agents in Conakry. Cabral remains “an example of an authentic African philosopher [who] expresses consciously the unconscious historical process of self organization and struggle of the African masses” (Wamba dia Wamba).

See Also ▶ Dialectic ▶ Fanon, Frantz ▶ Liberation in African Philosophy ▶ Marxism ▶ Movements, Political Philosophy of National Independence ▶ Senghor, Léopold Sédar

Works by Cabral Cabral, Amilcar. 1969. Revolution in Guinea, selected texts. New York: Monthly Review Press. ———. 1972. Our people are our mountains. London: Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau. ———. 1973. Return to the source: Selected speeches by Amilcar Cabral. Edited by Africa Information Service. New York: Monthly Review Press with Africa Information Service. ———. 1979. Unity and struggle: Speeches and writings. New York: Monthly Review Press.

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Bibliography Chilcote, Ronald H. 1991. Amilcar Cabral’s revolutionary theory and practice: A critical guide (with an extensive bibliography). Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Coll. Pour Cabral, Symposium international Amilcar Cabral, Praia, Cap-Vert 17–20 janvier 1983, Paris, Présence africaine, 1987. McCulloch, Jock. 1983. In the twilight of revolution: The political theory of Amilcar Cabral. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. O’Brien, Jay. 1993. Ethnicity, national identity and social conflict. Nordic Journal of African Studies 2 (2): 60–82. Review of African Political Economy; no. 58. 1993. A Tribute to Amílcar Cabral. p. 61–85.

Cannibalism Luise White Professor Emerita, University of Florida, Florida, USA

The accusation that one group consumes the flesh of its fellows or its enemies has been historically powerful and potent; it puts the accused group beyond the pale of civilized behavior and reveals the superiority and humanity of those who do not do such dreadful things. Whether or not cannibalism actually occurs, however, is something else again: it is far too powerful as an accusation or an imagined practice to require any grounding in reality. Cannibalism is not only a key image of Africa, it is a way of thinking about Africans that has been deployed both in the West and in Africa. The white man in the cannibals’ pot is only one image of race relations; slaves who embarked for the New World from West and Central Africa firmly believed that they had been purchased to be eaten. The early nineteenth-century mutiny on the slave ship Amistad began, the mutineers testified, when the cook announced they were to be killed, dried, salted, and eaten by white men. Africans in colonial Congo assumed that whites – men in particular – ate Africans; and Hutu refugees in contemporary Tanzania claimed that soldiers forced women to eat their fetuses ripped from their bodies. Any number of attempts to

Cannibalism

market canned meat in Africa, with a picture of a smiling African on the label, failed because the contents were rumored to be human flesh. The power of the trope of cannibalism, however, should not obscure our understanding of the history of the image, but also the wide range of meanings that “eating” has within African societies. The cartoon of the white man in the cast iron cannibal’s pot reflects the commodification of African daily life from the slave trade and the legitimate commerce that followed it; the commodities brought to Africa in exchange for slaves became part of household consumption, thus increasing African dependence on such trades. Ideas about white cannibals in colonial Congo reflected not only ideas about African bodies, but the rapacious labor requirements and control over leisure time that characterized Belgian colonial policies. Hutu refugees, who claimed to have been forced into eating their unborn children, found a powerful metaphor not only for their own powerlessness in the face of genocide, but also for the Tutsi attack on their social reproduction. But in all these cases, and in others, what does it mean “to eat” another person? In a vast number of African languages, the word “to eat” carries a far wider range of connotations than it does in English or French. To eat is to consume, to devour that which cannot be replaced; eating carries with it the kind of passionate disregard for others that “appetite” and “hunger” sometimes mean in English. Thus, in colonial times, the white man “ate everything” while, today, rich people “eat money.” West African cynics often say about presidential elections, “it’s time for someone else to eat.” Western representations of Africa are so frequently representations of African eating – cannibalism or famine – that cannibalism was readily abstracted from other equally important metaphors of consumption. For example, many early explorers were asked if it was true that they ate people, and also whether they ate hills. Ritual cannibalism, the eating of human flesh that was a deliberate outrage, an act so antisocial that it revealed the eater to be beyond the bounds of ordinary humanity, was practiced in Africa. In some places and some times, it was the prerogative of African kings. Such cannibalisms seem to

Certitude

have been infrequent and were often attempts to enhance the sacredness of the royal office. In some places, often in times of turmoil, ritual cannibalism established the non- or extra-human capacities of one group in terms that local populations would understand and fear. Warriors of the seventeenth-century Imbangala kingdom of Kasanje were said to prepare for battles by the ritual killing and eating of one youth, four adults, five cattle, and five goats. Such practices were regularly attributed to colonial and postcolonial rebels, although the political benefits of such attributions sometimes shape the evidence. Although human sacrifice, particularly of slaves and captives, was fairly commonplace in the political spectacle of the height and decline of the slave trade, sacrificed captives and slaves were sent as emissaries to the ancestors: they were not eaten. Ordinary Africans, even slaveholders, did not have the same rights over persons that kings had, and did not sacrifice people, let alone consume their flesh. Indeed, in most of cattle-keeping Africa, sacrificing cattle permits communication with a divinity far better than sacrificing a person can.

See Also ▶ Blood ▶ Religion, Tropes in Central Africa ▶ Uganda, Literature of (Religious Topics and Political Comments)

Certitude Emmanuel C. Eze Lewisburg, PA, USA

Certitude is the epistemological condition obtained when a judgment is affirmed without reasonable fear of error. Although the question

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of certitude arises only where propositions or assertions are considered true or false, affirmed or denied, certitude is, properly speaking, an attribute of the person making the assertion, hence, the Latin root of the term, cernere (to resolve, decide after seeing evidence). This is why Aquinas defines certitude as “the firmness of the adherence of a knowing power to the thing known” (1952–1954). If certitude measures the firmness of one’s assent to what one is affirming, then it must be distinguished from other states of mind, such as doubt (an inability either to affirm or deny) and opinion (the acceptance of judgment as likely or probably true). Certitude, then, can be objective or subjective. Objective certitude obtains when the person affirming the proposition has or knows of evidence sufficient to remove any prudent fear of error, while subjective certitude obtains when such evidence is lacking. If the intellect is made for knowing truth and if its perfect actuation is had only when the truth is known with evidence, then, strictly speaking, certitude is had only when what is known presents itself as objectively evident. Objective and subjective certitude are also known as warranted and unwarranted certitude. Certitude can be characterized according to the varying degrees of warrantability. First, absolute certitude occurs when all possibility of error is excluded because the negation of the judgment implies a contradiction. For example, “human beings exist.” The denial of the truth of this proposition, “human beings do not exist,” implies the denial of the very thing judged to be known. The initial statement is therefore absolutely certain. Absolute certitude is also called metaphysical certitude since it pertains to judgments about the essence of the thing. Second, logical certitude occurs when absolute certitude is used in logical demonstrations. The demonstration is not concerned with determining the truth or falsity of the premises of a proposition, but the logical or necessary implication of the conclusion in the premises. For example, “if P is true, then it necessarily follows that Q is true.” To accept the premise and refuse to accept the conclusion is self-contradictory. Third, physical certitude derives from assent to a proposition that lacks

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the probability of error, but the evidence for the truth of the proposition depends upon the physical laws of nature. This certitude is based upon the assumption that there exists regularity in these natural laws, that the physical laws are known, and that, barring unnatural causes, such as miracles, these laws will repeat themselves with regularity. Finally, moral certitude, as the name implies, obtains when assent is given to a proposition on the basis of understanding of the “law” of human behavior: the proposition’s truth depends on the assumption of a “normal” course of behavior operative in humans or society. For example, “the bus driver will not attack me.” Here, one is making a statement based upon absence of reasonable fear of error that a normal bus driver, who has never attacked passengers, who is reliable, and has no reason to attack a passenger during this particular trip, etc., is also worthy of confidence in this present instance that he will not attack me. Since negation of these kind of “laws” of normal human/social behavior can easily occur by the activities of a free-willed human agent, it is clear that the necessity found in this area is far less rigorous than, for example, in the workings of the causal laws of nature, so that “certitude” here is of a different kind, and hard to come by. It is obvious that, on the basis of the foundations upon which certitude rests, all but absolute or metaphysical certitude is unconditioned; the rest are conditioned. While absolute certitude is based upon the nature or the essence of thing, on self-evident truths (e.g., a thing cannot be and not be), conditioned certitude are based upon nonself-evident conditions: their truths depend upon the obtaining of (truth, causal, or social) premises extrinsic to the proposition. Some would argue that, strictly speaking, there is only one kind of certitude: the metaphysical, and that all others are simply probabilities.

See Also ▶ Act (Mental) ▶ African Philosophy, Search for Identity of ▶ Agent (Ethical)

▶ Heteroglossia ▶ Judgment

Bibliography Aquinas, T. 1952–54. Truth. Trans. R.W. Mulligan, et al., 3v. Chicago: Henry Regnery Publisher. Lonergan, B. 1956. Insight: A study of human understanding. New York: Philosophical Library. Potter, V. 1986. Philosophy of knowledge. New York: Fordham University Press. Ruch, E.A. 1977. The ways of thinking and knowing. Roma: National University of Lesotho. Trethowan, I. 1948. Certainty, philosophical and theological. Westminster: Dacre Press.

Ce´saire, Aime´ Fernand (1913–2008) Bernadette Cailler professor emerita Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Aimé Césaire was a Caribbean politician, essayist, poet, and playwright from Martinique. He served as mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945 to 2001, as deputy in the French Assembly from 1946 to 1956 and, again, from 1958 to 1993. Following his death, on April 17, 2008, a civil ceremony took place in Fort-de-France, led by Guadeloupean writer Daniel Maximin. It was attended by large groups of Martinican brethren and a number of political figures from metropolitan France. Césaire’s long-time friend, deputy-mayor Pierre Aliker, delivered the funeral oration. Shortly afterwards, numerous tributes to his poetic talent and lifelong defense of the oppressed appeared, including by Caribbean writers who had not always shared his political views and actions as a politician (RAL 2010; Cailler 2010). Not surprisingly, in the early twenty-first century, several conferences followed by published proceedings were held in his honor, especially around the centennial anniversary of his birth (Fort-deFrance 2013; Cerisy-la-Salle 2013).

Ce´saire, Aime´ Fernand (1913–2008)

Césaire’s father was a tax-collector, and his mother, a dressmaker. Taught by his grandmother, he had learned to read and write in French by the time he was four. He received his secondary education at the Lycée Schœlcher in Fort-de-France, where he met the poet Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana. He later attended the Lycée LouisLe-Grand and the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, both located in Paris. Along with Léopold Sédar Senghor, from Senegal, and Léon-Gontran Damas, Césaire became one of the major figures of a politico-literary movement born in the 1930s, which came to be known as Négritude. Coined by Césaire, the term Négritude appeared for the first time in L’Étudiant noir, a short-lived journal launched by Césaire and some fellow students from Africa and the West Indies. Only the issue of March 1935 seems to have survived. In the summer of that same year, Césaire traveled to Yugoslavia where he began working on his first extensive work: Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to my Native Land, 1939, 2013). Two years later, he married Suzanne Roussy who, in 1941, along with a few other collaborators, helped him start the literary journal Tropiques (1941–1945). Submitted to the Vichy censorship, the publication of Tropiques was interrupted in 1943, but was resumed following the collapse of the Pétain régime in the Antilles. While some of its texts served as a subtle manifesto against Nazism, Tropiques laid out the groundwork for the philosophy of Négritude. Antibourgeois in their outlook, the Tropiques team of writers proclaimed their affinities with the Marxist analysis of European society, as well as their allegiance to Surrealism. While traces of Spenglerian philosophy heralding the decay of European civilization can be found in Césaire’s early texts (especially Cahier), the influence of Nietzsche on his thought is obvious throughout his work, including Tropiques: Césaire’s dramatic heroes sound much more like Nietzschean overmen than Marxist liberators (Arnold 1981, Part 1). In a recent study, not only does Ernestpeter Ruhe show with much acumen how several of Césaire’s essays are bound together in style and tone, he actually demonstrates that Césaire developed a

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strong interest in a number of thinkers, namely, Hegel and Toynbee (Ruhe 2015). The Tropiques team also aimed at raising the ethnic consciousness of their Antillean readers. Thus, sections of the journal are devoted to Caribbean folklore, as well as to the fauna and flora of the area. Of particular interest is an article by Suzanne Césaire which brings the reader’s attention to the work of Leo Frobenius, the German ethnologist, who proved so influential on the Négritude writers’ formative years. An excerpt from Frobenius’ famous work on African civilization concluded the issue of April 1942. While advocating a return to and rediscovery of Black African roots, Négritude claimed, in Césaire’s words, “to be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth” (Eschelman, Smith 1983: 44–45). No doubt, Négritude was born among conflicting ideologies. Someone like René Ménil, for instance, a contributor to Tropiques, put Marxist orthodoxy ahead of ethnic consciousness, whereas someone like Césaire came to Marxism for practical reasons, hoping that the party would promote a social order based on equality regardless of origin, religion, or color. He ended up believing that orthodox Marxism had, in fact, little to offer to a rural society, namely, in this case, Martinican society (Arnold 1981). Césaire had joined the Communist Party during the war but withdrew his affiliation in 1956. His resignation stood as a strong gesture of protest against the party in its dealings with the colonial question (see his letter to Maurice Thorez, 24 October 1956). Césaire’s interest in Haiti and its historical figures was paramount (Jonassaint 2013; Walsh 2013). As early as 1944, such an interest had been stimulated by several months spent on that island where he had been invited to participate in a conference on epistemology. There, he delivered his famous communication on “Poetry and Knowledge” (partially published in Tropiques, no. 12, January 1945). In 1946, he co-sponsored the bill that transformed the Caribbean colonies into overseas departments. From the time of its inception in 1947, he became one of the promoters of Présence Africaine along with other black intellectuals and a number of white supporters, such as

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Sartre, Gide and Camus. In 1958, Césaire founded his own party, the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais (PPM). From this date on, feeling more and more dissatisfied with the departmental status, Césaire moved progressively towards advocating greater autonomy for Martinique, hoping, in fact, for a federalist status (Véron and Hale 2013, Herland 2016). Throughout the past decades, the philosophy of Négritude has fallen prey to widespread criticism in Africa, Europe, and the Americas; it has been blamed for taking little account of the cultural, political, and economic diversity prevailing among people of African descent and for having had little impact on the process of national liberation. However, in contrast with Senghor, Césaire had no lengthy theory to offer on Négritude as such. As he put it in a 1971 interview with Lilyan Kesteloot: “I am for negritude from a literary point of view and as a personal ethic, but I am against an ideology founded on negritude” (Kesteloot and Kotchy 1973: 235). His thoughts on history, politics, and culture found expression through the media of poetry and drama, as well as in a number of analytical essays (such as his famous Discourse on Colonialism, or his book on Toussaint Louverture), various letters and communications (such as the letter addressed to Monseigneur Varin de la Brunelière, Tropiques, May 1944), and, of course, in political speeches (such as the essay on “Culture and Colonization,” presented at the Congress of Black Writers and Artists, Paris 1956). Much of Césaire’s poetry is technically linked to Surrealism. Meeting André Breton in 1941 was a major event for him (see his interview with Jacqueline Leiner, as a preface to Tropiques). However, as he put it in an interview with Haitian poet René Depestre, Surrealism was not so much a “revelation” as a “confirmation” of what he was looking for (Cultural Congress, Havana, 1967). Paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, the language of Surrealism helped him bring out the African elements of his heritage, while allowing him to deal with the complexity of his existential predicament. Interested as Césaire was in the Freudian analysis of the human psyche, he appears to have been even more involved with

Ce´saire, Aime´ Fernand (1913–2008)

the Jungian approach to the collective unconscious. Some of Césaire’s critics, however, have challenged his claim that surrealist outlook and techniques had provided him with efficacious tools, stressing that his style was excessively dependent on French forms. On the other hand, in his early and still most relevant analysis of Négritude, Jean-Paul Sartre forcefully demonstrated how appropriate and helpful Césaire’s use of the French “miraculous weapons” was (“Orphée noir” 1948). Moreover, several African scholars have uncovered in some of Césaire’s works a type of rhetoric and a number of devices characteristic of African tradition (Zaourou 1978, Songolo 1985; Kubayanda 1985). Césaire’s mytho-poetic fabric borrows freely and most creatively from many cultural areas including ancient Egypt, Greece, the JudeoChristian world, Martinique, Haiti, Africa, and others. Written in the tragic mode, his first three plays present charismatic leaders whose personal sacrifice is offered in exchange for the betterment and the welfare of the people (the rebel, Patrice Lumumba, and, to a certain extent, King Christophe whose character, however, verges on the dictatorial). When Césaire was working on his first play Et les chiens se taisaient Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy was very much on his mind. His election of the Dionysian and Orphic elements of humankind over the Apollonian would last a lifetime. In his adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Césaire resorts to an ironic use of Western mythology in which the master/slave dialectic is toppled head over heels. In the last lines of the play, Caliban’s jubilant chant of freedom prevails. Later in life, Césaire’s tone and use of imagery were often less grandiose or jubilant, reflecting the weariness of the fighter whose struggle had often proved precarious; yet, his fidelity to a lifelong commitment was to remain intact until the end (Cailler 1984, 1987). In fact, in this new century, Césaire’s writings have lost neither their historical nor contemporary relevance (Malela 2009). His voice, as staunch spokesman of the oppressed, remains unsurpassed in the Afro-descendant diaspora and beyond.

Charles, Pierre

Works by Ce´saire Césaire, Aimé. 1978a. Œuvres complètes, 3 vol. Fort–de– France: Désormeaux. ———. 1978b. Tropiques. Revue Culturelle, Fort–de– France, Martinique, April 1941–April 1942. February, 1943-September, 1945 (2 volumes). Paris: Jean– Michel Place. ———. 1983. The collected poetry. Translated with an introduction and notes by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith. Berkeley: The University of California. ———. 1990. Lyric and dramatic poetry (1948–1982). Poetry and knowledge (Trans. A.J. Arnold). And the dogs were silent. I, laminaria. Introduction by A. J. Arnold. Translated by C. Eschelman and A.Smith. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ———. 2013. The original 1939 notebook of a return to the native land, ed. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman, Bilingual edn, Wesleyan Poetry Series. ———. 2016. Écrits politiques I, Discours à l’Assemblée nationale 1945–1983, II, 1935–1956, III 1957–1971. Série dirigée par Édouard de Lépine et René Hénane. Paris: Les Nouvelles Éditions Jean-Michel Place, 2013, 2016.

Bibliography Arnold, James A. 1981. Modernism and negritude. The poetry and poetics of Aimé Césaire. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Cailler, Bernadette. 1976. Proposition poétique. Une lecture de l’œuvre d’Aimé Césaire. Sherbrooke: Naaman. ———. 1984. Césaire ou la fidélité, Réflexions sur un poème de Noria. In Soleil éclaté, ed. J. Leiner, Études Littéraires Françaises, vol. 30. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. ———. 1987. Crevasse, métaphore vive du texte. Réflexions sur un poème de Moi, laminaire. In Aimé Césaire ou l’athanor d’un alchimiste. Paris: Editions Caribéennes. ———. 2010. Aimé Césaire: a warrior in search of beauty. RAL 41 (1, Spring): 14–31. Herland, Michel. 2016. Césaire’s Federalism. Comments. In The Federalist Debate, Number 3. Jonassaint, Jean. 2013. Césaire et Haïti, des apports à évaluer. Francophonies d’Amérique. Automne, Numéro 36. Kesteloot, Lilyan, and Bernard Kotchy. 1973. Aimé Césaire. L’homme et l’œuvre, précédé d’un texte de Michel Leiris. Paris: Présence Africaine. Kubayanda, J. Bekunuru. 1985. Polyrhythmics and African print poetics: Guillén, Césaire, and Atukwei Okai. In Interdisciplinary dimensions of African literature, ed. Kofo Anyidoho, Abioseh Porter, Daniel Racine, and Janice Spleth. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press. Malela, Buata B. 2009. Aimé Césaire. Le fil et la trame: critique et figuration de la colonialité du pouvoir. Paris: Anibwe.

111 Ruhe, Ernestpeter. 2015. Une œuvre mobile. Aimé Césaire dans les pays germanophones (1950–2015). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Sartre, Jean Paul. 1948. Orphée noir. In Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, ed. L.S. Senghor. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969. Songolo, Aliko. 1985. Aimé Césaire: une poésie de la découverte. Paris: L’Harmattan. Veron, Kora, and Thomas A. Hale. 2013. Les Écrits d’Aimé Césaire. Biobibliographie commentée (1913–2008). Paris: Honoré Champion, coll. Poétiques et esthétiques XXe–XXIe siècles, n 14, 2 vol., 891 p. Walsh, John Patrick. 2013. Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire and Narratives of Loyal Opposition. Bloomington: Indiana University. Zaourou, Zadi B. 1978. Césaire entre deux cultures. Abidjan/Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines.

Collective Works Aimé Césaire. 1992. L’Esprit Créateur. Lilyan Kesteloot, Guest Editor, vol. 32, no. 1, Spring. ———. 2010. 1913–2008: Poet, politician, cultural statesman. H. Adlai Murdoch, Guest Editor, Research in African literatures, vol. 41, no. 1, Spring. ———. 2017. Œuvre et Héritage sous la direction de Christian Lapoussinière, président du. CCER. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Jean-Michel Place. Césaire. 2014. 2013: parole due. Colloque de Cerisy, Cerisy-la-Salle, 4–11 september 2013 (ParisSorbonne, Rennes University, and Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar), Presentation by Romuald Fonkoua and Anne Douaire-Banny. Présence Africaine, no. 189.

Film Aimé Césaire. A Voice for History. 1994. Director: Euzhan Palcy.

Charles, Pierre V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Pierre Charles (1883–1954) was a preeminent Belgian theologian, widely influential thinker and recognized leader in Roman Catholic missiology. In the stifling antimodernist climate of early twentieth-century Catholicism, the optimism of his missiology witnesses to an extreme ingenuity attempting a theoretical program that

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abides by the requirements of a double relationship between faith and reason, Catholic identity and modernity. A Jesuit priest and a professor of theology at the Gregorianum (1932–38), in Rome, and at Louvain-Herverlee (1914–1954), Pierre Charles is mainly known as a student of ethnology and history of religions, two domains that contributed importantly to his missiology theory. It is believed that one of his superiors reproached him for this whim of his, wondering why he would sacrifice the dignity of fundamental Christian theology on the altar of a second rate discipline. From within the constraints of his Church, Pierre Charles chose to invest his mind in missiology as a way of maximizing the faith of a tradition. He served from 1925 to 1953 as the faithful secretary of the international Semaine de Missiologie, organized in Louvain, Belgium. Pierre Charles’ writings in missiology, most of them published between 1920 and 1950, revolve around three main poles: (a) a post-Vatican I Catholic doctrine that still opposed the essential elements of the then prevailing postEnlightenment developments in philosophy and sciences; (b) a critique of nineteenth-century theories of Catholic missionizing; and (c) a redefinition of the Christian missionary vocation. These poles engage different but interrelated perspectives in Charles’ missiological theory. For him, there were first of all the orthodox guidelines represented then by two papal encyclicals, Maximum Illud (November 1919) of Benedict XV, and particularly Rerum Ecclesiae (February 1926) of Pius XI to which Charles devotes a critical commentary in La Nouvelle Revue Théologique of May 1926. The two pontifical documents define modalities for the propagation of faith around the idea of “implanting” the Church and its strategy in three successive tasks: creating a native clergy; adapting and integrating the best of local customs and traditions; and finally, coupling the Christian evangelization activity with well-programmed modernizing processes inspired by the principle declaring “Christianity as a divine way of organizing the world.” For Pierre Charles, this strategic approach supposes for its success a coherent opposition to three mains nineteenth-century spiritual strains. There is, one, the predestinarian

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sequel of the seventeenth-century Jansenism and its excessive stress on justification by faith and work, and salvation through the authority and sacraments. Its effects tended to emphasize reasons for excluding pagan societies from a providential economy of believers and its fulfillment in the Christian history of salvation. A daring vision that, at the same period, a young Karl Rahner (1904–1984), a German Jesuit, was then exploring for philosophical research on the spirit in the world. This was expressed in his Hearer of the World (1941) as “Vorgriff auf esse,” a natural awareness of transcendence positing itself as preapprehension of being and, as such, a condition of expecting knowledge. Such an inclusive vision in Charles’ missiology explains his second caveat, the fideist anti-intellectualism of the French Abbé Louis Bautain (1796–1867) and his followers which, privileging faith in God as knowledge par excellence, tend to devalue prescriptions of human reason in general and would reduce pagan configurations to a cultural void, a tabula rasa, to be filled and pervaded by God’s revelation as an epiphany of mystical insights and human feelings. Pierre Charles’ antifideist critique expresses itself in two complementary axes that can be perceived throughout his 1920–1930s lectures and articles. The first is a weakening of Bautain’s main arguments in The Philosophy of Christianity (1833) and their modification in Religion and Liberty (1848) regarding the metaphysical deficiency and the competence of reason alone as a way of accessing the truth of God. Charles compensates for this weakening by an emphasis on the Church as a sign of convergence in faith and thus, against the Münster School of missiology, argues that the primary objective of the mission is not one of converting individuals but planting the Church. The second axis of Charles’ critique, stressing the anthropological alterity of non-Christian civilizations, conceives these as deficient and expecting their completion from an elsewhere: “chacune de ces civilisations est une pierre d’attente du Christianisme.” The final caveat in Pierre Charles’ reflection on the foundation of mission, mainly in Africa, concerns the negative effects of the romantic representation exemplified in Chateaubriand’s Génie du

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Christianisme (1802) a propos an imaginary America. It predicates primitiveness as an index to heroic transformations provoked by Western agents and signified in symptomatic conversions from prehistory to history, savagery to civilization, paganism to Christianity. Inscribing itself in an evolutionist conception of history as what is represented in the conceptual substitution of terms, Pierre Charles dwells on moral judgments as universal prescriptions. From this background, his missiology becomes prescriptive and can be seen as a theory of moral judgment on the best methods to optimize the good of acculturation, modernity, and Christianization.

See Also ▶ Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic

References Charles, Pierre. 1926. Au Lendemain de l’héroisme. In Carnets de l’Aucam, 1, 1. ———. 1927. Dossiers de l’Action Missionnaire. Louvain: AUCAM. ———. 1930. Le Saint-Siège et l’Aucam. In Revue de l’Aucam, 5. ———. 1932. Principes et méthodes de l’activité missionnaire en dehors du catholicisme. Louvain: AUCAM. ———. 1933. L’Esprit de l’Aucam. In Revue de l’Aucam, 8. ———. 1939. Missiologie. Etudes, Rapports, conférences, I. Louvain: AUCAM. ———. 1956. Études missiologiques. Tournai: Desclée de Brouwer. Van Bulck, P. 1960. in Studia Missionalia, 10.

Child Caroline Bledsoe Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Among all the values recorded in societies of subSaharan Africa, none are more important than having children. Especially in the past, becoming

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a parent was the mark of adulthood. A barren woman might attribute her misfortune to witchcraft or to punitive spirits. A childless man might be banned from certain rituals or political groups. Even today, the term “child” itself is used metaphorically in many African languages to refer to a person of subordinate status, no matter how old. Many descriptions of African societies depict children, like the old, as being close to the world of the spirits or ancestors. Throughout the subcontinent, ancestors are sometimes said to punish the wrongs of their earthly kin by recalling small children. Some children are considered to be reborn ancestors who held positions of authority in their previous earthly existence and have come back to resume looking after their kin (Dieterlen 1941). Other children may cross back and forth repeatedly between worlds (see Soyinka 1981, for an example). Such a child may be suspected to be an evil spirit that has come in disguise to destroy the family. When it “dies” yet again, the kin may mutilate the corpse to discourage it from returning. It is no wonder, then, that many societies regarded a pregnant woman as being in a dangerous state of moral and physical ambiguity and her newborn with considerable ambivalence until its character began to emerge. While old people are preparing to enter this other world, children, who recently came from it, retain remnants of its influence. In Yorubaspeaking areas in Nigeria, some people argue that young children run high mortality risks because they have less spiritual power than their unborn siblings with whom they may be competing for maternal sustenance (Ibitola Pearce, personal communication). As they grow older, children remain under the guidance of ancestors and spirits. Their awareness of it, however, dissipates (Leis 1982) and their own volition begins to determine their relations with the spiritual world. A child with extraordinary knowledge or skills, for example, is regarded with a mixture of admiration and fear. He may have established relations with a beneficent tutelary spirit – or he may have struck a Faustian bargain with a ruthless evil spirit that will eventually demand payment in the form of a sacrifice that will be grievous to the family (d’Azevedo 1973).

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Despite the uncertainties and worries they cause, children hold the key to the future welfare of their families. Some will achieve modest goals; others have enormous potentials, whether these consist of skills, cleverness, or simply raw charisma. In precolonial Africa, so important was the need to raise successful children that the task of training and sponsoring a child could not be entrusted to parents alone; it required both societal and spiritual oversight. Socialization, therefore, was a costly process that was sanctioned at every major step by religious powers. In West and Central Africa, boys, and sometimes girls, could spend years in initiation societies, traversing the required stages to adulthood. In East and Southern Africa, communities placed young men under close supervision in age-group organizations. Whether or not they have spiritual tutelaries and regardless of the endeavors they pursue, children need guidance from ancestors, who are said to determine, through blessings, the opportunities that individuals encounter and their success in exploiting them. In exchange for the knowledge and skills they acquire, children are expected to reciprocate by supporting, as best they can, those for whom the ancestors themselves are responsible: everyone in the extended family. This is true as much in the urban world of formal schooling and wage jobs as in the rural village. In Sierre Leone, for example, people maintain that since valued knowledge is a key economic and political commodity, proprietors of knowledge deserve compensation from the beneficiaries for imparting it: a model of education manifested most strikingly in the so-called secret societies of West Africa. As with more “traditional” knowledge, the chief cultural idioms by which children acquire “civilized” knowledge in school and, thus, advance in the modern world is through earning blessings from their teachers (Bledsoe 1993). Only by addressing ideologies of knowledge, power, and secrecy, then, can we understand contemporary cultural views of education in the postcolonial era: views that often

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differ markedly from Western perceptions of schools and pedagogical relationships. Classical anthropology kinship literature on Africa presented families as essentially inwardlooking: they drew on internal resources and aimed to replicate “traditional” patterns. But, in fact, families know that they can only capture the benefits of rapid societal change by producing a constant supply of children who can continually break new ground in domains in which older family members necessarily have little expertise. Children are the individuals who can most quickly stake entrepreneurial claims in rapid flows of change, because they are poised for training when new skills become available. Hoping to foster these emerging talents, adults constantly monitor individual children’s development, trying to discern their potentials in order to best decide which children to deploy to the outside world and when to summon spiritual guidance for their progress.

See Also ▶ Ancestors

Bibliography Bledsoe, Caroline. 1993. The cultural transformation of western education in Sierra Leone. In La Jeunesse en Afrique: Encadrement et rôle de la société a l’époque contemporaine XIX et XX siècles, ed. C. CoqueryVidrovitch, H. d’Almeida-Topor, and O. Goerg, 383–406. Paris: L’Harmattan. Revised version published in Africa 62(2):182–202, 1992. d’Azevedo, Warren L. 1973. Mask makers and myth in Western Liberia. In Primitive art and society, ed. A. Forge, 125–150. London: Oxford University Press. Dieterlen, Germaine. 1941. Les âmes des Dogons. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie. Leis, Nancy B. 1982. The not–so–supernatural power of Ijaw children. In African religious groups and beliefs: Papers in honor of William R. Bascom, ed. Simon Ottenberg, 151–169. Meerut, India: Archana Publications for Folklore Institute. Soyinka, Wole. 1981. Aké: The years of childhood. New York: Vintage International.

Christianity, Historiography in Africa

Christianity, Historiography in Africa Elizabeth Isichei Religious Studies Department, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Two authoritative books have recently appeared on this subject, both of which include detailed guides to source material. Hastings’ The Church in Africa, which ends in 1950, focuses on black Africa; it excludes the early church and the Egyptian Coptic church, but gives a detailed account of Ethiopian church history. Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa, covers these areas which Hastings excludes, and ends in 1995. The modern missionary movement in Africa began in the nineteenth century, but with some exceptions, such as the Creoles of Freetown and the kholwa (Believers) of Natal, its impact was insignificant until the twentieth. Paradoxically, however, much of the literature on missions deals with this earlier period, which is richly documented in the unpublished letters, journals, and memoirs of those concerned. Writing on missions has often been profoundly Eurocentric – the white missionary is the heroic actor against a background of indigenous peoples who are either invisible or barbaric. Millions who could not name a single ethno-linguistic group in Gabon have heard of Schweitzer. There is, of course, a place for studies of foreign missionaries. Good examples of the genre are O. Chadwick, Mackenzie’s Grave, G.Seaver, David Livingstone His life and Letters and J. Buchan, The Expendable Mary Slessor. From the 1960s on, there was a paradigm shift in African history generally, and the primary focus came to be on African agency – African resistance to colonialism, African nationalism, African entrepreneurs. This change was mirrored in studies of the history of Christianity in Africa. Two outstanding studies by Nigerian historians, J.F.A. Ajayi, and E.A. Ayandele, marked a turning

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point. Both these and other studies (such as Isichei 1973) paid particular attention to the Nigerian mission under its black Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. J.B. Webster studied the independent churches of Lagos. Isichei (1982) is a collection of short biographies of Nigerian Christians in various walks of life. Bengt Sundkler, a Lutheran bishop, made (first in Bantu Prophets in South Africa, later in Zulu Zion) a sympathetic study of the Zionist churches in South Africa. Whereas the African churches of Lagos departed relatively little from their western prototypes (except for their frequent willingness to accept plural marriage), the prophetic churches were profoundly indigenized, both in their ritual and in their worldview. The Aladura churches of the Yoruba have also been made the subject of fine studies, by Turner, and Peel; Baeta wrote on their counterparts in Ghana. More recently, Hackett has written on the varied religious life of Calabar, and on later movements, such as the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star. The Apostles of John Maranke and the Apostles of John Masowe (often called the Korsten Basketmakers) are major prophetic movements founded by Shona from modern Zimbabwe; they are the subject of studies by Dillon Malone and Jules-Rosette, respectively. The relative lack of success enjoyed by white missionaries contrasts with the tremendous success of the African prophets who founded these and other churches. William Wade Harris, a Grebo from Liberia, and Simon Kimbangu, a muKongo from Congo, exercised an extraordinary and lasting influence, although the deportation of Harris and the lifelong imprisonment of Kimbangu soon cut their ministries short. Harrist churches flourish in Ivory Coast, where Harris preached, and the Kimbanguist church is one of the main denominations in Congo – there is a vast body of literature on Kimbangu and Congo’s prophetic churches (the studies by Martin and MacGaffey are a good starting point). The pioneering study of Harris was by Haliburton. There are many religious movements that have sometimes been called syncretistic because they incorporate so many indigenous or new

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elements. The orthodoxy or otherwise of a particular movement depends on the prejudices of the writer, and some scholars – including some African Evangelicals – have condemned the prophetic churches as syncretistic. J. Fernandez’ Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination, a study of a modern cult which developed among the Fang of Gabon, is a classic study of a syncretistic movement. Women have often played a leading role in prophetic churches – Alice Lenshina’s Lumpa church is a well-known example, so they are an attractive field of study for feminist scholars. But as Crumbley points out, these churches often have concepts of ritual impurity that marginalize rather than empowering women. An interesting development in recent years is the increasing recognition of neo-Marxist/radical writers of the autonomy and relevance of the cognitive domain, reflected in, among other things, the religious expression of independent churches. Comaroff’s study of a Zionist church among the Tshidi (a Tswana people of the South Africa- Botswana frontier) is a fine example. She writes: “Zionism is part of a second global culture, a culture lying in the shadow of the first, whose distinct but similar symbolic orders are the imaginative constructions of the resistant periphery of the world system.” Field’s outstanding studies of Jehovahs Witnesses and witchcraft finding cults in Zambia are also in this genre. “Exotic” prophetic churches tend to attract a disporportionate amount of scholarly attention, and African Christians who remain in the older churches are often invisible. An important paper by Ranger (1994) is a corrective – any scholar who aspires today to “think in black” about many of the peoples of eastern Zimbabwe has to learn also to think “Methodist.” Isichei and Ki-Zerbo are biographies of obscure Catholics at grassroots level. An interesting body of recent work discusses the New Religious Right in postindependence Africa and its political and social implications. Gifford’s monograph on Liberia is the outstanding example, and he has also written on the same phenomenon in Southern Africa.

Christianity, Historiography in Africa

The historian of Christianity in Africa must be aware of the contemporary cognitive dimension. African theologians have tended to concentrate on contextual issues – the indigenization of the churches – rather than on offering a radical challenge to the status quo; it was only in South Africa that liberation theology flourished. There is a considerable body of literature on the question of church and state in Independent Africa. Sometimes civil conflicts have been conceptualized in religious terms as in the Republic of Sudan where the South is seen as Christian, or traditionalist, and the North is Muslim. The Nigerian civil war was sometimes inaccurately analyzed in these terms. A different dimension of the churchstate dialectic can be seen in church interaction with Mobutu’s policy of “Authenticity” in Congo. There is also, of course, the postmodernist critique, which points out that any academic analysis is, in a sense, an invention of Africa (cf. Mudimbe). This critique was made with great eloquence in a pamphlet written by a small group of Southern African prophetic church leaders in 1984 (Ngada et al). “Anthropologists, sociologists and theologians from foreign Churches have been studying us for many years. . . We have become a fertile field for the kind of research that will enable a person to write an ‘interesting’ thesis and obtain an academic degree. . . It is therefore not surprising that we do not recognise ourselves in their writings.” It is a warning which scholars – western or African – ignore at their peril.

See Also ▶ Aladura Churches: Women’s Role ▶ Antony of the Desert ▶ Athanasius ▶ Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic ▶ Churches, Indigenous ▶ Dinka, Christianity Among the ▶ Ethiopic Liturgy ▶ Evangelization of Western Africa ▶ Movements, African Religious ▶ Movements, Pentecostal and Charismatic ▶ Nubia, Christianity in ▶ Pachomius

Christology, African Folk

Bibliography Ajayi, J.F.A. 1965. Christian missions in Nigeria 1841–1891. London: Longmans. Ayandele, E.A. 1966. The missionary impact on modern Nigeria 1842–1914. London: Longmans. Baeta, C. 1962. Prophetism in Ghana. London: SCM Press. Bediako, Kwame. 1995. Christianity in Africa: The renewal of a non-Western religion. Maryknoll: Orbis. Buchan, J. 1980. The expendable Mary Slessor. Edinburgh: St Andrew Press. Chadwick, O. 1959. MacKenzie’s grave. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of power, spirit of resistance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Crumbley. 1992. Impurity and power: Women in Aladura churches. Africa, 62(4): 505–522. Fernandez, J. 1982. Bwiti: An ethnography of the religious imagination. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fields, K. 1982. Political contingencies of witchcraft in colonial central Africa. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 16(3): 567–593. ———. 1985. Revival and rebellion in colonial central Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hackett, R., ed. 1987. New religious movements in Nigeria. Lewiston: Edwin Mellon Press. ———., ed. 1989. Religion in Calabar: The religious life and history of a Nigerian town. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Haliburton, G. 1971. The prophet Harris. Logman. Harlow, London. Hastings, A. 1994. The church in Africa, 1450–1950. Oxford: Clarendon. Isichei, E. 1973. The Ibo people and the Europeans. London: Faber. ———. 1982. Varieties of christian experience in Nigeria. London: Macmillan. ———. 1995. A history of christianity in Africa, from antiquity to the present grand rapids. London: Eerdman, SPCK. ———. 2005. Entirely for god, the life of Michael Iwene Tansi. London/Basingstoke: Macmillan. Ki Zerbo, J. 1983. Alfred Diban premier chrétien de Haute -Volta. Paris: Led Editions du Cerf. Macgaffey, W. 1983. Modern kongo prophets. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Martin, M.-L. 1975. An African prophet and his church. Oxford: Blackwell. Mudimbe, V. 1988. The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ngada, N.H., et al. 1985. Speaking for ourselves. Braamfontein: Institute for Contextual Theology. Peel, J.D.Y. 1968. Aladura: A religious movement among the Yoruba. London: Oxford University Press. Ranger, T.O. 1994. Protestant missions in Africa. In Religion in Africa, ed. T.D. Blakely, W. van Beek, and D. Thomson. London: Heinemann and James Currey.

117 Seaver, G. 1957. David Livingstone his life and letters. New York: Harper and Row. Sundkler (1948), Bantu Prophets in South Africa, London, Lutterworth Press. ———. 1976. Zulu Zion and some Swazi Zionists. Uppsala: Gleerups, Oxford University Press. Turner, H. 1967. African independent church. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Webster, J.B. 1964. The African churches among the Yoruba, 1888–1922. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Christology, African Folk J. M. Schoffeleers Leiden, The Netherlands

Missiologists, social scientists, and African writers have repeatedly stated that Africans find it difficult to integrate the person of Jesus Christ in their belief systems, either because he is automatically associated with the west and the colonial past, or because his very essence is supposed to be incompatible with autochthonous religious conceptions. That view seems implicitly confirmed by African Theology, which appears unable to reach even a modicum of consensus with regard to a suitable African paradigm for Christ (Schoffeleers 1989). Yet, at the level of folk theology, there exists at least one Christological paradigm that is used over large areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The paradigm is that of the medicineperson, known in Central and Southern African languages by the noun nganga, or one of its cognates. Outside professional theology, in the catechesis, hymns, and liturgy of African churches; however, that paradigm is frequently used because it is said to be an image that the audience intuitively understands and, at the same time, is rooted in Scripture. In those contexts, Christ is conceptualized as the one true nganga, not only for his powers of healing, but also for his clairvoyance and his capacity to intermediate between the supernatural world and men. Not only is Christ frequently seen but also one frequently comes across implicit, as well as explicit, equations of Christian ministers with

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ngangas. In the healing churches, parallels between the two categories show up in many forms, from a common concern with healing and identical vocational experiences to similarities in external appearance and personality structure (Sundkler 1961). In Congo (DRC) and elsewhere, the term nganga is not only applied to healing priests and prophets, but to Christian pastors in general, including those who do not engage in healing (Buana 1969). Despite the disapproving attitude of many churches or even the active opposition on the part of some churches, many ngangas nowadays are practicing Christians who borrow ideas, symbols, and rituals from Christianity. While it is obvious that pragmatic considerations play a role in these adaptations, it is equally obvious that the Christianized nganga represents a specific form of mediation between Christian and traditional ritual healing. There are also a few cults in which a mythical nganga is explicitly presented as the Christ or as an alternative Christ. The best studied among these are the Bwiti cult of Gabon and the Mbona cult of Malawi. Every week, Bwiti adepts engage in a nightlong dance in which the mysteries of birth and death are celebrated. On these occasions, there is a central figure and leading dancer, called Nganga, whom the participants identify with Christ and who engages in a number of dramatizations, such as that of leading a witch hunt. This image of a nganga – Christ cleansing the community of witches – is also visible in Christian-inspired witch-finding movements, such as that of Mwana Lesa (“Son-ofGod”) in the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) (Ranger 1975). The Bwiti cult differs from such movements insofar as their Christ figures as the innocent victim of a witch-hunt. At Easter time, some of the chapters put on an exciting chase of the Savior for nearly an hour, with the Savior alternately hiding, breaking out, and fleeing again until he is finally captured and symbolically executed (Fernandez 1964). In his role of witch hunter, Christ represents a slaying nganga while, in his role of victim, he represents the slain nganga. The image of the slaying nganga refers to the elimination of

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proximate causes of witchcraft – that is to say, the actual witches – by smelling them out and rendering them harmless. The image of the slain nganga, on the other hand, refers to the elimination of all remote causes of witchcraft: in other words, everything in the social fabric that makes for greed, jealousy, lust for power, and hostility. To become reality, this would of necessity involve a radical transformation of society into a social order in which witchcraft has no place, and the nganga role has become superfluous. The images of the slaying nganga and the slain nganga are the ultimate expression of his two most fundamental operations, viz. divination and revelation (Turner 1975). Divination refers to the nganga as the person who lays bare the sordid facts of life and whose task is to neutralize the immediate causes of evil and misfortune. Revelation, on the other hand, refers to the nganga as a person who is able, by means of a ritual dramatization, to evoke a vision of society in its ideal state. The latter aspect is as essential as the first, for without it, it would be difficult to understand why ngangas so often turn into prophets.

See Also ▶ Aladura Churches: Women’s Role ▶ Inculturation and Anthropology ▶ Kongo ▶ Kongo and Angola, Christianity in ▶ Malawi, Mbona Cult of ▶ Practical Philosophy and Religion

Bibliography Buana, Kibongi R. 1969. Priesthood. In Biblical revelation and African beliefs, ed. K.A. Dickson and P. Ellingworth, 47–56. London: Lutterworth Press. Fernandez, J. 1964. The idea and symbol of the savior in a Gabon syncretistic cult: Basic factors in the mythology of messianism. The International Review of Missions 35: 281–289. Ranger, T.O.R. 1975. The Mwana lesa movement of 1925. In Themes in the christianization of Central Africa, ed. T.O. Ranger and J. Weller, 45–75. London: Heinemann.

Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic Schoffeleers, M. 1989. Folk christology in Africa: The dialectics of the Nganga paradigm. Journal of Religion in Africa 19 (2): 157–183. Sundkler, B.G.M. 1961. Bantu prophets in South Africa. London: Oxford University Press. Turner, V. 1975. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Church, Missionary Orders in the Catholic Norbert Brockman International Relations, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, USA

Missionary orders in the Catholic Church are a relatively new development, largely begun after the French Revolution. While orders have always engaged in missionary expansion from the first Celtic and Benedictine monks who Christianized Europe, specialized groups with this as their primary focus are of recent origin. In the first wave of European contact with Africa in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese established small outposts and trading forts along the coasts. The only Christian state in the period was that of the Kongo under King Afonso. It was only in the nineteenth century that Catholicism entered sub-Saharan Africa, and this work was entrusted entirely to religious orders. The opening of Africa to Europe coincided with a period of almost total decline in religious life. Decimated by the French Revolution and its effects in Europe, there was little to work with. When Napoleon reestablished three French missionary societies in 1805, they counted a pitiful 115 members, mostly working in Asia. The revival of missionary orders and their focus upon Africa originated with a dynamic French woman, Anne–Marie Javouhey, foundress of the Sisters of St. Joseph and the first modern Catholic missionary to Africa. After a vision of black children calling to her, she sent sisters to Reunion Island, then to Guinea and Senegal. Mother Javouhey was highly progressive. She began a program for training local clergy, and by

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1872 she had educated six Senegalese priests and begun the first African religious order, the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. Javouhey’s antislavery activities and work among freedmen earned her opposition and suspicion, and after her death her initiatives failed. What did not fail, however, was the effort she placed in reorganizing a collapsing order of men, which she encouraged until it became the Holy Ghost Fathers, or Spiritans. They would become a major presence among Catholic orders in Africa. After the nadir of the Napoleonic era, religious orders in Europe experienced explosive growth. Not only were older societies – the Jesuits, Franciscans, and Ursulines – revived, hundreds of new groups were founded. Almost every community engaged in some form of missionary labor, but there were now a number of orders who took that as their exclusive purpose. The older orders returned to their earlier missions in the Americas and Asia and left Africa largely to the new groups, especially the 20 missionary orders founded in the nineteenth century. The French generated the greatest growth of these new missionary orders, the most prominent of which were the White Fathers, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Spiritans, and the Society of African Missions. All were French, and they ranged in size from 1000 to 6000 members each at their greatest extent. These orders became international within several generations of their beginnings and were able to call up missionaries of several nationalities. The White Fathers even made this a policy, allowing no mission to be staffed by a single nationality, although membership remained predominantly French. Italian orders entered Africa after 1870, the result of a religious revival in northern Italy. The Combonians, named after Daniel Comboni, their founder and the first bishop of the Sudan, took on that difficult mission, while the Consolata Fathers entered northern Kenya. Catholic missionary work came under the Propaganda Fide, a branch of the Vatican bureaucracy, and its chief method was the commission system. By this strategy, every potential mission territory was assigned to a specific religious order of priests, which was then responsible for fund-

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raising, preparing and sending priests, and recruiting lay religious – Sisters and Brothers. The religious order was given wide latitude and authority and named the local bishop from among its members. The advantages of the commission system were considerable. Besides organization, it guaranteed that attractive areas would not be over staffed while hostile or unappealing ones were neglected. The missionary corps was professional and well supported. Strategic planning included not only provision for personnel and financing, but also created a broad base of enthusiastic backing among Catholics in Europe and America. It provided an outreach that Protestants could not begin to match. The negative effects were less obvious. The commission system left little room for development of local diocesan clergy, and where they were ordained, they were often second-class citizens in their own church. The best African vocations were picked up for the dominant religious order, which could offer European education and preferment. In extreme cases, as in Lesotho, one community, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, could so coopt African vocations that almost all the clergy, and every bishop but one, would be from the same community even into the 1990s. The commission system also produced an African Catholicism that remains dependent upon foreign finances rather than its own resources. Colonialism coincided with missionary expansion and produced an uneasy coexistence. Missionaries owed their legal right to work in a colony to the colonial authorities, and individuals could be expelled. After World War I, for example, all German missionaries were ousted from Tanganyika and the Kamerun by the British, reducing Catholic missionaries to a handful. In some cases, such as the Congo, the government allowed only nationals of Belgium to work in mission fields. Missionary orders could play this game as well. Irish missionaries were sent to British colonies such as Nigeria and Kenya, since at that time, Ireland itself was a British colony. In 1866, the small British Catholic Church began its own missionary society, the Mill Hill Fathers, and it took over territories in Uganda and Kenya.

