What a wonderful reply, toyin. Many thanks. Here is a footnote on this: when i first came to cameroon in 1977, i had some students over to my apartment, and as they opened up to me and my wife wife liz, one student mentioned his bitterness that when the christian teachers and authorities came to cameroon, they told the non-believers that their ancestors were burning in hell. He was bitter over that. I never forgot it, either.
I cannot imagine any religious authority saying to other people such a horrible thing, and yet that was the common notion that accompanied colonialism, colonial discourse.
Of course many people accepted that; and the same rhetoric is used to burn witches today in africa. This certain needs "repairing" in any way possible
Ken
Get Outlook for iOS
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 11:01:27 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Degree in Magic
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 11:01:27 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Degree in Magic
"The term witchcraft could be used in a similar manner, defiantly; not in submission to an outsider's prejudices, not in submission to a religious program that damns traditional african religious beliefs."
-- Ken
That is the orientation of modern Western witchcraft in relation to witchcraft ideas in Western culture, reclaiming the term in developing one of the world's fastest growing religions, according to the Wikipedia article on it, if I recall correctly.
It's true, though, that the Africans themselves have been primary aggressors against the equivalence of witchcraft beliefs in their own cultures, well before the emergence of Western influence in the form of Christianity.
The demonization of old women seems a common feature of pre-Christian African anti-witchcraft conceptions and similar orientations in Western history.
"Witchcraft " is an English world and is used in reference to beliefs in older African spiritualities in an effort to find equivalences in the African languages, although it's true that significant semantic convergences can be found between Yoruba ideas of "aje" and "Iyami osoronga", for example, those being the ones I am more acquainted with, and Western witchcraft conceptions, correlations that incidentally embody both the older negativisation of the term in Western