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A far more serious problem, however, was the colonial mentality itself. The missionary orders, by and large, had a sense of divine authority for the colonial enterprise. Rarely did missionary bishops openly resist colonial exploitation, and in areas where the colonial power was of a Catholic tradition, they could and did work in tandem. Belgian missionaries were instrumental in the lifelong imprisonment of Simon Kimbangu, founder of the largest independent African church, for instance. In Kenya, the Spiritan Archbishop of Nairobi was one of the strongest opponents of the Mau Mau. And in perhaps the worst example, the Church blessed the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935 and used the opportunity to bring numbers of Ethiopian Copts to Latin Catholicism. Most missionaries, however, were apolitical. Nevertheless, there were many examples of missionary advocates who defended the rights of Africans. The Catholic bishops were early and consistent opponents of apartheid in South Africa, and their “Call to Conscience” is perhaps the best developed religious statement on South African social injustice. Just as powerful was the indictment of a Franciscan friar, Cosmas Desmond, who described the removals of blacks to make way for white settlers in his The Discarded People, and who suffered detainment. Elsewhere, there were other anticolonial missionaries, beginning with the Spiritans who campaigned so effectively against the slave trade, up to those who tried to defend the land rights of the Kikuyu in Kenya. In Katanga, Placide Tempels organized new forms of communities among the miners, where justice was an integral result of faith. This was the minority, however, and it took independence and the Second Vatican Council to reshape the mentality of missionaries. One contributing organizational development was the rise of a new style Catholic missionary community, the national societies. These are modeled on religious orders, but the members do not take religious vows. Members are all of the same nationality and consider themselves as “sent” by their home churches. Since they accept candidates only from their homelands, their missions led the way in developing and promoting

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African clergy. Since 1910 twelve national mission societies have come into being, including the American Maryknoll (1911), The Irish Kiltegans (1932), the Mexican Guadelupe Fathers (1948), and the first African group, the Nigerian Society of St. Paul (1976), which has undertaken missions among African expatriates in Texas. All these groups work in Africa. In addition to orders of missionary priests, there were 24 missionary orders of women, several of which worked in Africa. Besides engaging in health care and education, they began the development of African sisterhoods. The post-World War II period saw a new expansion of religious orders in Africa. With established dioceses, the need was less for missionaries than for specialized ministries. From early on, there had been some hospitals, clinics, and schools, but the post-War era saw a significant expansion, especially in secondary schools. These institutions were staffed largely by Brothers and Sisters from nonmissionary orders. They brought a level of professional education often lacking among priests. Many came from the United States, especially after the 1957 encyclical, Fidei Donum, in which Pope Pius XII asked every religious order to undertake a missionary establishment in Africa. The mentality of these nonmissionary orders was international, and they had little colonial experience. From the beginning they began to invite African candidates to join them, but this met with mixed results. In Rhodesia, the 1969 Land Tenure Act kept whites and Africans from living together, but even when flouting the law, it was impossible to work together. Several orders in South Africa chose to form separate communities. Even where there were mixed communities at independence, many burgeoning Africanization programs collapsed in the nationalist enthusiasm of the time. The Christian Brothers lost all their African members in Kenya, for example, a not uncommon experience. Independence brought new concerns, as governments indigenized or secularized mission schools and hospitals. In the wake of the Vatican Council, the commission system was phased out, and dioceses were turned over to African bishops under a vigorous Vatican policy of Africanization.

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In Tanzania, for example, the ratio of African and expatriate bishops went from 6–14 in 1960 to 19–5 in 1975. While many of these African bishops were also members of religious orders, the dominant group (and almost all the cardinals) were from the local diocesan clergy. At the same time, religious orders after 1965 experienced a sharp fall in new members from Europe and America. This turned their interest toward the Third World as a source of recruitment, and by the 1980s, almost all religious orders in Africa actively sought and prepared African members. The Dominicans, for example, entered Nigeria in 1956 and within 25 years had a well–staffed jurisdiction of Nigerian priests and Brothers under Nigerian leadership. One legacy of the colonial period has been the religious orders of African women that have developed across the continent. The Bannabikira Sisters of Uganda, begun in 1909, have over 70 houses and close to a thousand members in several countries. The Kilimanjaro Sisters (1930) have similarly expanded beyond their original boundaries, as have the Nigerian Handmaids of the Child Jesus and the Rwandese Benetereziya. As yet, few of the women’s orders are independent of diocesan control, but their numbers make them a significant force for the future of African Catholicism. Often employed as catechists and in untrained professions, only in recent years have they begun to receive much education and formation. Orders of priests are almost unknown, the exception being the Apostles of Jesus (1968), an East African community that has developed despite great difficulties. One unexpected development has been the rapid expansion of monastic establishments. This has been the setting in which mixed African-expatriate communities have worked best, including the election of African superiors. The Trappists, a contemplative and strict monastic order, have founded 30 new monasteries since 1954. One reason for this success is not only the attraction of contemplative life to many Africans – monasticism, after all, originated in Africa – but also that monasteries have the best record of inculturation. Inculturation has been the critical issue of the 1980s and 1990s. African

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Catholics will no longer accept foreign versions of Christianity, but expect both the forms and spirit of the faith to be Africanized. Engaging in what Ngugi wa Thiong’o calls “decolonizing the mind” is a difficult and painful process. It has produced new expressions of worship, dress, and ministry. Perhaps more important are African modes of authority, such as use of the palaver, or consensus discussion, as a community decision-making process, where everyone may speak his thoughts and all topics are explored at length. A few African orders have abandoned monastic buildings and moved into simple huts, living village style and supporting themselves at subsistence farming. International missionary orders have begun to send African members to other continents. In a kind of reverse mission, recent years have seen African missions in England, the USA, and Italy, as well as in other Third World nations.

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Athanasius Campbell, James. 1963. The Greek fathers. New York: Cooper Square Publishers. Cliffort, Cornelius. 1994. Athanasius. In Historic world leaders, ed. Anne Commire, vol. I, 32–35. Detroit: Gale Publishers. DeClercq, Victor. 1967. Athanasius, Saint. In New catholic encyclopedia I, 996–999. MI.

Missionary Orders Brockman, Norbert. 1990. A popular history of religious life, 112–138. Nairobi: St. Paul Publications. Degrijse, Omer. 1984. Going forth. New York: Orbis. Tarikh. 1969. Christianity in Modern Africa, Longmans / Historical Society of Nigeria.

Nubian Christianity Ilevbare, J.A. 1968. Christianity in Nubia. In Tarikh, vol. 2, #1. Gale Cengage Learning. Jakobielski, S. 1988. Christian Nubia at the height of its civilization. In UNESCO, general history of Africa, vol. III, 194–223. Berkeley: University of California Press. Michalowski, K. 1990. The spreading of christianity in Nubia. In UNESCO, general history of Africa, vol. II, 340–326. Berkeley: University of California Press.

See Also ▶ Antony of the Desert ▶ Athanasius ▶ Nubia, Christianity in ▶ Pachomius

Church, Women Founders of Rosalind I. J. Hackett Department of Religious Studies, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

Bibliography Anthony of the Desert Athanasius. 1950. Life of Anthony. Westminster: Newman Press. Wellard, James. 1970. Desert pilgrimage. London: Hutchinson.

Pachomius McCarthy, Maria C. 1967. Pachomius, saint. In New catholic encyclopedia, X, 853–854. Detroit, MI, Gale Cengage Learning. Meinardus, Otto. 1989. Monks and monasteries of the Egyptian desert. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, revised edition. Rousseau, Philip. 1985. Pachomius: The making of a community in fourth century Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Veillard, Armand, ed. 1980. Pachomian Koinoinia. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications.

Women have distinguished themselves from the earliest phase of religious independency in Africa. In fact one of the first recorded movements in Africa was initiated by Dona Béatrice or Kimpa Vita in the Kongo kingdom of the early eighteenth century. Claiming to be the reincarnation of the Portuguese St. Anthony, she founded the (antiCatholic) Antonian Church, before being burned at the stake. Of the more than six thousand Christian-related independent movements that are found in Africa today, perhaps twenty per cent would be founded and/or led by women. The reasons behind this ultimate act of religious self-determination by women do not seem to be primarily motivated by economic factors or leadership tussles but rather by a concern to contest

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oppressive cultural practices for women, and intransigent and male-dominated ecclesiastical powers. It also needs to be seen against the background of women traditionally serving as priestesses and spirit mediums in some societies. Many of these movements have specifically addressed women’s social problems, through family-type religious communities with the founder/leader being perceived as spiritual Mother. This assertion of religious freedom by African women has not been without political consequences. In the case of Dona Beatrice, for example, her challenge to the Portuguese Catholic Church and call for Kongo Christian institutions and practices served to revitalize the Kongo kingdom and to inspire messianic movements in their struggle against colonial oppression two centuries later. Likewise, Alice Mulenga, who was revered for her healing and witch-finding capabilities, led her Lumpa Church against the newly formed Zambian government in 1964. More recently, Alice Lakwena and her Holy Spirit Movement challenged the Ugandan government on a number of occasions. While women’s spiritual powers are often revered, their capacity to run a growing religious organization and to command authority has been questioned (Jules-Rosette 1979); there are a number of cases of church leadership passing to men on the event of a woman founder’s death or retirement. The Christ Holy Church, an Igbo church which grew popular in Nigeria after the Civil War in Nigeria, is now in the hands of a male hierarchy while the female founder lives in retirement in Rivers State. Christianah Abiodun Akinsowon has had to struggle to maintain her leadership authority in the face of her (late) co-founder, despite her formative influence at the inception of the movement in Lagos in 1925. She has, however, played an important leadership role in recent years in reuniting a much factionalized Cherubim and Seraphim movement. Grace Thannie (or Tani) of the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Ghana and Marie Lalou, founder of the Deima Cult in Côte d’Ivoire also experienced challenges to their authority – the former through her association with the co-founder, Kwesi “John” Nackabah and the latter through accusations of

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witchcraft and subversion. Gaudencia Aoko played an important role in the early development of the Legio Maria movement in Kenya, but was later eclipsed by Simon Ondeto. A number of these women founders could be described as social misfits, in that they were childless, their children had died, or they were divorced or accused of harming or killing their husbands. These women, whether Marie Lalou and her successor, Princesse Geniss or Mai Chaza, the Shona prophetess and church founder, transformed and legitimated their socially unacceptable circumstances through spiritual means. They claimed status and were valued as ideal, spiritual mothers who had renounced their roles as traditional mothers for the good of the community. Mai Chaza, who died in 1960, embarked on a celibate life to achieve special ritual power. While denouncing the use of traditional medicines, she drew on the methods of a spirit medium and traditional healer, attracting many people to her “Cities of God” (Guta ra Jehova) around Umtali. Christianah Abiodun Akinsowon was also told in a vision to rely on prayer and water for healing rather than traditional herbalism. Women were thereby empowered to challenge one of the perceived sources of exploitation and muting of women. These faith-healing traditions continue in the work of present-day women founders, such as in the case of two Kenyan women, Senaida Mary Akatsa and Margaret Wangare, who operate in the suburbs of Nairobi. Ma Nku (Christinah Mokotulima), the founder of the St. John’s Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa was renowned for her visions, prophecies, and efficacious prayers in a life that spanned almost a century (1894–1988). Her healing work is being carried on by her daughter, Dr. Lydia August, a US trained medical social worker. Women have also founded semi-autonomous movements such as prayer bands. One such movement was Mother Bloomer’s Confidential Band founded in Sierra Leone in 1919 by Martha Davies and a group of Creole women. While maintaining affiliation to or operation within the confines of a mainline church, these movements nonetheless provide contexts for women to

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express themselves freely and to serve as leaders. By virtue of their ability to raise funds and mobilize women (who are frequently in the majority in many church congregations), they may become a powerful voice. Occasionally these groups develop their own momentum and separate identity as in the case with the Christ Apostolic Church, possibly the largest of the independent prayer-healing or Aladura churches in Nigeria. Despite the church’s stand against women preaching and serving as pastors, a number of strong, independent women evangelists have emerged from their ranks, challenging the exclusion of women from the pulpit. The most well-known of these women is Miss Olaniyi, the founder of Agbala Daniel, and well-known to television viewers in western Nigeria. The “lady evangelist,” as she is known, openly addresses such issues as divorce (her clergyman husband divorced her because of the conflict of their spiritual careers) and women’s religious responsibilities. She strongly advocates that women realize their full religious potential and renounce ungodly husbands (although she does still endorse the man as leader of the household). Lady Evangelist Odeleke heads a successful ministry and is a forceful critic of men’s behavior and repression of women. Eunice Osagiedie, the dynamic founder of the fast-growing all-women Jesus Women Prayer Band Ministry in Benin City, is keen to emphasize the privileged position of women who, despite causing the fall of the human race, were the vehicle of salvation (through Mary) and of the revelation of the greatest truths in Christianity. The rapid expansion of the Pentecostal and charismatic movement in the last 20 years in many parts of Africa, with its emphasis on experience, evangelism, miracles, the power of the Holy Spirit and millennialist eschatology, has encouraged greater participation for women. Their initiatives lie primarily in the para-church organizations such as the creation of ministries and magazines. In Nigeria for example, Nigerian Women for Christ produce The Virtuous Woman. The conservative ideology of these groups is offset by their removal of restrictive taboos pertaining to menstruation and childbirth, and

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strict dress codes, which characterized the older independent churches.

See Also ▶ Aladura Churches: Women’s Role ▶ Christianity, Historiography in Africa ▶ Churches, Indigenous ▶ Dinka, Christianity Among the ▶ Evangelization of Western Africa ▶ Movements, African Religious ▶ Movements, Pentecostal and Charismatic ▶ New Age and Esoteric Religion ▶ Women’s Power, The New African Religions and

Bibliography “African Women and the Independent Churches” Risk 3. 1971. Special edition on African independent churches. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1979. The new religions of Africa. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Churches, Indigenous Bennetta Jules-Rosette Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

Indigenous churches, also known as independent churches, are religious groups established by African leaders outside of the immediate purview of missions and historic religious traditions. They are distinct from separatist groups that arise as direct offshoots of missions and established churches. Although scholars of religion classify these churches as religious sects or sectarian movements, progress toward institutionalization of these groups, as well as the subjective interpretations of members, warrants their categorization as churches. Estimated by 2000 to comprise approximately 20% of the Christian population of sub-Saharan Africa, these groups have

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developed unique religious beliefs, doctrines, political philosophies, and social organization. Reacting against the political and religious domination of the colonial era, these churches have spread rapidly during the postindependence period. Groups as diverse as the Zionist and Apostolic movements of southern Africa, the Aladura healing churches of Nigeria, the neotraditional movements of Ghana, and the Harrists of Côte d’Ivoire may be classified as indigenous churches. These groups vary in terms of their organization, doctrine, popular appeal, and political status. Three major types of indigenous churches may be designated: prophetic churches, messianic groups, and millenarian movements. Prophetic churches are based on the charismatic appeal of an individual prophet. They emphasize revealed prophetic knowledge and reinterpretations of Christian, Islamic, and traditional beliefs. Syncretic and innovative in their theologies, prophetic churches have influenced the beliefs, practices, and direction of Africa’s new religions. Included under this category are Kimbanguism in Congo (DRC) – particularly during its early years (1921–1951), the Harrist Church in Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, Alice Lenshina Mulenga’s Lumpa Church in Zambia, and the Aladura churches of Nigeria. Distinctions may be drawn between Zionist, or healing-type, prophetic movements and Ethiopian, or politically visionary churches. Prototypical among Zionist churches are the Zulu and Swazi groups of South Africa, influenced by John Alexander Dowie’s evangelical Christian Catholic Church, established in 1896 in Zion City, Illinois. The idea of Zion is linked to spiritual healing and a utopian view of the world. The prophetic leaders arising in these churches emphasize faith-healing and visionary experiences to legitimate their leadership. The term prophet, in this case, refers to a visionary leader who claims extraordinary abilities and forecasts a future of spiritual freedom for members. Alice Lenshina Mulenga’s Lumpa church represents a prophetic subtype in which the leader establishes a utopian community in reaction against political authorities. Prophetic leadership is linked to the new spiritual world promised to

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followers and to the assurance of their health and well-being. Other groups in West Africa, such as the Harrist Church, established in 1913 by William Wade Harris, a Liberian of Grebo origin, and the Aladura movements of Nigeria combine divine revelation, prophecy, and healing. Preeminent among the prophetic type churches is Simon Kimbangu’s movement in Congo (DRC), emphasizing divine revelation, baptism, and exorcism. Initially, Kimbanguism combined elements of the prophetic and messianic categories. This movement has now become institutionalized as a state religion. Similar to prophetic movements in their origins and doctrines, messianic groups focus on the leadership of the founder and may experience a decline in their appeal when the founder dies. In this type of movement, the founder is viewed as either a messiah, or a prophetic messenger, whose teachings purport to modify customary religions and the doctrines of established churches. This category includes the church of Shona prophetess Mai (Mother) Chaza, established in 1954 in Zimbabwe; the Apostolic Church of Johane Masowe, also originating in Zimbabwe; and various Zulu Zionist groups. Presenting herself as the black messiah, Shona prophetess Mai Chaza, who also called herself Jesus, established holy villages (Guta ra Jehovah) and led healing and exorcism campaigns in Zimbabwe during the 1950s. She promised to alter the social, spiritual, and psychological conditions of her followers. Johane Masowe, or Shoniwa, established his church in the Hartley district of Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in 1932. Masowe, also known as the secret messiah, baptized local villagers, promising them a life of health and socioeconomic liberation. Near-death experiences, periodic disappearance, and alleged miraculous events characterized the lives of both Mai Chaza and Masowe. (See also “Women’s Power and New African Religions.”) Isaiah Shembe (1870–1935) was a Zulu religious leader who claimed to be a prophet and messiah. He founded the Ama Nazaretha church in South Africa in 1916. Quixotic and compelling in his personality, Shembe was believed to be a prophet, divine healer, liberator, and messenger of

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God. He built a holy village at Ekuphakameni, where he performed faith-healings and held annual festivals. Succeeded by his son Johannes Galilee Shembe, or Shembe II, Isaiah was believed to have transmitted his charismatic healing and prophetic gifts, but not his messianic status. Movements of the millenarian type arose across central and southern Africa during the colonial period. Among the best known of these movements are those stemming from the Watchtower group, linked to the American Jehovah’s Witnesses. Elliot Kamwana’s Kitawala movement, established in 1908 in Malawi, and various Watchtower spin-off groups spreading to Zambia and Congo (DRC) exemplify a millenarian and politically visionary view of the future. Often considered politically subversive by colonial and postindependence governments, these groups have experienced persecution across the African continent. In addition to the three primary types of indigenous churches, numerous groups – particularly in West Africa – revive aspects of customary religions and secret societies under the institutional format of churches. Included in this category are Bwiti, also known as the Église des Banzie (Church of the Initiates) in Gabon, the Église de Dieu de Nos Ancêtres (Church of the God of Our Ancestors) in Congo (DRC), and secret societies such as the Poro-Sande complexes in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In the case of the Poro-Sande societies and other initiation cults, traditional practices continue but have been altered to adapt to contemporary circumstances. Other neotraditional groups combine traditional religious elements with Christianity and have expanded their movements by proselytizing in urban and rural areas. Indigenous churches have made innovative contributions to ritual, doctrine, and symbolism in African religion. They propose beliefs that have popular appeal by reinterpreting orthodox doctrines, sacred texts, and ritual and cultural practices found in customary religions and historic churches. These groups present political challenges to African states by reformulating the role of religion and its social visibility. Indigenous

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churches have the potential to influence the larger nexus of social, cultural, and political values in African societies.

See Also ▶ Aladura Churches: Women’s Role ▶ Christianity, Historiography in Africa ▶ Church, Women Founders of ▶ Dinka, Christianity Among the ▶ Evangelization of Western Africa ▶ Maranke, John ▶ Movements, African Religious ▶ Movements, Pentecostal and Charismatic ▶ New Age and Esoteric Religion ▶ Women’s Power, the New African Religions and

Bibliography Asch, Susan. 1983. L’Église du Prophète Kimbangu: De ses origines à son rôle actuel au Zaire. Paris: Éditions Karthala. Balandier, George. 1955. Sociologie actuelle de l’Afrique Noire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Barrett, David B. 1968. Schism and renewal in Africa: An analysis of six thousand contemporary religious movements. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. ———., ed. 1982. World christian encyclopedia: A comparative study of churches and religions in the modern world, A.D. 1900–2000. New York: Oxford University Press. Daneel, Marthinus L. 1971. Old and new in southern Shona independent churches. Vol. I: Background and rise of the major movements. The Hague: Mouton. Dillon-Malone, Clive M. 1978. The Korsten Basketmakers: A study of the Masowe apostles, an indigenous African religious movement. Lusaka: Institute for African Studies. Fabian, Johannes. 1971. Jamaa: A charismatic movement in Katanga. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Fernandez, James W. 1982. Bwiti: An ethnography of the religious imagination in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haliburton, Gordon Mackay. 1971. The prophet Harris. London: Longman Group Limited. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1975. African apostles: Ritual and conversion in the church of John Maranke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Martin, Marie-Louise. 1971. The Mai Chaza Church in Rhodesia. In African initiatives in religion, ed. David B. Barrett, 109–121. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.

Cities Peel, J.D.Y. 1968. Aladura: A religious movement among the Yoruba. London: International African Institute. Perrin Jassy, Marie-France. 1970. La Communauté de base dans les églises africaines, Series II. Vol. 3. Bandundu: Centre des Études Ethnologiques. Sundkler, Bengt G.M. 1976. Zulu Zion and some Swazi Zionists. London: Oxford University Press. Taylor, John V., and Dorothea Lehmann. 1961. Christians of the Copperbelt. London: SCM Press. West, Martin E. 1975. Bishops and prophets in a black city: African independent churches in Soweto, Johannesburg. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.

Cities Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch Professor Emerita African History, University of Paris, Paris, France

Urbanization is, first, a spatial process, “whereby human beings congregate in a relatively restricted space” (Mabogunge 1968). But, it is also a social process which generates contradictions: ethnic, linguistic, professionals, and class. It is not only a pole of attraction, but also of diffusion; it is, therefore, a cultural phenomenon, a space where memories are blended together. The city is a synthesis of the external contribution (as was Swahili culture mixed with eastern seaports) and projected further: the medieval model of Timbuktu or Jenne has diffused its ideological apparatus and its architectural project throughout Western Sudan. In Africa, no more than Europe, size is not criterion. There could have been cities of 1000 inhabitants and villages of 5000 inhabitants able to defend themselves efficiently when attacked; the “country of rivers” of Middle Congo was, therefore, populated by large fishing of 5, 10, or even 20,000 inhabitants. But all that is known about these agglomerations (which were wiped out without a trace in 20-year span at the turn of the century by sleeping sickness) is what the first explorers said about them: there were only very large villages. The city defined by the population density either: the Ibo country (southeast Nigeria) is twice as densely populated as the Yoruba country

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in the southwest region, but it has not produced a comparable precolonial urban civilization. Rwanda, entirely rural until recently, is, nonetheless, one of the most densely populated states in Africa. The loose-knit structure of residential areas (mostly those inherited from Anglo-Saxons) can produce density that is less than those of neighboring rural settlements. African urban spaces might also contain several smaller cultural inner spaces for a population that is largely living of the land. About 20 years before the usage of cement was widespread, PotoPoto, a vast popular neighborhood in the Brazzaville, still looked like a big village, because the inhabitants practiced the same construction techniques. If one had chosen a single criterion, it would not be the use of a written language (as suggested by the historians of the Occident) but, as Max Weber underscores, the fact that, in the city’s economic space, everybody does not make a living out of agriculture (Weber 1921). One can deduce from that the heterogenous character of the population: an open society that induces trade, markets, exchange of nonagricultural products (crafts), and necessary everyday products for the survival of the community. Three conditions have proven necessary for urbanization to occur in Africa, as well as elsewhere: • The possibility of surplus of agricultural production that serves to nourish the nonproducers. Since the contemporary period and the technological revolution in intercontinental transportation, a city could not be conceived without a surrounding agricultural base. • Trade implied the presence of a merchant class specialized in the collection and redistribution of supplies. For example, in the twelfth century, Cairo counted 36,000 boats and 30,000 mule and donkey traders. Markets existed outside of cities (especially in West Africa), but there was never a city without a market. • All this implied the presence of political power, that is to say, a ruling class who controlled the use of the surplus by the nonproducers.

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Cities hardly ever emerged from stateless societies, that is to say, where balances were not maintained by lineage links, village chiefs were entirely preoccupied with subsistence survival. On the contrary, the city-state, as in the Hausa cities of northern Nigeria during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, used their hold on the immediate rural surroundings. Sometimes, the power of the political and the religious center overflowed largely into the surroundings region, as did Old Oyo (Katunga) which dominated four Yoruba provinces, each administered, in turn, by a major city. The centers, therefore, were scattered over every twenty or thirty kilometers, and this distance was adapted to the transportation capacity of the time, which was characterized by limited production, low income per capita, and rudimentary communication techniques. The notion of network and hierarchy is, therefore, inherent to the urbanization process. The strongest city incorporated the others in its system by recruiting the necessary labor force, slaves, or tributaries. The structure sometimes weighed heavily upon society from the precolonial period up until today; for example, the area of influence of Yoruba cities, of Bobo-Dioulasso (in BurkinaFaso), or of the borough and the markets of the Ashanti country (nowadays interior of Ghana). The colonial rupture did not consistently create cities, but rather substitute one network for another, giving the primacy to coastal harbors over inland areas. How are today’s African cities different from their cities of the Third World? • In the context of accelerated urban migrations, one can discern the same pattern of poverty in the majority of the inhabitants, especially from recent immigration. • The same distortion of town planning recently built high quality business and administrative centers contrasts with widespread and sometimes immense surface areas of impoverished, low-lying housing established in poorly equipped and integrated spaces, where the lack of and mediocrity of maintenance leads to accelerated decline.

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• The inadequacy of the transportation system becomes daily Entertainment, from troops of pedestrians to traffic jams in the overcrowded, out-of-date, and swaying mini-vans. Added to this, as in Ouagadougou, for example, an ocean of bicycles, which have now been replaced by motorcycles. • At last, the animation of the huge noisy and colorful markets present very striking similarities throughout the continent. How are these elements different from any other big city in today’s Third World? The answer is: all the cities are and still are inhabited by Africans, that is to say, individuals and groups of people forming communities, and whose reactions are based on a given historical and cultural inheritances. More than a typology, we can, therefore, suggest a chronology of this urbanization, even though such a model may be a reductive one. This is because periodization eliminates very long intermediary transitional phases and because history implies a cumulative effect of successive urban influences. 1. Ancient cities whose emergence, according to the places, corresponds to an agricultural expansion that allows them to supply leading nonproductive groups. The examples came from the most ancient archaeology known: from Jenne-Jeno, at the very beginning of the area on the Niger River (not far from the Djenne of today), to the fortified city of the central African interlacustrine zone (around the thirteenth century), through, for example, the fascinating stone builders in the cultural region of the Shona in southern Africa, whose most famous city was Grand Zimbabwe, which disappeared in the period around 1450. 2. The city created through contacts with Islam and the Arabic world by distant trade routes already seems more classical and familiar, along the Oriental Coast as well as in the Western Sahelian Sudan. But the function as cultural and merchant relay-stations becomes obvious. But the question remains about the

Coetzee, J.M.

degrees of transition between the first and second, by indirect and often very blurry contacts. 3. Then occurred, in the period from the second half of the fifteenth century, the introduction of Portuguese coastal fortress which soon became more generally European. It is, therefore, very early on that we can begin to see the origin of a Western model, and not only during colonial period. Nevertheless, the surrounding cities, except for the very exceptional case of an early Portuguese colonization on the Angola coast, were developed in the original native manner, without the dependencies which characterized the colonial period. 4. The colonial period imposed a rupture, using and competing with the prior network. Above all, it made a decisive selection among the “useful” cities. But we have still to make the distinction between several stages: from the military and administrative posts to the economic and harbor-based metropolitan centers. But even if entirely created by authoritarian decree (Cotonou or Kampala), every colonial city has become a major melting pot – economic, social, political or, in a word, cultural – which has developed continuously into a society composed of constant syntheses between the old and the new. 5. We can deduce from this chronology the huge complexity of the urban issue during the complementary period of the independences.

Bibliography Connah, Graham. 1987. African civilizations, precolonial cities and states in tropical Africa: An archeological perpsective. London: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, Frederick, ed. 1983. Struggle of the city: Migrant labor, capital and the state in urban Africa. Beverly Hills: Sage. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. 1993. Histoire des villes d’Afrique noire des origines à la colonisation. Paris: Albin Michel. Gugler, Josef, and William G. Flanagan. 1978. Urbanization and social change in West Africa. London: Cambridge University Press. Mabogunje, Akin C. 1968. Urbanization in Nigeria. New York: Africana Publishing. Weger, Max The City, 1921 (paperback ed. Glencoe, Ill. Free Press 1986).

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Coetzee, J.M. Dan Pillay Umhlaruzana Township, Durban, South Africa Literature Program, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

J.M. Coetzee is widely regarded as one of South Africans foremost literary-critics and novelists. Born in 1940, in Cape Town, he was educated at the Universities of Cape Town and Texas and is now Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town. Coetzee has published several novels to date, as well as a number of scholarly articles, some of which are included in two collections of critical and theoretical work, White Writing (1988) and Doubling the Point (1992). His critical oeuvre includes work on the representation of labor, landscape and race, modernist prose and poetry, censorship, and the philosophy of language. Much of his fiction is set within the context of coloniality and postcoloniality, but has dealt more generally with questions of power, authorship, language, and gender; its philosophical counterpart might be found in the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Deleuze and Guattari. Dusklands (1974) was concerned with the deployment of power on native populations, by the USA in Vietnam and by a Boer settler in eighteenth century South Africa. In The Heart Of The Country (1977) focused upon the antipatriarchal revolt of Magda, an Afrikaner woman. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) examined the conflicts and complicities between liberal and authoritarian power figures in the construction of the external threat so essential to empire. Set in the context of civil war, Life and Times of Michael K (1983) focused on the resistance of K, gardener and outsider, to the logic of war and to its institutions which attempt to colonize him. Foe (1986), an allegorical replay of Defoeís Robinson Crusoe, turned to questions of authorship, authority, and marginality. Age of Iron (1990) extended some of these earlier themes, taking up the maleconstructed militarization of a society in conflict

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as the context for the private reflections of an elderly female lecturer dying of cancer. J.M. Coetzee has been the recipient of various awards, including the Booker Prize, the Jerusalem Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

See Also ▶ Gordimer, Nadine ▶ Mphahlele, Es’Kia (1919–) ▶ Tutu, Desmond

Cognition Peter Amato Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Fordham University, The Bronx, NY, USA

Cognition refers to the processes by which knowledge is acquired. The philosophical study of cognition has been pursued during the twentieth century in such fields as Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Language. But it is connected to all major fields of philosophy. In Ethics, “cognitivism” considers moral questions to have definite truth-value. In Philosophy of Religion, theories of cognition are connected to debates regarding the nature of the soul, and the scope of faith in relation to reason, and the roles that tradition and interpretation may have in belief and knowledge. In Metaphysics, any attempt to account for cognition implies a broader attitude toward central questions like whether the mind or soul should be identified wholly and reductively with the brain. Theories of how cognition occurs attempt to trace the processes of perception and judgment responsible for the synthesis of sensory information and rational processing that produces experience. Such theories are currently developing rapidly in the neurosciences as the result of improved techniques through which brain functions can be observed. Theories which attempt to describe what cognition is are today considered to

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lie in the domain of philosophers, for whom the observation of brain functions and processes can never crack fundamental questions of the nature of human consciousness and its significance. Currently, central questions concern how mental representation should be understood. So, for example, major issues consider whether representations which express concepts should be considered to have truth value; whether there is a difference on the level of cognition between pictorial and syntactic representation; whether representations occur spontaneously in natural languages or in a “language of thought,” and related questions. Since Kant, there have been three general types of theories about cognition. Dualism holds that cognition can only be accounted for on a model that includes two levels or types of states, one physical and the other mental. Interactionists say these levels or states affect one another, while Epiphenomenalists hold that mental states are merely the noncausal byproducts of physical states. Functionalism holds that mental states exist only insofar as they have a causal role in behavior. Materialism claims that there are no mental states, in either a functional or an ontological sense. Reductive Materialists believe that mental phenomena can be reduced to or translated in terms of physical states; Eliminative Materialists deny that there are any mental phenomena that correspond to our references to mental states.

See Also ▶ Act (Mental) ▶ Agent (Ethical) ▶ Dualism ▶ Existence ▶ Obligation

Bibliography Churchland, Patricia Smith. 1986. Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dallmayr, Fred, and Thomas McCarthy, eds. 1977. Understanding and social inquiry. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Colonial Library Dennett, Daniel. 1991. Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Dougherty, Janet, ed. 1985. Directions in cognitive anthropology. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Fodor, Jerry. 1975. The language of thought. New York: Cromwell. Putnam, Hilary. 1975. Mind, language, and reality: Philosophical papers. Vol. II. London: Cambridge University Press. Rosenthal, David M., ed. 1991. The nature of mind. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. Serequeberhan, Tsenay. 1994. The hermeneutics of African philosophy: Horizon and discourse. New York: Routledge. Winch, Peter. 1958. The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy. London: Routledge and KeganPaul.

Colonial Library V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

The scramble for Africa and the 1884 Berlin Conference that normalized it have been called “the most gigantic and astonishing episodes in human history.” Two concepts, terra incognita and terra nullius, which have been circulating since the fourteenth century as juridical, philosophical, and theological keys in discourses on European rights to expand overseas, were thematized then as uniquely designating the African continent and its peculiar distinction. They connote arguments for the rights and duties of colonization. The negotiations and ultimate resolutions of the Berlin Conference on the slave trade, free trade and commerce, territorial partitions, and norms of annexation specify the modalities of submitting the colonial enterprise to a consensual authority. The whole project rests on an axiom that goes without saying: the universal primacy of Western history and civilization. Three models incarnate the task of converting the African difference to the requirements of Western paradigms. First, there is the explorer and his double, the anthropologist, in charge of consigning the economy of the difference.

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Secondly, there is the twin sign of the soldier and the commissioner in charge of an effective domestication of the new space and its inhabitants. Finally, there is the missionary, whose mission of substituting Christianity for local systems of belief bears witness to the fusion of Western historical authenticity with Christian eschatology. They actualize an episteme that identifies with a doxa conveying the evidence of civilization and with colonial reason as both an historical and providential necessity in and for the growth of Humanität by its function in erasing African differences and their impulses. The evidence belonged to the Western sensus communis. It was supported and justified by a body of knowledge – a colonial library – about non-Western societies and their organization. At the moment of the Berlin Conference, as Sir Edward B. Tylor, one of the founders of the new discipline of evolutionary anthropology, put it: the matter of human diversity was settled and the West had placed “its own nations at one end of the social series, and the savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between these limits according as they correspond more closely to savage or cultural life.” The models for conversion and their function may serve as an index to the library and thus define the main domains of the accumulated knowledge as figured in testimonies on foreign geographies, their societies, beings, and their systems of belief as in radical opposition to normative values. The same type of deficiency could be deduced from a chronological perspective and, say, from the Greco-Roman and early Judeo-Christian paradigms onward, used to decode and read renderings and drawings of alien realities as mystery or wonder, approximation or aberration, imitation or corruption of the normed, valued, orthodox achievement. What is devalued in a difference, be it qualified as barbaric, savage, or pagan, and for this very reason sometimes considered in awe is not the substance of the reality but rather the accidental marks distinguishing it from a canonized sign of harmony. The will to truth was assuredly the most determining criterion in classifying, dogmatic orthodox grids, the varieties of cultural deviations from the benign to the monstrous. Thus, for

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example, Medieval encyclopedias, as well as Renaissance thesauri, favored biblical themes such as the deluge and the tower of Babel for classifying nascent nations, their dispersion as well as their virtues and vices, and, in this manner, the varying rhythm of their corruption. From the hypothesis of an original cultural genesis or its rejection, theories on human diversity invoked physical factors (climate, environment, etc.), biological, or spiritual dispositions in their comments on the history and constitution of the chain of Being. For illustrations of this current, one might refer to the Theologia Naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum (1480) of Raymond de Sebonde and Montaigne’s curiosity on artless and simple civilizations in his Essays (1580). Kant’s question, “what is man,” summarizes well the intent of the main lines of learned investigations that since the mid-fourteenth century have been proceeded from connections between: firstly, Ius Naturalis principles or Natural Law, Christian Ethics, and Colonization policies well exemplified in missionary and travel literature; secondly, Natural history systems, as in the manner of Buffon’s scientific deductions of hypotheses on regional taxonomies of beings and things in the world and theoretical issues concerning hierarchical orders and laws of nature; and thirdly, what, within the Enlightenment framework, Kant’s question represents as a call to the task of clarifying the affinity between an abstract normative human reality and the anthropologist’s object, and, further, its bearing on post-Cartesian exegeses concerned with the relation between the subject of knowledge and the subject of history. By the nineteenth century, as reports Margarte T. Hodgen in her study, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1964), “anthropology, or the science of man, said Bendyshe, to the Anthropological Society of London in 1863–63, ‘joins natural history, at one extremity (. . .) and at the other (. . .) in its highest and most peculiar department (. . .) has (. . .) nothing beyond what is more generally known as the science of history’. The whole domain, ‘from the origin of mankind to its ultimate destiny (. . .) is embraced in Anthropology.”

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Such is the complexity of the Colonial Library. I have suggested considering it as a body of knowledge generalizing conceptual rules, certain historical paradigms, and a political project, in which the non-Western “something” unveils itself as lacking the Western norm, and thus offers itself as an object for conversion, transmutation, and standardization. The library includes, and for good reasons, everything evidencing difference as well as the figures indicating both the necessity and paths of an evolution. Thus, the library’s signs represent more than a simple reconstruction of a history and its incoherences. In its being, this library affirms the radical importance of a conversion and its consequences and in and by itself identifies with an imperative. In fact, it incarnates the gaze of the historically most advanced consciousness and, as such, in its scientific complexity, claims to lay down, in the name of a Kantian imperator that it actualizes, laws of both history and salvation. It describes everything, proscribing what the real African past might suggest or require in its difference and prescribing new ways of being and behaving; and these are, sometimes – as in the post-Tempels’ period – issues in the ambiguous authority of the so-called Christian stepping stones symbolizing a praeparationem evangelicam.

See Also ▶ Colonial Space ▶ Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to ▶ Episteme ▶ Evangelization of Western Africa ▶ Imperialism, Cultural ▶ Inculturation and Anthropology

Bibliography Berlin, Isaiah. 2000. Three critics of the enlightenment. Vico, Hamman, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Duchet, Michèle. 1971. Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières. Paris: Maspero. Groethuysen, Bernard. 1980. Anthropologie philosophique. Paris: Gallimard.

Colonial Space Hodgen, Margaret T. 1964. Early anthropology in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1997. Tales of faith. London: The Athlone Press. Pakenham, Thomas. 2003. The scramble for Africa. White mans conquest of the dark continent from 1876 to 1912. New York: Harper Collins.

Colonial Space John K. Noyes University of Toronto, ON, Canada

The system of spatial organization that emerges in the process of colonization comprises those uses, constructions, and representations of space that are determined by or conducive to colonizing interests. Colonial Space is generally seen to apply to the colonial and the “postcolonial Third World.” However, the homologies between the uses and structuring of space in the colonizing and the colonized world suggest a more general application of the concept. The idea that colonization involved not only an occupation, but a restructuration of space developed from Marxian theories of imperialism. According to David Harvey, in the process of imperialism, “the world’s spaces were deterritorialized, stripped of their preceding significations, and reterritorialized according to the convenience of colonial and imperialist administration” (1989). Although the concept of Colonial Space is heir to Marxian imperialism debates, it was not specifically formulated until the 1980s in the context of colonial discourse studies. An important informing source for the development of the concept was provided by Michel Foucault’s writings on taxonomic space (1966) and his later investigations into disciplinary uses of space (1975). The Foucauldian input resulted in Colonial Space being treated as a problem of subjectivity, policy-making, and representation. It is in this sense that it is used by Kristin Ross (1988) and John K. Noyes (1992).

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The emergence of Colonial Space is generally regarded as having taken place in the course of the nineteenth century. Ross speaks of the “late nineteenth-century European construction of space as colonial space” (1988). Changes in the uses of space were made possible by technical developments such as the spread of railways, the perfection of steamshipping, and the improvement of military hardware; medical developments such as the use of quinine to combat malaria; and economic developments such as the boom in world trade and investment in the second half of the nineteenth century. The structure of Colonial Space relied heavily upon European nationalism. In Africa, this culminated in the Congo Conference of 1884. European national interests required the establishment of powerful colonial administrations. These were responsible for controlling the spatial distribution and mobility of populations, as well as the planning of settlements, the control of appropriate forms of colonial architecture, the movements of goods, and various other policies of spatial management. Colonial Space also relied upon specific spatial representations. Throughout the age of exploration, conquest, and imperialism, African space was represented both as a peripheral extension of European space and as terra nullius. The ideology of terra nullius ensured that African space was represented as the rightful domain of European conquerors and settlers. The spatial order of the world implicit in Christian cosmology enhanced this view. The secular sciences that increasingly dominated representations of the New World following the Renaissance gradually departed from the spatial representation of a sacred European center and an ownerless heathen periphery. Nonetheless, they perpetuated the ideology of terra nullius by privileging the tabular representation of knowledge. Tabular representation grasped African space both as a category of European knowledge and a space of European action. The distinction between various fields of colonial knowledge, but also between different administrative territories within the colony is characteristic of the process of tabulation. It is generally agreed that the tabulation of space allowed a more

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efficient management, administration, and exploitation of colonies. Consequently, Colonial Space is typically tabular in organization. Various colonial discourses helped to define and structure Colonial Space. Noyes sees “colonial discourse as an instrument for the clearing of colonial space” (1992). Of particular importance were the representational conventions of geographic, administrative, and aesthetic discourse. The geographic disciplines active in colonialism developed highly specialized cartographic representations according to how they intended to exploit or manage the colony (e.g., ethnographic and military cartography). Colonial administrations made use of spatial representations conforming to the administrative problems they dealt with – most notably questions of exploration and settlement and labor and management of the “native” population. The complex structure of Colonial Space becomes apparent in the fictional and semifictional writings of colonial discourse and in colonial paintings and drawings. Here, Colonial Space bears a characteristic ambiguity found in theories of spatiality since Kant. In this sense, Edward Said demonstrates that the development fundamental to European expansionism was not only “a spatial and geographical one,” but also “a change in the quality of geographic and spatial apprehension” (1978). In representation, spatiality becomes the site of an attempt to reconcile subjective perspective with the objective world. The tabular organization of space and the technical revolution of the late nineteenth century resulted in an increasing subjective alienation. Literary and artistic production in colonial discourse offered models for overcoming this alienation. This is accomplished by various devices, such as the picturesque portrayal of landscape or the stereotype description of character. Following the lead of Frantz Fanon, Colonial Space has been regarded not only as an administrative or discursive construction, but also as a psychological imperative placed upon colonized individuals. Fanon has shown how the psychic life of the colonized may be described as an internalization of the oppressive structures of colonization (1952). In this view, Colonial Space is a

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hegemonic construction that remains selfperpetuating until individuals are liberated from the familial and social order typical of colonization. This has been argued in detail by Deleuze and Guattari (1977). As a result, the study of Colonial Space has also been concerned with uses of space as practices of resistance to colonization.

See Also ▶ Episteme ▶ Fanon, Frantz ▶ Marxism

Bibliography Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1977 (1975). Anti-oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapollis: University of Minnesota Press. Fanon, Frantz. 2008 (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove. Foucault, Michel. 2005 (1966). The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge. ———. 1995 (1975). Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage. Harvey, David. 1989. The condition of postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Noyes, John K. 1992. Colonial space. Spatiality in the discourse of German South West Africa 1884–1915. Chur/Reading: Harwood. Ross, Kristin. 1988. The emergence of social space. Rimbaud and the Paris commune. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.

Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to Allen F. Roberts Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

Three phases of religious adaptation to colonialism are easily identified: at conquest, in the 1930s with the expansion of a capitalist political

Colonialism, Religious Adaptation to

economy and during the turbulent years leading to independence. Colonial conquest, occurring in the late nineteenth century in most of Africa, marked the culmination of slavery and its dreadful consequences (radical population movement and loss, epidemics, and famine). In many areas, the turmoil undermined previous beliefs and ways of life. As a result, earlier religious forms and practices fast became obsolete. Prophetic movements, “cargo cults,” and millenarianism were common responses across the continent. In desperation, people often grasped at any sign or source of supernatural power to redefine their societies and selves. Brilliant Sungrazer comets appeared in central African skies in the 1880s, for instance, coinciding with battles for supremacy between European colonizers and east African slavers. The Tabwa of southeastern Congo (DRC) saw in the comets an explanation for the Europeans’ marvelous technologies and unsurpassable powers. The comets were thought to be Jesus, about whom early Catholic missionaries had told Tabwa, bringing the unknown powers to Europeans that allowed them to conquer Africa so quickly. At around the same time, an epidemic of rinderpest decimated big game in Tabwa lands. People were starving from warinduced famine and locust plagues and attributed this unexpected bounty to a territorial spirit named Kibawa. Other territorial spirits were known and were deemed responsible for important natural resources like rain, salt springs, and fish runs; some were offered “ecological cults.” Kibawa was different. Through a prophet, Kibawa announced that he would continue to assist people on condition that they cease speaking Swahili, a language produced through the colonial encounter. Reverence paid to Kibawa, therefore, constituted low-level nativistic resistance to change. At first, Kibawa was a Delphic oracle in a cavern hidden deep within a bamboo thicket. People visited the oracle over a wide radius, and the tangle of bamboo made metaphoric allusion to the supplicants’ confusion and desire to solve perplexing problems. But in the 1930s with the penetration of colonial capitalism, an important

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ontological shift occurred for Tabwa, from a precolonial focus on the community for religious and politico-economic activities, to a new individualistic strategy for coping with social change. Kibawa changed too. Authors addressing the history of religious change among central African peoples have noted that, in times of strife, when secular authority is undermined and values drastically eroded, links with spirit-realms are often activated to provide a framework for political and social revival, and, sometimes, military activity. The most celebrated case is the pivotal role assumed by Shona spirit mediums in the guerrilla movement of preindependence Zimbabwe. For the Tabwa, the 1930s were marked by intense social stress caused by the collapse of the colonial economy in the Great Depression and the politico-economic upheaval resulting from the introduction of a Belgian version of Indirect Rule. There were no overt military activities, but Tabwa terrorists did flourish, disguising themselves as lions to randomly kill profiteers from missions and other colonial enterprises. During this same period, the Tabwa adopted a form of the Bulumbu possession cult from the adjacent Luba. Among southern Tabwa and their Bemba neighbors, spirit possession also flowered, both in 1907 when the British implemented far-reaching agricultural and village consolidation reforms, thus disrupting social life and again in 1960, when anxieties were high due to preindependence political organizing and the threat of sabotage by reactionary forces. In possession, a medium becomes responsible for his or her own salvation to an extent alien to the collective focus of precolonial religious forms. Such individualism accords well with capitalist philosophy that rewards “talent” and initiative. At the same time, as an intermediary between divinity and humanity, the possessed person can communicate about and offer a metacommentary upon society itself. For Tabwa, Kibawa’s cavern became known as the place to which spirits of the dead travel and from which possessing spirits emanate. Territorial spirits – no longer so essential to collective exploitation

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of natural resources – assumed this task and were sent forth by recently deceased kin to afflict and so gain the attention of those surviving them. Once recognition and reverence is offered to the spirit, misfortune ends and the spirit will offer wisdom, prophetic dreams, and critical assistance to the individual thereafter. The possession cult still exists, but took another twist in some areas just before independence. A prophet named Alice Lenshina and her husband Mulenga (the Bemba name for the spirit analogous to Kibawa) gained prominence among the Tabwa, Bemba, and other northeastern Zambian groups. Lenshina became disaffected from her mission church, finding it lacking in the instrumentality and problem solving of African religions. She and Mulenga founded their own Lumpa Church that combined Christianity with spirit possession. Early supporters were the mother and a brother of Kenneth Kaunda, who would become first president of Zambia, and Lumpa became a nationalist political focus.

See Also ▶ Acculturation ▶ Church, Women Founders of ▶ Churches, Indigenous ▶ Possession Cults ▶ Women’s Power, The New African Religions and

Bibliography van Binsbergen, Wim. 1981. Religious change in Zambia. London: Kegan Paul. Roberts, Allen. 1982. ‘Comets importing change of times and states’: Ephemerae and process among the Tabwa of Zaire. American Ethnologist 9 (4): 712–729. ———. 1984. ‘Fishers of men’: Religion and political economy among colonized Tabwa. Africa 54 (2): 49–70. ———. 1985. Social and historical contexts of Tabwa art. In The rising of a new moon: A century of Tabwa art, ed. A. Roberts and E. Maurer, 1–48. Seattle: University of Washington Press for the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Communication

Communication Denyse de Saivre Sociologie Consultant International, Paris, France

The word “communication” comes from the Latin, communicare, which means “to put in common,” “to share,” “to transmit,” “to let know.” The word “communication” only appeared in dictionaries 50 years ago and, since then, it has acquired diverse meanings. Humans are always engaged in a process of communication. When speaking or writing, there is always the presence of a person who will receive the spoken or written message. This invisible presence influences speech and writing. Communication, information, relation, influence, and behavior are the key concepts necessary to organize a discourse on communication. Communication occurs each time any organism affects another organism. Communication, as an action conveying information, transforms an organism or modifies its action (Amado and Guitte 1975). A very rich literature has developed on the operation of communication systems. However, although the aims of communication are similar, each of the factors (transmitters, receivers, and those which unify them; messages, encodings, and decodings) are different. With respect to the African entity, this is examined in the context of cultures founded on orality. The first theories began with a mechanistic pattern that was augmented with all the processes through which one mind may influence another (Laswell 1948; Moles 1975). A simple diagram outlines an analysis of various modes of communication.

Denyse de Saivre: deceased.

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Linear Diagram Applicable to All Contexts A who

C E says what

B to whom

D how

F with which value transmitter code message receiver implements objective and implicit contents

Two requirements characterize the move from A to B: the extension through the move to B of information in A and the succession of the experience, since it is in A before it is in B. Extension aims at overcoming the space between A and B. Succession aims at overcoming the time gap between A and B. Temporal succession is absent from multimedia communication (MMC), since it is possible to receive the message at the same time it is uttered. Time and space are the two dynamic factors which intersect and frustrate all communication systems and communication acts. These two elements determine the method D – chosen according to the function at code C and the message transmitted at E – and represent the elements which constitute any communication system. The code C includes the transmission and the mnemonic processes. Four types of communication will be surveyed: nonlinguistic communication (NLC), oral linguistic communication (OLC), written linguistic communication (WLC), and multimedia communication (MMC). (1) There is a nonlinguistic communication (NLC) which can be divided into two groups. The corporal support of the first one is the body; the mimetic gesture is the code; and the chosen postures are the mnemonic process. This can be illustrated with mime and dance. The second group’s support uses the environment. One or several objects will serve as the corporal support; the environment in which the objects are located is the code; and these are linked to the mnemonic processes. This is exemplified by the classical case related by Herodotus (11.16): When Darius invaded the land of the Scythes, they

sent him a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. The message communicated was: “Unless you transform yourself into a bird to fly in the air, into a mouse to scurry underground, into a frog to take refuge in the swamps, you will not be able to escape our arrows.” There are also corporal supports encompassing representations from pictograms to graphic signs. (2) In oral linguistic communication (OLC), the support for conveying experience is the word. For regular communication through words, the support is the enunciation of the speaker, the code is the particular language spoken, and the mnemonic process is the oral style. This is explicit among oral traditions in which orality as a technique of communication has been efficacious for centuries, operating parallel to and complementing writing. Among societies based on oral traditions, all communication was oral. It was identified as emanating from a person or group. Communication is perceived as public and words are spoken. Verbalization is considered an art, and the mnemonic process lies in this art and is linked to the texture of the utterance. Oral texts which address the past are filled with reference markers for the audience to follow, in time as well as in object forms and place. The texts are continuously updated, thereby reinforcing memorization and creating a form of communication which fosters social integration. (3) The support of the written linguistic communication (WLC), in the case of the individual, is writing as a graphic mode of expression. The code is constituted by the written language and is linguistically different from spoken languages, while the mnemonic process is the written document itself. At this level of society, the written communication represents a cultural wealth and, therefore, requires a norm which will be comprehensible to all members of a reading public. The refined corporal support is the spelling; the code of the written language is the literary language; and the mnemonic process is the literary test. The word is thus materialized, becoming an

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object of sight and assimilated through reading. A society that becomes conscious of writing as a primary form of communication enhances the value attributed to a text which can be re-read and analyzed. This, in turn, facilitates the capitalization of knowledge and also scientific thought. The written text becomes autonomous and asserts itself as a new authority (e.g., the sacred texts). (4) Multimedia communication (MMC) requires many intermediaries: spoken, written, and visual. These are collectively called mass media when messages are broadcast to and address a community. The corporal support is constituted by printed intermediaries (books, newspapers, and placards) and electronic ones (records, cinema, radio, and television). The code is both linguistic and nonlinguistic. The mnemonic process is also composed of documents which come from the corporal support that is used (tapes and videos, records, slides, and movies). The communications revolution took place in the twentieth century, following the nineteenthcentury industrial revolution. The development of technologies, photography, cinema, radio, television, and computers enabled millions of people to hear, see, and read messages at almost the same time. Cumulatively, these media produce new possibilities of language and transform the relation between transmitter and receiver. The mass of information is directed on the basis of the industrial pattern. The content is a commercial produce, which is not the case in the oral linguistic communication where the public is a participant. In the WLC and MMC, the public is a consumer and there is little personal creativity. The producers are solely dependent on the consumers and viceversa. The evolution of sophisticated computer technology enables the emergence of a return receiver-transmitter. The choice of language is necessary to include the communicator in a system of communications. The language and the speaker thus transform each other. Each type of communication brings about a new type of communicator. The impact of this simultaneous knowledge of mechanisms and

Communication

constraints is evident in the options available to Africa. This part of the world shifted from predominantly oral societies to literate societies and then became linked with multimedia communications in the short space of 60 years. During this period, rapid transformations in transmitters and receivers, codes, and mnemonic processes took place. Consequently, fundamental mutations occurred within a short time span. The messages disseminating from the three communication types, OLC, WLC, and MMC coexist uneasily. Philosophical and religious thought had little time to flourish in writing before it was assailed by means of multimedia communication. Careful analysis of African countries below the Sahara must take into account the significant impact of the ongoing revolution in communication.

See Also ▶ Communication ▶ Culturalism and Anticulturalism

Bibliography Amado, G. and Guitte. 1975. Paris: Armand Colin. Berelson, B.R. 1952. Content analysis in Communication Reaserch. Glencoe: The Free Press. Eribo, Festus, and William Jong-Ebot. 1998. Press freedom and communication in Africa. Trenton: Africa World Press. Hampâte, Bâ. 1972a. Aspects de la civilisation africaine. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1972b. Les religions traditionnelles africaines. In Les religions africaines comme source de valeurs de civilisation. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1991. Amkoullel, l’enfant peul, Mémoires. Paris: Acte Sud. Houis, Maurice. 1971. Anthropologie linguistique de l’Afrique noire. Paris: Puf. Laswell. 1948. Moles, Abraham. 1974. Sociétés et Television. In Travaux du Conseil de l’Europe, Compte-rendu du colloque sur la gestion des télécommunications dans les sociétés démocratiques, Munich, June. ———. Systèmes de media et systèmes éducatifs. Perspectives 5 (2). Moles, Abraham.1975. Media Systems and Educational Systems. Prospects: Quaterly Review of Education, 2 (5): 165–186. Recherche, Pédagogie et Culture, Nos. 20, 25. Paris, 1976; Nos. 27, 28. Paris, 1977.

Community

Community Oyedan Owomoyela University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA

African thinking about community is reflected in the Yoruba proverb that says only one person gives birth to a child, but the whole community takes a hand in its rearing. As a rule, the individual may not sequester his or her affairs as private and of no concern to the community. This is not to minimize the status of the individual, but rather to assert that the two are in a relationship of mutual dependence. Without individuals, there will be no community but, without the community, the individual will have no context within which to fulfill one’s self. In African thought, an individual cannot stand alone but exists always in a dynamic relationship with others and with the community. The strong belief in the interconnectedness of individuals is evident in the saying that, if one pulls on a vine, the vine in turn pulls on the bush. The stress is on being-with-others, not being-for-oneself; social life is, therefore, characterized by solidarity, mutuality, cooperation, participation, etc. Although each individual has a unique identity, that identity is always in the context of a family, an association, an age group and, ultimately, the entire community. In certain societies, one can immediately identify the town, village, or family a person belongs to by that person’s facial scarifications. Constant awareness of one’s membership of a group is a powerful regulator of behavior, because any disgrace one brings on one’s self becomes the disgrace of one’s group. The community’s precedence over the individual is also evident in the status of even the most powerful individual in the society, like the chief or king in monarchically organized communities. As the terrestrial surrogate for the ancestors and guardian of the people, he is usually invested with considerable authority, but that authority is limited by the will of the people. He rules ultimately at the pleasure of his people, and mechanisms exist for removing him when he has lost

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their trust. According to a Zulu proverb, a king is a king because of people. The typical physical organization of African communities reflects and facilitates the operations of the communalistic ideal. The smallest unit is usually the compound that houses members of an extended family. It is constructed in a circular or rectangular pattern with living quarters facing inward around an open courtyard. Since most of the domestic activities of the compound take place in the courtyard or verandas ringing it, every member is aware of every other member and available to lend a hand or otherwise intervene when necessary. The compounds, as well as the main market, are constructed around that of the chief or king. Whereas modern developments – such as Western education, enhanced individual mobility, and urbanization – have tended to undermine the status of the community, its continued hold on people is apparent. Those transplanted to the cities maintain close ties with their traditional communities, often organizing hometown associations that meet regularly to discuss the affairs of the members or of their villages and returning home for major community festivals, or as often as feasible. Finally, it is important to note that membership in the community does not terminate on one’s death. Such a person merely enters into an altered mode of existence in the nonterrestrial branch of the community, the abode of the ancestors. In that state, the person possesses powers beyond what one had during life, and which the person uses this to enhance the fortunes of one’s survivors if they prove deserving, or to cause them grief if they prove unworthy. The dead also periodically revitalize their community membership, so to speak, by being reincarnated as children to take another turn at living.

See Also ▶ Conduct ▶ Individual as Community Member ▶ Naming ▶ Reciprocity

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Bibliography Abraham, W.E. 1962. The mind of Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wright, Richard, ed. 1977. African philosophy: An introduction. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Zahan, Dominique. 1979 [1970]. The religion, spirituality, and thought of traditional Africa. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.

Conceptual Translation V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

The issue of conceptual translation can be approached through a critical consideration of three avenues that intersect historically in dynamic interactions. The first avenue refers to the notion of objective mutation, that which within the African cultural context has been marking individuals and their generations. A product of an efficient and classical historical grid, this avenue has been foundational for knowledge organization consecrated in textbooks with entries that generally introduce dynamics concerned with economics, politics, and culture. A second avenue focuses on the notion of subject, or the more abstract idea of individuality. It tends to center the research on demographics, precisely on a relation to social conditions and the quality of life. At last, the third avenue explores generation processes. It is generally approached from its basic relation to a biological or symbolic line of descent and the concept imposes immediately upon the mind by its differentiating effects in pictures of filiations. In themselves so far, these avenues unveil nothing in particular. Their apparent transparency can, however, clarify a few processes in the understanding of spaces, identities, and readings, namely, the idea that every reading often tends to depict in violation of a material figure. In effect, a translation aims at understanding concepts. That is a goal. It might be accomplished, even if in a

Conceptual Translation

provisional and contextual manner given the polysemy and dynamics associated with the stabilization of meanings in multiple fields, or not. It is not a matter of conversion and of establishing linear and univocal equivalences of sameness, without interrogating contexts, conceptual grids, philological and historical cultural usages and dynamics. One can pose this issue by reflecting on the modalities of differentiation and their significance between equivalence and analogous. Specifically, there are silent suppositions on the capacity of translation. To invoke the Laurence Venuti’s treatise, these would be reducible to a few sets of technical principles. From The Translation Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004), one could mark, on the one hand, principles governing a translation in reference to equivalence and, on the other, apply the most apt. The Venuti’s textbook includes essays on translation that concretely illustrate the difficulty of conceptual translations. For a testimony, here are three good cases. Gayatri Spivak has the following in her chapter, “the task of the feminist translator is to consider language as a clue to the workings of gender agency” (op. cit.: 369). In sum, as an imperative consideration, to problematize any translating subject. And knowing that “the impractical” might be an enduring and useful obvious to keep in mind, “the production of the utopian translator” (op. cit.: 371). Inspired by Clifford Geertz expression of a “thick description,” with “thick translation,” Anthony Appiah meets principally demands which are “contextdependent.” In this sense, one evaluates three conclusive challenges that situate “oral literature in the Westernized academy in Africa” and relate them to precautions in pedagogical obligations. They define ways for a critique: First, on facing the idea of a continuity from the precolonial to a postcolonial; secondly, on estimating what can be related to the strictly technological versus what belongs to the domain of values; finally, about aesthetic quality, a needed distinction between the literary per se and the extra literary. The two references state an identical difficulty faced differently. One, between a “Western gaze” – (and “there is nothing necessarily meretricious”) about it, writes Spivak; and, on the other

Conceptual Translation

hand, “the law of majority,” about which “there is nothing essentially noble,” Spivak opts for translation as a reading, precisely, as a manner of surrendering to a text. Appiah’s intervention equally gives privilege to the text and specifically, it names a literary absent code circumscribed in “the assumption of Western Culture Superiority” (op. cit.: 401). And should one prefers to side with Spivak, comes in, the symbolic value of a Vivekananda and the subject’s experience vis-à-vis the reader’s. To be only critical, to defer action until the production of the utopian translator, is impractical. Yet, when I hear Derrida, quite justifiably, point out the difficulties between French and English, even when he agrees to speak in English –“I must speak in a language that is not my own because that will more just” – I want to claim the right to the same dignified complaint for a woman’s text in Arabic or Vietnamese. (op. cit.: 311)

The concrete practices of translation relate to the ways individuals inscribe themselves in multiple systems of language and knowledge. It is, in this sense, related to biographical circumstances, demands, and choices. It is from a personal education and its history that types of knowledge can be distinguished, and differences between their processes acknowledged. And from the background and the constraints or possibilities of a historicized subject, that posits him/herself in a here and a now that condense and consubstantiates history’s legacies, the colonial experience and its library are thus acknowledged every time. It is only subsequently that appears the issue of the status of knowledge and ways of knowing in native African languages. In a first approximation, that has been traditionally a way of marking a difference as deficiency, vis-à-vis a decidedly more competent style of an intellectual practice. In this process, a double privilege is recognized. It references functions of a language – for instance, English or French – and the normativity of its linguistic representations. As a matter of fact, and secondly, if the question of a conceptual mediation and intellectual representation can be raised apropos the Islamic transition of Greek philosophy, these are issues generally approached from their historical inscriptions in

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Arabic history and occasionally through issues of corresponding grids of Arabic and Greek sources. The case would seem to give a distinctive feature to African Muslims. The specificity of conceptual translation assumes a reference to both the reality of a colonial experience and the intrinsic demands of an intellectual field, a science, and its cultural models. As a matter of fact, alienation can be understood as linguistic before anything else. It expresses itself in ways of reflecting and manners of a being-for-others, Intellectually, within a discipline, existentially, within an intercultural space and a polemical way of existing in the present. Three types of African discourses have been managing views of our being in the world. In French, before 1940s, poetry is the main mediation; after 1945, the novel. Jean Paul Sartre 1947 Black Orpheus is generally quoted for its postulation for symbolic and real battles. One needs to interrogate the mid-1950s essays and their agendas of politically un-aligned countries. They accounted for prescriptive confrontations on politics and economics in the name of ethical imperatives. There is an immense paradox in this whole business. In their expressions, poetry, novel, and essay are mediations apropos values. Strictly, a mediation should be expected to be a body between two arguments. Aiming at reconciling them, the one intended was a legal accord expected to transcend differences. In the present case, besides this understanding of how to read the very concept of mediation, its linguistic and ethical dimensions belong to one cultural party and its own history. A major problem of African studies is there. On the one hand, one acknowledges the prevalent orientation with reference to what “one is capable of finding in oneself”; on the other hand, and the objectivity of that referred to from a Cartesian lesson, “the else within the great book of the world.” These two elements, the reference to a subject and the reference to a world, go together. This is a major issue. On questions of method, the issue relates to a normed approach of the subject, a propos the subject’s relation to an alter, and thus the priority of any reflecting ego vis-à-vis that of

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an alter. They are recognized, on the other hand, in the tasks on self-reflection and the intersubjective conversation on the practice of everyday life and its disciplinary interpretations. The I & We coherence reflects that which makes it functional within a language. One is always somehow within the universe of the language called upon to statute on knowing processes that coheres the I-Thou and the I-we relation. Without hesitation, one agrees with Sartre’s when, in Being and Nothingness (Washington Square Press, 1956), he writes that “I am language. By the sole fact that whatever I may do, my acts freely conceived and executed, my projects launched toward my possibilities have outside of them a meaning which escapes me and which I experience. It is in this sense and in this sense only – that Heidegger is right in declaring that I am what I say” (op. cit.: 486). Could what goes here without difficulty apply equally to a monolingual and a plurilingual individual? In translating a message from one language into another, a speaker creates a “site of contact,” to use the concept suggested by Lawrence Venuti in The Translation Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004). This has implications. Venuti refers to Marie Louise Pratt and invokes an important point. Any translation would be creating its own audience. Its heterogeneity might best be understood in terms of what Mary Louise Pratt calls a “linguistics of contact,” in which language based communities are seen as decentered across “lines of social differentiation”. A translation is a linguistic “zone of contact” between the foreign and translating cultures, but also within the latter. (op. cit.: 491)

This is say that one gets, mainly and importantly, only the expression of an analogous. Its substance passes significantly through codes conditioned by external factors that determine a cultural quality and the intellectual justification of both interest and appreciation. Gayatri Spivak celebrates the anthropologist. And precisely, she specifies a reason for admiration: “The ‘other’ languages are learnt only by the anthropologist who must produce knowledge across an epistemic divide” (op. cit.: 379). On this, one would recall Claude Levi-Strauss grounding of such a vocation in the truth of an

Conceptual Translation

immersion within the unconscious of a foreign culture. The anthropological mythology has constructed a wonderful metaphor, “going native.” An African does not go native in English or in French. She adapts and integrates cultural politics of citizenship. The process obliges an identity transformation. In its profound meaning, the anthropologist process conveys the idea of importing a way of being in the service of a scientific reason and the fate of a culture. That is a reversal, so to speak, of the Christian missionary Fig. A missionary would aim at converting a culture; the anthropologist’s soul might convert to a milieu. And in the cultural economy of such a symbolic transformation, the anthropologist would stand apt in comforting translations. From Latin, translatio could explain politics of intellectual dialog and often of slandering opinions. The word expresses the two basic values that trans-latio attest. They are, on the one hand, that of carrying something, moving it from one place to another; and on the other, a figurative extension, the act of an engrafting, a transplanting. This second value is close to the present-day technical meaning of the word in physics. From the 1996 American Heritage Dictionary, “the motion of a body in which every point of the body moves parallel to and the same distance as every other point of the body; nonrotational displacement.” An analogic representation exists in biology, for an orientation that can be given to a sequence. In technical terms, to go back to translation studies specifics, a discourse on being human, anthropology, the discourse, and the discipline would be designating a body of formal and dynamic cultural equivalences. That is the conjunction of a logos about an anthropos, a perfect challenge for a subject committed to a good translation.

Bibliography Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and nothingness. Washington: Washington Square Press. Venuti, Laurence. 2004. The translation studies reader. New York: Routledge.

Conjuring and Clowning

Conduct Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

Conduct is the core of morality. Its raw materials are thought and action, but not every kind of thought or action falls under this heading. Presumably, it took tremendous thought for Einstein to invent the theory of relativity and considerable exertions to persuade the scientific community of its validity; but that, in itself, is not what one would have in mind when biographically considering his conduct. Two conditions must be satisfied: first, the actions should be such as to manifest a settled disposition or character; and, second, they should have a bearing on some canons of good behavior, signifying morality in the strict sense or the mores of the given society, or both. In this sense, Mbiti (1969), in an otherwise extremely problematic chapter on African “Concepts of Evil, Ethics and Justice,” remarks that African morality “is morality of ‘conduct’ rather than a morality of ‘being’.” Given a careful interpretation of the distinction between the “being” and “conduct” of a person, this is certainly true. A person may be a royal by birth or a creative artisan by talent or even an affluent individual by industry, but still social respect or leadership may elude him or her because of inadequacies of character as manifested in his or her conduct. From an African point of view, it is especially significant that conduct would be judged by the degree to which it does or does not demonstrate a sensitivity to the interests of the community. This approach to the evaluation of conduct (characteristic of African traditional society based upon numerous anthropological accounts) is currently under stress from the corrupting influences of modern commercialism.

See Also ▶ Act (Mental) ▶ Agent (Ethical)

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▶ Community ▶ Free Will ▶ Morality ▶ Morals ▶ Obligation ▶ Yoruba, Foundation of Ethical Thought Among the

Bibliography Gyekye, Kwame. 1987. An essay on African political thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mbiti, John S. 1969. African religions and philosophy. London: Heinemann. 1990.

Conjuring and Clowning Murray Last Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK

The tradition of conjuring in Africa goes back to Egypt – even today there are sorcerers whose former apprentice claims can turn sticks into snakes (Bunza 1990). The majority of tricks, whether done for public entertainment in marketplaces or performed as the dramatic climax in the process of witchfinding, require the use of one or more young assistants. Witchcraft substance is buried ahead of time; local intelligence is discreetly collected for use later in divination (Gittins 1987); audiences are planted with apparent strangers to collaborate in the trick; or a boy is secreted behind a consulting room to give voice to the spirits called up in a seance. Other kinds of marketplace entertainment are also classic: cheeks are pierced by sharp knives and flesh is dramatically “cut”; a neon light tube is swallowed and then turned on; and snakecharmers and hyena-handlers terrify onlookers with their risks. Some tricks are little more than advertisements for expensive “medicines” – ones that will render the purchaser invisible (a special loin cloth), invulnerable to bullets (a magic waistcoat),

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or weapons of metal (a charm). A trader’s magical powers, once demonstrated to be genuine, prove that all his other products are equally genuine; patients are thus drawn to consulting rooms for divination and diagnosis; and news that his powers are, this time, “real” spreads to other villages. Meanwhile, the apprentices learn eventually for themselves the patter and sleight of hand required and carry on the profession. Another class of entertainment is humor. In highly verbal cultures, songs and jokes remain a very powerful means of social control: broadcast on the street, ridicule, allusion, and innuendo shame their target. Children in particular may act out a comic scene – for example, turbanning a dog and chasing it with shouts of “to the madhouse” – in this case, when an unpopular ruler is appointed – only to run off when the police arrive. Nicknames enshrine shameful episodes, setting in concrete popular ridicule. Stories, too, pass round as gossip – not so much claiming truth as being very funny; street radio (radio trottoir) fills the gap left by a surfeit of government propaganda and lies with rumor and humor (Toulabor 1981). Lastly, there is the formal use of humor in ritual where abuse and scandalous jokes are thrown at the incoming ruler as symbolic humiliation from a particular dignitary or titleholder (Norbeck 1963). In other contexts, young men may take on the role of village or town clown, often capitalizing on some deformity or disability, to earn an income; yet, they also fill a social need for the public telling of unpalatable truths. Joking relationships permit similar socially approved abuse, while trickster tales give expression to the enjoyment of a clever surprise and the shocking reversal of what is normal. Cleverness of all kinds, including deceit, is much admired; but one root of this tradition of conjuring and clowning lies in people’s awareness of another realm of reality that their own senses cannot penetrate. Powers await to be tapped: there are truths to which ordinary people have no access and, above all, there are secrets to be kept and secrets to be shared. The pervasive quest to understand the sources of unequal power gives an initial credibility to those claiming such powers, as well as the required credulity to their potential

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customers. Yet, alongside this credulity, there springs up a strong but amused skepticism – as yet another victim parts with his money.

See Also ▶ Beti-Bulu, The Tortoise Trickster ▶ Medicine and Religion ▶ Witchcraft/Sorcery

Bibliography Bunza, Aliyu Muhammad. 1990. Hayaki Fid da Na Kogo: nazarin siddabaru da sihirin Hausawa. M.A. Thesis, Bayero University, Kano. Gittins, A.J. 1987. Mende religion: Aspects of belief and thought in Sierra Leone. Nettetal: Steyler. Norbeck, E. 1963. African rituals of conflict. American Anthropologist 65: 1254–1279. Toulabor, C. 1981. Jeu de mots, jeux de vilain: lexique de la dérision politique au Togo. Politique Africaine 3: 55–71.

Continence Marie Pauline B. Eboh1 and Christiana C. M. N. Idika2 1 Philosophy Department, Faculty of Humanities, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria 2 Institute for World Church and Mission, Graduate School for Philosophy and Theology, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Continence refers to control over the body, from sexual activity to bodily functions. It implies moderation and temperance. Continence partly refers to the control of urination and bowel movement: for example, inability to control the bladder occurs in elderly men who have problems with their prostate glands and also in disease conditions such as diabetes. More importantly, adolescent pregnancy sometimes results in loss of bladder and rectal control. Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF), the abnormal opening between the bladder and the vagina that results

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in continuous and unremitting urinary incontinence, was known to physicians of ancient Egypt. Menstruation is not necessarily a sign that a young girl is physically mature enough to endure a full-term pregnancy, because the pelvic bones of a pregnant adolescent may be unable to bear the weight of a fetus. Thus, the arduous task of childbirth can lead to bladder punctures and subsequent involuntary discharge of urine. Violent rape can also cause fistulae. When the rectum is affected, the young girl can suffer from both VVF and RVF (rectovaginal fistula). This phenomenon is rampant in Muslim cultures that practice child marriages, for example, Northern Nigeria. Continence also refers to sexual activities: Some religions place a sacred value on sexual activity and impose restraints on promiscuous sexual behavior. In some societies, youths are required to undergo puberty rites. Special arrangements are made for betrothment: a white sheet may be spread when the newlyweds consummate their marriage. A blood stain on the white sheet may then be ceremoniously displayed to the anxious community as evidence of the bride’s virginity. Nothing is done as regards the virginity of the bridegroom. Clitoridectomy or female circumcision was practiced in some societies. The excision of a young girl’s clitoris was performed to ensure virginity at marriage, inhibit female libido, and prevent female sexual promiscuity. Male sexual passions are assumed to be irrepressible; consequently, polygyny provides a legitimate and institutional outlet to contain men’s erotic urges. Lecherous behavior is viewed with contempt. An incontinent man is regarded derisively and labeled a dog or a he-goat. Many African societies use these behavioral principles to foster chastity as a virtue.

See Also ▶ Education, Religious ▶ Excision ▶ Hierarchy, Gender

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Bibliography Badri, Amna Elsadik. 1992. Female circumcision in the Sudan: Change and continuity. In Women and reproduction in Africa, AAWORD-AFARD occasional paper series 5, 129–143. Dakar: AAWORD-AFARD. Stamatakos, M., C. Sargedi, T. Stasinou, and K. Kontzoglou. 2014. Vesicovaginal fistula: Diagnosis and management. The Indian Journal of Surgery 76 (2): 131–136.

Convention Dismas Masolo Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

Convention is that which becomes a norm by agreement or consent: a rule, method, or practice established by usage or long tradition. In philosophy, convention refers to the view which states that the truth of any proposition is determined not by fact, but by social agreement or usage. This distinction is reminiscent of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s two-part philosophical career. In his earlier work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Wittgenstein had held a position close to Bertrand Russell’s logical atomism, which claimed that a logically constructed language – qua representation of reality – would, for the most part, correspond to particular objects in the world. According to Russell, language consists of a unique arrangement of words, and the meaningfulness of language is determined by the accuracy with which these words represent facts. Words, in turn, are formulated into propositions. “In a logically perfect language,” said Russell, “the words in a proposition would correspond one by one with the components of the corresponding facts.” Wittgenstein also believed that a statement is able to assert a certain state of affairs by virtue of having the same structure as the reality which it represents. With the appearance of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in 1953, many of the ideas in the Tractatus were changed, because he

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discarded the picture theory of language. He now argued that language has many functions besides simply “picturing” objects, and he saw language as functioning in a context and, therefore, having as many purposes as there are contexts. Words, he said, are like “tools in a toolbox; there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. The function of words is as diverse as the functions of these objects.” These two contrasting views about the relation between language and reality have been replicated in interesting debates about some African speech forms, particularly proverbs and certain axioms. At the center of this debate, there is the question about rational retention in the process of translating idioms from one language into those of another outside context. For example, how does one translate the Nuer idioms nyang e kwoth (a crocodile is a spirit) or rut [or] ran e dit (twins are birds) without raising fundamental issues of ontological identity in the context of anglophone language and thought? Inspired by Evans-Pritchard’s book, Nuer Religion (1956) and by Godfrey Lienhardt’s article “Modes of Thought” (1954), these apparent equations have been intensely discussed by social anthropologists and philosophers, with arguments falling on either side of Wittgenstein’s two mentioned works. Another form of conventionalist theory of reality, called the contextualist theory, argues that all knowledge claims (all facts, truth, and validity) are intelligible and debatable only within their context, paradigm, or community – thus raising the controversy to the levels suggested by such related concepts as inter-andtrans-cultural relativism, incommensurability, and untranslatability.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy: The End of a Debate ▶ Communication ▶ Fables, African ▶ Language, Philosophy of ▶ Lienhardt, Godfrey

Couchoro, Felix

Bibliography Ayer, Alfred J. 1985. Wittgenstein. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Firth, Raymond. 1966. Twins, birds and vegetables: Problems of identification in primitive religious thought. Man (new series) 1 (1): 1–17. Lienhardt, Godfrey. 1954. Modes of thought. In The institutions of primitive society, ed. E.E. Evans-Pritchard et al., 95–107. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pitcher, George. 1964. The philosophy of Wittgenstein. Englewood: Prentice-Hall. Pole, David. 1958. The later philosophy of Wittgenstein. London: The Athlone Press. Specht, Ernst K. 1969. The foundations of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1990. Are there cultural universals? Quest: An African International Journal of Philosophy 4 (2): 5–19. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Couchoro, Felix Christopher L. Miller Department of French, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Félix Couchoro was one of the first Africans to write novels in French, mixing Christian moralism with the plot twists and intrigues of the popular novel. Born in the French colony of Dahomey (now Bénin) to parents of different ethnicities, Couchoro settled in Togo in 1940. L’Esclave (1930), Couchoro’s first novel (and only the third novel written in French by an African) earned the author a reputation as an apologist for both Christian mission and French colonialism. He became a nationalist and found himself both jailed and exiled for this activity. He produced dozens of other novels (mostly published in serial form in a Togolese newspaper), but only L’Esclave remains accessible and fairly well known (reissued in 1983). For a reader expecting Catholic proselytizing and an apologia for

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colonialism, L’Esclave may be surprising: it preaches conformity and conversion less than internal moral values. The text makes almost no mention of colony or church until the end. Instead, Couchoro preaches the abandoning of immoral practices (“guilty love,” “fetishes,” “the forbidden fruit”) and offers a vision of African “renewal” orchestrated by a new type of man named Gabriel, who happens to be Roman Catholic.

See Also ▶ France, Image of in African Literature

Works by Couchoro Couchoro, Félix. 1941. Amour de féticheuse. Ouidah: Imprimerie de Mme. P. d’Almeida. ———. Nineteen other novels published in serial form in Togo-Presse from 1962 to 1970. ———. 1963. L’héritage, cette peste: les secrets d’Eléonore. Lome: Impr Editiogo. ———. 1983. L’Esclave. Paris: Editions Akpagnon/ACCT.

Bibliography Amegbleame, Simon. 1997. L’intertexte biblique dans le roman de Félix Couchoro. In Histoire, Littérature et Société au Togo, ed. Janos Riesz et Simon A. Amegbleame. Frankfurt am Main: IKO. Huanou, Adrien. 1984. La Litttérature béninoise de langue française, 157–164. Paris: ACCT/Karthala. Ricard, Alain. 1987. Naissance du roman africain: Félix Couchoro (1900–1968). Paris/Dakar: Présence Africaine.

Crahay, Franz V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

A Belgian specialist of epistemology, history of philosophy, and symbolic logic, Franz Crahay was born on February 26, 1923, at Olne, Belgium, and died April 4, 1988. He was educated at Louvain University and the University of Paris, where he studied Classics, philosophy and

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psychophysiology. After a diplôme d’études supérieures in Paris (1948), he obtained a doctorate in philosophy and Letters in 1954 at the University of Liège in Belgium. A fellow at The Belgian Foundation of Scientific Research from 1951 to 1957 and chargé de cours at the University of Liège in 1957, he taught philosophy at the universities of Lovanium in Kinshasa (1957–1968) and Liège (Belgium) until his death in 1988. His main professional publications include Les problèmes de la vérité (1951), Le formalisme logico–mathématique et le problème du non-sens (1957), La diversité des sciences dans l’unité du savoir (1963), and “Le décollage conceptuel: conditions d’une philosophie bantoue,” in Diogenes (1965). Crahay is well known in the field of African philosophy for the intervention he made on March 19, 1965, at the Goethe Institute of Leopoldville. The lecture was published in Diogenes 52. It is organized around two main questions. First, is there a Bantu philosophy in an acceptable meaning of the concept of philosophy? Second, if the response to this question is negative, what are the conditions for a Bantu philosophy? He responds by suggesting five conditions which could make possible a philosophical take-off: (1) the existence of African philosophers, (2) their integration in the philosophical tradition, (3) an inventory of indigenous values which could provoke thought, (4) a clear distinction between reflexive consciousness and mythical consciousness, and (5) a critical analysis of African intellectuals’ main temptations, which, as in the case of Marxism, would seem to respond to the concrete and urgent need for development. Crahay’s intervention marked an important moment in the debate on African philosophy.

See Also ▶ Bantu Philosophy ▶ Hountondji, Paulin ▶ Ntu Philosophers 1950–1970

Observations Nothing to add.

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Works Author Crahay, F. 1949. L’argument ontologique chez Descartes et Leibniz et la critique kantienne. phlou Revue Philosophique de Louvain 47 (16): 458–468. ———. 1957. Le formalisme logico-mathématique et le problème du non-sens. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ———. 1963. La diversité des sciences dans l’unité du savoir. Léopoldville: Université Lovanium. ———. 1965a. Conceptual take-off conditions for a Bantu philosophy (V.A. Velen, Trans.). Diogenes 13 (52): 55–78. ———. 1965b. Le “décollage” conceptuel: conditions d’une philosophie bantoue. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1968. Variations logiques sur l’exclusivité. In Recueil commémoratif du Xe anniversaire de la Faculté de philosophie et lettres, ed. Université Lovanium de Kinshasa. Faculte de philosophie et lettres. Louvain/Paris: Éditions Nauwelaerts & Béatrice-Nauwelaerts. ———. 1970. Logique. Liège: Librairie Fernand Gothier. ———. 1974a. Perspective(s) sur les philosophies de la Renaissance. phlou Revue Philosophique de Louvain 72 (16): 655–677. ———. 1974b. The principle of thrift (S. Pleasance, Trans.). Diogenes 22 (85): 31–46. ———. 1979. La pratique du soupçon chez Marx et Nietzsche. Liège: Université de Liège Section de Philosophie.

About Hountondji, P.J. 1970. Comments on contemporary African philosophy. Diogenes 18 (71): 109–130. ———. 1977. Sur la “philosophie africaine”: critique de l’ethnophilosophie. Paris: F. Maspero. Masolo, D.A. 2003. Philosophy and indigenous knowledge: An african perspective. Africa Today 50 (2): 20. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The patience of philosophy. In The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge, 135–186. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Crisis Rites Walter E. A. van Beek African Studies Center, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

Crisis rites are those rituals connected with the important, critical but predictable events in the life cycle of the individual in a given society.

Crisis Rites

Based on the so-called biological changes of birth, growing up, sexual maturity, reproduction, and death, these rites are called rites of passage since they involve a transition from one social status to another. The definition of such a passage is essentially socio-cultural, because not only does each culture define what biological change should be ritually marked, but also many status transitions have little or nothing to do with biology – such as entrance into age grades, voluntary or professional associations, and secret societies. Thus, in each society, some transitions are marked as ceremonial, while others are not, and the crisis rites serve as a reinforcement of the social definition of self in the formation of personhood. Ceremonies may begin before birth with the pregnant woman observing taboos and undergoing different kinds of rituals to secure a healthy baby and a good delivery. Confinement before and during birth and purification afterwards are common aspects of this passage. The couvade, a rite in which the father goes through the motions of delivery and that is interpreted as a dramatic re-enactment of paternity, is not found in Africa. After delivery comes the presentation of the baby to society (e.g., infant baptism in Christianity), as well as rites marking the early stages of childhood: the first cutting of hair, the first teeth, and so on. Naming the child is an important occasion in the literate religions (Aijmer 1992), but this is less ritualized in indigenous religions. The first biologically induced major transition is the onset of puberty, but it is still culture that dominates. This transition, usually called initiation, is a passage towards adulthood, meaning a life in which sexuality plays a crucial role. In many African cultures complicated rituals are enacted, which may involve bodily markers of transition or facial scars such as circumcision of boys, along with tests, fearsome experiences, and an intricate symbolism. Clitoridectomy of girls, which is still practiced in some parts of Africa, is usually performed at a more tender age. The rites of initiation often feature death and rebirth as a central set of symbols, with tests and fearsome experiences in between. Many rituals indirectly relate to sexuality, often through symbols of transition: fire, water, and yeast (La Fontaine 1985). In

Crisis Rites

cultures with masking traditions, masks and masquerades* play a major part in initiation rituals, especially of boys (van Beek and Leyten 2021). Marriage is the next transition, which for girls often coincides with initiation: a famous case is the Bemba Chisungu girls’ initiation (Richards 1982). Girls’ initiation has an overwhelming focus on marriage and often features long seclusion and fattening. In the age-graded societies of East Africa, the entrance into the male grades offers important transitions for men, one of which may coincide with their first marriage (Bernardi 1985); the other steps address different changes in status, such as becoming an elder. Each of these grades is entered through a ritual of initiation, though the transitions become more gradual at a later age. Not all initiations lead to a public status, especially in West and Central Africa where secret societies harbor covert status hierarchies that are entered through elaborate, but hidden, ceremonies that almost routinely involve masks. Although secrecy is an integral aspect of these initiations, the main thrust of the secrecy is to keep details of the initiation hidden and not talk about them, even if many of them are open secrets, which most know but nobody talks about (Bellman 1984). If there are male and female secret societies, each has their own initiation, even with masks (Ottenberg 1994), and the various initiation rituals can be instrumental in balancing the power between the genders (d’Azevedo 1994). Finally, death and its aftermath form the great transition. Whereas birth and marriage are usually not that ritually marked in African societies, death rituals (both first and second funerals) are of supreme importance. The communality of African village life finds its clearest expression in the complicated and spectacular rites surrounding burial, mourning, and the making of ancestors. However, not all African religions have a focus on ancestors, nor are all burials large festivals. Among pastoralists and foragers, funerals are not the large occasions they are among agriculturalists. The symbolic content of these rituals is highly complex and stresses the relevance and unity of all social segments and strata in the society, as well as its dependency on outside forces,

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often expressed in séances where performance counts highly (van Beek and Blakely 1994). In anthropological literature, the crisis rites have drawn a great deal of attention. Very early on, Arnold van Gennep, who coined the phrase “rites of passage” (1960/1902), noted that most crisis rites have a similar structure in their performance. Three phases can be distinguished: separation, a liminal phase, and reintegration. Together, they form a symbolic dramatization of the severing of old ties, the knowledge and demeanor required for the new status, and the entrance into the new status. In the first stage, the candidates are more or less forcefully separated from their old environment through a simulation of death or capture. In boys’ initiation (the most widely studied type), the boys are “stolen” from their mothers’ huts, leaving behind wailing kinswomen. At their first marriage, girls are abruptly taken from their parent’s homes by their groom’s kin, often with a mock battle or verbal abuse, and a staged show of reluctance on the part of the bride. Then follows a period of transition during which the novice is neither in his or her old world, nor yet in the new. This “liminal” (lit. threshold, border) phase may last from a few days to many months. Instruction may be part of this phase in initiation and marriage rituals, but also in confinement before parturition. In some African initiations, a ritual language is learned during the liminal stay in the bush, which is to be used in later ceremonies in the village. The contact between the transitional group and the normal society is minimal: the boys stay out of sight, in the bush; in the case of girls, they are usually enclosed in a hut. The final phase restores the individual to his or her new life, often with visible signs of the new status (hairdo, wedding ring, tattoos, scars, details of clothing). When their sons come home, the mothers often pretend not to recognize them, as the youths have “changed” so much. In death rites, this tripartite structure is also evident, since there are two funerals. The first often includes the actual burial to dispose of the corpse, but in any case has an accompanying festival to bid a fond farewell to the deceased;

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this first phase is to “deconceive the living” (Barley 1997). The rituals frequently involve the whole village in a festive display of vigor and life. In Africa, one’s funeral is the finest day of one’s life. Then follows a period of mourning to slowly sever all relevant ties: the bereaved mourn, often with special taboos, inheritances are settled, and emptied positions are filled. During this time, the deceased is considered to be still potentially on the spot, as a ghost or spirit, a rather haunting presence. Finally, the second funeral aims at “deconceiving the dead,” who will transform from a haunting spirit into a settled ancestor (Huntington and Metcalf 1991). Although van Gennep notes that this final stage entails less ritual than the first, in Africa this is often not the case. These second funerals can take many shapes, sometimes reburying part of the corpse, especially the head (Langlois 2017), and in urbanized settings increasingly take the form of huge commemorations long after the first funeral; the famous Ghanaian caskets appear in these celebrations (Jindra and Noret 2011), as do many kinds of images of the deceased (De Witte 2011). Especially in West Africa, large mask festivals may be performed as a tremendous ceremony to celebrate the regeneration of the village through the powers of the bush (Van Beek 1991). Victor Turner has taken up van Gennep’s analysis by focusing on the liminal phase. The symbolic forms and meanings used in this phase are often those of “nothingness,” ambiguity, representing things “betwixt and between” (V. Turner 1984). These rituals have their own set time separate from the normal time of daily life, a “time out of time,” and take place outside the normal living space; these places are associated with danger, supernatural power, and sacredness. In the symbolic content during this liminal phase, the many indications of classification and structure are dissolved, hierarchy dismissed, and separations between people erased – often with the symbolic help of mediating figures. In liminal ritual, all participants are alike and one, a situation Turner calls “communitas” or “antistructure,” sharing a genuine bond stressing common humanity, often expressed as collective joy (Turner 2012). This “communitas” during ritual then

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alternates with the “structure” of the normal times in which hierarchy and inequality are crucial. The liminal communitas, expressed in ritual, may find institutionalized form in persons or groups outside normal society – the marginals, such as (outside Africa) monks, pilgrims, outcasts, and sexually ambivalent people. In Africa, court jesters, mendicants, travelling diviners, and, characteristic in West Africa, some specific artisan groups (blacksmiths, bards) bear similar liminal aspects.

See Also ▶ Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies ▶ Masquerade ▶ Mourning ▶ Naming ▶ Ritual

Bibliography Aijmer, G., ed. 1992. Coming into existence: Birth and metaphors of birth. Gotheborg: IASSA. Barley, N. 1997. Dancing on the grave. Encounters with death. London: Abacus. Bellman, B.L. 1984. The language of secrecy: Symbols and metaphors in Poro ritual. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Bernardi, B. 1985. Age class systems: Social institutions and politics based on age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. d’Azevedo, W.L. 1994. Gola womanhood and the limits of masculine omnipotence. In Religion in Africa: Experience and expression, ed. T.D. Blakeley, W.E.A. van Beek, and D.L. Thomson, 363–387. London: Currey & Heineman. De Witte, M. 2011. Of corpses, clay, and photographs: Body imagery and changing technologies of remembrance in Asante funeral culture. In Funerals in Africa. Explorations of a social phenomenon, ed. M. Jindra and M. Noret, 154–176. New York: Berghahn Books. Fontaine, J.S. 1985. Initiation: Ritual drama and secret knowledge around the world. London: Penguin. Jindra, M., and J. Noret. 2011. African funerals and sociocultural change: A review of momentous transformations across a continent. In Funerals in Africa. Explorations of a social phenomenon, ed. M. Jindra and M. Noret, 16–40. New York: Berghahn Books. Langlois, O. 2017. Vers un histoire du ‘culte de crânes’ au sud du bassin tchadien: approche ethnoarcheologique. In Rites et religions dans le bassin du Lac Tchad, ed. É.

Cuisine Guitard and W.E.A. van Beek, 159–182. Paris: Karthala. Metcalf. P., and R. Huntington. 1991. Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortuary ritual. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ottenberg, S. 1994. Male and female secret societies among the Bafodea Limba of Northern Sierra Leone. In Religion in Africa: Experience and expression, ed. T.D. Blakely, W.E.A. van Beek, and D.L. Thomson, 388–397. London: Currey & Heineman. Richards, A. 1982. Chisungu. A girl’s initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia. London: Routledge. Turner, V. 1984. On the edge of the bush. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Turner, E. 2012. Communitas. The anthropology of collective joy. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan. Van Beek, W.E.A. 1991. Enter the bush: A Dogon mask festival. In Africa explores: 20th century African art, ed. S. Vogel, 56–73. New York: Center for African Art. Van Beek, W.E.A., and T. Blakely. 1994. Introduction. In Religion in Africa: Experience and expression, ed. T.D. Blakely, W.E.A. van Beek, and D.L. Thomson, 1–20. London: Currey & Heineman. Van Beek, W.E.A., and H. Leyten. 2021. Masks in action. Masquerades in African society, in press. Van Gennep, A. 1960. The rites of passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cuisine Karen Tranberg Hansen Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

The method of food preparation and the circumstances of its consumption are strong markers of social boundaries in terms of gender, region, and class. Jack Goody suggests that a “high” cuisine is found where people have differentiated access to resources. The extreme form of this differentiation is the allocation of special foods to special roles or classes, and a gulf between them not only of quantity, but of quality, of complexity, and of ingredients (1982). He also notes that the “high” and the “low” cuisines are divided by gender and that hierarchy, specialization, and elaborate cooking are associated with men as cooks. The difference in Africa, he argues, was the virtual

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absence of alternative or differentiated recipes, either for feast or for class. Throughout most of precolonial Africa, food habits were based on a combination of starches and relishes. Roots, such as yam, were important starch bases in West Africa, whereas grains such as sorghum, millet, and maize were common starches in east and southern Africa. After pounding, these starches were boiled to a porridge which was served with a stewed sauce, consisting of meat or fish and vegetables, and cooked in palm oil in West Africa and other vegetable oils in the rest of the continent. Red pepper flavored the West African stew or “chop,” which was more spicy than relishes elsewhere. The chief variation in this meal pattern was of quantity and quality, rather than of variety of ingredients and methods of preparation. People with lesser means ate more starch and less relish. The starch-relish theme made substitutions easy – for example, cassava for sorghum – without altering the structure of the meal (von Oppen 1991). Cooking was culturally constructed as a woman’s task, and the wife’s preparation of her husband’s food was a central obligation of marriage. According to Audrey Richards, it was a matter of pride for wives to attend to their husbands’ food (1969). According to William Bascom, Yoruba men in Nigeria, while eating meals with little variation, were “discriminatingly critical of the way in which these [were] prepared, not only with regard to the ingredients, the method of preparation, the amount of seasoning, but also as to the. . . stiffness of the. . . porridge, [and] mashed vegetables” (1951). The sexual connotations about preparing and receiving cooked food readily turn changes in meal content, preparation, and timing into signals of troublesome relationships (Clark 1989; Guyer 1981; Stoller and Olkes 1986). African cuisines and food habits have been influenced both by new foods and consumption patterns introduced during the colonial period, and by “fast-food” consumption styles that are reducing previous distinctions between the West’s “high” and Africa’s “low” cuisines (Goody 1982). What gets borrowed or transformed in this process depends on the cultural

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Cult, African Cultural Elements in the Trinidad’s Shango

frame of reference. Monica Wilson has shown this in her explanation of why Christian Nguni in South Africa featured two wedding cakes: one provided by the bride’s family and one by the groom’s (1972). The sexual connotations of cooking continue to charge women with cooking (Hansen 1992), and the starch-relish theme still shapes what is considered a satisfactory and tasteful meal. Today, bread, tea, and snacks coexist with the standard meal of starch and relish. And class plays a role in shaping changes in food habits, as the most available cooking technology prevents all but the most affluent Africans from preparing “high” cuisine.

Stoller, Paul, and Carol Olkes. 1986. Bad sauce, good ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 1: 336–352. Wilson, Monica. 1972. The wedding cakes: A study of ritual change. In The interpretation of ritual: Essays in honour of Audrey Richards, ed. Jean S. La Fontaine, 187–201. London: Tavistock.

See Also ▶ Domesticity ▶ Environment ▶ Food

Bibliography Bascom, William. 1951. Yoruba food. Africa 21 (1): 41–53. Clark, Gracia. 1989. Money, sex and cooking: Manipulation of the paid/unpaid boundary by Asante market women. In The social economy of consumption, Society for economic anthropology monographs, no. 6, ed. Henry Rutz and Benjamin Orlove, 323–348. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Goody, Jack. 1982. Cooking. Cuisine and class: A study in comparative sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Guyer, Jane I. 1981. The raw, the cooked and the halfbaked: A note on the division of labor by sex. Working paper no. 48, Boston University: African Studies Center. Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 1992. Cookstoves and charcoal braziers: Culinary practices, gender and class in Zambia. In African encounters with domesticity, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen, 266–289. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. von Oppen, Achim. 1991. Cassava, ‘the lazy man’s food?’ Indigenous agricultural innovation and dietary change in Northwestern Zambia (ca. 1650–1970). Food and Foodways 5 (1): 15–38. Richards, Audrey I. 1939. Land. Labour and diet in Northern Rhodesia: An economic study of the Bemba tribe. London: Oxford University Press. Reprinted 1969.

Cult, African Cultural Elements in the Trinidad’s Shango Shireen Lewis Department of Romance Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Followers of the Shango cult in contemporary Trinidad are primarily of African descent. American anthropologists, Melville and Frances J. Herskovits were the first to essay field research on Shango cult life in Trinidad. Their fieldwork of 1939 established that Trinidadian Shango is derived from the Yoruba people of southern Nigeria as part of the pattern of survival, syncretisms, and reinterpretations of African cultural elements in the New World. According to Yoruba religion, Shango is one of the Yoruba gods of thunder and lightning. The cult developed in Trinidad during the nineteenth century when people of Yoruba descent were brought to Trinidad as slaves from other islands of the Caribbean. In his detailed study of the Shango cult entitled The Shango Cult in Trinidad (1965), anthropologist George Eaton Simpson stated that followers of the Shango cult are primarily economically disadvantaged Trinidadians from urban areas. However, he noted that it is not uncommon for someone from the middle class to consult a shango practitioner about a problem. Simpson’s research is in accordance with the Herskovits’ finding of a pattern of survival, syncretisms, and reinterpretations of African cultural elements in Trinidadian Shango. Simpson shows, for example, that one aspect of the reinterpretation of Shango religion by Trinidad followers involves its polytheistic orientation. In Nigeria, for instance, each Yoruba god, including Shango,

Culturalism and Anticulturalism

has its own priests, societies, and religious place of worship, whereas in Trinidad by contrast, Shango is only one of several Yoruba gods worshipped by Shango followers. Some of the other gods (commonly referred to as “powers” in Trinidad) worshipped by Trinidadian followers are: Alufon (Olufon), Beji (Ibeji), Eshu (Esu), Ogun, Obatala, Oshun (Osun), and Oya. Also, Afro-European synthesis is evident in the pairing of African gods with Catholic saints. Consequently, Shango is paired with St. John the Baptist, Beji with St. Peter, Emanja with St. Anne or St. Catherine, Obatala with St. Benedict, Oshun with St. Philomena or St Anne, and Oya with St. Catherine or St. Philomena. Cult life consists primarily of religious worship that dominates small regular prayer meetings and a 4 day ceremony held each year. Possession by a particular power is extremely important in Shango worship. Possession is precipitated by intense drumming accompanied by dancing and singing. Shango drumming is an integral aspect of the religious practice, since each power has its own drum beat. Simpson explains that possession is part of a ritual that begins with a slow dance in a clockwise direction, which is then reversed. When a participant becomes possessed by a power, he or she sings and dances to the rhythms played by the drummers in honor of the god that has possessed him or her. Other aspects of cult life consist of healing and conjuring. A majority of Shango leaders engage in healing for a modest fee and provide remedies for a range of physical and emotional complaints, including the common cold, backaches, unplanned pregnancies, venereal diseases, diabetes, and possession by evil spirits. Some practitioners seek direct help from the Shango powers only in cases of serious illnesses or problems, while others frequently use these powers. Some clients consult exclusively Shango practitioners, while others may consult both Shango practitioners and medical doctors to treat the same or different illnesses. Conjuring is used to ensure success in business or court cases, for overcoming parents’ opposition to a marriage, to ensure the maintenance of amorous relationships, or to injure an enemy.

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See Also ▶ African Diaspora, Religion in ▶ Literature, Religious Themes in ▶ Sex, Prohibitions and Taboos

C Bibliography Bascom, William. 1972. Shango in the new world. Austin: African & African-American Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin. Herskovits, Melville J., and S. Frances. 1947. Trinidad village. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Simpson, George Eaton. 1965. The Shango cult in Trinidad. Rio Piedras: Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico. ———. 1978. Black religions in the new world. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1980. Religious cults of the Caribbean: Trinidad, Jamaica and Haiti. Rio Piedras: Institute of Caribbean/ Studies, University of Puerto Rico.

Culturalism and Anticulturalism Denyse de Saivre Sociologie Consultant International, Paris, France

Analytic discourse is to be distinguished from the culturalist school where linguistics coincides with the behaviorist school and proposes a theory of language formation. It was disseminated, at first, by cultural anthropologist after World War II. Over the last 20 years, opponents of this school of thought emerged with the rise of emphasis on universal rationality. In Europe, and particularly within the French academy, this argument is represented by sociologists positioning themselves in opposition to cultural anthropology. It is a dispute over epistemological and methodological issues which are usually hidden from the public. These origins of hostility between the two schools of thought govern philosophical reflection and need to be illuminated. Denyse de Saivre: deceased.

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The idea of universalism was diffused with the philosophies of the Enlightenment Period in France and the ideals of the French Revolution. The latter aspired to the institutionalization of equality between people through a rupture with the past. This school of thought has played an influential role in sociological research, which presupposes that an understanding of social institutions does not need to take into account the past history of a society or a group of people. History, indeed, is not insignificant and refers back to periods when the meaning of various social practices was coherent. The recourse to a focus on cultures is one of the means through which cultural anthropology contests the anticulturalist tendency in sociology. It is a heated debate within the social sciences, and a central question revolves around the attention to be given to the issue of meaning. Cultural anthropology, as an academic discipline, was invented by German, Anglo-Saxon, and French explorers of the meaning of culture. Cultural anthropologists advocate the view that human beings live in a world of signification. The scholar’s goal is to decode words, expressions, attitudes, and social and religious actions. Meaning is located in cultures, languages, and codes. These define the principles of classification for social groups from traditional to professional categories and provide the means of interpretation for life in a given society. Cultural anthropology expanded after westerners sought out societies which were totally alien to their own. The culture school, who are not all anthropologists, was inspired by differences and equality between people. This perspective also introduced analysis of Western and modern economic problems in the Third World and provides an account of what has been called the “clash” between the West and the rest.

See Also ▶ African-American Philosophy (1) ▶ Afrocentricity ▶ Communication ▶ Convention ▶ Education and Pre-consciousness

Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies

Bibliography Clifford, Geertz. 1973. The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books. Erhard, Friedberg. 1986. La culture. . . quelle culture? In Gérer et Comprendre, no 4, September. Iribarne Philippe d’. 1986. Vers une gestion culturelle des entreprises. In Gérer et Comprendre, no 4, September. ———. 1989. La logique de l’honneur. Paris: Seuil. Jean-François, Amadieu. 1989. Les entreprises: églises ou équipages de rafting. In Gérer et Comprendre, Annales des Mines, no 17, December. Nisbet, A. 1984. La tradition sociologique. Paris: Puf.

Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies Walter E. A. van Beek African Studies Center, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

Cyclical rites are communal ceremonies performed at specific moments of the calendar, be it on a weekly, monthly, yearly, or even multiyearly basis. These rites punctuate the rhythm of the seasons; they do not so much fit into a calendar but rather form the way lived time is defined into socially meaningful portions. So the modern notion of a calendar is slightly misleading, since it assumes a fixed, numerical, and universal grid onto which the rituals are placed. In fact, highlighting specific points of the year, rituals impose their own definition of time on natural events, and as such they define a yearly rhythm more than they follow one (Birth 2012); even if placed onto the international calendar, they still follow their own logic. These religious ceremonies relate to the means of gaining a livelihood during the seasons of the year, so they vary with the various climatic zones of Africa and the ecological adaptations of the cultures in question. Cyclical rites thus include hunting and fishing rituals, rainmaking rites, sowing and harvesting ceremonies, and year rites with general thanksgiving. On top of this, the imported religions of Christianity and Islam have their own cyclical rites and feasts at clear, precise points on

Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies

the international calendar; these rituals define the high points in the respective calendars, such as the Christian Christmas and Easter, or in Islam the end of the Ramadan fast and the birthday of the Prophet; the same holds for the many Hindu festivals, such as Divali and Holi. These festivals sanctify the year, and they do so by mixing two calendars, a solar and a lunar one. For instance, in the solar-oriented Christian calendar, Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a mixture of solar and lunar counting; in addition, it defines a week as seven days, a religious definition in itself. Africa knows many other definitions of the week cycle – three days or five days, for instance, with their own holy days – all receding now before the Abrahamic week. Thus, given the dominance of the international solar calendar, in itself a colonial imposition, most rituals in Africa do have a fixed place on that calendar, serving as highlights of a year that they help to define. Indigenous religions timed their rituals and feasts not only to their own mix of lunar counting and solar observations, but for a large part to the seasonal phenomena of their ecosystem: the first rains, the arrival of certain migratory birds, or the blossoming of signal flora. These are sometimes the subjects of myths. For instance, the Dogon in Mali tell how the god of heaven, Ama, and the god of the earth, Lèwè, competed to know who was the older and thus stronger one. Consequently, Ama withheld rain, and at long last the starving people persuaded Lèwè to give in. In acknowledgment Ama sent from on high a special bird, and when that bird settled down on earth, rains came. Though set in an assumed deep past, the myth tells about the yearly anxiousness about rain, plus its eco-signal: when that particular species of bird, indeed called the “bird of God,” settles in the fields, rain will come. That is the moment all rituals that adorn the dry season should halt, and agriculture then begins. The degree of ritualization of economic life differs greatly among the various African traditions. In foraging societies, the hunting rituals depend on periods of scarcity and have more to do with the chances of the hunt than with the seasons. Most rituals in pastoral societies center

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on the solution of individual problems more than on that of communal ones. It is in horticultural groups that the rhythm of the seasons is most marked and ritualized. For instance, among the Kapsiki of Cameroon, the ritual year cycle consists of second burials in January, a rain preparation ritual in February, first marriage of girls in March, initiation of boys in April, rites against insects in July, chasing away of illness in August, first harvest in September, and finally the major year ritual in November (van Beek 2012). So the ritual calendar involves both the cyclical rites related to agricultural work and the rites of passage that mark the transition of people through the stages of life, and all together “make the year.” Cycles other than yearly ones may be important. Many traditional societies have a day in the week (not always a seven-day week) set aside for ritual. Few African societies observe rituals to accompany the phases of the moon, though moons, of course, are counted in order to know the time of the year. Longer cycles, involving many years, are often connected to significant stages in life and may involve cycles of a few years up to a whole life span, such as the sixtyyear cycle of the Dogon sigi-ritual (van Beek and Hollyman 2001). Cyclical rites directly related to cultivation usually consist of a sacrifice followed by a first weeding, planting, or harvest. Often, the officiator consults a diviner before conducting the ritual. Surprisingly, the plants used in these rituals are often not the main food crops. Many cultures single out specific crops as main symbols of survival, related not so much to nutritional value but to symbolic properties or their moment of ripening: the crops harvested first thus accrue ritual significance. For example, the Dogon of Mali have as their symbolic crop not the economically important millet, but fonio, a half-wild grass which is the first harvest. Rituals against insects and other dangers to the crop are also straightforward. To guard the millet, a Kapsiki blacksmith grinds a few caterpillars with some millet leaves on his anvil and, with a few appropriate sentences, distributes the mixture over the road crossings. This kind of ritual is either in the hands of specialists or of specific lineages.

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Rain rituals form an important category of cyclical rites in those parts of Africa where drought is a persistent problem – that is, in a large part of the continent. Their form is highly diverse, ranging from sacrifices on personal or specialized altars to elaborate rain voyages or public dances. Especially in East and Southern Africa, rain ceremonies are central to the notion of power in society, and the main ritual task of a chiefly or royal dynasty is to procure rain. Manyika Shona of Zimbabwe rain rites exemplify this: in severe drought, royal descendants trek into the mountains, drinking and singing on the way, enticing the ancestors through sexual arousal to release the rain (JacobsonWidding 1991). In South Sudan, the link between power and rain even forms the backbone of society, featuring rainmaker-kings whose very raison d’être depends on their ability to procure rain at the right time in the desired amount; if they fail, they may even forfeit their own life. This classic case of regicide – a debate that has haunted anthropology for a long time – underscores both the crucial position of rain and the dependence on cyclical rituals (Simonse 2017). Elsewhere in Africa also, rainmaking serves as an idiom for power and is often linked with iron making, another African symbol of power (Rasmussen 2013). Actual rain rites are usually performed not before the start of the rainy season but somewhat later; when, after the onset of the wet season, a small dry spell threatens the young crop, rain rites should be held. Many reports testify to their efficacy, because rain often appears after their performance (van Beek 2015). Cyclical rituals are set in time, so they have to be timed accurately. Fertility, broadly conceived as fertility of people, animals, crops, and the bush, is interwoven with almost all cyclical rites, usually as an aspect of larger, more encompassing rituals. Often, the sources of fertility reside in resolving fundamental oppositions in African thought, such as those of heaven and earth, village and wilderness, drought and water, heat and coolness, social communion and individual anarchy. In bridging these oppositions, the ritual regenerates fertile life in the community (Jacobson-Widding and van Beek 1991).

Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies

Most of these elements come together in the year rites. In many societies, at least once a year a large festival is held to regain and celebrate unity and is held after harvest or just before the rainy season. In Mali, the Dogon year rite involves sacrifices on all altars, following a hierarchy of seniority, ritual greetings of men by women and women by men, ceremonial visits of young husbands to their fathers-in-law, masked youngsters chasing girls, and finally an all-village dance in which wards compete to show off the riches accumulated in the last year. On that last day, rain should fall and cultivation begin. It sometimes does (van Beek and Hollyman 2001). A central part of many of the cyclical rites is sacrifice, a basic ritual form (Grimes 2014). In essence it is a family meal shared with the “other world,” a feast of communion. The head of the family slaughters a domestic animal and presides over a meal consisting of the meat and many other food items, offering choice parts to the gods, ancestors, and other presences from the other world, before sharing with kinsmen and friends. Such a sacrificial meal that gathers a family, lineage, ward, or whole village, occurs in mainly patrilineal societies (Jay 1992), and may well be interpreted as a ritual, cyclical expression of paternity. In pastoral societies, this kind of sacrifice is the core ritual of the whole religion, as the classic study of Nuer religion demonstrates (Evans-Pritchard 1956). Matrilineal societies focus more on rituals related to health and fertility, with less insistence on cyclical rites; positioned as they are mostly in forested regions, the rhythm of rain and drought is less relevant for them anyway. But sacrifice has remained a dominant theme in all major religions in the world (Duyndam et al. 2017). Thus, cyclical rites tend to stress the social fabric of society and be dependent on it at the same time. Sometimes called “rites of intensification,” they focus on adherence to political authorities, on group belongingness, and on resolution of social tensions. At set times through the year, the old ties that bind the community are reinforced. Among the Ekiti-Yoruba, for example, the year is opened by a ritual in which the king eats the first yam. Thereafter, each quarter of the town can perform its own festival, sacrificing to

Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies

the orisha (gods). The order of performance is crucial. Each of the festivals emphasizes the unity of the segment in question, defines its chief as sovereign in his own fief, while the whole cycle unites the kingdom above all the divisive powers of the parts (Apter 1987). One mechanism for intensification is by ritually celebrating the reverse of the usual order of society, in what have been called rituals of rebellion. Here role reversal is the way to signal the ritual time, so during ceremonies women don men’s clothing and act in ways normally prohibited to the former. During Zulu agricultural rituals, groups of women perform obscene acts in public, girls and women go around naked and sing lewd songs, while men and boys hide inside the huts for fear of being molested (Bell 1997). This reversal between the sexes is echoed in other kinds of ritualized rebellion against the social order: fighting between rival factions at festivals, or slaves abusing their masters during the year rites. Though also occurring during the liminal phases of crisis rites,* this kind of periodic ritual upheaval of society and inversion of hierarchy is seen as a cathartic means of re-establishing the social fabric (Stewart and Strathern 2014). The periodic lifting of restrictions serves as a socially approved outlet for dominated groups, while the fact of contest over symbols of power reinforces the basic values of society that, in themselves, are not challenged. Cyclical rites thus impose a cultural grid on the timeline of nature, which remains even after the ritual has been lost or changed. Most festivities of literate religions (e.g., Christianity and Islam) are embedded in an old agricultural ritual cycle that, as such, has been transformed to celebrate great events in the sacred history. The content, then, is no longer agricultural, but the place on the calendar still commemorates its cultural history.

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Bibliography Apter, A.H. 1987. Rituals of power: The politics of Orisha worship in Yoruba society. New Haven: Yale University Press. van Beek, W.E.A., and S. Hollyman. 2001. Dogon. Africa’s people of the cliffs. New York: Abrams. van Beek, W.E.A. 2012. The dancing dead. Ritual and religion among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2015. The forge and the funeral. The smith in Kapsiki/Higi culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Bell, C. 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. Birth, K.V. 2012. Objects of time. How things shape temporality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Duyndam, J., A.-M. Korte, and M. Poorthuis. 2017. Sacrifice in modernity: Community, ritual and identity. Leiden: Brill. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grimes, R. 2014. The craft of ritual studies. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Jacobson-Widding, A. 1991. The fertility of incest. In The creative communion: African folk models of fertility and regeneration of life, ed. A. Jacobson-Widding and W.E.A. van Beek, 47–74. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Jacobson-Widding, A., and W.E.A. van Beek. 1991. Chaos, order and communion in the creation and sustenance of life. In The creative communion: Africa folk models of fertility and the regeneration of life, ed. A. Jacobson-Widding and W.E.A. van Beek, 15–45. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Jay, N. 1992. Throughout your generations forever: Sacrifice, religion and paternity. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Rasmussen, S. 2013. Neighbors, strangers, witches, and culture heroes: Ritual powers of smith/artisans in Touareg society and beyond. Lanham: University Press of America. Simonse, S. 2017. Kings of disaster: Dualism, centralism and the scapegoat king in Southeastern Sudan. Kampala: Fountain Publishing. Stewart, P.J., and A. Strathern. 2014. Ritual. Key concepts in religion. London: Bloomsbury.

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Delafosse, Maurice Anthony Mangeon Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Maurice Delafosse was both an administrator in the French colonial system and an Africanist. When he was trained as an Orientalist at the Ecole des langues orientales [school of oriental languages] in Paris, he met Octave Houdas, an eminent arabist who was very influential on him. (Delafosse married his daughter and later published some African texts translated from Arabic with Houdas). After a first “African experience” in Algeria in 1891, Delafosse began his career as an administrator in Ivory Coast in 1894, to be promoted viceconsul in Monrovia in 1897. Back in Ivory Coast, he was part of a French mission (1901–1903) that sought to define clearly the frontiers between Ivory Coast, Gold Coast (Ghana), and Sudan. He was assigned later to Dabakala (Ivory Coast) from 1904 to 1907 and then to Bamako (Mali). The hostility of Gabriel Angoulvant, who was the General Governor of the West French Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française), was a predicament for Delafosse’s career and, on his return to

France, he decided to dedicate himself to scholarship. Teaching Arabic and African languages both at the Ecole des langues orientales and at the Ecole Coloniale [colonial school], he was one of the founding members of the Institut ethnographique international de Paris (1910–1920), together with Arnold Van Gennep, and later took part in the creation of the Institut d’ethnologie [ethnology Institute] with Mauss, Rivet and Lévi-Bruhl. During his years in Paris, Delafosse was an active contributor to many reviews, and particularly the Revue des Etudes ethnographiques et Sociologiques, established in 1908 by Van Gennep. He also published many studies, which made him the prominent advocate of a colonial ethnography based on observation, fieldwork, and constant reference to African written sources. His discourse is oriented towards a scientific audience in priority (Haut-Sénégal-Niger), but Delafosse’s attempts to open up a better knowledge of Africa for a wider audience was also very successful (Broussard ou les états d’âme d’un colonial, Les civilisations africaines, Les nègres). His linguistic and, at the same time, historical and scientific approach play a crucial part in the re-discovery of African civilizations, while Delafosse wants to promote – contrary to Lévi-Bruhl–the “African soul” that manifests itself in the history and the arts of African peoples. His essentialist bias and his appraisal of animist religiosity among Africans are, nonetheless, condemned by the academic scholars (Griaule in particular), who want

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to dissociate ethnography from the colonial administration. The impact of Delafosse on African studies is still considerable: breaking with the evolutionist tradition, he helped to redefine the practice of ethnography at the beginning of the twentieth century. He also initiated and favored the development of scientific African literature in the 1910s. His research has been most influential on the Négritude Movement, where writers and poets greeted Delafosse as one of the major inspirers of the Negro-African “prise de conscience.”

Dialectic itinéraire d’un Africaniste. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. Delafosse, Louise. 1976. Maurice Delafosse, le Berrichon conquis par l’Afrique. Paris: Société Française dHistoire doutre-mer. Piriou, Anne, and Emmanuelle Sibeud, eds. 1997. L’Africanisme en questions. Paris. EHESS: Centre d’études africaines.

Dialectic Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

Bibliography Works by Maurice Delafosse Essai sur le peuple et la langue sara (bassin du Tchad). Paris: Joseph André, 1898. Essai de manuel de la langue agni. Paris: Librairie africaine et coloniale, J. André, 1900. Essai de manuel pratique de la langue mandé ou mandingue. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901a. Manuel de langue haoussa. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1901b. Vocabulaires comparatifs de plus de 60 langues ou dialectes parlés à la Côte d’Ivoire. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904. Les frontières de la Côte d’Ivoire, de la Côte d’or et du Soudan. Paris: Masson, 1908. Broussard ou les états d’âme d’un colonial. Paris: Larose, 1909 (roman, rééd. 1922). Haut-Sénégal-Niger (Soudan français). I. Le pays, les peuples, les langues. II. Lhistoire. III. Les civilisations. Paris: Larose, 1912 (réed.1972). Tarikh El Fettach, par Mahmoûd Kâti ben El-Hâdj El-Motaouakkel Kâti. traduction par O. Houdas et M. Delafosse. Ernest Leroux, 1913 (réed 1981). Esquisse générale des langues de l’Afrique et plus particulièrement de l’Afrique française. Paris: Masson, 1914. L’âme nègre. Paris: Payot, 1922a. Les noirs de l’Afrique. Paris: Payot, 1922b. Les civilisations négro-africaines. Paris: Stock, 1925. Les nègres. Paris: Reider, 1927. The blacks of Africa. Washington: Associated Publishers, 1931.

Critical Bibliography Aggarwal, Kusum. 1999. Amadou Hampâté Bâ et l’africanisme, de la recherche anthropologique à l’exercice de la fonction auctoriale. Paris/Montréal: L’harmattan. Amselle, Jean-Loup, and Emmanuelle Sibeud, eds. 1998. Maurice Delafosse, entre orientalisme et ethnographie,

The word “dialectic” can mean many things; it can be taken to name an ontology, a rhetoric, a methodology, and a logic. In modern Western philosophy, the dialectic is most notably associated with the philosophy of Hegel, who employed the concept in all four senses – though in uneven proportions. As an ontological principle, it construes reality as a process propelled by the interplay of opposites or even contradictions. In this sense, the dialectic goes back to the ancient philosophy of Heraclitus. What Hegel gave to the dialectic was the idealistic twist and the iron inevitability of a logical transformation. And what Marx, the other archangel of the dialectic in modern philosophy, did, by his own description, was to stand it back up on its materialistic head. In both Hegel and Marx, the dialectic is also a method of inquiry by which one studies concepts and historical situations through their transformative interconnections with their opposites, though the mode of exposition was not always dialectical. By intention, this was methodology imitating reality. But, for both thinkers, what was at play here was not just a methodology but also a distinct logic, an alternative to classical logic in the sense that it denied the principles of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle, canonized in the latter as the supreme laws of thought. Although dialectic as rhetoric is not totally absent from these two philosophers, it was in the philosophy of Plato that it was most prominently

Dialectic

cultivated. Plato employed the dialectic as a form of question-and-answer dialogue in which the inadequacies of proposed views are exposed through analysis and counterexample. He also employed it as a method for attaining higher forms of knowledge, namely, knowledge of the “forms,” through definition by “division.” In Plato, the dialectic was not a logic for, in his time, the Western tradition of logic still awaited its systemizer. Nor was it an ontology for, although he viewed the phenomenal world as a theater of change and instability, ultimate reality for him was a realm of eternal changelessness. This historical preliminary, made necessary by the semantic versatility of the term “dialectic” in the Western philosophic tradition, makes it possible to raise the question of the role or nonrole of dialectic in African philosophy in a useful way. It suffices to consider traditional philosophy for, in contemporary African philosophy, approving hints on the dialectic have emanated only from converts or quasi–converts to Marxism, who have tended to take it for granted. It turns out, in fact, that African traditional philosophy is frequently highly dialectical. Dialectic is encountered in the rhetorical, methodological, and ontological forms. It does not, however, appear to exist – either explicitly or implicitly – as an alternative logic, at least not generally. Contrary to Senghor’s assertion (1964) that “Negro African reason is traditionally dialectical, transcending the principles of identity, non-contradiction and the ‘excluded middle,’” these principles would seem to be commonplace in the traditional discourse of at least some African peoples. To illustrate: among the methodological maxims of the Akans are the following: 1. “Conflict does not exist in truth.” (Abra nni nokware mu) 2. “There are no crossroads in the understanding.” (Asumu 0nni nkwanta) These are clearly two equivalent aphoristic formulations of the law of noncontradiction (Wiredu 1992). In truth, the dialectic in African traditional thought is to be sought elsewhere, but it is not

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far to seek. The thought of the Dogon of Mali, immortalized in Griaule’s Conversations with Ogotemmeli, is replete with conceptions of the perpetual interaction, in cosmic processes, of opposites – “right and left, high and low, odd and even, male and female” (Griaule and Dieterlen 1954) and, one might add, perfection and imperfection. The Yoruba myth of “creation,” in which the first emissary of God sent to Ile–Ife to initiate the process yields to the temptations of alcohol and falls asleep in neglect of the project (Idowu 1962), is a dramatic instance of the last mentioned opposition. The Akans are hardly less cognizant of the role of oppositions in the affairs of the cosmos. In summation of a number of enigmatic Akan sayings about the Creator and the world order as, for example, “Would [the creator] Odomankoma (universal Death) venture to take man if he were the type to be scared by Discord (Opposition)?” Danquah (1968) points out (correctly) that “the consciousness of opposition and the need for reconciliation underlie each of the root conceptions.” These intimations of the dialectic are, of course, ontological. But this dialectic is neither idealistic nor materialistic for, arguably, this type of doctrinal opposition in Western thought does not make sense in an African framework of concepts (Wiredu 1987). Evidences of the dialectic as rhetoric are even more widespread in Africa. African cultures are famous for the superabundance of proverbs in their folklore. That one proverb can seem to contradict another has often been remarked. But, in fact, closer probing will sometimes reveal a third proverb or set of such that resolves the tension. In these cases, the thought-architecture can scarcely be attributed to accident. The Kikuyu of Kenya are particularly adept at this way of disseminating wisdom. The method of inculcating logical skills through drills in the solution of contradictions, paradoxes, and riddles is closely connected with this expository approach. This is also a well-known methodological feature of indigenous African pedagogy. Moreover, much serious metaphysics is couched in riddles – ones intended to be solved, not accepted as mysteries.

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See Also ▶ Being ▶ Dualism ▶ Fanon, Frantz ▶ Kikuyu, Philosophical Proverbs ▶ Marxism ▶ Senghor, Léopold Sédar

Bibliography Danquah, J.B. 1968. The Akan Doctrine of God. London: Frank Cass & Co. (1944). Griaule, Marcel, and Germaine Dieterlen. 1954. The Dogon of the French Sudan. In African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunnings, Gordon. 1975. Logic, language and culture. Second Order: An African Journal of Philosophy 4 (1). (Alleges that African thought does not operate with the classical laws of thought, though not the worse for it.). Idowu, E. Bolaji. 1962. Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. London: Longman. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1970. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De–Colonization. London: Panaf Books. (1964) (Claims, among other things, that dialectical materialism is in harmony with African traditional thought.). Senghor, Leopold S. 1964. On African Socialism. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1992. Formulating Modern Thought in African Languages: Some Theoretical Considerations. In The Surreptitious Speech, ed. V.Y. Mudimbe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1987. The Concept of Mind with Particular Reference to the Language and Thought of the Akans. In Contemporary Philosophy, A New Survey: Vol. 5: African Philosophy, ed. G. Floistad. Boston: Kluwer Academic.

Difference and Literature Gaurav Desai Department of English, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

The concepts of identity and difference which critically inform all literary texts are of particular

Difference and Literature

importance to twentieth century African literary practice. Influenced both by the structures of oral traditions with their often didactic and normalizing discourses as well as by the often alien written traditions, African literature has consistently aimed at interrogating the boundaries between the self and the other, and between the individual and the communal also. The earlier written narratives such as those by Thomas Mofolo or by Samuel Ntara are surprisingly not so much concerned with the difference between the white and the black or between the colonizer and the colonized. Rather the locus of difference is primarily religion – between those who are Christian and those who practice the indigenous religions. Later narratives, written primarily after the Second World War in the period of growing nationalism, focus more on the differences between the Europeans and the Africans and on some of the cultural consequences of these differences. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God are instances of such a focus. A racial emphasis on difference is evident in the work of the Negritude school championed by poet-thinkers such as Leopold Senghor and backed by such European supporters as Jean Paul Sartre. If religious difference and racial difference were to have emerged through the sixties, gender and class differences were also growing concerns. Literary works by women writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Bessie Head, and Tsitsi Dangarembga among others have increasingly led to considerations not only of the relevance of gender as a locus of difference but also to a recognition of the difference that women have made throughout African history. Such a two-fold project of foregrounding a difference and also celebrating its role in history is also at work in the writings of the Marxist activist Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The production history of Ngugi’s play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) and the author’s subsequent political imprisonment (recorded in Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary) open an important chapter in the lesson of internal differences in postcolonial Africa and of the role of literature in foregrounding them.

Dinka, Christianity Among the

See Also ▶ Pluralism ▶ Religion and Art

Bibliography Achebe, Chinua. 1958. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann. ———. 1964. Arrow of God. New York: Anchor. Dangarembga, Tsitsi. 1988. Nervous conditions. Seattle: Seal Press. Emecheta, Buchi. 1979. The Joys of motherhood. London: Heinemann. Head, Bessie. 1971. Maru. London: Heinemann. Mofolo, Thomas. 1934. Traveller of the East. Trans. H. Ashton. London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Literature. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 1981. Detained: A Writers Prison Diary. London: Heinemann. Ngugi Wa Thiongío, and ngugi Wa Mirii. 1982. I will marry when I want. London: heinemann. Ntara, Samuel. 1934. Man of Africa. Trans. T. Cullen Young. London: Religious Tract Society. Nwapa, Flora. 1966. Efuru. London: Heinemann. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1976. Black Orpheus. Paris: Présence Africaine. Senghor, Léopold. 1991. The collected poems. Trans. Melvin Dixon, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Dinka, Christianity Among the Francis M. Deng The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA

The advent of Christianity among the Dinka was closely associated with the Anglo- Egyptian administration (1898–1956), which permitted and even encouraged Christian missionary societies to operate within defined spheres of influence in southern Sudan. The main objective of Christian missions among the Dinka was seen in traditional terms as the pursuit of physical and spiritual well-being. The premise was that, prior to Catholic education, the Dinka were immersed in the abyss of intellectual, moral, and spiritual darkness or emptiness that was dangerous to well-being.

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Dinka religious values and practices, which aimed at promoting individual and collective well-being in this world, were molded to foster a new concept that welded the traditional view of health with the Christian doctrine of ultimate spiritual survival. Initially, the Dinka were reluctant to send their children to school not only through fear of cultural alienation, symbolized by the fact that schoolchildren became known as “the children of the missionaries” (mith abun), but also because of fear of moral corruption and the loss of the dignity associated with Dinka identity. Slowly the significance of the school began to make itself felt, and with that discovery came the realization of the hidden treasures and powers of modern education. This was, indeed, a reversal of roles: in traditional society, knowledge was presumed to accumulate with age and proximity to the ancestors; now, according to the new code of learning, the Dinka, as a culture group, not only had a lot to learn but should indeed be ashamed of where they stood in the newly postulated scale of progress. Dinka religious devotion also paradoxically facilitated the Christian mission among them. What matters most to the Dinka is not so much what religion one adheres to as how religious one is. A holy man regardless of race, religion, or language, who appears to reflect unusual spiritual powers and divine will, is revered as a man of God, capable of rewarding good and punishing evil. Christian missionaries among the Dinka had the distinct advantage of being seen as people who were there for the sole purpose of spreading the word of God to do good among men and women. Baptism conformed with sprinkling blessed water, a ritual familiar to the Dinkas in their traditional religious practice. Even the designation of the Catholic priests as Fathers was well suited to Dinka notions of paternal spiritual leadership. Many of the schoolchildren’s songs were, indeed, personal exaltations of the missionaries as benefactors in all the values associated with well-being and moral order. But the inspiration behind the moral and religious exaltation of the missionaries was directed not so much toward a new spiritual order or the

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worship of God, but towards the new notions of “going ahead,” or “progress” associated with modern education. The Dinka had come to appreciate that, without education, their people were denied some of the essential skills for advancement in the modern context. Education began to be perceived as a way of producing Dinkas who were capable of providing modern leadership and thereby protecting Dinka identity, autonomy, and self-determination. Once the children were converted, however, equally preoccupying – even obsessive – was their concern with the supposedly inherent evils and dangers of non-Christian life, religious practices, and social conditions. The supposedly “evil spirits” of traditional religion and even “Mohammedism,” which was morally equated with paganism, were seen as posing a serious threat to physical and spiritual well-being, and Christianity was extolled as the only tool of redemption. With independence, the Dinka experienced yet another stereotype of racial, religious, and cultural development, in which Arab-Muslim identity replaced the European-Christian mold as the official model for “progress.” But, by then, Christian education in the South had become rooted, fostered a sense of identity that transcended tribal loyalties, and created a southern nationalist sentiment that was anti-North and anti-Islamic, at least, tool of northern domination. During the seventeen-year war (1955–1972) and extending into the war that resumed in 1983, the conditions of upheaval, intense insecurity, and massive suffering from starvation and violent death have nudged southerners increasingly toward religion, in general, and Christianity, in particular, as a source of salvation. Several factors account for this, among them, a natural yearning for supernatural protection against an otherwise incomprehensible destruction; a search for alternative interpretations as the traditional belief system becomes discredited; a response to the Church as a source of material, social, and spiritual support in contrast to national leaders; and, not least, the need for a coherent competing modern religious identity with which to oppose the Arab-Islamic identity.

Dinka: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals

See Also ▶ Belief, Anthropological Studies of ▶ Dinka: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals ▶ Nilotic Religious Thought ▶ Nilotic Society, Religion and Moral Values in

Bibliography Deng, Francis Mading. 1971. Tradition and modernization: A challenge for law among the Dinka of the Sudan. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. ———. 1988. Dinka response to Christianity: The pursuit of well–being in a developing society. In Vernacular Christianity: Essays in the social anthropology of religion, ed. Wendy James and Douglas H. Johnson. Oxford: JASO Occasional Papers, no. 7. ———. 1990. A cultural approach to human rights among the Dinka. In Human rights in Africa: Cross-cultural perspectives, ed. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim and Francis M. Deng, 261–289. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. ———. 1995. War of visions: Conflict of identities in the Sudan. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Johnson, Douglas Hamilton. 1988. Divinity abroad: Dinka missionaries in foreign lands. In Vernacular Christianity: Essays in the social anthropology of religion, ed. D.H. James and W. Johnson. Oxford: JASO Occasional Papers, no. 7. ———. 1995. The prophet Ngundeng & the battle of Pading: Prophecy, symbolism & historical evidence. In Revealing prophets: Prophecy in eastern African history, ed. David Anderson and Douglas H. Johnson, 196–220. London: James Currey. Lienhardt, R.G. 1982. The Dinka and Catholicism. In Religious organization and religious experience, ed. J. Davis, 81–95. London/New York: Academic Press, ASA Monographs, no. 21. Sanderson, Lilian Passmore, and Neville Sanderson. 1981. Education, Religion, and Politics in Southern Sudan 1899–1964. London: Ithaca Press and Khartoum University Press.

Dinka: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals Francis M. Deng The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA

The Dinka are a pastoral Nilotic people in the Republic of the Sudan. They number several million people and are the largest group in the

Dinka: History, Religious Systems, and Rituals

country; yet, unlike most peoples in the Sudan who have corresponding branches outside the country, they are found only in the Sudan. Although they grow a wide variety of crops, their indigenous economy is dominated by cattle (and to a lesser extent sheep and goats), which they see as a special gift from God and are exchanged as bridewealth in marriage and used for sacrifice to God, deities, and ancestral spirits. Not much is known about the origin of the Dinka or their early history. Judging from their myths of creation, beliefs, and rituals, the religious culture of the Dinka and their kindred group, the Nuer, has been very much influenced by the classic religions of the Middle East. These influences have been distorted by centuries of hostilities and animosities. The presence of pyramids in their country is obvious evidence of the Egyptian influence. The burial rites of their spiritual leaders have also been observed as having something in common with ancient Egyptian rites. Similarities are particularly striking between the Dinka myths of creation and the stories of the Bible and the Koran. Among the many such stories or myths are: how God created man from mud and the woman from the rib of the man; how the woman was tempted by the snake to eat the forbidden fruit; how God punished mankind in consequence; how a divine leader made waters part so that his people might cross; how a prophet was born of a woman without a biological father; the miracles performed by that prophet; and his religious message to the world. The Dinka believe in One God, Nhialic, whose attributes are identical to those of the Judaic, Christian, and Muslim God. But Dinka religion is not an affair of the soul in a world yet to come; it is focused on the quest for a secure life in this world and continued participation after death. In the mythical hierarchy, lesser spirits are nearer to man than God and are symbolized by emblems that are more commonly encountered. Spirits usually have particular characteristics that manifest themselves through human experience. Some of them are known to inflict specific types of pain or illness. Some are known to have certain likes and dislikes. When they “fall upon” a man and possess him, they can be identified by the aberrational behavior they induce in him.

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The relationship between a clan and a particular spirit may be traced to a traumatic episode in the history of the clan, remembered in legends that try to create a protective relationship out of a destructive experience. The evil and the good aspects of the experience are merged and the object and the subject of the experience are reconciled as relatives, who must no longer antagonize one another, but must indeed assist each other. To mention examples of how conflicting factors in a bad experience are reconciled by ritual and symbolism, a man who has suffered a serious, often disabling or deforming disease may become recognized after the disease has passed as possessing an inheritable spiritual power to cure similar diseases; a man whose herds have been wiped out by a disease, rendering him poor, may similarly acquire a power of purifying cattle of like diseases. The degree to which experience is given a lasting spiritual value depends on its impact upon the person and his community. In all cases, the memory must be honored by appropriate rites, sacrifices, or dedication of animals or objects. Failure to do so may result in harm inflicted by the neglected power. According to a myth from the Ngok Dinka, Jok (whose epithet “Athurkok” meant the one who broke through the way, the founder of the leading clan that bears his name, Pa-Jok), emerged from the byre of creation with the sacred spears that God had given him as symbols of his spiritual powers to bless or curse, to give, or take life. As the tribe searched for better land for their cattle, they came to a point on the Nile where their way was blocked by powers in the river, sometimes described as spirits and sometimes as human beings with peculiar attributes, such as “exceedingly white” beyond known human color of skin. In response to their demands, Jok sacrificed his daughter, Acai, to them, making the waters recede and allowing the people to cross on dry land. The spiritual outcome of this tragic event was a veneration of Acai who, although a female is now a far greater power than individual ancestors. Offerings are made annually to her in the river where she is metaphorically believed to reside. It is this close connection between experience and the belief system which gives the religion of the Dinka a worldly orientation and makes the people intensely religious. In the view of some

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observers, they are among the most religious people in the Sudan. The Dinka do not even have a word for religion, except perhaps the expression “The Word of God.” For them, religion is a central element in their way of life, their moral code, their culture, and, indeed, their identity.

See Also ▶ Dinka, Christianity Among the ▶ Nilotic Religious Thought ▶ Nilotic Society, Religion and Moral Values in

Bibliography Deng, Francis Mading. 1971. Tradition and modernization: A challenge for law among the Dinka of the Sudan. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ———. 1984. The Dinka of the Sudan. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972; reissued with changes by Waveland Press, Inc. ———. 1978. Africans of two worlds: The Dinka in AfroArab Sudan. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. ———. 1973. Dynamics of identification: A basis for national integration in the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. ———. 1974. Dinka Folktales:African stories from the Sudan. New York: Africana Publishing Company. ———. 1986. The Man Called Deng Majok: A Biography of power, polygyny and change. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Howard, Paul P. 1951. Notes on the Ngok Dinka. Sudan Notes and Records XXXII (Part 2): 239–293. Lienhardt, R.G. 1958. Western Dinka, ed. John Middleton and David Tait. London: Routledge and Paul. Seligman, Charles G., and Brenda Z. Seligman. 1932. The Pagan Tribes of the Mlotic Sudan. London: G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd.

Diop, Cheikh Anta Mubabinge Bilolo African Institute for Prospectives Studies (INADEP), Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Diop, Cheikh Anta

he was Director of the Radiocarbon Laboratory of the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa (IFANDakar). He was proclaimed by the “Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres 1966” as “the Black intellectual who has exercised the most profound influence on the twentieth century.” The basis of his international recognition is his Egyptological and anthropological works, Nation nègres et culture (Paris 1954), Antériorité des civilisations nègres: mythe ou vérité historique (Paris 1967), and Civilisation ou barbarie? (Paris 1981), in which he pointed out that the Ancient Egyptians were Negroes, Blacks, and that the Egyptian civilization was a Negro civilization. Diop was firmly convinced that the cultural renaissance of the Black peoples is inconceivable outside the restoration of both their historical past and their languages. This is his scientific break with Western ethnophilosophy and ethnohistoriography of Black Africa: “In fact, it is impossible to elaborate a new body of social studies without a systematic reference to Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt plays for Africa and Blacks in general the same role which Greco-Latin culture plays for the Western world” (Diop 1985). However, this view has been criticized for its essentialism: the West and Africa are indeed supposed to have an essential origin, respectively Greece and Egypt. Diop underlined that philosophy and science were born in Egypt three thousand years before Greek scientists like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Egypt was the beginning of monotheistic thinking and the origin of the purest monotheism. From this background, the Black peoples could build a modern culture benefiting the totality of human achievement, without anxiety or fear of cultural alienation. Dealing with Africa as a whole, Diop kept on pleading for the “Federal State of Black Africa” and struggled against scientific and sociopolitical racism, ethnocentrism, and discrimination. He died at the 7th February 1986, in Dakar, Senegal.

See Also Born in Thieytou, Diourbel (Senegal), on 29 December 1923, Cheikh Anta Diop was a savant, a physicist, Egyptologist, and anthropologist, and

▶ Afrocentricity ▶ Movements, political philosophy of national independence

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▶ Negritude ▶ Présence Africaine

Froment, A. 1991. Origine et evolution de l’homme dans la pensee de Cheikh Anta Diop: une analyse critique. Cahiers d’etudes africaines 31 (121/122): 29–64. Gray, Chris. 1989. Conceptions of history in the works of Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga. London: Karnak House. Hommage a Cheikh Anta Diop. Paris: Societe Africaine de Culture, 1991. Manchuelle, Francois. 1995. Assimiles ou patriotes africains? : naissance du nationalisme culturel en Afrique francaise (1853–1931). Cahiers d’etudes africaines 35 (138/139): 333–368. Moitt, Bernard. 1989. Cheikh Anta Diop and the African diaspora: Historical continuity and socio-cultural symbolism. Presence Africaine (149/150): 347–360. Molongwa, Bayibayi. 2020. Pioneros y pilares de la egiptología africana. Estudios epistemológicos de C. A. Diop, Th. Obenga, M. Bilolo y G. Biyogo. (INADEP. I, vol. 15), Kinshasa-Munich-Paris : Publications Universitaires Africaines. http://www. cheikhantadiop.net/cheikh_anta_diop_sur.htm Moore, Carlos. 1989. Conversations With Cheikh Anta Diop. In Hommage à Cheikh Anta Diop. Présence Africaine (149/150): 374–420. Nziem, Ndaywel e. 1995. La quete des antiquites et l’avenir de l’Afrique: une nouvelle lecture de Cheikh Anta Diop et de Theophile Obenga. Africa / Istituto Italo-Africano 50 (2): 249–264. Sall, Babacar. 1989. Histoire et conscience historique: De la philosophie de l’histoire dans l’oeuvre de Cheikh Anta Diop. Presence Africaine (149/150): 283–291. Samb, Djibril. 1992. Cheikh Anta Diop, Les nouvelles Editions africaines du Sénégal. Sertima, Ivan Van. 1986. Great African Thinkers. Vol. I – Cheikh Anta Diop. Oxford: New Brunswick, Special issue of the Journal of African Civilization. Teraanga Neel na Seex Nata Jóób: Hommages à Cheikh Anta Diop. Dakar: Special issue of the review Ethiopiques, 1987. Wamba-dia-Wamba, Ernest. 1991. Philosophy and African intellectuals: mimesis of Western classicism, ethnophilosophical romanticism or African self-mastery? Quest 5 (1): 5–17.

Works by Diop Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1954. Nations Nègres et Culture. De l’antiquité nègre égyptienne aux problèmes culturels de l’Afrique Noire d’aujourd’hui. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1960. L’Unité culturelle de l’Afrique Noire. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1967. Antériorité des civilisations nègres: Mythe ou vérité historique? Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1974. The African origin of civilization: Myth or reality. New York/Westport: Lawrence Hill and Company. ———. 1977. Parenté génétique de l’égyptien pharaonique et des langues négro–africaines. Dakar: IFAN– NEA. ———. 1981. Civilisation ou barbarie. Anthropologie sans complaisance. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1990. Philosophie, science, religion. Dakar: IFAN. ———. 1996. Towards the African renaissance: Essays in African culture and development 1946–1960. Lawrenceville: RSP.

Bibliography Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique. 1988. Cheikh anta Diop. Paris: Nomade. Asante, Molefi Kete. 1990. Kemet, Afrocentricity and knowledge. Trenton: Africa World Press. Bilolo, Mubabinge. 1986. Les tâches laissées par Cheikh Anta Diop: Hommage au Père de l’égyptologie/ africanologie africaine. Les Nouvelles Rationalités Africaines I (3): 429–460. ———. 1989. La Civilisation pharaonique était–elle Nègre: L’état de la question en égyptologie avant et après ‘Nations négres et Culture’. Hommage à Cheikh Anta Diop. Présence Africaine 149/150: 5–22. Crawford, Jeffrey. 1995. Cheikh Anta Diop, the ‘stolen legacy’, and Afrocentrism. In African philosophy: Selected readings, ed. Albert G. Mosley. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Diagne, Pathé. 1997. Cheikh Anta Diop et L’Afrique dans l’histoire du monde. Paris: L’harmattan. Diop, Thierno. 1998. Cheikh Anta Diop et le materialisme historique. Africa Development 23 (1): 87–111. Ela, Jean-marc. 1989. Cheikh Anta Diop ou l’honneur de penser. Paris: L’harmattan. Fauvelle, François-Xavier. 1996. L’Afrique de Cheikh Anta Diop: histoire et idéologie. Paris: Khartala. ———. 1997. Cheikh Anta Diop dix ans apres: l’historien et son double. Afrique contemporaine 181: 3–11. Finch, Charles Charles S. 1989. Interview With Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar, on November 1, 1985). Hommage à Cheikh Anta Diop. Présence Africaine 149/150: 361–373.

Divination and Diviners Philip M. Peek Madison, NJ, USA

In a constantly changing world, it is difficult to have sufficient knowledge to act wisely. Nevertheless, answers to the mundane as well as extraordinary questions which arise daily are available. One has only to ask the correct question of the

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appropriate source and then be able to interpret the answer accurately: a diviner provides these skills. African diviners manage standardized procedures by which otherwise inaccessible information is revealed. Usually this process is governed by an extensive body of esoteric knowledge. The occult communication is revealed through a mechanism, such as a diviner’s basket of symbolic objects or cast cowrie shells, or directly through the diviner as a spirit medium. Divination sessions are central to the expression and enactment of cultural truths, as they are reviewed in the context of contemporary realities (Peek 1991). All African societies, urban and rural, use divination today – perhaps even more than in the past – to aid in problem-solving and decision making, because divination continues to serve as the primary institutional means of articulating the epistemology of a people. While one primary divinatory form often characterizes a culture, such as the Ifa system of the Yoruba (Bascom 1969), all cultures and even individual diviners will employ several different types of divination to better focus the questions. Some forms are restricted to private sessions, while other forms are for public discussion. No matter the format, whether through sortilege or spirit mediumship, the cryptic oracular communication is normally debated within the divinatory congregation of diviner, and before specific plans of action are formulated. As managers of such critical processes, diviners are a carefully selected group in most African societies. Only those who are “called” may serve, as among the Zulu, and most diviners must go through extensive training and initiation periods with a final public demonstration of their abilities. Not only the integrity of diviners and their extensive training, but the skeptical attitudes of clients who often travel far distances for consultation, argue against facile attacks on the veracity of divination sessions. Diviners are not charlatans manipulating a fearful clientele but sensitive, learned specialists, who are very respectful of the roles they have been granted as communicators between worlds. For many years, serious research on African divination systems was hampered by prejudice

Divination and Diviners

and ignorance. Also, inappropriately developed and analyzed typologies have confused matters. Many studies simply generated contextless lists of divinatory mechanisms and omens, which became endless catalogues, because virtually anything that registers change can be interpreted for meaningful messages. Equally problematic are studies that attempt to rigidly separate divination systems as intuitive or logical, mediumistic, or mechanical (Devisch 1985 and Zuesse 1987). All forms of divination participate in cross-world communication and intentionally meld different cognitive processes. The temporal and spacial situating of a divination session, the symbols employed, and the behavior of the diviner all serve to emphasize the liminality of the divinatory process in which a different kind of truth is revealed. No matter how extraordinary the divination session is, the enigmatic oracular message will be debated in terms of present reality before a plan of action is decided. Despite earlier problems with divination research, there have been several informative and insightful studies, such as those by Evans-Pritchard (1968), Middleton (1971), Werbner (1973), and Turner (1975). Analyses focusing on social dynamics have been further developed in work by Mendonsa (1982) and Rasmussen (1991). Africanist scholars have begun to use divination systems as valuable resources for other types of research. Divination sessions serve to revise and review individual and group histories and thereby become sources for historical studies and personality research (Blier 1990). Regional studies (Peek 1982) provide valuable comparative and historical data also. All divination sessions are ritual encounters whose dramaturgical dimensions are highly informative of various cultural dynamics (Roberts 1988). Divination systems are often closely related to medical (Ngubane 1977; Morris 1986) and judicial practices as the embodiment of culture; divination systems comment on all aspects of a culture. Because of divination’s centrality, future studies of African peoples should make better use of diviners and divination systems. Effective responses to life’s problems demand both established tradition and creative innovation,

Divination and Possession

sensitive intuition, and careful reasoning combinations artfully orchestrated by African diviners.

See Also ▶ Divination and Possession ▶ Ifa, Divination System of ▶ Practical Philosophy and Religion ▶ Problem-Solving and Religion ▶ Prophetism, Precolonial African ▶ Women’s Power, The New African Religions and

Bibliography Bascom, William R. 1969. Ifa divination: Communication between gods and men in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Blier, Suzanne Preston. 1990. King Glele of Danhome, Part One: Divination portraits of a Lion King. African Arts 23 (4), 42–53, 93–94. Devisch, Rene. 1985. Perspectives on divination in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. In Theoretical explorations in African religions, ed. W. van Binsbergen and M. Schoffeleers, 50–83. London: KPI/Routledge and Kegan Paul. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1968. Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande. (1937). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mendonsa, Eugene L. 1982. The politics of divination. Berkeley: University of California Press. Middleton, John. 1971. Oracles and divination among the Lugbara. In Man in Africa, ed. M. Douglas and P.M. Kaberry, 262–278. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Morris, Brian. 1986. Herbalism and divination in Southern Malawi. Social Science and Medicine 23: 367–377. Ngubane, Harriet. 1977. Body and mind in Zulu Medicine. London: Academic Press. Peek, Philip M. 1982. The divining chain in Southern Nigeria. In African religious groups and beliefs, ed. S. Ottenberg, 187–205. Meerut: Folklore Institute. ———. 1991. The study of divination, present and past and African divination systems: Non-normal modes of cognition. In African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing, ed. P. M. Peek, 1–22 and 193–212. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rasmussen, Susan J. 1991. Modes of persuasion: Gossip, song, and divination in Tuareg conflict resolution. Anthropological Quarterly 64: 30–46. Roberts, Allen F. 1988. Through the bamboo thicket: The social process of Tabwa ritual performance. The Drama Review 32: 123–138.

169 Turner, Victor. 1975. Revelation and divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Werbner, Richard P. 1973. The superabundance of understanding: Kalanga Rhetoric and domestic divination. American Anthropologist 75: 1414–1440. Zuesse, Evan M. 1987. Divination. In The encyclopedia of religion, ed. M. Eliade. New York: Macmillan.

D Divination and Possession Allen F. Roberts Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

Possession, or the ecstasy of altered consciousness, is a widespread form of African divination. The relative merits of terminology are hotly debated by theorists, but the approach of I. M. Lewis seems most useful: “trance” is the state of altered consciousness and “possession” its cultural construction. That is, some proportion of all human populations can achieve a physiological state of dissociation but, when they do, the interpretation and use of what has occurred differ as radically from an American Apostolic’s joyfully being “touched by the Holy Spirit” to a Zairian’s falling to the ground, writhing like a snake, and speaking in the voice of an Earth spirit. In other words, possession is related to world-view and ontological concerns. The person undergoing possession is often called a “medium,” when divination and problemsolving are the goals of the seance, and a “shaman” when healing is the principal purpose, especially when the entranced practitioner must confront the agents of affliction while visiting the other (or under) world. Ongoing research suggests a complex relationship between endorphins and other chemical triggers that cause trance and social context. Drumming and percussive music, in particular, encourage euphoria. During a possession seance, the audience plays an instrumental role in providing the music and often, when supplicant trembles and shows the other early signs of trance, drummers will move to within inches of the person,

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their throbbing beat literally captivating the supplicant. But the audience’s even more important function is in willing the person into dissociation: they want the person to “be taken” and “fall,” as Tabwa of southeastern Zaire say, so that the spirit seeking voice through affliction of the supplicant can come forth, explain its needs, and then allow the person to heal. The essential purpose of possession is to discover the nature and source of misfortune, so that restorative action can be taken. Among Tabwa (and many other groups), a person’s first trance is often the consequence of illness or other affliction that defies easy remedies. Diviner finds that an ancestral or other spirit is causing the misfortune to “get the person’s attention,” for it wishes to be recognized and given voice. A seance is held, often in a secluded place away from disruption by the supplicant’s enemies. Seances are not always successful which, Western observers would explain, is because of the well-known differential possibility of “hypnosis” – itself a form of possession by Lewis’ definition. Tabwa, though, would say a malicious person or spirit is interfering. When successful, the person experiences ecstasy and acts and speaks at the spirit’s bidding, often as glossolalia interpreted by a “guide.” The spirit will tell why it has brought affliction and what to do to restore health or good fortune. Thereafter, the spirit may appear intermittently or regularly and will offer insight unavailable to ordinary people, coming, as it does, from across the threshold to divinity. Interesting correlations exist between incidence of spirit possession and sociopolitical issues and contexts. Lewis notes that women often play important roles in religious innovation. “Adverse changes in the status and freedom of women have been directly accompanied by the development of possession cults and . . . conversely, the cults decline with improvements in women’s opportunities and general position.” Women’s possession cults may be “thinly disguised protest movements” against men. This is because possession releases the supplicant from ordinary restrictions of gender. Indeed, even in remarkably egalitarian societies like the Tabwa, in which both women and men become

Divination and Possession

possessed, gender-reversal is a common achievement facilitating solution of personal role problems. Possession cults often came into being in the colonial period. Tabwa say that their Bulumbu society was borrowed from neighboring Luba and adapted to their own purposes in the 1930s. This was a time of radical social change, as the colonizers made great strides in reorganizing indigenous society to accommodate capitalism and, in particular, to oblige Africans to sell their labor. Earlier collective and corporate activities were often discouraged or outlawed, while individual initiative was rewarded. “Success” became increasingly identified with personal achievement in school, church, and career, with “wealth” measured in European currency rather than human fellowship. A common African religious response was the cathartic ecstasy of possession, itself a personal triumph (although importantly assisted by a caring audience). Lewis calls the possessing spirits of such desperate circumstances “peripheral,” for they often come from sources of inspirational power outside the community. They may be spirits of powerful and perhaps hostile neighbors, or even “Europeans” themselves. Even as a particular person is healed or solves a nagging problem through possession, the community regains a sense of dignity, a capacity for problem solving, and control of circumstances, however fragile this may prove to be. In this sad uncertainty, the sociology of African “peripheral” possession cults is quite similar to that of American counterparts in the storefront churches of the inner city.

See Also ▶ Divination and Diviners ▶ Ifa, Divination System of ▶ Possession Cults ▶ Practical Philosophy and Religion ▶ Problem-Solving and Religion ▶ Prophetism, Precolonial African ▶ Women’s Power, The New African Religions and

Divination, Muslim

Bibliography Karp, Ivan. 1989. Power and Capacity in Rituals of Possession. In Creativity of power: Cosmology and action in African societies, ed. W. Arens and Ivan Karp, 91–109. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Lewis, I.M., and A. Ecstatic Religion. 1989. Study of shamanism and Spirit possession. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Peek, Philip, ed. 1991. African divination systems. Ways of knowing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Roberts, Allen. 1988. Through the bamboo thicket: The social process of Tabwa ritual performance. TDR: The Drama Review 32 (2): 123–138.

Divination, Muslim Louis Brenner School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, UK

The divination system known in Arabic as khaṭṭ ar-raml or “sand writing” has been practiced by Muslims throughout the Muslim world and beyond for at least seven centuries. Derived from pre-Islamic forms of geomancy and condemned by many Muslim scholars, Muslim practitioners of khaṭṭ ar-raml defended its legitimacy by citing a ḥadīth that states, “Among the prophets there was one who practiced khaṭṭ; whoever succeeds in doing it according to his example will know what the prophet knew.” Despite the controversies that surrounded it, sand writing seems to have been practiced in the past wherever there was a significant Muslim presence, and judging from the extent of its influence among non-Muslims as well as Muslims, its efficacy was widely recognized. For example, Arabic-language divination manuals were translated into Latin, Greek, and even Provençal, and sand writing has influenced or given rise to a number of non-Muslim divination systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Sand writing is so-called because it is based upon the interpretation of “signs” that are traced with the fingertips in sand or earth. Because each

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sign is a tetragram consisting of four single or double points, the system can generate 16 different signs, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Each sign is named and associated with various attributes or qualities such as gender, positive or negative implications, the basic elements of air, earth, fire, or water, signs of the Zodiac, etc. Fig. 1 illustrates the 16 signs “at rest,” in which each is considered a “house.” However, the signs are not interpreted individually but in relationship to one another. During a consultation, the diviner makes a series of marks in the sand or earth in a manner that generates a random sequence of signs that are interpreted both according to the houses in which they fall and the sequence in which they appear. Multiple configurations are therefore possible. In his Muqqadimah, the fourteenth-century Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun wrote a brief but insightful critique of khaṭṭ ar-raml in which he debunked its efficacy and rejected claims that the ḥadīth cited above legitimated its practice. He further alleged that practitioners of sand writing were “common people” who became diviners in order to earn their livelihood, accusations that were not without justification but also did not reveal the full story. Somewhat contradictorily, Ibn Khaldun also acknowledged the existence of a scholarly tradition of study and transmission of sand writing by referring to a classic text on khaṭṭ ar-raml written by the Moroccan scholar, Abu ‘Abdallah al-Zanati. Khaṭṭ ar-raml may not have been part of the standard curriculum of Muslim studies, but some scholars in the past certainly studied and practiced it. Whatever Ibn Khaldun’s judgments about sand writing, the attention he devoted to it confirms that the practice was well established in North Africa by the fourteenth century. From at least the seventeenth century, and probably earlier, it was also widely practiced in sub-Saharan Africa where its practice was certainly not everywhere limited to “common people.” During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in central Sudanic Africa, khaṭṭ ar-raml was taught by learned scholars in conjunction with other practices devoted to healing, such as the science of letters (‘ilm al-ḥurūf) and the science of magic squares (‘ilm al-awfāq) that were employed, for example, in the

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preparation of curative or protective talismans. Muhammad al-Kashnawi (d. 1741), who wrote a major text on these healing sciences, had studied in Katsina and Borno before travelling to Egypt where he was recognized as a specialist in these subjects. However, despite scholarly interest in khaṭṭ ar-raml, no centralized authority exercised control over the many diviners who practiced it, which allowed numerous variations to proliferate. The most variable aspect of sand writing, as in all divination systems, was how diviners interpreted the configuration of signs that appeared during a consultation. Interpretations were inevitably subjective, even those of literate diviners who could consult Arabic language divination manuals. As the practice spread into different regions of Africa, Muslim diviners adapted it to local cultures, often translating the attributes of the signs into local languages and sometimes renaming them. By contrast, the least variable feature of sand writing was its 16 tetragrams, a fixed structural characteristic that enables one to trace variations within its

practice, as well as its appropriation by nonMuslim diviners. In the Mande cultural zone in West Africa, divination practices based on khaṭṭ ar-raml were known variably as ramuli or turabu, from the Arabic turāb, meaning soil or earth, or by local language terms for “sand,” such as cien or buguri. The formal and operational properties of these systems were identical or very similar to those of classic khaṭṭ ar-raml, although the names, attributes, and interpretations of the signs and their relationships varied. These divination systems were also adopted by non-Muslim diviners, who distinguished themselves from Muslim diviners in part by claiming a different origin for their practice. For example, the formal properties of dion soutoun differed little from other local divination systems based upon khaṭṭ ar-raml, but its practitioners claimed it had been revealed to its founders, not by a pre-Islamic prophet, but by jinn. By the sixteenth century, Muslims from the Niger bend region of West Africa were present in what is now southwestern Nigeria, where the

Divination, Muslim Divination, Muslim, Fig. 2. The 16 principal signs of Ifá (Abimbola, 29–31)

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practice of khaṭṭ ar-raml profoundly influenced, or perhaps even gave rise to, the Yoruba-language divination system known as Ifá. As illustrated in Fig. 2, the 16 basic signs of Ifá are virtually identical to those of khaṭṭ ar-raml, with the exception that they consist of eight, rather than four, single or double elements. During a consultation, the eight elements of each sign are produced by manipulating either a divining chain or palm nuts, and the resulting signs are traced on a divining board covered with kaolin dust. The 16 principal signs are symmetrical, but the method also produces asymmetrical signs making a total of 256 different signs, each of which is named, assigned various attributes, and is associated with a number of different interpretive texts. In Madagascar, a version khaṭṭ ar-raml known in Malagasy as sikidy was practiced as early as the seventeenth century where it was closely associated with astrology. At that time, the divination signs were traced on a wooden board covered with sand, although subsequently some practitioners formed the signs with seeds. The Malagasy names and attributes of the 16 signs also differed from classic Arabic language versions. Muslim influence also penetrated the interior of central Africa from the East African coast from

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an early date, and it has been argued that a nonMuslim form of divination known in the Shona language as hakata was derived from sand writing. Hakata divination is performed with four small tablets, each of which has a symbol on one side and is blank on the other, thus producing 16 possible configurations when cast. Each configuration has a name and is associated with various attributes, some of which are very similar to those of khaṭṭ ar-raml. These few examples illustrate the extensive influence of khaṭṭ ar-raml on divination practices in sub-Saharan Africa, although given the lack of historical evidence one can only speculate about precisely how this influence was transmitted. Common to all systems, whether Muslim or nonMuslim, are the 16 basic tetragrams, which are produced by different methods but in most cases are traced with the fingers in sand or kaolin dust. Their most variable features are the names and attributes of the signs and the interpretive texts that accompany them, which were subject to change as the system was translated into different languages and adapted to different cultures. This pattern reflects the fact that the structural properties rather than the substantive content of khaṭṭ ar-raml were more readily transferrable

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from one cultural context to another. Furthermore, methods for producing the 16 signs could be learned by carefully observing a diviner in action, whereas learning the names, attributes, and interpretations associated with the signs required a more formal and usually lengthy course of instruction. Therefore, it was not necessary for Muslim diviners to have formally taught their divining methods to non-Muslims in order for them to learn techniques for producing the 16 basic signs, although they may have done so. However, the more intriguing lines of enquiry are those for which there is little or no evidence. Who were the religious specialists who initiated and effected the transformation of the divining methods of khaṭṭ ar-raml into what became such divining systems as hakata or Ifá, and what were the social, political, and religious conditions that made these changes possible and enduring?

See Also ▶ Divination and Diviners ▶ Ifa, Divination System of ▶ Mande Area: The History of Religious Systems ▶ Shona: History, Religious Systems Change, and Rituals

Bibliography Brenner, Louis. 2000. Muslim divination and the history of religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Insight and artistry in African divination, ed. John Pemberton III, 45–59. Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institute. Hébert, J. 1931. Analyse structurale des géomancies comoriennes malgaches et Africaines. Journal de la Société des Africanistes, XXXI, fascicule 2: 115–208. Kassibo, Bréhima. 1992. La géomancie ouest-africaine. Formes endogènes et emprunts extérieurs. Cahiers d’études africaines 128, XXXII-4: 541–596. Maupoil, B. 1943. Contribution à l’étude de l’origine musulmane de la géomancie dans le Bas-Dahomey. Journal de la société des Africanistes XIII: 1–94. Ryan, Patrick. 1978. Imale. Yoruba participation in the Muslim tradition. Missoula: The Scholars Press. van Binsbergen, Wim. 1996. Regional and historical connections of four-tablet divination in southern Africa. Journal of Religion in Africa 26, Fasc. 1: 2–29.

Domesticity

Domesticity Karen Tranberg Hansen Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Throughout Europe’s colonial experience in Africa, the colonizers brought along their notions of domesticity that associated women with family and home and took for granted a hierarchical distribution of power favoring men. European ideas of domesticity that revolved around monogamy, the nuclear family, private property, and individuality were very different from widespread African practices of plural marriages, extended families, and property holding by kin groups. When Africans were confronted with this model, they often redefined it and put it to different uses. Whereas the ideal Victorian wife did not work outside the home or participate in public life, most African women worked both in households and fields; in some societies, they were active traders of foodstuffs and other commodities; and almost everywhere, women influenced family and community affairs, if not public life (Hansen 1992). In those parts of Africa where Muslim norms confined women’s activities, a wholesale westernization of local notions of domesticity did not take place (Mack 1992). Scholarly work on domesticity in Africa has focused on struggles over domesticity that arose through the influence of missions and education, within voluntary associations, and in paid domestic service. These subjects have ramifications on gender relations, space, work, and power far beyond the domestic domain. The “civilizing” mission of Christianity is central to Jean and John Comaroff’s work on colonialism in southern Africa (1991). They focus on domesticity when discussing the way nonconformist evangelists in South Africa attempted to transform African lives, at the same time as social reformers in England sought to upgrade the English working poor (1992). Demonstrating that domesticity embraced more than mothercraft and housekeeping, Nancy Hunt describes the

Domesticity

mission home in the Belgian Congo as both a symbol of domesticity and a training site for the transfer of knowledge about hygiene (1992). She observes how hygiene became a colony-wide, but gender-specific, project to restructure African lives. Throughout most of the colonial period, missionaries were in charge of education, providing models for new forms of social interaction that stipulated separate gender spheres and role. Boys’ schools were the first to be opened everywhere. Girls’ schools aimed at socializing young women into wife and mother roles (Morrow 1986). The curricula in girls’ schools prompted considerable debate between men and women missionaries, the colonial state, African parents, and girls themselves (Musisi 1992). The focus on domesticity in girls’ schools had consequences which educational planners had not foreseen. LaRay Denzer shows how Yoruba women in Nigeria employed their acquired skills in new contexts and for different purposes, opening bakeries, restaurants, and tailoring shops (1992). Ideologies of domesticity were also transmitted in less formal ways. The churches encouraged the formation of women’s prayer groups and mothers’ unions that celebrated women’s domestic roles (Gaitskell 1990). Across southern Africa, such associations provided women with direction and pride and were important in maintaining communities characterized, until recently, by high rates of male out-migration (Epprecht 1993). From the post-World War II years, if not before, colonial governments involved themselves in community development and welfare in which domestic science teaching of women featured prominently (Hunt 1990). Sita Ranchod-Nilsson demonstrates the unexpected outcomes of the Women’s Club movement in Zimbabwe, which became forums for addressing women’s problems and, eventually, informal networks supporting the liberation war (1992). Although the European “civilizing” mission with its focus on domesticity was particularly directed at women, this did not mean everywhere that they were employed as domestic servants. In much of Africa during the early colonial period, paid domestic labor was mostly male. This is due

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to economic and cultural factors, such as the early labor recruitment of men, the need to keep women in the rural areas to maintain subsistence cultivation, and to gender preferences by both Europeans and Africans (Schmidt 1992). South Africa is an exception where women were employed as domestic workers from an early date (Cock 1980). As the gender question in domestic service demonstrates, domesticity is constructed in male as much as in female terms. The skills required in domestic service are learned and do not follow “naturally” from being female (Bujra 1992). In some countries such as Zambia, men dominate in private household employment, where domestic skills and western styles of cooking still have highly gendered and class-specific meanings (Hansen 1989) European and African notions of domesticity both emphasize the importance of women’s care of children. But African domesticity rarely turned motherhood into an issue that bound women to home. Children of both sexes participate from an early age in caring for younger siblings. As more women join the wage labor force, only few countries have supported childcare. Kathleen Sheldon’s work in Mozambique demonstrates that although childcare expanded as a result of the postcolonial state’s socialist policies, gender inequality in the domestic domain was not questioned (1992). Children in Africa circulate widely across rural and urban settings and between kin and nonkin. Some of this circulation involves fostering, a process through which cultural standards are reproduced in housekeeping, hygiene, and dress, as described in Mary Moran’s work in Liberia (1990). As Caroline Bledsoe has demonstrated from Sierra Leone, fostering may also amount to strategic investment by parents who expect that good child placements will improve their education and ultimately benefit parents when they age (1990). Yet, the widespread circulation of children may also entail exploitation of their labor (Grier 1994; Hansen 1990; Reynolds 1991). Under such circumstances, children of both sexes are often socialized without formal education into adult roles that have little to do with domesticity.

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European domesticity was based on notions of gender and sexuality encompassed within the nuclear family ideal. The transposition of this to Africa was a complex process that varied by class and region and to which women and men reacted differently, as demonstrated in Kristin Mann’s study of an educated Yoruba elite in colonial Lagos, Nigeria (1985). Throughout postcolonial Africa, conjugal roles and responsibilities are redefined anew in the face of changing political and economic circumstances. The persistence of dual legal systems, combining customary and western derived laws in many African countries today, curtail a full embrace of private property and individual accumulation so central to European domestic ideals. It also supports a sexual double standard, condoning polygyny by men while questioning women’s morality. In many countries, women remain legal minors who do not inherit in their own right from husbands. These circumstances affect the value systems, gender roles, and family structures that are shaping contemporary patterns of domesticity in Africa.

See Also ▶ Acculturation ▶ Cuisine ▶ Hierarchy, Gender ▶ Women, Conflicts, and Symbols

Bibliography Bledsoe, Caroline H. 1990. The social management of fertility: Child fosterage among the Mende of Sierra Leone. In Birth and power: The politics of reproduction, ed. Penn Handwerker, 197–223. Boulder: Westview Press. Bujra, Janet. 1992. In Men at work in the Tanzanian home: How did they ever learn? ed. Hansen, 242–265. Cock, Jacklyn. 1980. Maids and madams. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 1991. Of revelation and revolution. vol 1, Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Domesticity ———. 1992. Home-made hegemony: Modernity, domesticity, and colonialism in South Africa, ed. Hansen, 37–74 Denzer, LaRay. 1992. Domestic science training in colonial Yorubaland, Nigeria, ed. Hansen, 116–139 Epprecht, Marc. 1993. Domesticity and piety in colonial Lesotho: The private politics of Basotho Women’s pious associations. Journal of Southern African Studies 19 (3): 202–224. Gaitskell, Deborah. 1990. Devout domesticity? A century of African women’s Christianity in South Africa. In Women and gender in southern Africa to 1945, ed. Cheryl Walker, 251–272. London: James Currey. Grier, Beverly. 1994. Invisible hands: The political economy of child labour in colonial Zimbabwe, 1890–1930. Journal of Southern African Studies 20 (1): 27–52. Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 1989. Distant companions: Servants and employers in Zambia, 1900–1985. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1990. Labor migration and urban child labor during the colonial period in Zambia. In Demography from scanty evidence: Central Africa in the colonial era, ed. Bruce Fetter, 219–234. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. ———. 1992. African encounters with domesticity. New Brunswick: Rutgers, University Press. Hunt, Nancy Rose. 1990. Domesticity and colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura’s Foyer Social, 1946–1960. Signs 15 (3): 447–474. ———. 1992. Colonial fairy tales and the knife and fork doctrine in the heart of Africa, ed. Hansen, 143–171. Mack, Beverly B. 1992. Harem domesticity in Kano, Nigeria, ed. Hansen, 75–97. Mann, Kristin. 1985. Marrying well: Marriage. Status and social change among the educated elite in colonial Lagos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moran, Mary H. 1990. Civilized women: Gender and prestige in Southwestern Liberia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Morrow, Sean. 1986. ‘No girl leaves the school Unmarried’: Mabel Shaw and the education of girls at Mbereshi, northern Rhodesia, 1915–1949. International Journal of African Historical Studies 19: 602–636. Musisi, Nakanyike B. 1992. Colonial and missionary education: Women and domesticity in Uganda, 1900– 1945, ed. Hansen, 172–194. Ranchod-Nilsson, Sita. 1992. Educating ‘eve’: The women’s club movement and political consciousness among rural African women in southern Rhodesia, 1950–1980, ed. Hansen, 195–217. Reynolds, Pamela. 1991. Dance. Civet cat: Child labour in the Zambezi Valley. Ohio: Ohio University Press. Schmidt, Elizabeth. 1992. Race, sex, and domestic labor: The question of African female servants in southern Rhodesia 1900–1936, ed. Hansen, 221–240. Sheldon, Kathleen. 1992. Creches, Titias, and Mothers: Working women and childcare in Mozambique, ed. Hansen, 290–309

Dreams

Dreams T. K. Biaya Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Verdun, QC, Canada

Definitions, Modalities, and Fields of Operation In African thought, dreams refer to an ensemble of anatomical and psychic components of the person interacting with a universe peopled by spirits and humans. Dreams are the actions of the intimate part of the sleeping subject, or his shadow, which leaves by his ear to wander in the universe. As a modality of action, dreams prolong the subject’s participation in the activities of everyday life. African languages clearly distinguish between dreams, daydreams, and apparitions. Dreams often have a linguistic root in common with the ear – their way of exit – or they connote the moving shadow; they imply conscious participation and suggest the responsibility of/or the implied subject(s) in oneiric action. Daydreams are considered a fabrication due to drowsiness, while apparitions are visions of the sacred. These distinctions permit us to understand the nature of dreams, in addition to the indivisible relationship between dreams, the soul, and the other world within the real, as well as to the African symbolic and imagination. The essential function of dreams remains communication between the souls of living beings (humans, ancestors, spirits of the dead, genies, and ferocious beasts) which enact social, political, and religious connections, in addition to existing tensions between the individual and his society (Fouche and Morlighem 1948). Thus defined, dreams take their meaning from a socioreligious and psychological universe inhabited by diverse components of the person and spiritual entities that evoke a “mythic geography, ‘strong’ places peopled by spirits which are at the same time subjects and objects of dreams.

T. K. Biaya: deceased.

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Between the norm and the deviant, the sacred and the profane, thought and unreason, dreams also represent the bridge which, across the land of fear, leads to madness” (Lionetti and Mounkoro 1992). A troubling dream is considered much like a hostile witch’s intervention; the individual who has dreamed it should take steps to protect oneself from this menace of consumption. Oneiric activity is a “large book” where social relations and their tensions – responses to anxiety and the need to protect oneself – inscribe themselves and, in turn, provoke the need to understand the meaning and interpretation of dreams.

Symbolism as the Key to the Interpretation of Dreams In the Dogon world, as in others, psychophysiology affirms “the symbolic equivalence which, in psychoanalytic culture, is posed by the unconscious, in relation to the products of the conscious and the superego” (id., 106). But comparison does not authorize any serious links between the African and Western oneiric visions even if analogies can be drawn. Africans distinguish globally between two types of dreams according to content. Simple dreams enact a scenario in which the apparent meaning does not elicit anxiety nor need interpretation. Complex dreams provoke strong emotions or anxiety in the subject and impel the subject to seek out a professional, an initiate, or a fortuneteller to help discover the meaning. The grid of interpretation goes beyond the dream/reality construct and employs artifices of thought such as opposition, contradiction, and allusion in order to explain the meaning of the latent or apparent symbolic tropes within the oneiric narrative. Prophesy helps to determine the context, to clarify the significances, and to authenticate the dreamed facts. Thus, the fortuneteller in Luba or Democratic Republic of Congo tells the person who dreams of eating fresh fish in the brush that he will be elected soon to a religious (as a priest) or political position, which necessitates that he make a sacrifice to the ancestors; a nubile virgin girl will prepare the meal. The key words are “fresh fish,” “meal,” and “brush.” In a second example, in a

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dream where the person is covered by dried peanut shells, there is a curse that results from a negative social practice and that the ancestors cannot stop. In the two cases, the symbolism of colors – white and red – is not explicit, but the two elements – fresh fish and dried peanut shells – evoke a chain of connotations and symbols, which embody implied social, religious, and psychological value. In the first case, the relations between fish, water, ancestral village, and recompense are associated with the color white – that of benediction. Peanuts are a privileged and disputed food currency between men, genie-beasts (like the red), and other rodents (underground creatures); in the traditional bestiary, these beings evoke the color red – that of blood, violence, and bad spirits, while the genies of the brush evoke death. Elsewhere, the reading of oneiric symbolism necessarily implies a knowledge of cosmology and the bestiary; their symbolic value constitutes the foundation of African psychopathology.

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returning from the voyage, the victim is cured; if he fails, both die (Biaya 1985). Political dreams have served to generate peaceful or violent transformations and innovations in African societies. After consulting with the royal priest, the kings and political leaders who receive them announce the dreams to the people. These dreams possess the dynamism of acculturation or even resistance to change. (Ziegler 1970). With the advent of Christianity in Africa during the sixteenth century, the founding prophets of the independent churches turned to the African conception of dreams in order to affirm the authenticity of their churches. Within contemporary societies in crisis, the prophets of West and East Africa – Domitila Nabibone, Esther Kaseka, and many others – dream and take “celestial voyages” during sleep or death (Kadima Mwakwidi), in order to discover new precepts for their churches. The faithful who commune in the same cultural universe do not doubt the authenticity of the divine: dreamed messages which constitute the postscriptural word (Janzen 1992).

Categories of Dreams Dreams can be divided into diverse categories according to their content, their aims, and the uses that people make of them, and the society in question. Dreams of premonition announce individual or collective events with affirm social characteristics (birth, bewitchment, call to sacrifice, etc.). The very complex category of therapeutic dreams comprises passive and active dreams. In the passive type, the healer receives spirits and messages which relate to the sick – their state of health and the result of the cure. This type of dream also becomes a mode of acquiring knowledge, when the healer receives new medicinal recipes and information on how to use them. Active dreams, which are very feared, consist in sending the spirit of the sick person’s relative to the ancestors in order to solicit the recovery of the victim. This special prophesying, lubuku lwa muzanu (Luba-Kasayi), is conducted with the assistance of a special ritual. The “soul voyage” of the living is accompanied by the beat of the drums. When the subject succeeds in

See Also ▶ Ancestors ▶ Apparition ▶ Experience (Religious) ▶ Surrealism and Africa

Bibliography Fouche and Morlighem 1948. Une Bible noire. Brussels, Max Arnold. Janzen. 1992. Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa. Berkeley, University of California Press. Lionetti & Mounkoro (1992) “Pour une pyschologie traditionnelle du rêve”, in Coppo, P. (dir.) Essai de pyschopathologie Doggon, Editions CRMT /PSMTM. T. K. Biaya. 1985. “A propos du rêve en milieu traditionnel lulua ”, Cahiers de Sociologie économique et culturelle, 4, p. 165–176. Ziegler. 1970. Sociologie et contestation. Essai sur la société mythique. Paris, Gallimard.

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Lucius Outlaw Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the only child of Mary Silvina Burghardt and Alfred Du Bois, and thereby a mixture of French Huguenot, Dutch, and African ancestries. By his graduation from Great Barrington High School in 1884, he had set his sights on a college education at Harvard College, but had neither the funds nor the academic qualifications to be admitted. With the encouragement of his high school principal and assisted by a scholarship, Du Bois was persuaded to go south to study at Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee). For the first time in his life, he lived in a social environment (at Fisk as well as in the surrounding city and rural worlds, the latter of which Du Bois explored while teaching during summers), where people of African descent were in the majority and where cultural life was significantly shaped by their presence and traditions. It was at Fisk that Du Bois began to cultivate an explicit awareness of himself as a Negro, as one among an oppressed and troubled people with whom he felt a connection and an obligation for their liberation and wellbeing. After graduating from Fisk in 1888, Du Bois entered Harvard College. He was awarded a B.A. (cum laude) in 1890, an M.A. in 1891, and a Ph.D. in 1895, after two years of study at the University of Berlin His dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870, was published in 1896 as the first volume in the Harvard Historical Studies series. After leaving Harvard, he taught at Wilberforce University in Ohio (1895–1897), surveyed Negroes in Philadelphia (1897), which resulted in

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the monumental and path-breaking The Philadelphia Negro. He then taught economics and history at Atlanta University (1897–1910), during which time he edited a number of very significant publications. He was a founding member and official of the American Negro Academy (1897) and presented his provocative “The Conservation of Races” as the second of the Academy’s Occasional Papers. Meanwhile, Du Bois expanded his horizon of concerns with his participation in the Pan-African Conference held in London in 1900, an involvement that would lead to his becoming the father-figure of the Pan-African movement and its conferences (1919 in Paris; 1921 in London, Brussels, and Paris; 1923 in London and Lisbon; 1927 in New York City; and 1945 in Manchester England). From 1905 to 1909, he was the organizing founder of and guiding figure in the Niagara Movement (named for the first meeting held near Niagara Falls) to counter the hegemony of the politics and policies of the highly influential Booker T. Washington and his “machine” organization. In 1910, Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), serving as director of publicity and research and editor of its magazine, The crisis, until 1934. Back to Atlanta University as chairman of the Department of Sociology, he rejoined the staff of the NAACP in 1944 as director of special research and stayed on until he resigned in 1948, at which time he served as co-chairman of the Council on African Affairs (New York) until 1951. He joined the Communist Party of the United States in 1961, after having been prosecuted (and acquitted) and persecuted earlier for being allegedly “an agent of a foreign principal.” In 1961, at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, Du Bois became a resident of Accra, Ghana, and a citizen of the country in 1963. He died in Accra and was buried there in a State funeral. W. E. B. Du Bois left an enormous legacy of accomplishments as a researcher, essayist, poet, author of scholarly books and novels; and his collected works, edited by Herbert Aptheker,

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comprise more than 30 volumes. He was the founder and editor of a newspaper (Horizon, 1907–1910) and magazines (Moon, 1906; The Crisis, 1910–1934), and correspondent; and published collections of selections from his correspondence fill three volumes. He was an organizing drum-major for truth and social justice and the elevation of the Negro race. He was, indeed, one of the most formidable engaged intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among his many accolades, Du Bois was a NAACP consultant at the conference in San Francisco out of which the United Nations was born in 1945; and he worked for world peace in other organizations. In 1950, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States Senate as a candidate of the Progressive Party. Among his many writings, the following are particularly noteworthy: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a novel, Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), The Negro (1915), Darkwater: Voices Within the Veil (1920), Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America. 1860—1880, Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race (1939), and Dusk of Dawn (1940), and several autobiographies. During the final years of his long and productive life, he was at work on a major project, the Encyclopedia Africana.

See Also ▶ African Philosophy, Search for Identity of ▶ Africana Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in West ▶ African-American Philosophy (1) ▶ Blyden, Edward ▶ Garvey, Marcus Mosiah

Bibliography Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1995. In The uncompleted argument: Du Bois and the illusion of race, African philosophy: Selected readings, ed. Albert G. Mosley. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Dualism Aptheker, Herbert. 1973. Annotated bibliography of the published writings of W. E. B. Du Bois. Millwood: Kraus-Thomson. DuBois, William Edward Burghardt. 1964. An ABC of color: Selections from over a half century of the writings of W E B du bois. Berlin: Seven Seas. Echeruo, M. J. C. (Michael Joseph Chukwudalu). 1992. Edward W. Blyden, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the ‘color complex’. The Journal of Modern African Studies 30 (4): 669–684. Lewis, David Levering W.E.B. 1993. Du Bois: Biography of a race, 1868–1919. New York: Holt. Logan, Rayford W., and Michael R. Winston. 1982. Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. In Dictionary of American Negro Biography, ed. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, 193–199. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Pobi-Asamani, Kwadwo O. 1994. W.E.B. Du bois: His contributions to pan-Africanism. San Bernardino: Borgo Press. Robinson, Cedric J. W.E.B. du Bois and black sovereignty: Cedric J Robinson. Imagining home: Class, culture and nationalism in the African diaspora Sidney J Lemelle and Robin D G Kelley. London: Verso, 1994, 145–157. Zamir, Shamoon. 1995. Dark voices: W.E.B. Du bois and American thought, 1888–1903. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Dualism Kwasi Wiredu Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

Any resolving of things into two irreducibly contrastive classes in any domain of thought or reality is a form of dualism. Western philosophy is full of dualisms, though internal “revolts” against some of them are not unknown. Among the most important dualisms are those that diametrically oppose the material to the spiritual and the natural to the supernatural. These, moreover, are the dualisms of especial interest to African philosophy, for they have hitherto been freely attributed in expositions of traditional philosophical thought in Africa. Yet, in each case, there are good reasons for doubting their applicability. Take the material/ spiritual dichotomy. This is a distinction of substances and its most influential exposition is in Descartes. There are supposed to be two types of

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substances irreducibly antithetic in character. Material substance is, by definition, that which is extended and spiritual substance is that which is not extended. Being purely negative, the informative content of the latter definition is quite elusive. But beyond this, it is to be noted that, in the characterization of human personality, Descartes, followed by great numbers of Western philosophers and nonphilosophers, identifies the mind with spiritual substance and the body with material substance. Descartes was never able to explain how something nonextended and nonspatial could take up residence in the extended body. Moreover, the notion that mind is a substance, a kind of object, leaves the status of thought mysterious. The reason is that in virtue of the fundamental categorical difference between thought and object (or, what is the same, between concept and object), the problem of how a thought could arise from an object is not made any easier in the case of a spiritual object than in that of a material object. Indeed, given the negativity of the definition of spiritual substance, the situation becomes rather more aggravated in the spiritual case. It is important to note that, at least on one interpretation, African traditional analyses of human personality, in many instances, seem to avoid the last difficulty. Generally, a person is conceived to be a visible body animated by a life force emanating directly from God and socially individuated by a personality-making principle, which plays itself out in the interaction between character and circumstance. With none of these elements of personhood is mind identified. On the contrary, mind as ratiocinative capacity and emotional disposition seems to be conceived by the Yoruba, for example, to supervene upon the functioning of the brain (opolo) and the heart (okan), respectively. Interestingly, the Bantu also, if Kagame is right, see the heart as the physiological basis of emotion and of that “which integrates all that the interior man is” (Kagame 1989). For the Akans, the processes of the brain (amene) would seem to be what underlies mental functioning. It ought, perhaps, to be stressed that in neither case are the physiological identified with the mental functions; the former are only taken to be the basis

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of the latter. Various other African peoples, such as the Dogon (Griaule and Dieterlen in Forde 1954 and Ray 1976), the Mende (Harris and Sawyerr 1968), the Lugbara (Middleton 1960), and the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1956) entertain conceptions of human personality, which, in terms of basic stratification, accord with the model just portrayed. (The possibility of disparities in other parts of Africa is, of course, not ruled out.) Mind, then (in the areas of Africa under consideration), is not conceived as a spiritual, immaterial entity, for the simple reason that it is not conceived as an entity at all. (For a contrary interpretation, see Gyekye 1987 and Gbadegesin 1991) But even of those constituents of a person that are regarded as entities, it seems clear that they are not thought of in a way that encourages the application of the material/immaterial dichotomy. In order to more easily to appreciate this, one might recall that the part that is supposed to survive death and become an ancestor is depicted in paraphysical capacities and surroundings in its post–mortem existence. Thus, in some ways, such as in selective imagery and palpable effects, the departed ancestors would seem to be like embodied people. But, in other ways, such as in their (assumed) ability to operate unseen (except in special cases) and in relative freedom from the familiar limitations of human dynamics, they are rather unlike bodies. This paraphysical status of the ancestors and of other such extrahuman beings accounts for their being situated in thought in basically the same spatio-temporal order as the world of mortals. It follows that viewed from the conceptual framework of the African peoples concerned, it does not make sense to speak of the ancestors and the rest as supernatural beings (But see Gbadegesin 1991). What emerges is that neither the physical/spiritual dualism nor the natural/supernatural one is applicable within the worldview of at least some African peoples. Whether these ontological oppositions are valid in themselves is, of course, a separate issue; though, from the amount of trouble they give in Western metaphysics, a certain amount of pessimism may not be altogether misplaced.

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See Also ▶ Act (Mental) ▶ Androgyny ▶ Cognition ▶ Dialectic ▶ Reincarnation

Bibliography Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gbadegesin, Segun. 1991. African philosophy: Yoruba traditional philosophy and contemporary African realities. New York: Peter Lang. Griaule, Marcel, and Germaine Dieterlen. 1954. The Dogon of the French Sudan. In African

Dualism worlds, ed. Daryll Forde. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gyekye, Kwame. 1987. An essay on African philosophical thought: The Akan conceptual scheme. New York: Cambridge University Press. Harris, W. T. And Henry Sawyerr. The springs of Mende belief and conduct. Freetown: Sierra Leone University Press, 1968. Kagame, Alexis. 1989. The problem of ‘Man’ in Bantu philosophy. The African Mind: A Journal of Religion and Philosophy in Africa 1 (1), p. 35–40. Middleton, John. 1960. Lugbara religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ray, Benjamin C. 1976. African religions: Symbol, ritual and community. Prentice-Hall, Inc: Englewood. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1987. The concept of mind with particular reference to the language and thought of the Akans. In Contemporary philosophy, African Philosophy, ed. G. Floistad, vol. 5, 169–175. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Eboussi-Boulaga, Fabien V. Y. Mudimbe The Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga was born January 17, 1934, in Bafia, the Mbam region of Cameroon. After his baccalaureate in philosophy in 1955, he entered the Society of Jesus. Ordained in the Catholic priesthood in 1967, he completed his studies in philosophy in 1968 with a doctorate at the University of Lyon. His main professional appointments included professorships at major seminaries, the Universities of Abidjan in Ivory Coast and Yaounde in Cameroon. Eboussi-Boulaga’s La Crise du Muntu (1997a) and Christianisme sans fétiche (1981), translated into English as Christianity without Fetishism (1984), are his major works and have received critical attention as foundational resources in African philosophy. By emphasizing the particularity of the experience of existing as an accidental historical contingency, he posits the African as what should be conceptualized in its determinations. Thus, its two main concerns. Firstly, as a critic of ethnophilosophy, Eboussi-Boulaga focuses on the shortcomings of Placide Tempels’ method in Bantu Philosophy (1959), which does not ask how anthropology can be a source of, or a basis for philosophy. Eboussi-Boulaga elaborates on an analysis of

Tempels’ work, focusing on the ambiguity of its ontological hypothesis, which he thinks ultimately reduces the Muntu to the primitiveness of an amoral and absolutely determining order of forces. EboussiBoulaga rethinks the socio-historical African contexts in order to suggest ways of problematizing both African authenticities and the Christian conversion made possible by the colonial experience. Secondly, to Kierkegaard’s way of questioning an existential predicament and its pertinence to the African condition, Eboussi-Boulaga integrates a radical interrogation into problems of political authority and obligation. Using mostly Hegel’s equivocal displacement in order to question the foundation of any ethical authority, he explores, via circumstantial analyses of concrete crises in Church politics, the distance between the idea of an ontological authority and that of an epistemic authority. This translates into critical propositions about social transformations, their socio-historical regimes of mutation, and the paradoxes of both voluntarist and individualist attempts at formulating their political modalities. This is the basis of Eboussi-Boulaga’s conception advancing a reading of promulgations on the cultural requirements of an alterity, political uncertainty, and the (in-)justice of a linear development.

See Also ▶ Tempels, Placide

© Springer Nature B.V. 2021 V. Y. Mudimbe, K. Kavwahirehi (eds.), Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5

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Bibliography Boulaga, F.E. 1968a. Le Bantou problématique. Présence Africaine 66: 4–40. et, (1975), Philosophie Africaine II, ed. Dans A.J. Smet, 349–381, 557 p. Kinshasa, RDC: Presses Universitaires du Zaïre. ———. 1968b. Le mythe du dialogue chez Platon – Essai sur le mythe et le dialogue comme formes du discours. Thèse de Doctorat en histoire de la Philosophie, Lyon II. Lyon: Presses Universitaires Lyon. ———. 1978. Pour un concile africain, 141 p. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1981. Christianisme sans fétiche. Révélation et domination. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1984. Christianity without fetishes. Trans. Robert Barr. New York: Orbis Books. ———. 1991. A contretemps. L’enjeu de Dieu en Afrique. Paris: Karthala. ———. 1992. Christianisme et Etat postcolonial. Terroirs: Revue africaine de sciences sociales 1: 46–68. ———. 1993. Les conférences nationales en Afrique noire. Une affaire à suivre. Paris: Karthala. ———. 1995. La modèle américaine et la démocratisation en Afrique. Terroirs: Revue africaine de sciences sociales 2: 18–33. ———. 1997a. La crise du Muntu. Authenticité africaine et philosophie, Essai. Paris: Présence Africaine. ———. 1997b. La démocratie de transit au Cameroun, 456 p. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 1998. Redéfinition anthropologique de la démocratie. Quest XII (1): 151–155. ———. 1999a. Lignes de résistance, 296 p. Yaoundé: Clé. ———. 1999b. L’anthropologie et les droits de l’homme. Dans Jean Hannoyer (Dir.), Philosophie et démocratie en Afrique. Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire: Unesco. ———. 2001. Terrorisme et conflit d’anthropologies. In Dans Terrorisme et droits humains: Actes du Colloque d’Academia Africana, 59–93. Yaoundé: Presses Universitaires d’Afrique. ———. 2003. Intellectuels, nationalisme et idéal panafricain. Mosaïque 1: 4–20. ———. 2004a. De la pauvreté anthropologique. In Comprendre la pauvreté au Cameroun, ed. Dans Jean Didier Boukongou and Marie Thérèse Mengue, 193–198. Yaoundé: Presses de l’Université catholique d’Afrique centrale. ———. 2004b. NEPAD: Initiative de chefs sans bases ? Terroirs: Revue africaine de sciences sociales et d’études culturelles 1–2: 267–286. ———. 2005. Société civile: Analyse diagnostique et ‘prescriptions’. Terroirs: Revue africaine de sciences sociales et de culture 4: 47–56. ———. 2006a. Existe-t-il un Etat camerounais ? Exercice dialectique. Terroirs: Revue africaine de sciences sociales et de culture 1–2: 127–139. ———. 2006b. Le génocide rwandais: Les interrogations des intellectuels africains, 205 p. Yaoundé: Clé. ———. 2007. L’homosexualité: Trois lectures pour commencer. Terroirs: Revue africaine de sciences sociales et de philosophie 1–2: 13–44.

Eboussi-Boulaga, Fabien ———. 2009. L’état du Cameroun: 2008, 669 p. Yaoundé: Editions Terroirs. Boulaga, F.E., and Meinrad Hebga. 2007. La dialectique de la foi et de la raison. Yaoundé: Editions Terroirs.

Works on Fabien Eboussi Boulaga

Akakpo, Yaovi. 1998. Une pensée prospective des ‘conférences nationales’ chez Fabien Eboussi Boulaga. Quest XII (1): 61–68. Awazi-Mbambi-Kungua, Benoît. 2002. Les métamorphoses de la théologie négro-africaine de la libération. Quatre théologiens camerounais: Mveng, EboussiBoulaga, Hebga et Ela. Nouvelle revue théologique 124: 238–251. Bono, Ezio Lorenzo. 2011. Fabien Eboussi Boulaga (Essere in crisi). In Ezio Lorenzo Bono, L’idea di persona nella filosofia africana contemporanea. Doctoral Dissertation, 72–84, 201 p. Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università degli studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italia (Francesca Bonicalzi, Dir.). Goussikindey, Eugene Didier A. (1997). The christic model of Eboussi Boulaga: A critical exposition and evaluation of an African “Recapture” of Christianity, 228 p. Doctoral dissertation. Ottawa:University of St. Michael’s College. ———. 2005. Christ from an African perspective: The perspective of Eboussi Boulaga. The Toronto Journal of Theology 21 (1): 49–56. Heijke, Jan. 1993. De strijd tegen de fetisj. Fabien Eboussi Boulaga. In Theologie in de context van de Derde Wereld: Een vergelijkende studie, ed. Berma Klein Goldewijk and Jacques van Nieuwenhove, 22–71, 226 p. Kok: Kampen, Nederland. Kavwahirehi, Kasereka. 2001. Tous les philosophes africains ont-ils un style illusionniste? A propos de J.G. Bidima et de F. Eboussi-Boulaga. Présence Africaine 161–162: 153–168. Kom, Ambroise, ed. 2009. Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, la philosophie du Muntu, 310 p. Paris: Karthala. Maesschalck, Marc. 1991. Mémoire et tradition. Notes sur Xavier Zubiri et Eboussi Boulaga. Chemins Critiques 2 (1): 307–320. Mbonda, Ernest-Marie. 2006. Fabien Eboussi Boulaga: Penser les évènements et les institutions. In Philosophes du Cameroun, ed. Dans Ebénézer Njoh Mouelle and Emile Kenmogne, 447 p. Yaoundé: Presses Universitaires de Yaoundé. Mbonimpa, Melchior. 1990. De la mémoire humiliée à l’utopie: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga et la critique africaine du christianisme, 137 p. Doctoral Dissertation.Montréal: Université de Montréal. ———. 1996. Défis actuels de l’identité chrétienne: Reprise de la pensée de Georges Morel et de Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, 233 p. Paris: L’Harmattan. Monga, Célestin. 2006. “Penser africain: Raison, identité et liberté” (Entretien avec Fabien Eboussi Boulaga). Esprit 12: 106–116.

Education and Pre-consciousness

Education and Pre-consciousness Denyse de Saivre Sociologie Consultant International, Paris, France

A child’s unconscious is formed in the first months and years of life, before the beginning of so-called formal education around the age of five. This time also marks the beginning of the child’s preeducational unconscious, the psychological space essential for the individual. It is necessary to go back to the first years of childhood to find the genesis of the ulterior thinking of the individual. However, this does not deny the norms that will intervene, nor the demands of a rigorous apprenticeship, nor the lessons of experience; the richness of these elements must be taken into account. From the beginning of life, the individual constructs oneself through first sights and sounds. Very early on, the child develops the habit of exerting thought by mobilizing determined images, either visual or verbal. How are these educational habits formed? There is an innateness, but also an immediate influence of the present environment on the child. One’s tendency to use visual representation more than auditory images, or vice-versa, will fix mental habits that will determine one’s future method of knowledge acquisition. An aware educator can affect these habits, for the more a child practices these two types of image mobilization, the more one may be able to enrich one’s field of knowledge. In fact, thought can only be established on mobile elements. The mental image is the supple medium between precept and concept; it is used to learn as well as to understand. Corresponding to these two forms of mental habits are two forms of memorizing – auditory and visual, which result in two modes of understanding. A young child in a

Denyse de Saivre: deceased.

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predominantly auditory environment (oral tradition) will, most likely, reinforce this mental habit that is quite contrary to the situation of the child in an environment rich in objects and written texts. The child’s process of knowledge acquisition may be truncated, even though there was no initial defect in the intellectual faculties, if education brings about a total caesura from these modes of learning for various reasons, or if the child is unable to fix one’s memory in projecting one’s mental habits in the outline of a future pictured by the imagination. (Memory is such that one can project oneself into a situation where it will be used.) These notions are generally unrecognized either from within the same culture if the child is left alone too often or in a more obvious way, if historical chance allows one culture to dominate another, a child can become surrounded by an educational environment completely foreign to the earlier years of one’s world, with its language, family activities, and child’s universe. Recognition of this phenomenon by educators is essential for the enrichment of the thinking and reasoning faculties of the child and, later, the adult.

See Also ▶ Communication ▶ Culturalism and Anticulturalism ▶ Education, Religious

Bibliography Chateau, J. 1955. Le réel et l’imaginaire dans le jeu de l’enfant. Paris: Vrin. de la Garanderie, A. 1980. Les profits pédagogiques. Paris: Centurion. de Lenval, Lubienska. 1968. H. L’éducation de l’homme conscient et l’entraînement à l’attention. Paris: Spes. de Saivre, D. 1991. Etudes de quelques clés pour un développement difficile. Communication d’ouverture du colloque: pour une formation adaptée à Afrique d’aujourd’hui. Chantilly: Centre Culturel des Fontaines. Erny, P. 1972. L’enfant et son milieu en Afrique noire. Paris: Payot. ———. 1974. L’enfant dans la penseé traditionnelle de L’Afrrque noire. Paris: Le livre africain.

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Education, Religious Marie Pauline B. Eboh Philosophy Department, Faculty of Humanities, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Religious education is acquired through conscious and unconscious imitation, observation, stories, questions, and through direct and indirect coaching.

Indirect Instruction In the traditional society, there is no formal institution where religious education is taught as such. It is believed that no one teaches a child about one’s God, which means that divine presence and religious knowledge are firsthand data. The ordinary person, who is socialized into the African culture, learns the moral norms and modes of behavior that regulate communal life, the social organizations, and political institutions, which define a person’s attitude towards other human beings, and the taboos of the community in order to guard against transgressions and desecration of the land for which there must be atonement. Religion is an integral part of African culture. Religious education is, therefore, built into witty sayings and nomenclature, especially the theocentric names which Africans give their children, cultic rites, funeral rites, and other cultural practices. For instance, among the Igbo, kola nut is used to show hospitality. A host breaks kola with his guest and no one ever breaks kola without proper procedures, which include praying. The guest is offered palm wine after the kola, and the last dregs of the wine is used to pour libation, which is always accompanied by invocations. Thus, one informally learns to pray just as one learns to eat. Religious education is, therefore, received through lived experience by way of daily observation and absorption of cultural values through unconscious imitation. As elders habitually pour libation to the ancestors, they indirectly inculcate the thought patterns of

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African people, for example, death is not the end of life; the dead continue to live in the hereafter; the ancestors are not ghosts or merely dead people but rather the “living-dead,” who “are intimately concerned with the social and religious life of their descendants. They protect the living and also serve as intermediaries between their descendants and the deities.”

Direct Coaching Religious education is inculcated sometimes through direct and conscious instruction. Because formal occasions for offering sacrifices to a particular deity abound, the devotees have to be taught by an adept the demands of their deity. The existence of an omnipotent God is taught; however, it is believed that He is reached through intermediaries – the ancestors, the lesser gods of the earth, rivers, and trees (nature gods).

Catechesis Through Answering Questions An African elder was once asked: “Why do you pour libation on the ground?” He replied with stunning rhetorical questions followed by resounding catechesis (religious education): “And why do you kneel down while praying? Is it not the same homage to the ground – the earth to which we shall all return? I learned that Westerners present their relations with flowers whenever they are celebrating; and that they troop to cemeteries carrying flowers to their dead relatives. Similarly, when our friends and relatives are feasting, we send them wine and we pour libation to our ancestors. The only difference is that we use wine in place of flowers. When we pour libation, we call on God and on our ancestors in commemoration of their continual presence and solidarity. One cannot pour libation on the sky; one pours it on the ground, but He who is above receives it all the same.” As the people put it, ozi eziri anwuru oku erula Chukwu aka – “a message given to the smoke has reached God.” In other words, any sacrifice offered to the minor deities, or through

Egypt, Creation in Ancient

the ancestors, gets to God. They are accountable to Him. He is the ultimate recipient of all sacrifices. The Bible says that Jacob (Israel) worshipped God by pouring oil on stone, and that God has some errand spirits (Mmuo ozi) called angels. “What then is the difference? Pouring libations intended for Chukwu (God) on the ground may mean that [the ancestors and/or] the earth spirit is used as an intermediary – a messenger who ought to present the offerings to God.” The intermediary spirits are forces of evil and blessings. Often sacrifices are offered to them to avert their anger and disturbances. This offering is utilitarian in character unlike the offerings made to God out of filial devotion and gratitude. Africans believe that God is good and always benevolent. This is part of the reasons why sacrifices are seldom offered to Him directly. In the first place, He is so good that He troubles nobody. In the second place, He is so perfect and so selfsufficient that one would not know what to offer Him. As a result, offerings made to Him are mostly prayers. The eldest man in a family prays aloud every morning to God on behalf of his family. But individuals say spontaneous prayers whenever they have the incentive to do so, and one prays wherever one is because God is everywhere. This is why the High God hardly has a shrine in most African communities. Nevertheless, “He is the final resort, the last court of appeal and He may be approached directly without intermediary. The power of God is supreme; all flows from Him and inheres in Him.” The Africans’ notion of right and wrong, obligation, and justice is rooted in the laws and customs of the land. The greatest virtue is justice, which regulates a person’s relationship with one’s fellow human beings, gods as well as the ancestors. Sanctions of reward and punishment from the spirits, nature gods, and ancestors are the strong motive force for being moral.

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▶ Igbo, Mbari ▶ Morals ▶ Obligation

Bibliography Badri, Amna Elsadik. 1992. Female circumcision in the Sudan: Change and continuity. In Women and reproduction in Africa, AAWORD-AFARD Occasional Paper Series 5. Dakar. Eboh, Marie Pauline. 1983. The structure of Igbo logic as shown in dispute settlement in Igboland with special reference to Nzerem town. Rome: Liberit. Nzomiwu, John P.C. 1985. The Igbo Church and indigenization question. In The Igbo Church and quest for god, ed. Chukwudum B. Okolo. Obosi: Pacific College Press Ltd. Okolo, Chukwudum B. 1985. The Igbo experience of Christian values: Dimensions of dialogical encounter. In The Igbo Church and quest for god, ed. Chukwudum B.O. Okolo. Obosi: Pacific College Press Ltd. Parrinder, E.G. 1974. African traditional religion. 3rd ed. London: Sheldon Press. Smith, Adrian B. 1982. Interdenominational religious education in Africa: The emergence of common syllabuses. Leiden: Interuniversitair Instituut Voor Missiologie en Oecumenica. Ter Haar, G. 1988. Religious education in Africa: Traditional, Islamic, and Christian. Exchange 17 (50) p. I–II, 1–84: ill. ———. 1990. Faith of our fathers: Studies on religious education in sub-Saharan Africa. Utrecht: Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht [Franeker: Wever [distr.], cop. Gerrie ter Haar, Simon J Nondo, Ambrose Moyo 1992. African traditional religions in religious education: A resource book with special reference to Zimbabwe. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht, cop.

Egypt, Creation in Ancient Mubabinge Bilolo African Institute for Prospectives Studies (INADEP), Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

See Also ▶ Ancestors ▶ Community ▶ Education and Pre-consciousness

The notion of creation constitutes one of the sublime contributions of the Ancient Egyptian Thinking to ideas history. The Ancient Egyptian

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language had more than 40 verbs to express the idea of creation. The most important ones are: km3, to create; iri, “to do”; msi, “to beget”; shr m ib., “to plan/conceive in one’s heart”; m3t /dd, “to utter, say (what is)”; wd hpr, “to say/to order the being”; s3c wnnt, “to inaugurate what is”; s3i hpr, “to decide the being”; rdi hpr, “to give reality/to let be”; km3 m ib., “to create in one’s heart/ thought”; iri m 3 h, “to create in the light of the mind/by the power of the mind”; shpr, “to cause the being, to let exist, to existencify,” etc. At the origin of the creation, there is the “awaking of the creative-Thinking,” the “self-constitution,” or the “self-activation” of the Amorphous-Inert as a “Living-Being.” The concept of creation does not only refer to the “visible world,” but it encompasses “all what is” (nti nb) and “all what is not” (ñti nb/iwtt nbt). One and only one Hpr shpr sw ds.f, “Being which made itself be by itself,” exists. All the rest is creature or thinking wanted and planned by the Unique-by-itselfBeing. That is the Ancient Egyptian “monooriginism.” As for the question of “how” the creation took place, the religious literature reveals a series of postulates, of models, and of modes of creation. A “mode of creation” designates the way a determined being or a given species was created. A “model of creation,” by contrast, explains the creation of all what is and of all what is not yet. For clarity, two postulates and three models were chosen. The postulate of the “creation-transformation” assumes at the origin of the world a quadrad or an ogdoad of principles called: hprw tpj.w, “primordial elements,” or p3wti.w tpi.w, “initial princips.” For instance, nn/nw, “water”; hh, “infinity or impulse”; kk, “darkness”; imn, “the hidden” and their variants; ny3w, “emptiness, nothingness”; inm, “emptiness, air, deviation”; or grh, “dark night.” It is said that these p3wti.w would be at the origin, before, at the confines, and at the end of what is. They are “meta-principles.” Inside this model, the “Living and Intelligent Meta-principle” is both “Demiurge” and “ex-nihilo Creator.” The nwn, “water,” and other “meta-elements” play the role of the “Habitat” and the “Amorphous-Inert” before the creation.

Egypt, Creation in Ancient

The postulate of the “radical creation” excludes a priori the possibility of a “metaprinciple,” which would not be a creature of the “by-itself-Being” (hpr ds.f). That explains its titles: wc–wcw qm3w wnnt (Assmann 1983a) “The-One-and-Only-Creator-of-Existence” or “The-One-and-Only who created what is,” wc jrjw hhw, “The-One-Creator of the multitude/of the millions.” Nothing exists without it or outside it. Inside this postulate, two models have to be distinguished: The model of the “uniform-radical-creation” according to which the Creator created all beings in its “Heart” (ib) or “Mind” (3 h) under the form of “thoughts-plans” (shrw) and historicized them in the same way, either by the power of its Thinking: m3t.n ib.f hpr hr–c (Otto 1964) “What its Heart thought is immediately realized,” or by its Word: qw3 nri nb m–tp r3.f ddw hprw msjw/wnnt (Assmann 1983a), “who created all what is by the word/sentence of its mouth. Teller of Being and Engenderer of what is/of the Beingness.” The conception of the creation in the Document Philosophique de Memphis is situated in this stream. The model of the “radically differenciated creation” according to which the Creator created all beings in its “thinking,” in its “heart” and according to a shr nh, “eternal plan,” but what exists thus “ideally/potentially” is not historically realized in the same way or at the same time. The sun, the earth, the sky, the water, the air are neither created in the same way nor at the same time as people, gods, plants, and animals. The ideal succession of creatures is not identical to their historical succession. A “late-come” in history can be a “first-born” in the “creation Plan.” Even the positive human creations are foreseen in the “eternal plan.” This model is more particularly used in the Heliopolitan and Theban texts. It appears in more than 300 Hymns and Prayers from the New Empire and Lower Epoch. The “catalogue of the created species” remains open, since the process of creation is going on. The texts often use the expressions “what is and what is not” (ntt iwtt), “what is above and what is below” (hrrjw hrjw), “sky, earth, and douat (¼underworld)” (pt, t3, dw3t) to designate

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the “whole” or the “totality” (tm). But they also name certain species. For instance, in Pap. Chester Beatty IV:

dd m r3.f hpr m wnw m rmtw ntrw mnmnt cwt nbt mi qd.sn p3yyw hnnt r–3w

who said/ordered through his mouth the existing beings: men and gods, the whole of big or small cattle, the whole of what flies and lands”

The list of Sonnenhymnen in Thebanischen Gräben (Assmann 1983a) is even more explicit: stwt, “rays”; hddwt, “light”; t3w, “air”; hcpi, “Nil”; tmmw, “humanity (mankind)”; ntrw, “gods”; 3hw, “(celestial) spirits”; hnmmt, “dwellers of the sky”; cwt hr–h3swt, “big cattle of the desert”; 3pdw, “birds”; cpnnt, “worms”; hrt–pnw, “mice”; and irt nbt, “any eye.” Other texts add: rmw, “birds”; sn–t3, “plants of the earth”; mw, “water”; itn, “sun”; etc. Reading this catalogue, it appears that the ntr, “gods,” constitute a species of creatures different from the human, animal, vegetable, or material species. There is no confusion between these species. Even when the One-and-Only-Creator is called “God” or “god of the Gods”; it is not at all in the sense of primus inter pares, or in the “polytheist” and “henotheist” sense, but rather in the sense of the radical mono-originism, of the “Creator-Godex nihilo-of-the-Gods.” Names such as “Sun” (Aton, Re. Ptah, Khepri) or “Air” (Chou) remain “metaphysical models” as Ramsey defines them (1960, 1969, and 1973) and not a proof of the “divinization of nature.” The Creator vivifies (scnh), existencifies (shpr) its creatures all the time (creatio continua). Although it is transcendent, it also remains by its Ba “Spirit” or its Sw “Pneuma/Breath” immanent to all what is. A text says on that subject: qm3 wnnt Nb ntt mn ht. nbt (Urk. IV, Sethe 1929) “Creator of the Being-there, Master of what is, what remains/subsists in every thing”; swh pw m iht nb(t) im rn.f wr n Imn (Assmann 1983a; Sethe 1929), “It is the Air /the Breath/the Pneuma that is in every thing, in its name of ‘The Hidden One’.”

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“Any being permanently draws its being from ntr ntri qm3w sw ds.f” (Assmann 1983a) “DivineGod who created himself” or “God who ‘deifies himself’ and creates himself by himself. Any living being – more particularly people and “gods” – aspires to an “eternal vision and union” with the One-Creator.

See Also ▶ Genesis ▶ Time

Bibliography Allen, J.P. 1988. Genesis in Egypt, The philosophy of ancient Egyptian creation accounts. New Haven. Assmann, J. 1983a. Sonnenhymnen in Thebanischen Gräbern (Theben I). Mainz am Rhein, T. 18b; T. 130, 6; T. 149, 3–5; T. 59A, 3. ———.. 1983b. Re und Amun. Die Krise des polytheistischen Weltbilds im Ägypten der 18–20. Dynastie. Freiburg (Switzerland): Göttingen [en sigles: RuA.(?)]. Bilolo, M. 1982. “Du”Cœur h3tj ou jh comme l’unique lieu de création: propos sur la cosmo génèse héliopolitaine. Göttin ger Miszell en 58: 7–14. ———. 1986a. Les Cosmo–Théologies philosophiques de l’Egypte antique. Problématique, prémisses herméneutiques et problèmes majeurs. Kinshasa/Libreville/Munich: Publications universitaires africaines. ———. 1986b. Les Cosmo–Théologies philosophiques d’Héliopolis et d’Hermopolis. Essai de thématisation et de systématisation. Kinshasa/Libreville/Munich: Publications universitaires africaines. ———. 1988. Le Créateur et la création dans la Pensée Memphite et Amarnienne. Approche synoptique du “Document Philosophique de Memphis” et du “Grand Hymne Théologique” d’Echnaton. Kinshasa/Libreville/ Munich: Publications universitaires africaines. ———. 1992. Concepts et expressions égyptiens relatifs à la création: Importance et Actualité eu égard à l’héritage gréco–biblique. Göttinger Miszellen 131: 13–19. Otto, E. 1964. Gott und Mensch nach den ägyptischen Tempelinschriften der griechischrömischen Zeit, 14. Heidelberg. Ramsey, I. 1960. Models and mystery. London: Oxford University Press ———. 1969. Religious language. London: Wipf and Stock. ———. 1973. Models and divine activity. London: Wipf and Stock.

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190 Sethe, K. 1906–1909. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, 4 vol. (Urk. IV). Leipzig, 164. ———. Amun und die acht Urgötter von Hermopolis. Berlin, 1929, par. 220–221. Zandee, J. Der 1992. Amunhymnus des Papyrus Leiden 1344 verso, 2 vol. Louvain.

Egypt: History, Language, and Literature Mubabinge Bilolo African Institute for Prospectives Studies (INADEP), Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

The Names of the Country In the period of the Pharaohs, the people called their country Kmt or, in Demotic, Kmi; and in Coptic, KAME, KHME, KHMI. Kmt means “who is black,” “Black,” “Melanos,” “Negro.” The word comes from km, “black,” “perfect,” “complete.” Any added statement, where “black” refers to the “black soil,” the “Nile’s ooze,” and not to its people, is pure speculation. Another name was T3-mrj, “the Land which is loved” (from the Creator of the world). The people from Asia called it Misr, and the Greeks Aigyptos, probably a transcription of Hwt-k3-Pth (Hutkaptah), the name of the city of Memphis. Nowadays, in Arabic, this country is called Misr.

Population As for the pigmention, “the ancient Kemet” distinguished two colors for humanity: the “reds” (dSr.wt) and the “blacks” (kmty.w/kame, or km. [w]) (Unamun). In regard to geography, he distinguished the Asian people or “Semites” (a3m.w), or the Lybians (Tmh.w), the Egyptians (rmt.w) and the “Southerner or Southerner people,” “Nubians” (nhsy.w). The first two groups were part of the “reds” and the last two of the “blacks.” But there also was a series of local appellations such as k3S, “Kushs”; Kfty.w, “people from

Egypt: History, Language, and Literature

Creta”; s3Sw, “Bedouins”; wynn, “Ionians”; pwnt, “Punt”; St.tjw, “Asian people”; the “Westerners,” “Indo-Europeans” (Thn.w), Sty.w, “Southerner”; etc. Languages Egyptian is a semitized African language and not an africanized Semitic language. As for the writing, four main forms are distinguished: hieroglyphical, hieratic, demotic, and coptic. In regard to grammar and literature, five forms are distinguished: 1. Ancient Egyptian (O.K) 2. Middle Egyptian or classical Egyptian (M.K + N.K) 3. New (or neo-) Egyptian (XVII –XXIV dyn.) 4. Demotic (after the XXVI dyn.) 5. Coptic (after AD. 150). Coptic was spoken until the seventeenth century and is still alive in the liturgy of the Coptic Christian Church. History and Ethico-Political Thinking The division into dynasties of the written history of Kemet came from the kemetic historian Manetho from the delta, who, in his History, left a list of the kings grouped into about thirty dynasties. He borrowed this pattern from the ancient lists, the most famous of which is that of Abydos Temple under the king Sethos I with his 76 names. These dynasties were also grouped into three “Kingdoms,” three “Intermediate Periods,” and a “Late Period.” The Kingdoms were characterized by the reign of the “maati-cracy” (from m3c.t, “truth-justice-solidarity-and-order”) by economical property, security, solidarity, political unity, and stability. The “Intermediate Periods” were the reigns of disintegration, chaos, injustice, insecurity, violence, and misery or, in a word, of isft (isefet) and byn (evil) or bini-cracy. Nevertheless, in regard to the history of thinking in the Pharaohs’ period, this view is erroneous since the periods of transition are periods of extremely active intellectual creativity and of very critical literature. Prehistory or Predynastic Period The archaeological excavations on predynastic sites, or under the dynastic strata, as well as the

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new methods of dating increasingly bring to light a civilization already well developed in the sixth millenium. The important thing to note is that the predynastic cultures such as Merimde-BeniSalam I–II, Naqada I–III, Fayum, etc., revealed a cultural continuity between the Delta and Nubia. Most of the cosmo-theological ideas were constituted within that period, such as the belief in after death life, the notion of creation, and the notion of the Maat. Dynastic Period The Early Dynastic Period: Dynasties 1–2 (ca. 3000–2705 B.C.) and The Old Kingdom: Dynasties 3–6 (ca. 2705–2180). The Ancient Empire continued with the federal policy, creating central and local administrative institutions, as well as the mechanisms of coordination and control. In the intellectual regard, it was dominated by historical and religious literature centered mainly on the king. For most of them, The Pyramid Texts came from the pyramids of Unas, Teti, and Pepi I and speak of the king’s life, status, and role amid the creation. Almost each of these kings built himself a pyramid in order to eternalize his name (rn), his body (dt), and his soul (k3/b3). The most famous ones are the pyramids of Djoser in Saqqara, Snefru at Medum, Cheops, Khefere (Hcf-Rc), and Menkare at Gisa. But the Biographical and Historical Inscriptions, the Moral or Ethical Instructions of the Old Kingdom address everybody, every subsequent generation. The classical Instructions were written by Prince Hardjedef, Kagemni, and Ptah-Hotep. Political philosophy and theology elaborate the conception of the king as s3-rc (sara) “son of Re,” “servant” (hm) of the Maat “Truth-JusticeOrder,” as servant of the people and the gods, warrant of prosperity and social justice. Men and women had almost the same advantages since, in the first dynasty already, we found “two Kings who were women: Merit-Neith and Neith-Hotep.” It is also worth noting that the condemnation of slavery dates back to that time also, as attested to in Nekhebou’s Biography (VI dyn.): “I have never enslaved anybody” (Roccati 1982).

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First Intermediate Period: Dynasties 9–11 (Ca. 2180–2040)

The Early Dynastic Period was characterized by both critical and prophetical literature. It criticized the sociopolitical crisis; the material, cultural, and anthropological pauperization; the values inversion; and the political anarchy. It criticized some religious conceptions such as the conception of the hereafter, the construction of the pyramids, and the granite tombs; and it raised the question of the theodicy. How could the Creator-God allow evil in history? And in front of the “bini-cracy,” Ipu-Wer asks: “Where is God? Is he perhaps sleeping?” This literature announced the coming of the men who would “recreate” the world, restore the “maati-cracy.” The literary and philosophical works such as The Prophecies of Nefertiti, the Admonitions of Ipuwer, The Dispute between a Man and his Ba, Harpers’ Songs were products of this sad period. Middle Kingdom: Dynasties 11–14 (Ca. 2040–1650)

The Middle Kingdom was the era of politicoeconomical rationality, competence, and foresight. It included two legendary dynasties, the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. The most famous kings were Mentuhotep (eleventh dynasty), Amenemhat and Sesostris I–III (twelfth dynasty). The twelfth dynasty ended with a queen, Sobeknofru. They widened the borders of Egypt to the second cataract in Nubia and to Syria and Palestine, in order to assure the commercial routes. This period was characterized by a very strong centralization of power (authority) and the setting up of a very efficacious administration. All of the process of centralization was upheld and legitimated by a royal political and theological literature that was developed for that purpose. Many classical literary, philosophical, political, and theological works date from this period: Coffin Texts (CT), The Instruction of King Amenemhet I for His Son Sesostris I, The Instruction Addressed to King Merikare, The Eloquent Peasant, The Hymn to Hapy, The Story of Sinuhe, etc. Also, classical for the rest of the history of the Pharaohs times were the art and the language (grammar) of that period. The Instruction

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Addressed to King Merikare defended the addressed against Ipu-wer’s critic and developed an anthropocentric vision of the world, in which the whole creation was set in the service of lopedan (man), produced for the satisfaction of their needs. Merikare presented people (men) as “God’s flock,” created according to “his image.” God created the State or the chief (royalty) not to dominate or oppress the weak, but to be “the spine of the weak.” CT. Vii 461c–464f furthered this apology by having God say: iw iri.n.i s nb mi snnw.f “I created every person as his fellow-people”; ñ wd. i iri.sn isft VII “I did not order them to do evil/commit iniquity.” This text underlines the equality or thorough identity and fundamental fraternity between people, an idea which will recur from the New Empire onwards. The Second Intermediate Period: Dynasties 15–17 (1650–1540)

During the Second Intermediate Period or Hyksos Period, KHME was at the mercy of hk3-h3sw.t (Heka-hasut) “rulers of foreign countries,” known under the name of Hyksos. Although there were also some Nubian sovereigns, most of the criticism was directed towards the Asian ones: “they ruled without Re” (says the King Hatschepssut). They were expelled by Ahmose, who also inaugurated the New Empire and became the first king of the eighteenth dynasty. New Kingdom: Dynasties 18–20 (Ca. 1540–1075)

The New Kingdom originated in the struggle against the Hyksos. The trauma created by these “foreigners” who ruled “without Re” forced the first kings of the eighteenth dynasty to widen the borders of Kemet beyond the fourth cataract (close to Napata) in Nubia and beyond “Euphrates in Eurasia.” The art, the temples, and the kings of the New Kingdom are famous: temples such as Karnak, Luxor and their obelisks, the Kings Amenophis I–III, Thutmosis I–IV, Hatschepsut, Echnaton (Amenophis IV), Tutanchamun, and Ramses II have become legendary. But what about a critical knowledge of their political and moral philosophy and of their theology? From the Old Kingdom onwards, the king of Kemet was, in theory, the king of whatever was

Egypt: History, Language, and Literature

alive, the king of the creation, and whatever the sun encompassed. He had, in fact, become the king of a large Afro-Eurasian empire. His professional army was an indispensable instrument, created for that purpose to maintain the political hegemony in Nubia and in Eurasia. The “priests of Amon” and the scribes had become professional philosophers. Kings themselves tried to give a theological justification to each of their enterprise. The most famous of these philosopher-kings was probably Echnaton (3 hn-Itn ¼ Achan-yati or Achanti). The philosophico-theological synthesis made by Echnaton influenced, in particular, the Hymns of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. It was the “ramesside period,” characterized by a conception of the Creator-God who no longer acted through people and their institutions, but who intervened directly in history to assist those who call upon him: the weak, the sick, the poor, etc. The New Kingdom represented the climax of ancient Egyptian culture and theologico-philosophical thinking. A religion and a philosophy were developed in that period, valorizing each person without regard to one’s color, language, and culture. Third Intermediate Period: Dynasties 21–24 (Ca. 1075–715)

Long before Ramses XI’s death (ca.1075), a kind of coup was accomplished by a General who proclaimed himself “Grand-Priest-of-Hamon,” as well as king. It was the beginning of the time of the “Kings-Priests” and of “Theocracy.” But the “City of God” was economically and militarily so weakened and so sociopolitically disunited, that it appeared to the population as a “City without a God” and at the mercy of the small “foreigner” kings. Ethiopian-Egyptian or Nubian-Saite Kingdom: Dynasties 25–26 (Ca. 715–525)

Fortunately, during the Third Intermediate Period, Nubia had reorganized itself and founded the Napata Empire. Around 720, the King Kaschta (K3-st3) of Napata began the process of reunifying Kemet, an enterprise actually realized between 715 and 712 by his son Pianchi (p3-cnhy). After his victory, Pianchi gave the power to his brother,

Egypt: History, Language, and Literature

Shabaka, and retired to Napata. It was thanks to Shabaka that the famous Philosophic Document or Memphite Theology was preserved. It is possible that this philosophical text was written by Shabaka himself. Among his successors, the most famous was Taharka because of his numerous constructions in Napata and in Thebes. The last king, Tanutamani (T3nwt-Imn), tired by Assurbanipal’s continuous attacks in the Delta, decided to go back to Napata. In 656, he was replaced by Psammetich I. Another important character of this epoch was the General Amasis (570–526), who performed a coup against Apries. He was to enter history as the “pro-Hellene king” of whom Herodotus speaks (II, 172–178). His successor was defeated by the Persians after a few months in power. Late Period or Last Intermediate Period (Ca. 525 B.C.–Today)

With the Persians’ victory over Psammetich III, a period of foreign domination began for the inhabitants of Kemet, which continues to this day. The KAME lost their political independence forever and became victims of racial and religious discrimination within their own country. Thus, the exodus to their natal land took place to the South, where Napata and then Meroe symbolized the political autonomy of the black world. And we can understand why the large migrations from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic coast and to South Africa were contemporary to these Barbarian dominations. The story of this definitive loss of political independence and of the burial of “maati-cracy” in Kemet is divided into seven steps: 1. First Persian domination: twenty-seventh Dynasty (525–404 B.C.) 2. Last Egyptian Pharaohs or Last Independence: Dynasties 28–30 (404–342 B.C.) 3. Second Persian Domination (ca. 341–332 B.C.) 4. Greek Domination period: Alexander the Great and Ptolemaic Kings (332–30 B.C.) 5. Roman Domination period (30 B.C.–324 A.D.) 6. Byzantinian Period (324–642 A.D.) 7. Arabian or Islamic Period (from 642 A.D.)

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Yet, the times of sociopolitical crisis were also, for the KAME of the Late Period, the times of large and very critical philosophical, moral, and theological works. The situation of the Third Intermediate Period inspired many Hymns and Prayers relative to “personal devotion,” such as The Instruction of Any, The Instruction of Amenemope, whose kindred with the wisdom of Solomon was almost established; The Immortality of Writers, etc. In The Late Period, there was a revival of “Biographical Inscriptions”: the most important were the Inscriptions in the Tomb of Petosiris. A literature in the Demotic language was developed also, including such best known texts as The Instruction of Ankhsheshonq and The Instruction of Papyrus Insinger. Many classical works were re-edited during this period. On the philosophico-theological level, the “new Schools” were created in almost all of the important centers of the epoch in Edfu, Kom Ombo, Sais, Esna, Philae, Alexandria, etc. These “schools” could be called “neo-Theban,” since almost all of them continued the Theban conceptions. Beside the literature in Kemetic languages, a literature in Greek was also developed. Some documents are often quoted, such as the books of Hermes Trismegistus, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Papyrus Oxy 1381, the works by Horapollon, and other books called hermetical, as literary monuments of “greekspeaking” Kemet, but it is rather neo-Platonism in general which represents “neo-Thebanism.” Plotinus and Jamblique, the “real Egyptians of Greek culture” (Derchain 1969), for instance, preserved the henology of the Theban Hymns. Long before the Roman and the Christian Periods, the KAME also invented the Coptic language and writing. This language made it possible for Kemet to have, besides the foreign languages, an actualized traditional language and to develop its own Christianism: the Coptic Church. Although it can be said that the ancient Egyptian culture was “murdered” by the Eurasian cultures and, more particularly, by the Byzantine Christianism and the Arabian Islam, it is, nevertheless, also true that it lives an “eternal life” in these cultures. It was incarnated in various degrees into

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the Greco-Roman cultures, the Bible, Western Christianity, the Art, the Architecture, and the philosophico-theological Thinking of the West, Coptic Christianity, and into the cultures located between Karnak and Monomotapa.

See Also ▶ Egypt, Creation in Ancient ▶ Egypt: Religion and Theology

Bibliography Barguet, Paul. 1967. Le Livre des Morts des Anciens Egyptiens. Introduction, traduction et commentaire (LAPO, 1). Paris: Cerf. ———. 1986. Les Textes des Sarcophages Egyptiens du Moyen Empire. Introduction et traduction (LAPO, 12). Paris: Cerf. Breasted, J. H. 1906. Ancient records of Egypt. Historical documents from the earliest times to the persian conquest, 4 vol. Chicago/London: UCP. Breasted, J.H. 1912. Development of religion and thought in ancient Egypt. New York. ———. 1933. The dawn of conscience. New York. Buck, A. de. 1935–1961. The Egyptian coffin texts, vol. I– VII. Chicago: OIP. Derchain, Ph. 1969. Introduction. In: Religions en Égypte Hellénistique et Romaine. Colloque de Strasbourg, 16–18 mai 1967. Paris: PUF. Erman, A., and H. Grapow. 1971. Wörterbuch der Ägyptischen Sprache. New repr. in 7 vol. Berlin. Germann, P. 1948. Die Grundlagen der Afrikanischen Kultur. Leipzig. Grapow, H. 1929–2939. Religiöse Urkunden (Urk.V). Leipzig. Heclk, W., and W. Westendorf (Ed.). 1972–1993. Lexikon der Ägyptologie, vol. I–VIII. Wiesbaden. Kitchen, K. A. Ramesside inscriptions historical and biographical, vol. I–VIII. Oxford, . La Daumas, F. 1960. Civilisation de l’Egypte pharaonique. Paris. Roccati, A. La. 1982. Littérature historique sous l’Ancien Empire égyptien (LAPO, 11). Paris. Lichtheim, M. 1968–1989. Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3 vol. Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1973–1980. Mercer, Samuel A. B. 1952. The pyramid texts, 4 vol. London/New York. Pirenne, J. 1961–1963. Histoire de la Civilisation de l’Egypte ancienne, 3 vol. Neuchâtel/Paris. ———. 1965. La Religion et la morale dans l’Egypte antique. Neuchâtel/Paris. Schäfer, H. 1905. Urkunden der älteren Äthiopenkönige (Urk. III). Leipzig.

Egypt: Religion and Theology Schott, S. 1929–1939. Urkunden mythologischen Inhalts (Urk. VI). Leipzig. Sethe, Kurt. 1904. Hieroglyphische Urkunden der griechisch-römischen Zeit. Leipzig. ———. 1906–1909. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, 4 vol. (Urk. IV). Leipzig. ———. 1908–1922. Die altägyptishen Pyramidentexte, 4 vol. Leipzig. ——— 1933. Urkunden des Alten Reiches (Urk. I). 2nd ed. Leipzig. ———. 1935. Historisch-biographische Urkunden des Mittleren Reiches (Urk. VIII). Leipzig. ———. 1935–1962. Übersetzung und Kommentar zu den altägyptischen Pyramidentexten, 6 vol. Glückstadt. ———. 1957. Thebanische Tempelinschriften aus der griechisch-römischen Zeit (Urk. VIII). Berlin. UNESCO. 1980. Histoire Générale de l’Afrique. II. Afrique ancienne. Dir. G. Mokhtar. Paris, Jeune Afrique/Stock/UNESCO. Wolf, W. 1971. Das alte Ägypten. München. Wycichl 1983. Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue Copte. Leuven.

Egypt: Religion and Theology Mubabinge Bilolo African Institute for Prospectives Studies (INADEP), Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

The Egyptian religion’s hermeneutics devalues the religion it examines by referring to “prelogical thinking” (called “mythopoeic thought” or “mytho-theological thought” within Egyptology), “polytheism and pantheism,” all nonrevelationary religions, the inexistence of philosophical thought outside of the West, and “inferior languages,” etc. Even today, these devalorizing aspects paralyze the study of the religion of Kemet. The pharaonic religion is more than monotheistic; it is mono-originist. Its uniqueness is not founded on the negation of the gods of the pantheon, but rather on the philosophical axiom, which states that, outside of the unique “Being which exists in and of himself ” (hpr sw ds.f ) “who created himself ” (qm3w/shpr sw ds.f ), the

Translated by Gayle Levy

Egypt: Religion and Theology

rest is creation. Between the God-Creator and the created gods, there is a relationship; between the Creator and his creatures, there is an ontological rupture and an analogical relationship. The monoorganism goes further by postulating that “the being” of the One, his “body” and everything which constitutes him (his thought, his words, his mind, his power, etc.) are “created” by himself. The Creator, the “Origin of all forms of existence” is Ineffable. He can only be approached polyonymically because of the different “models,” such as “Existing” (Hpr), “Being” (Wnn), “That which is/is being” (Nti /Neith), “One” (Wa), “Life” (Ansh), “All and Nothing” (Atum), “Sun” (Khepri, Re, Atum, Horus, Aton), “Air” (Chou, Amun), “Water-infinity” (Nun), “Moon” (Khonsu, Thot), “God” (Neter), “Creator or Constructor” (Ptah, Chnum), “Resuscitated” (Osiris), “Distant” (Horus), “Hidden/Unknown” (Amun), etc. According to its dominant themes, each region, each “theological school,” and each privileged period has its own names: for example, Atum–Re in Heliopolis, Ptah in Memphis, Thot in Hermopolis, Neith in Sais, Amun in Thebes. Polyonymy is a sign of theological maturity and not of polytheism. All too often scholars apply an odd logic: “one name ¼ one god.” The Creator is a knot of paradoxes; he is both “Transcendent, beyond his own creation” (Hri tp iri.n.f ds.f) and “Immanent, Omnipresent” (mn m ht. nbt), “Distant and Near”, “One and Universal.” He is “Eternal” (Nhh) and “Infinite/Unlimited” (ñn drw.f). He is also hq3 dt “the Sovereign of eternity,” nb–nhh “the Master of infinity,” Nb–tm “the Master of all,” “the Father and Mother” of all creation and not simply of a nation. More than just the solar-disc, the One-Creator governs and enlightens everything that exists. The Primordial-Being is singular: ñn wn hr. hw.f “a being of his species does not exist.” He remains in the solitude of his singularity. The Creator is Imn “Unknown,” “Hidden,” and “Ineffable.”. His “true form” (irw) is unknown. Neither statues nor philosophico-theological speculation exposes what he really is. This theorization is at the core of “negative theology” of which a historical monument is the hymn of the Leyde Papyrus I–350, IV, 9–21.

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The Creator, the Perpetually-Good-Being (Wnn–nfr) lives in the M3ctvbm, “Truth– Justice–Solidarity–and–Rectitude” and his creations are thus infused with the same. His enemy is isft, “injustice, wrong, violence, oppression, the law of the jungle, irrationality, evil.” He especially loves (mrj) and protects the weak. Religion in Kemet means iri M3ct, “the practice and awareness of the Maat” (¼ justice, truth, sincerity, correctness, rightness, rectitude, integrity, solidarity, and charity as social justice, order). It aspires to the spiritual and material happiness of living beings and particularly that of humans, here on earth and in the other world. It is a tolerant, nondogmatic, and open religion. At a basic level, it excludes the possibility of sexual discrimination as it understands the Creator as “Father and Mother.” We meet woman as Primordial-Being (Neith), as goddess (Mut, Hathor, Isis, etc.), as queen, as “daughter of Re” (Sat–Re), as “pope” or “First-High-Priest” (of Amun), and as “High-Priest.” The theory by which the multiplicity of human races, colors, languages, and cultures attest to the richness and excellence of the “creationary Thought” and its notion of the king as hm, “servitor, priest,” bk3, the “slave” of the God-Creator, of Maat, of men, of created-gods, and of all creation makes this a religion of the future. Each person has the duty to realize the Maat, to satisfy the Creator of everything, and has a four-fold responsibility: towards the Creator of everything, towards the created-gods (ntrw) and the dead or the glorified-spirits (3hw), towards men and towards the rest (ecological responsibility). The pharaonic religion developed an extraordinary sensibility for social justice, solidarity, and socio-ecological equilibrium. The “understanding of Maat, of “maaticracy,” remains an ideal and a challenge for our times.

See Also ▶ African Traditional Religions, Philosophy of ▶ Egypt, Creation in Ancient ▶ Egypt: History, Language, and Literature

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Bibliography Bilolo, Mubabinge. 1986. Les cosmo-théologies philosophiques de l’Égypte Antique.Problématique, prémisses herméneutiques et problémes majeurs, (AAT. I, vol.1). Kinshasa-Munich : Publications Universitaires Africaines. ——— 1987. Les cosmo-théologies philosophiques d’Héliopolis et d'Hermopolis. Essai de thématisation et de systématisation, (AAT. I, vol. 2), KinshasaMunich-Libreville : PUA. ——— 1988. Le Créateur et la Création dans la pensée memphite et amarnienne. Approche synoptique du Document Philosophique de Memphis et du Grand Hymne Théologique d’Echnaton, (AAT. I, vol. 3). Kinshasa-Munich-Libreville : PUA. ——— 1991. Die klassische ägyptische Philosophie. Ein Überblick. In Neugebauer, C. (ed.). 1991. Philosophie, Ideologie und Gesellschaft in Afrika, Wien, 1989. Frankfurt-Bern-New York-Paris: pp. 199–212. ——— 1992. L’Un (Wa) devient-il Multiple (Hh) ? Approche pragmatique des formules relatives à « l’UN ‘comme Multiple’ ou à « l’Auto-Différenciation » de l’UN dans les Hymnes Thébains du Nouvel Empire. Vol. I–II. Travail d’habilitation et de venia legendi, Université de Zürich : Philosophische Fakultät I. ——— 1995. Métaphysique Pharaonique IIIe millénaire av. J.-C. (AAT. & INADEP. I, vol. 5). KinshasaMunich : Publications Universitaires Africaines. ——— 1996. Méta-Ontologie Pharaonique IIIe millénaire av. J.-C. (AAT. & INADEP. I, vol. 5,Kinshasa-Munich: Publications Universitaires Africaines. ——— 1996. Fondements thébains de la philosophie de Plotin l’Égyptien, (AAT&INADEP. I, vol.9). KinshasaMunich-Paris : Publications Universitaires Africaines. ——— 2007. Percées de l’éthique écologique en Égypte du -IIIe millénaire, ((AAT&INADEP. I, vol.8). Kinshasa-Munich-Paris : Publications Universitaires Africaines.

Ela, Jean-Marc Kasereka Kavwahirehi University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Father Jean-Marc Éla was born on September 27, 1936, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, and died on December 26, 2008, in Vancouver, Canada, where he had taken refuge after being forced into exile by the Cameroonian authorities. He studied at the University of Strasbourg and the

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Sorbonne where he obtained respectively a doctorate in theology on Martin Luther as well as another in anthropology. Equipped with a particular set of tools acquired during his training, his personal experience in colonial and postcolonial Africa, and his faith in God who proclaims the liberation of the dominated and the exploited, Éla began pastoral activities and developed a particularly original body of work in the field of African theology. For Jean-Marc Éla, the theological goes hand in hand with community experience since God always speaks (and reveals himself) to man through his concrete history. With the publication of his essay The Cry of the African Man. Questions to Christians and to the Churches of Africa (1980), Jean-Marc Éla affirmed his position as a leader in African liberation theology. Both the relevance and urgency of the latter were publicly recognized at the PanAfrican Conference of Third World Theologians held in Accra from December 17 to 23, 1977. This new trend of African liberation theology sought to go beyond the theology of inculturation (theology of culture), which was criticized for failing to address the socioeconomic and political issues confronting Africans. In fact, the emphasis placed on culture (very often examined in its ancestral dimension at the expense of its historicity) overshadowed the challenges linked to economic, political, technological, and financial mechanisms of domination and exploitation that were capable of causing cultural changes and shifts in spiritual life. Moreover, by emphasizing this cultural facet at the very moment when authenticity was being promoted by African dictators as political ideology, theological practice then ran the risk of legitimizing the established order. The theology of liberation developed by JeanMarc Éla drew upon his experiences among the poor and was aimed at a holistic liberation of the African man. The work of this talented theologian was occupied by the need to “displace debates of faith from the ghetto” so that the Gospel could provide enlightenment regarding the historical, political and social dynamics already underway in Africa. For him, God is discovered outside of churches, at the margins of history, beginning

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with the damned of the earth who remains representative of Calvary located at the center of our history. Thus, by refusing, on the one hand, to relegate the happiness of man, justice, freedom, peace, and reconciliation, to a beyond unrelated to the realities of the present world and on the other hand, to separate the soul from the body and profane history from the sacred, the theologian of liberation joins the individual in a concrete situation, tracing out a path of spiritual, cultural, economic, and political liberation. He rejects the idea that Christianity can continue to grow and thrive in Africa while, in the streets, orphans are exploited and mistreated and human rights are trampled upon. This opening of theological discourse and faith to the world is illustrated by the way in which Éla alternates between theological publications (African Cry 1980; My Faith as an African 1985) and sociological texts (L’Afrique des villages 1982; The City in Black Africa 1983) or better still, the way in which he interweaves the two since they ultimately revitalize one another (Churches and Globalization. Four Theological Reflections 2000). There cannot be a proclamation of liberation without naming the social and political pathologies from which the poor will be liberated. For Jean-Marc Éla, nothing is more suspect than the temptation to strictly protect the “religious” or “spiritual” character of the Christian institution. The Church, in his view, should not define itself by clerical issues but rather by its dynamic relationship to decisive existential situation where men think, fight, and dream. The Church is therefore obligated to move beyond parish problems revolving around the administration of the sacraments to also addressing the demands of faith in the organization of the city. Moving beyond parish issues to find a language that is comprehensible outside parish walls implies that the Church would relinquish pastoral work focused exclusively on the salvation of souls or on debates regarding the genders of angels in favor of considering, both theologically and publicly, the many political, economic, and social struggles faced by the African people with the aim of improving life for all and, in doing so,

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discerning the liberating presence of God who acts throughout history to transform the world. It becomes a question of following the prophets’ example, to proclaiming the public meaning of the Christian message, at the center of which is the promise of the liberation of the poor and oppressed, and to publicly denouncing injustices and policies of domination. Thus, in Rethinking African Theology. The God Who Frees Man (2003), which can be viewed as Éla’s theological testament, he suggests that in the era of the globalization of poverty, there is an urgent need to create a broad current of critical reflection beginning with poverty, unemployment and exclusion in countries forced to adjust to a globalized economic system. The need to rethink theology is inseparable from an epistemological urgency: that of liberating African theological discourse. By this, Ela is referring to a necessity for the African theologian to “actualise an epistemological rupture from Roman theology which evidently tends to submit itself to a singular line of thought, ‘la pensée unique’, even if it does not cease to condemn the injustices and deaths caused by the neoliberal project in countries of the South” (2003: 92). This rupture is necessary for the development of a space of freedom and creativity where it would be possible to turn to other theological sources, to forge new paradigms, to define new frameworks of intelligibility and appropriate reading methods, in order to deepen the sense of living revelation within a context of neoliberal globalization.

Bibliography Éla, Jean-Marc. 1980. Le Cri de l’homme africain. Questions aux chrétiens et aux Églises d’Afrique. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 1981. De l’assistance à la libération. Les tâches actuelles en milieu africain. Paris: Centre Lebret. ———. 1982. L’Afrique des villages. Paris: Karthala. ———. 1983. La ville en Afrique noire. Paris: Karthala. ———. 1985. Ma foi d’Africain. Paris: Karthala. ———. 2000. Les Églises face à la mondialisation. Quatre réflexions théologiques. Bruxelles: Commission “Justice et Paix”. ———. 2003. Repenser la théologie africaine. Le Dieu qui libère. Paris: Karthala.

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Enkang Peter Rigby Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

The Masai enkang’ (pl. inkang’itie) must be distinguished from a “warrior village” (which is called emanyata, pl. imanyat). The latter term is commonly and erroneously used for Maasai homesteads. Maasai inkang’itie vary a great deal in size, plan, structure, and social composition, both over time and between one section and another (see Maasai). But there are basic similarities, and many features of the homestead are symbolically and ritually significant. Each homestead is surrounded by a thorn fence (esita, pl. isitan), whose physical construction is basically the responsibility of junior elders, senior warriors, and junior warriors, all under the supervision of senior elders. Each married man in the homestead-group should have his own gate (enkishomi, pl. inkishomitie or inkishomin) into the cattle-byre (emboo) and about which his wives’ houses are placed in specific order. The men who are heads of polygynous families occupying one enkang’ may be related to each other as patrilineal kin, matrilateral cross-cousins, affines, or unrelated men who are frequently age-mates (ilajijik). Every married woman with children occupies one “house” (enkaji, pl. inkajijik) within the fenced homestead. These houses are constructed by the married women (inkituaak) of the entire homestead group, aided by their daughters, sons, and young girls nearing puberty (intoyie). There is only one entrance to each house, which faces the cattle-byre and opens to a passageway leading to the wife’s bedroom at the far end from the entrance, a central hearth and, opposite the wife’s bedroom, a guest, and children’s room. Beds are raised wooden platforms covered with hides. The wife’s room is strictly her domain, and

Peter Rigby: deceased.

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she keeps her milk-gourds (olkukuri, pl. ilkukurto, and various other terms) ranged around the head of her bed, against the wall and away from the hearth. The wife’s and children’s/guest’s bedrooms may or may not be enclosed with saplings, but both abut the hearth and are at least partially open to each other. The fire in the hearth is originally made with firesticks (ilpironito, sing. olpiron), which are crucially important in ritual terms. The houses (inkajijik) of married women are ranged on each side of their husband’s gate, the first wife’s being on the right hand side of the gate facing in, the second of the left, the third on the right, and so on. Thus, each polygynous “family” (olmarei, pl. ilmareita) is spatially and symbolically divided into two “streams” named after the right- and left-hand gatepost (entaloishi e’tatene_ and e’kedianye,_ respectively; olpahe le’tatene_ and olpahe le’kedianye_ among Ilparakuyo section). These streams may also be called ilgilat_ (sing. Olgilata: room, partition, subclan). The first and second wives are the founders of this dual classification, subsequent wives following them alternately on each side. This mediated division and symbolization of houses is both juridically important in terms of property division and inheritance and is implicated in the overall structure of clanship among Maasai. The house, or enkaji, is thus the focus of the semi-autonomous, matricentral unit of a wife and her own children, symbolizing the strong influence of married women and their relative independence within the patricentral, polygynous family. Each has control over her own part of the joint herd, and the circumcision of young men (emurata, pl. imurat) is performed by non-Maasai gatherers and hunters (Iltorrobo) just outside the father’s gate and adjacent to the gatepost of their mothers’ stream.

See Also ▶ Architecture, West African Built Environment ▶ Community ▶ Enkang ▶ Feminism (African) ▶ House

Environment

Bibliography Galaty, John, and P.C. Salzman, eds. 1981. Change and development in pastoral societies. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Hollis, A.C. 1970. The Maasai: Their Language and Folklore, 19056. Westport: Conn., Negro University Press. Jacobs, Alan. 1975. Maasai pastoralism in historical perspective. In Pastora\lism in tropical Africa, ed. T. Monod. London: Oxford University press. Kipuri, Naomi. 1983. Oral literature of the Maasai. Nairobi/London: Heinemann. Rigby, Peter. 1969. Cattle and kinship among the Gogo, a semi-pastoral Society of Central Tanzania. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1985. Persistent pastoralists, nomadic societies in transition. London: Zed Books. ———. 1992. Cattle, capitalism, and class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sankan, S.S. 1971. The Maasai. East African Literature Bureau: Nairobi.

Environment David L. Schoenbrun Department of History, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

The environment in Africa has both a physical and a philosophical life. As the scene where Africans win their livelihood and as the theater in which they construct their spiritual and political lives, the physical and the philosophical aspects of African land and climate are interconnected. The historical development of African food and technological systems has both wrought and responded to change in the physical environment. These long-term processes shaped the emergence of African philosophical and religious ideas toward the environment. A broad categorization of exemplary environmental zones and their major historical transformations will set the stage for generalizations about African environmental philosophies. Major regions can be defined by climate, topography, and vegetation. Straddling the equator, African environmental zones mirror each other across the globe’s middle. Dense, humid tropical forests stretch from southeastern Guinea

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to eastern Republic of Congo (former Zaire). Arid deserts dominate the continent’s top and bottom, the gigantic Sahara forming a western extension of the belt of desert that stretches from Mauritania to Central Asia’s Gobi desert. Between the humid forests and the deserts, drier savannas shade into forests. Eastern Africa boasts extensive highland forms around the Rift valley, a boundary between two large parts of the Earth’s crust, which cuts through the continent from the Red Sea to the Zambezi. Southern and Western African forests and savannas are almost entirely lowland forms. Near the equator, rain comes in two seasons, each separated by a dry season. Away from the equator, the climate grows increasingly temperate, with one long rainy season and one long dry season. Large river systems lace the continent with the Nile, the Niger, the Zaire, and the Zambezi dominating the continent’s northeastern, western, central, and southern portions, respectively. Both climatic change and human agency leave their marks on these zones. Coastal regions are most stable, but historical changes in rainfall amounts cause river and lake levels to fluctuate. Between 9000 and 12,000 years ago, Lake Chad, near the geographical center of the continent, grew to ten times its current area. The deserts, too, have fluctuated in size, following large-scale global climate changes in the distant past and suffering the effects of deforestation and grazing in recent times (Nicholson 1979). The highland and lowland forests and savannas have undergone the greatest alteration in both the location of the boundaries between them and in their internal composition. Farming and ironworking have had the greatest impact. As Africans sought fuel to fire furnaces and to warm cooking pots and as they cleared land for new fields, the virgin forests shrank (Vansina 1990). Economic practices also define African environments. Grasslands tend to be home to herders, deep forest belongs to gatherer-hunters, and the more open woodlands to farmers. Frontiers between them are exciting and promising zones of admixture. Africans have generated philosophies toward all these dynamic and varied zones, philosophies that explain the relations between people and their natural world.

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Beyond the fundamental physical differences that Africans recognize in their environments, based on livelihood, they also distinguish between “the homestead” and “the bush,” between safety and danger. These poles include the full range of spiritual forces (ancestral, creative, destructive) and their moral dimensions. For the Bashu, who live in the northeastern highlands above the Republic of Congo (former Zaire) equatorial rainforest, the forest beyond their homesteads harbors dangerous spiritual forces capable of destroying social harmony (Packard 1981). The Giriama, who live near Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast, bury murderers outside their homesteads while they bury all others, including revered elders, within the homestead precincts (Parkin 1992: 131). The Jola and other peoples of West Africa’s Senegambian region carry out their initiation ceremonies in forest areas (Linares 1992: 43). Young people enter the liminal space of the forest as children and return to the homestead as educated adults. As in ancient times, leaders mediate pressures on wild lands. In the past, only religious leaders and, through alliances with them, political leaders could control the forces of the bush to ensure the health of society. African peoples felt that the wild forces residing in the bush required modification and moderation. For example, too much or too little rain could be deadly to crops and animals. Leaders were to regulate the relationship between home and wilderness (Linares 1992: 41; Packard 1981). In the twentieth century, the division between wild lands and domesticated lands, or lands where animals live versus lands where people live, assumes new importance. Wilderness provides people with an herbal pharmacy, lumber, and fuel for growing urban and rural populations. During times of food stress, wild lands and waters act as larders, providing critical relief to cash-strapped and hungry farmers and herders. The ancient divide between the bush and the home has come to mean lucrative opportunities for contemporary African states, as tourists (both African and foreign) trek to behold the wonders of the Serengeti Plains or the Okavango Swamp.

Environment, Attitudes Toward Natural

See Also ▶ Architecture, West African Built Environment ▶ Environment, Attitudes Toward Natural ▶ Nature and Culture ▶ Rainforest, Cultural Ecology of the

Bibliography Linares, Olga. 1992. Power, prayer, and production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nicholson, Sharon. 1979. The methodology of historical climate reconstruction and its application to Africa. Journal of African History 20: 31–49. Packard, Randall M. 1981. Chiefship and cosmology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Parkin, David. 1992. Sacred void. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vansina, Jan. 1990. Paths in the rainforests. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Environment, Attitudes Toward Natural K. Wambari Department of Philosophy, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya

The world is now painfully aware of the environmental crisis consisting of problems such as the pollution of vital natural resources: air, water, overpopulation, deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification. Life is threatened largely because of the uncaring, selfish, and exploitive human treatment of nature, based on the attitude that nature exists for human purposes. This attitude leads to the destruction of nature (Passmore 1980). There is a need for a careful reexamination of humanity’s place in the natural environment and its relation to humankind. The way humans relate to other beings depends largely on their attitude towards nature. The human attitude towards nature is based on a human-centered (anthropocentric) value system, whose criterion of moral considerations restricts moral standing or worthiness to humans. This is

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exemplified by traditional ethics which treat nature as being devoid of any intrinsic value. The alternative value system (nonanthropocentric) is the view that some nonhuman beings, such as animals and plants, have inherent worth deserving respect and, therefore, moral consideration (Taylor 1986; Johnson and Morally Deep 1991). Such beings have a good of their own with intrinsic values that can be bettered or harmed, just as in the case of humans. Realization of that good has its own intrinsic value. This view, unlike the anthropocentric one, points to a parity between human beings and some nonhuman beings in nature. It also points to the need for a transformation of human attitude, from that of exploiters to that of cooperators with the rest of nature, so as to enable nature as a whole to sustain its integrity, stability, and proper function. Human beings, being rational and moral animals, have a responsibility to be concerned about the well-being of others than themselves in nature because such beings are integral members of the earth’s community. This position is grounded in the belief that humans are but one species population among many others on earth, who are equally threatened by the environmental challenges that threaten other species. As natural beings, humans occupy a no more privileged or superior place on earth than other living organisms. They must obey the same laws of genetics, natural selection, and adaptation. If humans were to disappear from the face of the earth, the community of life would most probably continue; and judging from present human conduct, it could possibly be even better. Both the story of creation in Genesis and the theory of evolution support the position that humans were late arrivals on the earth. The need for harmonious coexistence of the members of this earthly community of beings – each of which has its unique part to play – demands equal regard for the good of all. Early African ancestors knew that human wellbeing depended on how they regarded nature. They did not manipulate nature at will but sought to adapt within it. Environmental issues were of basic concern for them. That concern has been eroded by the introduction of a monetary economy and alien values, whose influence has altered drastically African land concepts and attitudes

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toward natural resources. Sustenance agriculture has been replaced with extensive, exploitative farming of cash crops and commercial animals for foreign exchange and profit. This has caused considerable degenerative moral and environmental implications. Traditionally in Africa, the means of livelihood, especially on the land, belonged to the whole clan – not to individuals – who could only use the land while conserving it for its future members. The clan consisted of the ancestors, the living, and those yet to be born. The ancestors sanctioned the conduct of the living and had a special concern to see that the land was tended and conserved for posterity (Wiredu 1991). The Masvikiro of Zimbabwe, traditional Shona ecologists, for instance, took seriously the responsibility of protecting holy groves, prohibiting the cutting of certain trees, prosecuting water polluters, and protecting certain game species for conservation purposes in accordance with the dictates of Mwari, the creator god of the ecology (Daneel 1993). Today, African preservation of biodiversity is exemplified by the Malshegu sacred grove, an isolated pocket of forest that contrasts sharply with the surrounding Guinea Savannah in the arid and semi-arid northern region of Ghana. Managed by villagers for close to 300 years, the grove is important because it is a critical ecological habitat for fauna and flora in the region, and it has served as a repository of a concentration of rare species (Dorm-Adzobu et al. 1991). Similarly, the Naimina Enkio forest, an important wildlife sanctuary, is among the last untouched forest areas of Kenya, with sacred sites and ritual areas that have been tended for hundreds of years by Loita Maasai on behalf of all Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania. A move to carve a “nature reserve” out of it for commercial tourist purposes now threatens the integrity of the forest, with its rich but fragile diversity of animal and plant species. Humans must realize that one cannot replace, with impunity, the delicate natural systems with artificial ones, because these natural systems have evolved over a very long period of time. Humankind is but a mere part of the natural world, with component parts that have coexisted in a symbiotic interdependence and benefited from the maintenance of a sensitive balance of interrelations.

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Destabilization of this balance will spell disaster for life that exists today. Nature as a living whole resists disturbance. An attitude of care and concern rather than one of an arrogance towards nature is necessary.

See Also ▶ Architecture, West African Built Environment ▶ Environment ▶ Muteko ▶ Nature and Culture ▶ Rainforest, Cultural Ecology of the

Bibliography Daneel, M.L. 1993. Healing the earth: Traditional and Christian initiatives in southern Africa (part I). Journal for the Study of Religion 6 (1) Pietermaritsburg: University of Natal. Dorm-Adzobu, C., O. Ampadu-Agyei, and P.G. Veit. 1991. Religious beliefs and environmental protection: The Malshegu sacred grove in Northern Ghana. Nairobi: Acts Press. July, 1991. Johnson, Lawrence E., and A. Morally Deep. 1991. World: An essay on moral significance and environmental ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Passmore, John. 1980. Man’s responsibility for nature: Ecological problems and Western traditions. 2nd ed. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Taylor, Paul W. 1986. Respect for nature: A theory of environmental ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1991. Philosophy, humankind and the environment. Nairobi: World conference of Philosophy.

Episteme Nicholas Mainey Brown Department of English, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

In contemporary usage, the word episteme refers to the more or less total structure of knowledge for a given culture at a given moment in its history.

Episteme

Episteme is a revival of the Greek episteme, knowledge (from epistanai, to understand or know); this word is the root of epistemology, traditionally the search for the origins of truth, or more recently the study of how one knows what one knows. The current use of episteme derives from the practice of the poststructuralist epistemology practiced by Michel Foucault in early works such as The Order of Things, The Birth of the Clinic, and Madness and Civilization. In The Order of Things, Foucault turns structuralism back on itself, proposing to study the positive structures of Western discourse on the human being: in other words, the origins of what is thinkable within the “human sciences,” anthropology foremost among them. The concept of episteme has strong relativist implications, for the question of truth is entirely bracketed: the object of study is a culture’s knowledge, whether or not that knowledge be true. It is a powerful corrective to anthropological presuppositions when Foucault speculates what “importance ethnology could possess if, instead of defining itself in the first place. . .as the study of societies without history [thereby always instituting an a priori difference between cultures with true history and cultures with mythical narrative] it were to deliberately seek its object in the area of the unconscious processes that characterize the system of a given culture.” This set of “unconscious processes” that systematically produces knowledge (the episteme) can be analyzed without recourse to an a priori judgment of the truth of the knowledge produced by the episteme. The concept of episteme has come under fire for both its totalizing tendencies and the difficulties involved in deciding whether the episteme is a system of rules acting on subjects or an empirical collection of discursive regularities observed in a population. Foucault tried without success to answer these questions in The Archaeology of Knowledge, and yet the concept of episteme has proven fruitful not only for anthropology, but also, perhaps more importantly, for critical analyses of discourses on Africa. The concept of episteme has wide application, but it has been discussed most fruitfully by Mudimbe, who, in The Invention of Africa, analyzes discourse on Africa in the light of

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the structures that Foucault uncovers in his archaeology of anthropological knowledge. Mudimbe discovers that knowledge of Africa, whether apparently “Western” or apparently “African,” tends to conform to a set of discursive regularities whose peculiarity to a Western epistemological formation is more apparent than is the legitimacy of its claim to truth.

See Also ▶ Colonial Space ▶ Essentialism ▶ Subject

Epistemology, Religious Louis Brenner School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, UK

Religious epistemologies are reflected in the ways in which religious knowledge is conceptualized, understood, circulated, and applied by religious practitioners. All religious epistemologies distinguish among three different forms of religious knowledge based on their origin. • Divine religious knowledge originates with spiritual entities and is conveyed to humankind by religious intermediaries such as prophets or mediums. • Specialist religious knowledge is of human origin and consists of the interpretations, commentaries, and applications of divine knowledge that religious specialists produce and employ. • Popular religious knowledge consists of the ways in which nonspecialist religious practitioners understand, think, and speak about the substantive content of the religious traditions in which they participate.

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The content and dissemination of divine, specialist, and popular religious knowledge can vary within a single tradition as well as among different religious traditions. For example, divine knowledge constitutes the essential core of all religious traditions and, depending on the tradition, can be revealed by various spiritual entities including God, Allah, endogenous deities, spirits, and ancestors. For Christians and Muslims, respectively, the teachings of Jesus and the words of the Qur’an that were transmitted from Allah to Muhammad by the angel Jibril constitute fundamental bodies of divine knowledge. But for some Muslims and Christians, divine truths can also be revealed by revered deceased human beings such as the Prophet Muhammad and various Christian and Muslim saints who can appear and speak to living persons in dreams or visions. In most instances, spiritual entities select the prophets or mediums through whom they wish to transmit their message, but there are also religious practices intended to enable religious practitioners to establish direct personal communication with spiritual entities. For example, Muslims accept that Muhammad was the last of the prophets through whom Allah would transmit His message to humankind, but Sufis engage in devotional practices that prepare them to receive knowledge of divine truths through direct personal experience. Sufism is an initiatory practice through which one is guided in a religious quest to move closer to the Prophet and ultimately to Allah in the hope of receiving knowledge of divine reality. Initiatory practices exist in many endogenous religious traditions in the form of rituals of personal transformation that enable an individual to develop a personal relationship with one or more spiritual entities from whom they might receive divine knowledge and guidance. For example, ngoma is the generic designation of a wide variety of initiatory associations of religious healers and diviners in central and southern Africa into which an individual can be initiated when an illness or other affliction is diagnosed as resulting from the physical proximity of a spiritual entity, usually an ancestor, who wishes to develop a personal relationship with that individual. The ngoma initiatory ritual cycle is said to transform a sufferer into

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a healer, first by treating the symptoms of the affliction and then by empowering the initiate to sustain a relationship with the ancestor or entity who will subsequently guide him or her in healing and divining for the benefit of others. Initiatory healing associations transform individuals into religious specialists who can communicate directly with spiritual entities and who, during their initiation and subsequent training, also acquire the specialist knowledge necessary to perform the many rituals associated with healing and divining, a secret knowledge that is not shared with the noninitiated. The secrecy of specialist religious knowledge is common in endogenous religions traditions, a restriction that is often justified because of the dangers that can purportedly ensue if this knowledge is misused, but which also enhances the authority of specialists. Of course, the status of religious specialists is by definition based upon their possession and understanding of knowledge not acquired by nonspecialists, among whom the dissemination of specialist knowledge is limited, not necessarily because the knowledge is secret, but because they have not received specialist training. Central to all religious traditions are institutions that formally transmit religious knowledge, although their methods vary. In Christian and Muslim traditions, formal instruction begins with the religious schooling of young children, which in the past in Africa was accompanied by learning to read and write. Being Christian or Muslim did not depend on being literate, but literacy was virtually indispensable for becoming a Christian or Muslim religious specialist, even if some claimed to receive religious knowledge directly from spiritual entities in dreams and visions, as mentioned above. Aspiring to become a Christian or Muslim religious specialist was a matter of personal choice, and recognition as such usually depended on one’s mastery of written religious texts. In endogenous traditions, formal religious instruction was more ritualized and often took place during rites of passage such as male circumcision or preparation for marriage when groups or individuals were isolated from their normal

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activities for varying periods of time. Nor was becoming an endogenous religious specialist usually a matter of choice. Most specialists inherited their religious obligations, training for which might begin in early childhood. Some children were promised to the service of a spiritual entity who had intervened favorably in the lives of their parents. Individuals were also “called” into the service of an entity, as exemplified by healing associations such as ngoma. And as mentioned, much endogenous specialist knowledge was secret, often acquired during initiatory rituals. These broad differences reflect in part how the dissemination of knowledge is affected by the constraints of oral versus literate cultures, but they also reveal very different concepts about the essential nature of religious knowledge and the extent to which it should be shared with the broader religious community. These differences can be illustrated by imagining a continuum of teaching methods with two ideal types at either extreme: apprenticeship and initiation.

Apprenticeship: Initiation In its purest form, apprenticeship can be described as the cognitive transmission of knowledge from teacher to student; it is an intellectual process based upon the premise that knowledge is equally available to all and that the efficacy of a religious specialist is based upon the extent and depth of his or her religious knowledge. Initiation in its most extreme form consists of highly ritualized, sometimes intense, personal experiences and is based upon the premise that the personal transformation of an individual is prerequisite to receiving religious knowledge. Initiatory knowledge is not cumulative but immediate and empowering, enabling a religious specialist to see or know what others are unable to see or know. The formal transmission of religious knowledge rarely falls at the extremes of the apprenticeship-initiation continuum but is almost always some combination of the two. Endogenous religious specialists acquire much of their knowledge in the context of initiatory ritual cycles, but they also receive direct instruction from their

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mentors. Christian and Muslim schooling may not be ritualized, but progress is ritually marked by such events as Christian confirmation and ordination or the ceremonies that commemorate memorization of the Qur’an. Of course, religious knowledge is also acquired informally from a variety of sources throughout one’s life. Children begin to absorb religious knowledge by observing and participating in religious activities within their families and from the religious myths and stories recounted to them. Religious knowledge is also gleaned from the content of preaching, songs and prayers recited during religious services and rituals, and even from causal conversations on religious topics. Popular religious knowledge, that of ordinary religious practitioners, therefore varies according to how individuals acquire and understand it. One factor for Christians and Muslims is the level of religious schooling they receive. For example, most Muslims know enough Arabic to recite their prayers, but not all are able to read the Qur’an or other foundational Muslim texts in the original Arabic. Until relatively recently the Roman Catholic liturgy was recited in Latin, which few Catholics could understand. Nor do all children have access to religious schooling or the opportunity to pursue religious studies to more advanced levels, in addition to which even basic religious schooling in the past was offered more often to boys than girls. Gender also determines who receives what religious knowledge in endogenous traditions where rites of passage are performed separately for males and females and where the religious obligations of men and women differ. Although most religious practitioners tend to participate in the religious tradition into which they are born, many also live in communities where they are exposed to the ideas and practices of more than one tradition, and possibly of different interpretations of the tradition in which they participate. Some practitioners may decide to change their religious adherence, for example, by converting to Christianity or Islam, or by deciding to attend the church of a different Christian denomination or a different mosque because

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of the doctrinal orientation of its imam. Such decisions are based ultimately on one’s personal religious knowledge, but they are also subject to many other influences, not least, an individual’s valuation of the religious specialists with whom they interact. Relationships between religious specialists and practitioners constitute the dynamic core of religious thought and practice. They can assure the continuity and sense of community within a religious tradition, but they can also be the source of the religious pluralism that is an inherent feature of religious history. Religious specialists compete with one another to establish their personal authority, which is largely dependent upon the extent to which their mastery of religious knowledge is accepted or rejected by practitioners. When this competition focuses on differences of opinion about fundamental religious truths, it can encourage individuals to convert from one tradition to another, but it can also erupt into tragic religious conflict. When it focuses on differences of doctrinal interpretation, it can create profound tensions within a single tradition. These kinds of differences generate religious change and have produced the numerous religious movements and traditions that have appeared through the centuries. Pluralism also permeates the field of religious healing, which is one of the more salient themes in the religious history of Africa. The etiology of many illnesses and misfortunes, both individual and communal, was attributed to the intervention of spiritual entities or forces for which the only recourse was religious healing. Healing was therefore offered by specialists from every religious tradition whose methods of diagnosis and healing varied according their knowledge and training. In socially complex communities, healing might be available from Muslim, Christian, and endogenous healers, offered both in the congregational settings of churches or healing associations and privately by individual healers. But the more extensive the range of choice, the greater the potential for provoking tensions between perceptions of therapeutic efficacy and adherence to a particular religious tradition. Those suffering an affliction might be more concerned with efficacy of treatment rather than religious tenets, but they

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were rarely able to make healing decisions independently of the influence of family and close associates whose opinions and convictions could vary. Therefore, in addition to the anxiety that can be induced by an illness or misfortune, the healing process could be accompanied by considerable uncertainty. For example, in endogenous traditions, formal diagnosis was often conducted by diviners in order to determine the cause of an affliction or misfortune, which might be interpreted as a “call” from a beneficent entity to enter his or her service, as in ngoma and similar healing associations. But patients and their families did not always agree to submit to the recommended healing and initiatory rituals, which could be both lengthy and expensive. A different specialist, however, might diagnose the same symptoms as being caused by maleficent entities, such as Satan, various jinn, and other spirits whose intentions are harmful and destructive. Methods exist in all religious traditions to identify maleficent entities and to combat their harmful intentions by means of various practices, including exorcism. But benevolent entities can also bring misfortune. God and Allah can punish the faithful for impiety or immorality, as can ancestors or other entities for failure to maintain proper relationships with them by performing prescribed rituals and sacrifices. Personal afflictions could also be diagnosed as resulting from the conscious or unconscious actions of other human beings, usually referred to in English as sorcery or witchcraft. This possibility can add further uncertainty as well as ambiguity to the healing process, because in many parts of Africa the religious specialists who combat the nefarious effects of witchcraft are thought to possess the very powers that witches themselves employ, as demonstrated, respectively, by the BaKongo and Yoruba concepts of kindoki and ajé. Similar ambiguities are associated with material forms of religious healing. For example, some Muslim healers manipulate Qur’anic words, phrases, or other sacred texts to produce amulets or talismans, and some endogenous healers claim to be able to create specially sanctified objects

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(or fetishes) by combining plant, animal, and mineral ingredients in ways that activate their innate healing or protective powers. But because this same knowledge could be used to curse or harm as well as to heal and protect, some religious specialists were viewed with ambivalence and often feared. This brief overview illustrates the complexity of religious epistemologies. How best to achieve personal wellbeing or salvation is a central theme of all religious discourse, but it also consists of conflicting claims about what is true or false. What some religious practitioners accept as divine knowledge may be condemned by others as false. Practitioners deploy divine, specialist, and popular religious knowledges situationally, sometimes in order to bring together and sustain a coherent religious community, sometimes to emphasize difference or to express dissent. Religious discourse can therefore offer succor and certainty to some while simultaneously questioning or condemning the religious thought and practice of others, thus creating conflict and division.

See Also ▶ Divination and Diviners ▶ Divination, Muslim ▶ Fetish ▶ Knowledge and Secrecy ▶ New Age and Esoteric Religion ▶ Ngoma ▶ Secrecy as a Way of Seeing, Knowing, and Acting ▶ Witchcraft/Sorcery

Bibliography Anderson, David M., and Douglas H. Johnson, eds. 1995. Revealing prophets. Prophecy in Eastern African history. London: James Currey. Hallen, Barry, and J. Olubi Sodipo. 1986. Knowledge, belief, and witchcraft. Analytic experiments in African philosophy. London: Ethnographica. Hamès, Constant, ed. 2007. Coran et talismans. Textes et pratiques magiques en mileu musulman. Paris: Éditions Karthala.

Essence Janzen, J.M. 1992. Ngoma. Discourses of healing in central and southern Africa. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lambek, Michael. 1990. The practice of Islamic experts in a village on Mayotte. Journal of Religion in Africa 20: 20–40. MacGaffey, Wyatt. 2000. Kongo political culture. The conceptual challenge of the particular. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Equiano, Olaudah Anthony Mangeon Department of French and Comparative Literatures, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France Department of French and Comparative Literatures, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

Olaudah Equiano was born the son of an Igbo chief (Nigeria) and was captured at the age of ten to be sold as a slave in the West Indies. He first served an Englishman who gave him the name of Gustavus Vassa (former Swedish hero) and worked as a seaman on British ships during the Seven Years War in Canada. Although he had been baptized and educated, he was sold to an American in 1763, who used him for his business in the transatlantic slave trade. Three years later, Equiano managed to buy his liberty back and then assisted a surgeon in his travels to the Artic and South America. On his return to England in 1777, Equiano involved himself in the abolitionist movement and notably revealed the massacre, for insurance, money of 130 African slaves on the ship Zong. His writings, particularly his personal account of his enslavement and also the horrors committed against the slaves that he had witnessed as a seaman, were very influential in England. It finally led to the Abolition of the Slave trade in 1807, and the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British empire in 1833. By the time of his death in 1797, several editions of his autobiography, The life of Olaudah Equiano, had already been published and is considered as the first African

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autobiography and the first slave narrative, which later initiated a literary tradition among the African-Americans in the United States.

Bibliography Acholonu, Catherine Obianju. 1989. The Igbo roots of Olaudah Equiano. Owerri (Nigeria): AFA Publications. Andrews, William L. 1986. To tell a free story: The first century of Afro-American autobiography, 1760–1865. Urbana: University Press of Illinois. Costanza, Angelo. 1987. Surprizing narrative: Olaudah equiano and the beginnings of black Autobiography. New York/London: Greenwood Press. Equiano, Olaudah. 1988. The life of Olaudah Equiano, edited and introduced by Paul Edwards. New York: Longman Publishers, . Walwin, James. 1998. An African’s life. London: Cassel.

Essence Clarence Sholé Johnson Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, USA

To give the essence of an entity is to specify the peculiar kind of attributes that characterize the entity and in virtue of which the entity is what it is: Essence, in other words, is the summation of the defining attributes of an entity. For example, an object, X, is a chair and not a bed because of certain characteristics that it has and that a bed lacks. In the philosophical literature, the broadest sense of classifying objects into kinds, via a consideration of their essences, is known as the problem of universals (Staniland 1972). There are two distinct kinds of essences that characterize two different kinds of entities in African philosophical and religious systems: spiritual and material. Spiritual essence characterizes spiritual entities. The entities include the Supreme Being, traditional divinities, and the souls of departed ancestors. Material essence characterizes all spatiotemporal objects, including the human

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body. These categories of essences are intimately connected. Spiritual entities have the following attributes: they are incorporeal and transcendental, and they are believed to control human destinies, sometimes through direct involvement. To say that spiritual entities are incorporeal is to say that they do not exist in space and that they transcend time. Their essence and their existence is, therefore, transcendental. Although transcendental, spiritual entities are believed to control human destinies. This is the second characteristic of those entities. For example, in the Yoruba cosmological system, Olórun Olódùmaré (the Supreme Being) is also called Alaye (“Owner of Life”), and the predicate Alagbara (“All-powerful”) is ascribed to him. Even the name Olódùmaré means “Almighty.” In the dialect of the Akan people of Ghana, Nyame is the name of the supreme deity. Amosu and Brekyirihunu (respectively, “Giver of rain” and “All-Seeing”) are other Akan praise-names for the Supreme Being. The Bantu-speaking people of Congo (DRC) refer to the Supreme Being variously as Anjombe (“All-powerful”), Bilikonda (“The Everlasting One”), Ebangala (“The Beginner”), and Edandala (“The Unexplainable”). All of these names are significant because they encapsulate what are believed to be unique attributes of the deity (Smith 1950). As Edwin W. Smith wrote: “In Africa, names are not mere labels, but often express qualities for which the owners are conspicuous.” The deity is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, mysterious, and eternal. Noting this, human beings know that they owe their existence, sustenance, and fortunes to the deity. However, the Supreme deity is not the only entity that is incorporeal, transcendent, and involved in human affairs. There are other, “lesser,” spiritual entities that have these characteristics. The term “lesser” reflects only the place of these entities in the hierarchy of divinities that are integral to traditional African systems. At the apex of the hierarchy is the Supreme deity, followed by the subordinate deities. For example, in the Yoruba system, there is Shango, the god of thunder, and Ogun, the god of iron and war and the patron saint of hunters and blacksmiths. The Akan of Ghana have Abosom; and, among the peoples of Ruanda and Urundi in Central Africa, there is Ryangombe.

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The degree to which these spiritual entities are believed to be involved in human affairs should be stressed. Among the Yoruba, victory in war is attributed to Ogun. The occurrence of thunder, together with rain and lightning, is attributed to Shango. Accordingly, these deities are revered and honored with libations and sacrifices. Finally, there are the ancestral spirits. These have the aforementioned two defining characteristics of the other spiritual entities but they are not divinities. Ancestral spirits are intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds. Given their role as intermediaries between the two worlds, ancestral spirits are not only acknowledged and revered, but they also are often petitioned by humans to intercede with the divinities on the humans’ behalf. However, ancestral spirits are not worshipped because they are not divinities. Thus, the notion that Africans engage in ancestor worship derives from a profound failure to understand the place and role of ancestral spirits in African cosmologies. In African cosmological systems, material objects are considered to be “alive” in the sense that they are animated and intrinsically characterized by certain force vitale – that is, essential energy or power. It is in virtue of this intrinsic property that material objects are believed to perform their specific functions (Smith 1950; Gyekye 1987). For instance, herbs heal because of certain forces or powers that they possess. These essential forces vary with the type of function or purpose of each natural object, and it is these animating forces or powers that comprise the essences of material objects. Implicit in the belief systems of traditional Africans, then, is a certain teleology or purposefulness in nature. All objects have a certain purpose or function, and this purpose is realized through appropriate agents that intrinsically characterize the objects. In the Akan system, for instance, these agents are referred to as “sunsum” or spirits. Speaking about the Akan metaphysical system, Kwame Gyekye says that “all created things, that is, natural objects, have or contain sunsum.” And, Gyekye adds, “In saying that natural objects contain sunsum or power, Akan thinkers mean to attribute to them an intrinsic property, namely, the property of activity or an activating principle” (1987). Gyekye’s

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observation about the Akan applies, in its essentials, to most traditional African systems. Concerning their origin and creation, the essential forces or powers in material objects derive from the Supreme Being. At times, the administering of these causally efficacious powers is done by “lesser” beings or spirits who are believed to reside in the objects (Gyeke 1987). To illustrate, the healing properties in herbs are certain inherent properties in the herbs, but these properties are activated by spirits that inhabit the plants or trees. Thus, spirits are mediators; but, no less important, they are causal agents in the overall scheme of things. It is in this way that material and spiritual essences are intimately connected. The implication of saying that material objects are “alive” is that, intrinsically, matter is active. This conception of matter is fundamentally different from that present in the accounts of some modern Western philosophers, especially those of the “enlightenment” period, notably René Descartes (1596–1650) and John Locke (1632–1704), for whom matter is, as Locke puts it, “dead (and) inactive” (Nidditch 1975). To be sure, Locke attributes to matter certain “active” powers; however, he argued that God is the efficient cause of the activation of these powers. In his view, matter is inherently inactive, and so is incapable of motion. This said, it needs to be pointed out, though, that the African conception of natural objects is not fundamentally different from that of some earlier Western philosophers such as Thales (c. 580 B.C.) and Aristotle (384–322 B.C.). Thales is reputed to have said that the world is full of gods, and Aristotle, in the De Anima, classified natural objects in terms of the kind of soul (or motif force) that he understood them to possess. Interestingly, the African ascription of activity to natural objects is pejoratively referred to as dynamism or animism (Smith 1950). Perhaps the term “essentialism,” in its nontraditional usage, better captures the phenomenon in question rather than “dynamism” or “animism.” To sum up: Material objects are essentially active; they are characterized by certain vital forces or energies, and these vital forces or energies are activated by spirits. There is thus a duality of essences in African cosmological systems that

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reflects a duality of entities. However, spiritual essences, and hence spiritual entities, are ontologically prior to material essences.

See Also ▶ Animism ▶ Being ▶ Essentialism ▶ Spirit ▶ Time

Bibliography Busia, Kofi A. 1954. The Ashanti of the gold coast. In African worlds, ed. Daryll Forde. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Danquah, J.B. 1944. The Akan doctrine of god. London: Lutterworth Press. Gyekye, Kwame. 1987. An essay on African philosophical thought. Vol. 75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hountondji, Paulin J. 1983. African philosophy: Myth and reality. Trans. Henri Evans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. King, Noel Q. African Cosmos. 1986. Belmont. CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co. Masolo, D.A. 1992. Narratives and moral perspectives: Conversations with Luo sages. SAPINA Newsletter IV (July–December): 1–9. Mbiti, John S. 1970. African religions and philosophy. New York: Doubleday. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The invention of Africa. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Nidditch, Peter H., ed. 1975. Essay concerning human understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parrinder, E.G. 1969. Religion in Africa. Harmindsworth: Penguin. Rattray, R.S. 1916. Ashanti proverbs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Serequeberhan, Tsenay. 1991. African philosophy: The essential readings. New York: Paragon House. Shaw, Thurston. 1978. Nigeria: Its archaeology and early history. London: Thames and Hudson. Smith, Edwin W., ed. 1950. African ideas of god: A symposium. Vol. 4, 17–21. London: Edinburgh House Press. Staniland, Hilary. 1972. Universals. New York: Anchor Books. Tempels, Placide. 1959. Bantu philosophy. Paris: Presénce Africaine. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yai, Olabiyi. 1992. From Vodun to Mawu: Monotheism and history in the Fon cultural area. SAPINA Newsletter IV (July–December): 10–29.

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Essentialism Nicholas Mainey Brown Department of English, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Program in Literature, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Broadly construed, essentialism refers to any position that claims that certain properties belong to objects essentially; that a property may be essential to what an object is. Obviously, these formulations beg the question of essence, a concept whose attractions and problems populate the history of Western philosophy, from Plato to Husserl. Let us simply say, for the time being, that property P may be said to be essential to object x if and only if it is inconceivable that x exist without the property P. For example, utility might be an essential property of a tool, if it is inconceivable that a tool not have the property of utility. We are, however, approaching a tautology, since a tool is defined in the first place as something useful. Rather than saying that utility is the essence of a tool, we might simply have said that we label useful things “tools” and thus should not be surprised that the essence of a tool appeared to be its utility. As Nietzsche remarked, “If somebody hides a thing behind a bush, seeks it again and finds it in the selfsame place, then there is not much to boast of, respecting this seeking and finding.” Of course, there are other, more sophisticated ways of arriving at essence, at particular modes of being (Latin essentia is the participle of esse, to be; hence “being”). Phenomenology and existentialism are ways of deriving modes peculiar to human being, while at the same time serving as critiques of vulgar essentialism. In the context of discourses on Africa and the Black Diaspora, however, essentialism takes on a much more specific meaning: namely, the claim that certain traits belong essentially to classes of human beings – in this case races, but also potentially in reference to people of a particular sex, nationality, or

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sexual preference. Both Apartheid and some versions of Negritude, for example, are based on essentialist notions of race, though from opposite ends of the political spectrum. These essential traits may, of course, be said to define only nominal essences; that is, apparent essences formed by linguistic and structural categorization and socialization, but often a real essence is also implied. A distinction can also be drawn between cultural essentialism, which traces essences to modes of socialization, and biological essentialism. Since essentialist has become a term of opprobrium, and since the idea of racial essence is generally understood to have been discredited, very few thinkers will admit to being essentialist. Nonetheless, many contemporary philosophical and anthropological practices plainly have essentialist implications. There is, further, the idea of strategic essentialism, which admits that while essentialism may be philosophically untenable, the concept of racial or other essences can be deliberately applied in concrete situations to further political goals.

See Also ▶ Apartheid and Religion ▶ Being ▶ Césaire, Aimé Fernand (1913–2008) ▶ Episteme ▶ Essence ▶ Senghor, Léopold Sédar

Eternity Allen F. Roberts Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

The Western concept of eternity is based upon a linear sense of time that may not be shared by all

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Africans. In some African societies, time is circular or spiral, and for many people, “eternity” is not a “forever” enjoyed by the dead in strict separation from the living. Rather, ancestral spirits return to guide and protect their loved ones, and may be reincarnated in grandchildren named after them. When there is an afterlife, it may be in a place accessible to humans, often through the services of a shamanistic spirit medium. Sara peoples of southern Chad believe the dead reside in an inverted world beneath rivers and lakes. For Tabwa of southeastern Zaire, ancestors reside in a deep cavern once visited as a Delphic oracle, where their voices could be heard and cases of serious litigation settled. But, even if such residence is for eternity, it is not distant to the living. Instead, the ancestors are deemed present in everyday affairs, although the names of all but the most famous may be forgotten over the generations. “Generic” ancestors are often portrayed in statuary and, as memory of particular persons fades, the distinction between ancestors and supreme divinity becomes increasingly blurred.

See Also ▶ Afterlife ▶ Cyclic Rites, Calendar Ceremonies ▶ Time ▶ Translating Biblical Categories into African Languages

Bibliography Onyewuenyi, Innocent. 1982. A philosophical reappraisal of African belief in reincarnation. Présence Africaine 123 (3): 63–78. Roberts, Allen. 1988. Through the bamboo thicket: The social process of Tabwa ritual performance. TDR: The Drama Review 32 (2): 123–138.

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Ethiopia, Christianity and Philosophy in Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Christianity and Monasticism One usually distinguishes three historical elements from which Ethiopia was born: qäddas, the sanctifying and blessing element devoted to divine service; haras, the element formed by farmers, workers, tradesmen, and cattle breeders; and nägas, the leading element, that protects, judges, and gives orders. Everyone in traditional Ethiopia is firmly convinced that the first of these elements is the basis for the other two. From its earliest days, the Ethiopian Church has been associated with the Egyptian Church of Alexandria. This relationship dates from the consecration of Frumentius, the founder of Christianity in Ethiopia, by the Patriarch of Alexandria in the fourth century, St Athanasius. It has been perpetuated up to 1948, when a concordat was signed with the Alexandrian Church permitting a native Ethiopian to become the consecrated head of the Ethiopian Church. Basically, then, Ethiopian Christianity is the Coptic Christianity of Egypt which developed on the high plateaus of Ethiopia. Certain Jewish elements were introduced concurrently with Christianity, so that the Semitic contribution in Ethiopia is made up of two components: one is South Arabian or ge’ez and the other is Judaic. The latter is believed to have developed through the intermediary of Arabia, where numerous Jewish communities had been established from ancient times. Thus, the particular characteristics of the Ethiopian Church are due, in part, to the deep imprint

Claude Sumner: deceased.

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of Judaic traditions, as well as to a number of African ones, but, for the most part, to the isolation in which it developed. The Ethiopians were never in close touch with the main body of the Church; and, only three centuries after their evangelization due to Moslem invasions, they were almost completely cut off from it.

Christianity and Philosophy The link between Christianity and “Philosophy” evolves from the Christian symbolism of The Physiologue (middle or end of the fifth century AD), to the anthropocentrism (considered in its theological orientation) of The Book of the Philosophers (completed 1510–1522), to the theistic pantheism of the first series of maxims in Skendes (first quarter of the sixteenth century), and to the non–Christian (although deeply mystical) radicalism of Zera Yacob (who wrote his Treatise in 1667) and of his disciple, Walda Heywat (who probably wrote his Treatise at the beginning of the eighteenth century). Of the five written works of “Ethiopian Philosophical Literature,” The Book of the Philosophers is the one that penetrates more deeply into Ethiopian Christianity and monasticism. The author who translated and adapted the Ethiopic Book of the Philosophers from Arabic, Abba Mikael, was, himself, an Egyptian priest who came to Ethiopia with his father when he was young. The ascetic accents of the work, the evident preference and partiality for monks, and the indirect information about the compiler of this book all indicate that he was living in a monastic atmosphere. The compiler of this book said: My child, do not hasten to stretch out your hand for the dish until the one who is older than you in dignity and age has stretched out his hand. Do not cast glances on him with greed and haste. Do not eat if he has not eaten before you. Do not gaze on those who are eating together with you. Do not speak much with him nor with those that are waiting on him. Accustom yourself to gratitude. Eat with moderation. Overeating brings illness and laziness. Do not speak about what you do not understand, lest you be asked questions about it. Train your tongue to good speech and service to all.

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One can cast a glance into the quiet refectory where the monks silently take their simple meal. Indeed, the first part of this paragraph echoes the Ethiopian rule of the monks of Pachomius: While the monks are eating, they are to cover their heads with their hoods so that one brother does not see the other while he is eating. They shall not speak while they eat. Their eyes shall not stray outside or anywhere else, but rest on the table and on the plate. Nobody shall look while the brethren are eating, and nobody shall stretch his hand to the table before the one who is older than he has helped himself.

The order of Pachomius was established in Egypt in 323. It appeared in Ethiopia at the end of the fifth century or at the beginning of the sixth. Abba Aregawi, who, according to some local traditions, is said to have received the religious habit from the hands of Pachomius, and his eight companions built their first monastery in Tigray. They are known as the “Nine Saints,” who most likely came from Syria. Through several passages of The Book of the Philosophers, it is possible to characterize a monastic Weltanschauung. The key words in these passages are also the key words of a monastic view of the world; such words include the “world,” man, happiness, the “way,” constant readiness, cleanliness in eating, the dormitory, seclusion, security, human existence as a journey, freedom, vainglory, the law, and prayer. A wise man said: “I met one of the Palestine monks. I called him. He turned towards me”. I said to him, “How do you consider the world?” He replied, “In this way that it brings death to the souls and takes away the flesh and makes the days pass.” I said to him, “How then do you consider man?” He answered, “He who owns, owns hardship; he who does not is tempted.” Again I said to him, “Is there anything like happiness?” He replied, “If you are on the way.” “And what is this going on the way?” He said, “Quietude.” “What can guide me on this way?” He said, “Constant readiness.” And I told him, “Teach me!” He answered, “Eat with cleanliness and go to sleep with all the others.” And I spoke to him, “Tell me more!” He said, “Seclude yourself and thus you will be self-governing.” I told him, “What do I gain by loneliness?”

Ethiopia, Christianity and Philosophy in He anwered, “Seclusion from people’s chattering and escape from their evil.” And I told him, “How do you look upon your own existence?” He said, “What is the existence of one who wanders far away without any food and who spends the night in the graveyard and who stands before the true and just judge?” I said to him, “When does the world leave the heart and wisdom dwell in the chest?” He answered, “Lo! You asked me a difficult thing.” I repeated my question. He said to me, “From the moment I saw you, I freed you from slavery. For if a heart is clean, it extends to the sky.” I told him, “What leads one into temptation?” “In most cases,” he answered, “vainglory and over-confidence. I fear I may succumb to them.” I said, “Why are you dressed in black?” He replied, “A bride whose bridegroom is dead shows her sorrow and dresses in black.” I said to him, “What is it that causes orders to be broken?” He answered, “Blindess, neglect of law, foul passion. We say: God is merciful. But when the divine majesty commands, we do not act the same way as when the king commands and we obey him.” I said to him, “Teach me more!” He said, “Pray thus! Say: O Lord! make me hold fast to what you have created me for; do not make me do what is beyond my strength, keep me away from sin; do not reject my request; do not keep me away from your mercy.” I said to him, “Add some further advice.” He said, “Behold! I gathered for you counsels on all actions. Keep my advice!”

The Book of the Philosophers also introduces the Monastery Library: A wise man came to the dwelling of another wise man because he was a hermit, and said to him, “O wise hermit, how do you endure solitary life?” And the latter said, “I am not alone, but live with many people who are wise and well–advised. With whom of this I wish to speak, I speak, and he speaks to me”. He stretched out his hand and fetched down from his cupboard many books while he said, “Here Galen is alive and Hippocrates gives advice and Socrates teaches; Plato speaks and Aristotle demonstrates; Akrantinos talks in similes and Hermes replies; Porphyry admonishes; Gregory discourses; David gives instruction; Paul preaches and the Gospel proclaims joyful tidings. Of all these he whom I want speaks with me and I speak with him and I do not entertain the least doubt.”

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introduction of ancient Greek philosophy, first through the Arabic and then through the Latin language, likewise the introduction of Christianity into Ethiopia has also meant the introduction of ancient Greek philosophy, first through Byzantine Greek and then through Christian Arabic influence. The Book of the Philosophers is full of Greek names in their English garb: Aristotle, Democritus, Diogenes, Empedocles [Akrantinos], Galen, Heraclius, Hermes, Hippocrates, Plato, Porphyry, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Sextus, Simonides, Socrates, Themistius, and Fathers of the Church like Basil and Gregory. There has been, historically, mishandling of these names from one collection of sayings to another, so that there is a continual substitution of certain persons for others. Moreover, the great names are often used only as a pretext for the most common practical lore. However, Greek influences are everywhere evident in The Book of the Philosophers: Pre–Socratic, Socratic, Aristotelian, but especially Platonic and Neo–Platonic. The pendulum of history has moved in both directions. Ancient Greek thought owes its distant origin, to a great extent, to Africa, to Pharanoic Egypt. In its turn, Greek philosophy, through Christianity, has penetrated Ethiopia and still permeates, to a great extent, its century-old culture. Africa, therefore, is not only the roots from which the tree of philosophy has grown in Greece and the West, but the branches that have expanded elsewhere have returned, as it were, to their roots, and the offshoot is “Ethiopian Philosophical Literature.”

Bibliography Dillmann, August. 1950. Christomathia Aethiopica (2nd edition with additions and corrections by Enno Littmann). Berlin: Akademie–Verlag. Jones, A.H.M., and Elizabeth Monroe. 1955. A history of Ethiopia. Oxford: Clarendon press. Luther, Ernest W. 1958. Ethiopia today. London: Oxford University Press. Sumner, Claude. 1985. Classical Ethiopian philosophy. Addis Ababa: Sponsored by Alliance Ethio–Française d’Addis–Abéba and printed by Commercial Printing Press. ———. 1988. The Ethiopian philosophy of greek origin. In Collectanea Aethiopica herausgegeben von Siegbert Uhlig und Bairu Tafla (Aethiopistische Forschungen, Band 26, pp. 145–171). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH.

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Ethiopian Case: Folktale and Wisdom Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Isidore Okpewho, in his article on “Rethinking Myth,” has already assessed the tidal fluidity of one and the same story from controllable fact and its historic and mythic legend, through the etiological tale and fable to the license of fiction, and from history and historical time to mythical time and fancy. The same conclusion can be drawn from a collection of songs as a whole. Based on a study of the Oromo people, who speak a Cushitic language and constitute one of the most numerous ethnic groups within the boundaries of present day Ethiopia, one may corroborate the findings of the Nigerian scholar. A collection of Oromo folktales reveals the same movement, through their frequent occurrences, that a basic story reveals by its actual tendency toward one or the other end of this continuum.

Historic Legend The “Historic Legend” is a combination of fact and fiction. On the one hand, the narrator has a rigid faith in the facts of his account and, on the other hand, uses his liberties as a creative genius. There are very few Oromo historic legends. One of them, “The Moving Plain,” an equivalent of Shakespeare's “walking forest” in Macbeth, despite the historical and factual data of the story vis-à-vis time, place, and characters, is presented as a “legend” by Azais and Chambard, who

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collected it in the Harar region in 1931 and reproduced it in the conditional tense.

Mythic Legend In the mythic legend, the interest is concentrated on heroic qualities. It deals with great figures which belong to a remote epic age, when men were cast in a different mold than today. Wonders are possible and the supernatural is much more prominent than in the historic legend. The narrator introduces motifs and attitudes in glorification – or denigration – of a chosen society in a chosen place and time. The story is an illustration or vehicle of larger, timeless, abstract ideals, as in Homer's Iliad and in the Anglo–Saxon Beowulf. There are a few Oromo mythic legends. In one of them, the valiant Sare evokes images of glorified heroic deeds. While fighting against an enemy, his leg is cut off by a sword stroke, whereupon he uses the leg as a club to vanquish his enemy. He is victorious and later on is restored to health.

Etiological Tale The etiological tale and the fable (of which there are many in Oromo oral literature) are often introduced by “Once upon a time” or “In the olden days.” They belong to a mythical time scheme. Their figures are either wholly human, nonhuman, or combined in varying degrees. Etiological tales are intended primarily to explain the roots of a society's traditions, customs, or natural phenomena. A present reality is given as the basis of the narrator's excursion into the past. Age-old customs and natural phenomena are rationalized.

Fable Fables are told for entertainment or to convey a moral message. The creative imagination is liberated from the constraints of time, tradition, or

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even rationalization. The spirit of the fable is largely play, the setting is arbitrary, and the images of the tale are drawn from abstract symbols. The narrator is not bound to historical fact or uses. Instead, he focuses on a moral; and, thus, recreates, through the power or the play of symbols and mimesis, that canon of ideals which have guided humankind since the undetermined origins of organized society. The fable is the golden domain of Oromo folktales, one fourth of which are animal fables. Appropriating the text of Jacob Grimm, the Oromo folktale rarely walks or knocks at the door: it flies. In most cases, leaving aside the authority of history, the folktales draw freely from the fullness of poetry and the license of fiction. About one-third of Oromo folktales are Ethiopian versions of stories found all over the world, while the majority are found only in Ethiopia. They are absolutely indigenous. One may, therefore, establish a certain analogy between Ethiopian written and oral literature. This analogy is based on three considerations: (1) adaptation and originality, (2) a cultural world outside Ethiopia, and (3) creative assimilation. Okpewho speaks of “the dialogue of moods between narrator and audience, the tidal play of emotions within the man, the histrionic punctuation to the text of his act.” When compared to their literary counterpart in Aesop or in La Fontaine, Oromo folktales may give the impression of being flat if one simply reads them. But this should not be the case. They are meant to be told and performed. Their language is not the written word but the human body. The cases of doubling are very numerous in Oromo folktales. It is usually expressed as an opposition, for example, the clever and the silly fox. There are a few cases where the opposition is not between the protagonists of a fable, but between situations and conditions: a monkey imitating a learned man’s writing and making a mess out of it, and the same monkey imitating the same man’s shaving with a sharp knife and killing himself in the process.

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Cases of tripling are not as numerous; however, the significance of tripling in Oromo folktales is in no way inferior to that of doubling. Tripling sometimes appears in the choice of different personages: for example, “The Lion, the Hyena and the Fox.” This type of tripling is reducible to one protagonist faced with a doubling of the contrasting or homomorphic type. Many cases of tripling concern the development of the story itself: three obstacles, three situations, three answers, three prodigies, or three choices. The prevalence of moral concern is a specific feature of the totality of Ethiopian philosophical and sapiential written literature and of Oromo proverbs and folktales. Nearly all these folktales express moral values positively or negatively through a judgement against a given vice or defect. Wisdom is one of the greatest values expressed in many tales, and its absence is one of the greatest deficiencies. The strength of unity and the weakness of disunity are the objects of a few tales. Some stories show how the strength of evil does not win against the weakness of honesty; and some extol virtues such as: bravery, the home, humor, and invulnerability, while reproving the betrayal of a secret, imprudence, lying, and the seduction of an evil woman. Sanction is so imbedded within the structure of the Oromo folktale that it may be considered as its paramount element. Sanction is often expressed as a reversal of situation such as a servant impersonating his master and then returning to his former situation. A few folktales end up in the most unexpected and extraordinary way – no doubt a sign of the “supernatural” element in them. Thus, it is impossible to select one leader amongst three brothers, in spite of the prodigies they accomplish one after the other; in the end, the three brothers coalesce into one person. Most Oromo folktales enter into the ethical category of sanction; that is, there is a reward for those who do well and a punishment for those who do evil; the sanction is always on the temporal level and belongs mostly, but not exclusively, to the individual order. A comparison with The

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Book of the Philosophers would reveal that, in this Ethiopic Christian–inspired collection of sayings, sanctions are both temporal and eternal, as well as individual and social. However, in The Book of the Philosophers, there is no trace of fatalism; whereas, in Oromo folktales, besides the dominant emphasis on sanction, there is a strong but less frequent expression of fatalism, which is an offshoot of necessity. How is it that sanction and fatalism and freedom and determinism, appear side by side? Could it be that fatalism springs from Oromo traditional religion, and emphasis on sanction comes from Semitic influences like Christianity and Islam? What does an Oromo folktale say about social relations? To what extent is it a reflection of the actual social situation? Is it perhaps a reflection of men's aspirations, of an ideal situation? Limiting oneself to the Borana area in the 1960s, one may underscore a movement away from social practice to moral ideals, with the humanization of warfare, the prohibition of internecine fighting, the promotion of internal solidarity, and clever ways of dealing with very powerful enemies. Illustrations of the belief in the power of prayer and blessing, when in danger from the enemy, can be found in several folktales. The fable, with its moralistic bias, is a privileged haven for one of the main features of the totality of written and oral Ethiopian philosophical and sapiential literature: the prevalence of the moral concern.

See Also ▶ Fables, African ▶ Orality

Bibliography Azais, François, and Roger Chambard. 1931. Cinq années de recherches archéologiques en Ethiopie. Province du Harar et Ethiopie méridionale. Préface par Edmond Pottier, membre de l'Institut. Texte avec 6 planches et une carte hors texte. Paris: Librairie orientaliste: Paul Geuthner.

Ethiopian Case: Song and Wisdom Fieldman, H., and R.D. Richardson. 1972. The rise of modern mythology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Okpewho, Isidore. 1980. Rethinking myth. African Literature Today 11: 5–23.

Ethiopian Case: Song and Wisdom Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The Oromo speak a Cushitic language but have no written literature or language, thereby making them an ideal group for a study based on oral literature. They constitute one of the most numerous groups of the many who live within the borders of present-day Ethiopia. In Oromo songs, there is a complete identification of the “literary type” with the “notion” or the “theme”. There are three basic criteria for the classification of literary types and their interpretation: 1. The texts supply the criteria of classification and identification. 2. The distinction of significant literary units is made according to motifs (the smallest units of form and content which can be discerned). 3. An intimate link prevails between form, content, and concrete situation in life. Literary types may, therefore, be defined as units made of short sections which have in common the same grouping of thoughts and feelings, the same unit of formal characters – namely of expression, of syntactic form, of vocabulary, of metaphor, etc., which recur over and over again, and the same situation or original function in life. When the three principles of literary type are compared with Oromo songs, they are usually

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very short units and, hence, do not ordinarily yield motifs or mixed literary types. The motif usually applies to the introductory verse(s) which constitutes the smallest unit of form and content, and to the subject matter of the song with which it is very often unconnected notionally, although possibly connected rhythmically, notionally, or both, in a structure of analogy or other literary form. Taking all these principles into consideration, it is possible to classify Oromo songs under the following specific literary types which are listed by order of decreasing frequency.

Love Songs Analogy is the most frequent form in which thought is expressed in love songs. Such a mass of specific details is given in love songs that we are able to reconstruct the concrete situation in life for the vast majority of them: the identity of the singer, the addressee, and the very circumstances which gave rise to a song. The heuristic approach yields an etiological situation. All the aspects of love are touched upon: premarital, nuptial, marital, and maternal. However, the greater number of poems concern prenuptial love. All the sentiments that accompany them are the objects of poems, from joy to pain, and the spectrum of nuances that lie between them. There is, however, one exception to all the aspects of life: there is no place for paternal love. Perhaps the heroic songs of war and hunting could be considered as a substitution on the level of father–son relations.

Heroic Songs As in love songs, analogy is the most frequent and the most typical form in which thought is expressed. The concrete situation in life is so well described that it is nearly always possible to identify the singer for war and hunting songs. The identification of the addressee is not as easy with war songs as with love songs; the identity of the addressee is not revealed in the hunting songs. The circumstances that give rise to a war or

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hunting song are usually known, but they are quite limited. Two words express the content of war and hunting songs: praise of the hero and contempt for the coward. However, the modalities of this “value dualism” assume a great variety in their expression.

“Historical” Songs In a song on a historical subject, the concrete situation in life is the event that is celebrated. However, “historical” songs deal with contemporary events and not with past events. These contemporary events have acquired a historical significance, like wars and political maneuvers. The aspects that retain attention are success and failure, conquest and defeat, and wisdom and cleverness in administration. Just as the complete series of poems and romances which have narrated the exploits of a central hero and his followers and a body of legend built around them constitutes a cycle in an epic work; the series of songs that celebrate, for instance, the conquest of the Oromo kingdoms by Menilek II or the Italo–Ethiopian war constitute a cycle in “historical” songs. In “historical” songs, the vocative form prevails throughout – a witness to the lyrical character of these epic poems and to the lack of the narrative dimension.

Pastoral Songs Very few pastoral songs deal with a description or characterization of animals themselves. Most of them are about the lives of shepherds and cattlemen, their work, their Weltanschauung, the people they praise and those they condemn, the miseries of poverty, and their play between themselves. Pastoral songs are identified by the singer more than by the song. This does not mean that shepherds in the field are necessarily the authors of these songs; they may repeat songs that have been composed by others. When they do so, one can usually identify the person who initially wrote the song and the circumstances in of its composition. One may

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also identify the reason why this particular song has been integrated into the shepherds’ repertoire. When compared to love songs and heroic songs as far as subject is concerned, the pastoral song never makes use of the analogy pattern. Neither does it make use of unconnected couplets, sound, or word parallelism as love songs do consistently. The pastoral song exhibits a broader range of structural forms than the heroic song: vocative, exclamatory, optative, conditional, and imperative, together with personal experience.

Festive and Religious Songs There are three main formal characteristics of this group of songs. The first is the absence of any introductory verses. The second is the appearance in some of these songs of the “inclusive pattern,” with the partial or total resumption of the “introduction” in the conclusion or ending. The third is their great length of up to one hundred and three verses. The prevalence of the vocative form is so high that it may practically be considered as a fourth typical formal characteristic of festive and religious songs: they abound with invocations to Maram. Even the flower of the Cross is addressed in the vocative.

Satirical Songs The Oromo’s liberal use of trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm for the purpose of exposing and discrediting vice or folly has transformed satire into a literary type with its own content, situation in life, and form. All the details are given about the singer and the concrete situation in life in which the song blossomed. Satirical songs are constructed along the lines of “personal experience.”

Gnomic Songs The study of the gnomic form permits one to state the anteriority of the proverb to the song for two reasons. First, from a grammatical viewpoint, proverbs always have a correct form; while songs easily suppress certain syllables, even for

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proverbial utterances. This is quite normal if one takes into account rhythmic considerations; but, in these conditions, it is easier to conceive a passage from the grammatical exact (the proverb) to the inexact (the song) than the opposite. Second, from the viewpoint of the situation where it is employed, the proverb always designates a concrete situation experienced by the participants. For songs, this relation with a designated situation is rather loose. It seems normal that a given situation has been the occasion to invent a proverb that later on may have been sung. It is less probable that a song not directly adapted to a situation would have given birth to a proverb which designates this situation. It is, therefore, symptomatic that, in the case of gnomic songs, it is impossible to identify their Sitz im Leben: it has been lost in the course of the transmission of the proverb by song. Most gnomic songs concern friendship, selfishness, and enmity. Employment and work are also frequent subjects. The exclamatory form, personal experience, and sentence parallelism characterize the gnomic songs.

Multiple Literary Types The study of the multiple literary types permits one to investigate Gunkel’s claim, namely that pure literary types always precede mixed forms. The mixed literary type, for instance, of love and satire combined was born no sooner or later than the pure literary types. It is only because one subjectively combined two currents that objectively sprang up together. Oromo songs present a complete view of reality. The reason is clear: like The Book of the Philosophers, an Ethiopic sixteenth-century collection of sayings, Oromo songs are a collection of oral, not written, sources that emerge in different life situations, where the singer spontaneously pours out in poetry and mime the inner feelings of the heart: joy, sadness, and the infinitely varied shade of emotions from desire and hope to frustration and despair. Oromo songs present a broad variety of thought patterns. They are constructed through analogy, comparison, metaphor, contrast, description, portrait, the conditional, the exclamatory, the interrogative, the imperative, the optative, the

Ethiopian Jews: Falasha Beta Israeli

declarative, and, above all, the vocative form: on parallelism, the question and answer pattern, dialogue and quotation, humor, pun, hyperbole, enumeration, elimination, series of events, the maxim and the advice, personal experience, longing, dream, and sympathetic magic. All in all, there are about 30 different types of thought pattern. The vocative form prevails above all. The total enumeration of vocative forms expresses the emotional rapport that the singer spontaneously establishes with the person to whom one is speaking or about whom one is thinking. The addressee may be a thing, a mountain, or a flower that the singer does not consider as a mere simple reality in its objective distance, but rather as involved through vital intimacy to oneself. Song is not only a content but a communion. All the longer units of thought in Ethiopian written sapiential and philosophical literature are characterized by a type of development, which is proper to Semitic thought: the ABA’ pattern. It is usually a case of development that is proper analogy (Thesis I–Thesis II – Synthesis of Theses I and II), although the dialectical process in the strict sense (Thesis–Antithesis – Synthesis of Thesis and Antithesis) occurs frequently enough. One understands that such a triadic pattern is absent from Oromo proverbs: they are too short to allow such development. But one could have expected that the longer units of songs would exhibit the ABA’ thought pattern, which is completely absent. It is characteristic of a Semitic conceptual logic rather than a Cushitic figurative one.

Ethiopian Jews: Falasha Beta Israeli Katya Gibel Azoulay Department of Anthropology, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, USA

The Jews of Ethiopia identify themselves under the name “Beta Israel.” Until their mass immigration to Israel, the estimated Jewish population in Ethiopia was approximately 25,000. The majority of the Jews lived north of Lake Tana, in the

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mountains around Gondar. The Beta Israel, who were isolated from religious developments that were absorbed in most of the Jewish communities around the world, strictly followed the Hebrew Bible and celebrated the religious holidays according to the dictates of Biblical tradition. The historical antecedents of the Beta Israel community are a mystery, and research on Jews in Ethiopia between the sixth and thirteenth centuries remains speculative. Historical interpretations for this period are drawn from ethnographic narratives of contemporary Ethiopians, Portuguese, and Muslims, as well as medieval Hebrew writers whose information was compiled from second-hand sources during their travels in the region. Examination of these documents has fostered different explications of the historical identity of Jews in Ethiopia. The identity of the Jews in Ethiopia is clouded by translations from Ethiopian texts of ayhud (Jew) and Falasha (stranger/exile), which appear in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century documents. Questions have been raised regarding whether the terms referred to the same recognizable ethnic entity with a common identity, and the extent to which Falasha was used as a metonym for Jews. However, there is general consensus that, beginning in the sixteenth century, the term falasha refers specifically to Jews. Jews in Arabia and Egypt have been linked with local groups in Ethiopia accounting for demographic migrations in the region, which stimulated population contact where marriages and alliances were influential in promoting conversions to Judaism. Some evidence suggests that Jewish prisoners of war from Southern Arabia were among the Yeminites who migrated voluntarily or were brought under force to the Axumite kingdom, while mercenaries in the country of Pathros [Jeremiah 44:1], at the southern frontier of ancient Elephantine, may have engaged in proselytizing activities, eventually marrying and settling in the country. Following the establishment of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Jews migrated away from the Christian center and established themselves in the mountainous areas of the Semien region. It is unclear to what extent the Jews in the vicinity of Axum felt threatened and fled or were expelled by

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the Christian monarchy. The pattern of institutionalized anti-Semitism that characterized the experience of European Jews, however, did not characterize the situation in Africa. Under the Solomonic Dynasty that ruled for four centuries from 1270, major social and political transformations within the Jewish population in Semien, Woggara, and Dambiya occurred. The Solomonic emperors, who traced their royal lineage to the biblical account of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, conducted a cumulative campaign of expansion and consolidation of territories affecting the entire population, including the Beta Israel. Jewish communities’ efforts to remain independent from imperial control were undermined following the defeat of the governor of the Beta Israel in Semien and Dambiya during the reign of Emperor Yeshaq 1413–1430, the first monarch to be associated in Beta Israel texts with a campaign directed specifically against the community. The status of the Jews was permanently altered with the introduction of royal proscriptions on their land tenure and usage. While efforts to preserve a separate identity were reinforced by the escalation of Christian pressure during the fifteenth century, influential elements from the Ethiopian Church were also integrated into the Beta Israel community. The Christian institution of monasticism was incorporated into Beta Israel society empowering monks and nuns. This development created the institutional channels through which stringent ritual laws of purity and separation were enforced. In addition, the new mode of authority provided a hierarchical system augmenting clerical monopoly over religious literature and prayers, which were in Ge’ez, the language of the Ethiopian Church. The Beta Israel had consolidated into a distinct and autonomous community in the mountainous area of Semien by the sixteenth century. Periodically, emperors launched unsuccessful military offensives against the Jewish kingdom. The Beta Israel finally lost their independence when Susneyos overpowered the Jewish militia and their leader, Gedewon. In the nineteenth century, European Christian missionaries in Ethiopia enthusiastically reported to their headquarters on their activities among the

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local Jewish community. This prompted the intervention of the Alliance Israel. The first encounter between black and white-skinned Jews took place in 1867 when Joseph HaLevy visited the Beta Israel. The status of the Beta Israel as Jews, however, remained in question until 1973, when the Chief Sepharadi Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef, accepted the ruling of a fifteenth-century Jewish scholar, David Ibn Zimra (Radbaz), who authorized the Beta Israel to be recognized as the lost tribe of Dan. Two years later, in 1975, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, Slomo Goren, concurred with this decision to officially recognize the Beta Israel as Jews, thus allowing for their immigration to Israel under the Law of Return (an immigration law guaranteeing Jews with right of entry and citizenship). In 1973, diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and Israel were broken. Questions about religious harassment and an outbreak of anti-Semitism under the Marxist regime were raised in campaigns on behalf of Ethiopian Jews who wanted to immigrate to Israel. Throughout the 1980s, Jewish organizations in America and Canada were further motivated to action by the increase in political instability and economic chaos in Ethiopia. Under the administrations of Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir (1977–1992), Israeli efforts to arrange for a mass exodus of Ethiopian Jews were seriously intensified through secret diplomacy between the Ethiopian and Israel governments. Until 1984, about 8,000 Jews emigrated from Tigray Province; however, the first major airlift of Jews, coded Operation Moses, took place in 1985. Most of these immigrants came from the area of Gondar and had walked from Ethiopia to Sudan. When this clandestine initiative was reported, the Sudanese government immediately suspended the secret operation. In 1991, with the agreement of the Ethiopian government, a carefully prepared undertaking with local Jewish leaders and activists brought the remaining Jewish population to Israel.

Bibliography Kaplan, Steven. 1992. The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia from earliest times to the twentieth century. New York: NY University Press.

Ethiopian Philosopher Zera Yacob, Autobiography of the Kessler, David. 1982. The Falashas: The forgotten Jews of Ethiopia. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers. Messing, Simon D. 1982. The story of the Falashas: “Black Jews” of Ethiopia. New York: Balshon Printing & Offset Co. Quirin, James. 1992. The evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A history of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Ethiopian Philosopher Zera Yacob, Autobiography of the Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The Autobiography of Zera Yacob In 1667 an Ethiopian philosopher by the name of Zera Yacob (which means “The Seed of Jacob”) wrote a Treatise (Hatata in ge’ez) in which he recorded both his life and his thought. He begins his Treatise with the story of his life, the only known autobiography in Ethiopic literature. He was born on August 28, 1599, near Aksum, from a family of poor farmers. Aksum was the capital of a kingdom and the cradle of a civilization which from the most ancient time up to the ninth century AD extended from the Red Sea coasts to the Nile plain and covered a great part of northern Ethiopia. Zera Yacob attended the traditional schools of Ethiopia, studying in particular the Psalms of David, the zema (sacred music taught in Church school), the qene (poetry or hymns) and the sewasewa (vocabulary; it designates the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and is somewhat the equivalent of “belles–lettres”). This is a point of special importance. The prose of Zera Yacob reflects the language that is taught in the qene school: it is the jewel, the masterpiece of Ethiopian literature. Moreover, his thought is

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imbued with the discussion and criticism which are encouraged in the school. In 1626, King Susenyos made his solemn profession of Catholic faith. Shortly afterwards, Zera Yacob was denounced before the king and compelled to flee for his life, taking with him three measures of gold and the most precious of his possessions. The second great influence in his life together with qene language and culture: the Book of Psalms, the Dawit. On his way to Shoa in the south he found a beautiful uninhabited location: a cave at the foot of a valley south of the Takkaze River, where he lived for two years. There, in the peace and solitude of the cave, far from the conflicts among men, he elaborated his philosophy. Just as his contemporary René Descartes, during the winter in Neubourg was forced to stay in a locality where, as he found no society to interest him, undisturbed by any cause or passion, he remained the whole day in seclusion in a room heated by a stove, and there occupied his attention with his own thoughts, thoughts that were later on embodied in his Discours sur la méthode (1677), likewise Zera Yacob, in the quietness of a cave where he meditated on the Psalms and reflected on the roots of antagonisms in the hearts of men, developed a new approach to life and thought which later on would constitute his Treatise (1667). After the death of Susenyos, Zera Yacob left his cave and life of solitude; and settled in Enfraz with a certain rich merchant named Habtu, who became his patron. Zera Yacob wrote the Psalms for Habtu in a beautiful script which all admired, taught his sons, and married a maidservant of the family. At the request of one of Habtu’s sons, Walda Heywat, Yacob wrote his famous Treatise which was completed in 1667 when the author was 68. Yacob remained in Enfraz for 25 more years. The brief account which he gives of his harmonious and happy life, of his prosperity, and the birth of his children and grandchildren is very striking in its patriarchal simplicity. He died in 1693 at the age of 93. After his mentor’s death (their association spanned a 59-year period), Walda Heywat, already well advanced in age, wrote a book on

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the things taught to him by Zera Yacob. This second Treatise, however, is no mere repetition of the first. Heywat selected from the ideas of his mentor those whose significance for human life was the greatest. Walda Heywat expressed these forcefully, often addressing himself to his readers as if they were his disciples. The combination of practical significance and educational concern is such that present-day Ethiopia has promoted many aspects of his thought as, for instance, the value or work, and his concern with men’s health and hygiene.

Pattern of the Autobiography Zera Yacob’s autobiographical form conforms to the ABA’ thought pattern which characterizes Ethiopian thought in its written expression. It may be formulated in the following schema: A. The life of Zera Yacob up to the death of King Susenyos. B. Solitude in the cave. His Hatata. A'. Death of Susenyos: events from the entrance into Enfraz to the marriage of his son. We are in the presence of two levels: an objective level corresponding to events according to their chronological order, and a subjective level of inquiry, prayer and meditation. The first level is that of life. It is conditioned by the coordinates of space and time. The vital space of Zera Yacob follows a movement toward the south, from Aksum where he was born and educated, to the Takkaze River where he found refuge in a cave and elaborated his philosophy, to Enfraz where he taught, wrote his Hatata and died. The coordinate of time is marked by two significant events in his life: the conversion to Catholicism of King Susenyos, and the latter’s death and the accession to the throne of Fasilides. The two coordinates of time and space are intimately linked together through the persecution of Walda Yohannes, a priest of Aksum and a perfidious friend of both kings. It was the charge against Zera Yacob brought by Walda Yohannes that led to his flight from Aksum and his secluded life in a cave south of the Takkaze River. The death of

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Susenyos and the accession of Fasilides were the occasion for the end of Zera Yacob’s seclusion and his journey to the south. By then his enemy Walda Yohannes had befriended the new king, returned to the faith of the Copts, and again accused Zera Yacob of treachery toward the king. This first level of life is represented in The Treatise of Zera Yacob considered as a whole by A and A0 . But the sequence of events was interrupted by a long development on his solitude and the thought he elaborated in this isolation. The B section corresponds to the level of his Hatata. It is no longer autobiographical in the narrow sense. It passes from the world outside to the world within; from a succession of events to an inner dialectics of questions and answers he poses for himself, to prayer and meditation; from the society of men to the solitary dialogue with his Creator and with himself. This is not to say that the A and B sections are two juxtaposed pieces in the structure of his thought, of equal importance and relevance. As is usual in the ABA´ pattern, B is the more significant. It is also the longer and the more developed. Hence the A´ section that follows is not simply the resumption of A. It is enlightened by B. It is the philosophy elaborated in solitary confinement that casts its light on the remaining years of his life in Enfraz: on the type of education that he communicated to the sons Habtu entrusted to his care, on the actual writing down of his life and thought (A and B) at the request of one of his pupils, and above all, on his total attitude toward the world, men and himself, as evidenced by his marriage and the spirit of serene happiness that marks his last years. The autobiography, therefore, already gives us the key to Zera Yacob’s philosophy. It is the product of independent personal reflection upon events that have affected his life. Each one of his introspective moments not only follows upon an event, but springs from it, or more exactly is a penetrating intuition into the sense of history as it conditions his life. It is a kind of philosophical midrash based on a personal story. The themes that he develops in the first part of his biography: gratitude to the saving power of God, discretion in the manifestation of his opinions, tolerant attitude in

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his life and teaching, his meditation of the Psalms, and his sadness over divisions among believers – all are the epiphany in his heart of the meaningfulness of the event, except the last which is so much a part of his own fabric that the objective divisions among men seem to follow upon an inner a priori consideration on their uselessness and evil. When we pass to the second section of his autobiography (A0 ), we find the same characteristics as in the first part (A), but it is immediately apparent that his philosophy as expounded in (B) bears a deep imprint, whereas in the first section, one was rather witnessing the first gushing forth of his thought at its spring and in all its freshness. The frequency of the rising to the subjective level has increased. But what is still more striking is the crystallization of his reflections around a few themes that appear several times in slightly modified forms. All of these themes, except one, on marriage, had already appeared in the first part.

Bibliography Sumner, Claude. 1978. Ethiopian philosophy, Volume III, The treatise of Zera Yacob and of Walda Heywat. An analysis. Addis Ababa: Printed for Addis Ababa University by Commercial Printing Press.

Ethiopian Philosopher Zera Yacob, Theodicy of the Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The first being whose existence Zera Yacob posits, not as a logical necessity in the manner of Descartes, but through the spontaneous and immediate bent of this thought, is God. As the

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circle of light grows in his own philosophy, Zera Yacob passes, with the greatest of ease and naturalness, from criticism to theodicy. Now, the term theodicy (from the Greek theo, “God” and dikè, “right, custom, usage, manner”) was coined by the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) who used it in his Essays on Theodicy to express the justice or the righteous manner of God’s dealings with mankind, which he defended against those who felt that the evils of life are an argument for atheism. The term theodicy thus literally means “God’s justice” or “God’s righteous way.” This original meaning was quickly broadened to include not only God’s Providence, but the whole of the philosophy of God: nature, attributes, and operations. Theodicy thus became a synonym for natural theology. Theology had long been distinguished as (a) natural theology which is a part of philosophy, and which is the science of God as knowable by human reason without the help of any revelation; and (b) supernatural theology or divine theology which is the science of God as manifested by Divine Revelation. The term theodicy came in handily to replace the more cumbrous natural theology and to allow the simple name theology to be used for the supernatural science. Convenience and long usage have established the term theodicy in its present meaning. There is no doubt that, when applied to Zera Yacob, theodicy has the broader meaning of natural theodicy, and not the narrower and stricter one used by Leibniz, as the Ethiopian philosopher did not intend to vindicate God’s justice against any atheistic attack. Nothing could be further away from Zera Yacob’s serene attitude toward all things than the spirit of controversy. Now, is there in Zera Yacob the need or even the possibility of a valid demonstration of God’s existence? Or is this truth self-evident, intuitively recognized by immediate or direct grasp? In both Zera Yacob and his disciple Walda Heywat, there is an explicit declaration of the knowability of God, of the efficient power, on the part of the human soul, of eliciting the concept of God. What type of argument does Zera Yacob use to prove the existence of God? It has many elements in common with such great thinkers as

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St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Francis Suárez. The Spanish Jesuit philosopher and theologian, Suárez (1548–1617) is a contemporary of Zera Yacob: the latter was 18 years old when the former died after a life devoted to lecturing, studying and writing. It is most likely that Zera Yacob, who introduced a philosophical approach to the problem of the existence and nature of God, was acquainted with the thought of Suárez through the Portuguese Jesuits that he met and discussed with in Ethiopia. Yet Zera Yacob’s argument cannot be identified with that of either Augustine, Aquinas, or Suárez. Like Aquinas, Zera Yacob proceeds a posteriori and through the impossibility of an infinite regress, but contrary to Aquinas, Zera Yacob makes use of a “horizontal,” temporal, accidental subordination of causes. Like his fellow African Augustine, he expresses his personal experience, his spiritual encounter with his Creator in a dialectics of questions and answers that lead him to joy. But unlike Augustine, he does not address himself to the world of sense and does not apprehend God as the Ground of all truth. Like his contemporary Suárez, Zera Yacob makes use of the impossibility of the “horizontal,” temporal series of accidental subordination of causes. His existential approach, however, has nothing in common with Suárez’s systematic methodology or with the metaphysical basis of his disputatio. In his proof of the existence of God, therefore, Zera Yacob, while sharing with other Christian thinkers many material and formal elements of content and style, exhibits an independence of thought and an originality of presentation which mark him off as quite personal. Would this be another instance of “creative incorporation” which has been identified as a typically Ethiopian process in his “Autobiography”? No word appears more frequently in the Treatise of Zera Yacob and in that of his disciple Walda Heywat than that of God: usually under the form of __gzi _abher. The word occurs 303 times in the two Treatises, that is, once every 48 words; it represents 2.08% of their total word population. Its original meaning of “Sovereign over all things” is conveyed by many a text.

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Many divine attributes are recorded in the Treatises. Their appearance is not haphazard, nor is their total a mere enumeration or addition. They constitute an authentic Gestalt, a clear, well–unified, and coherently structured pattern. The unifying force which assures the cohesion of all these constituent parts is creationism. If we classify logically each of the divine attributes mentioned in these Treatises, we find each is mentioned because of its relation to creation. Creation extends to the divine attributes in general as greatness, perfection, infinity; to the divine attributes in particular as immutability and eternity; to the immanent operations of God’s intellect as knowledge, wisdom, truth; to the operations of his Will, as Will itself, love, goodness, kindness, mercy; to the personal nature of God as his name; to the transient operation of God’s power as power itself, almightiness, strength; to the divine operation of Conservation; and to the whole spectrum of the divine operation of Governance and Providence which is developed with a great wealth of details: Providence itself, protection, government; plan, decree, decision, order, precept; God’s actual exercise of his plan as he directs all, teaches man, draws the soul and appears alternately in his silence, in his guardianship or in his wrath, justice, judgment, joy, blessing, and grace. Some 40 distinctions are made. These distinctions are not particularly original. They are part of man’s effort to name the ineffable. Their roots are Biblical. But their structuration is characteristic of these Treatises. The materia of Zera Yacob and Walda Heywat’s distinctions concerning God’s nature have been animated from within and unified by the forma of creations. The prevalence of the notion of Providence and Governance is a characteristic feature of the theodicy of Zera Yacob and of Walda Heywat. When one compares the operation of Providence and Governance with all the other divine operations, the disproportion is striking. The notion of Providence and Governance merges from beginning to end in each of the Hatatas or Treatises. What is the reason for such an optique? One may venture to say that it is deeply Semitic, at least inasmuch as Semitic thought patterns are manifested in the Hebrew Bible. For indeed if the belief in the

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Creator of the world, in the cosmic Creator, is very old in Israel, the explicit references to such a belief are relatively recent. It is the historical Creator, the God of Israel and His dealings with His people that fill the oldest written sections of the Bible. One does not claim that in the Hatatas one witnesses a transition from the historical to the cosmic Creator. The two aspects coexist. But one means that the emphasis on God’s dealings, either with Zera Yacob individually, or with men and human historical events at large, is so emphasized that the relation with, and even the inspiration from, the oldest and deepest expression of Semitic Revelation on God’s dealings with men and historical events are strongly suggested. Although the notion of Providence–Governance is found with the same relative importance in both Hatatas, the treatment of the subject varies from one author to the other. In very general terms we can say that Zera Yacob’s treatment is personal, and Walda Heywat’s impersonal. The general characteristics which mark out the dual authorship of the Hatatas do not condition only their authenticity, their vocabulary and their style, but also condition the prominent features of their theodicy. It may seem strange that in an entry on theodicy, that is, on the philosophy of God, avowedly not on supernatural theology, one would speak of the Psalms. Are not the Psalms a part of the Holy Scriptures, of a book which Christians consider as religiously inspired? The Psalms, however, are not presented as a revelation, but as the individual or social man’s prayerful response to this Revelation. Their Weltanschauung is an anthropology, albeit a theologically oriented anthropology. That is why Zera Yacob, who does not accept any historical revelation, nor any positive religion, Jewish, Christian or Islamic, has permeated his Hatata with words, expressions, quotations, thoughts’ and sentiments which explicitly or implicitly are psalmic. When he fled at night from Aksum, his first thought was for the Book he treasured the most: the Psalter or Dawit which he took with him in his exile. While he was secluded in his cave he recited the Psalter every day. Whereas in his Hatata he lavishly criticizes other Scriptural works, he never does so for the Psalter. When the Dawit seems incorrect to him, he gives a compromising

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interpretation. There are 19 explicit quotations from the Psalms in his Treatise, and innumerable implicit quotations. His theodicy is deeply anchored in the psalmic universe. It is possible to establish a comparison between the 150 psalms on the one hand, and on the other, those selected by Zera Yacob. Such a comparison will enlighten us on the identity and the difference between the Psalter as a whole and Zera Yacob’s Treatise, so that we may attempt to delineate his spiritual physiognomy and penetrate into the Gestalt of his inner life – what the Ethiopians would call his “heart” – as he meditates the Psalms. A first comparison shows a preference of the individual over the communal, of the lament (and to a lesser extent of wisdom psalms) over all other literary types. A second comparison, penetrating into the structure of each individual psalm that he quotes, yields a precise pattern in Zera Yacob’s selection. The criterion for this selection is neither synthetic, nor analytical, nor eclectic. It is not synthetic: so many literary types from the 14 psalmic ones have left no imprint on him at all. The whole communal aspect of the psalms escapes him completely. Even within one single psalm, the section of it which is communal is never quoted. Neither is he interested in one psalm as a unit since he is not guided by its dominant literary unit. It is not analytic. Never does he pursue the analysis of a psalm, or its salient features or its structure. And yet it is not eclectic: it does not represent a random variety of literary types from which the quotations would be made. But it is definitively selective: there is a clear and constant pattern in the choice of psalms that is made: their individual character and their aspect of lament, invocation, supplication, or appeal. It seems that Zera Yacob’s own internal structure was the reason for the pattern that we discern.

Bibliography Sumner, Claude. 1978. Ethiopian philosophy, Volume III, The treatise of Zär_a Ya__cob and of Wäldä H_ywåt. An analysis. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University: Commercial Printing Press.

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Ethiopian Philosophical Literature Claude Sumner Philosophy Department, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a unique phenomenon in Africa for several reasons. Egypt and Ethiopia are the only African nations that can trace their history into antiquity. While Egypt became more and more alienated from its ancient culture by successive conquests, Ethiopia (except for a few years of Italian occupation in the 1930s and 1940s) retained its original character through the centuries. It has had a continuous existence as an independent nation – though with highly variable frontiers – for no less than 2,000 years. Ethiopia’s historic continuity is largely the result of a favorable geographic location. Its high fertile and temperate plateaus, which border on heavily traveled seas on the east, can be defended like fortresses from the hostile deserts that surround them. Thus, Ethiopia has been able to preserve and perfect a unique culture born of the ancient encounter and the slow fusion of two equally gifted people: the Cushitic, who were probably indigenous, and the Semitic, who may have emigrated from Arabia. Ethiopia also deserves to be singled out because it has a written language. It is true there are nearly one hundred distinct languages, some of which have several dialects or less well-defined regional variations, within the political boundaries of present-day Ethiopia. These languages fall into the Semitic, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Omotic language groups. In terms of historical, political, and cultural role of its speakers, the most important of the language groups is the Semitic. Semitic languages in Ethiopia fall into a northern group that includes ge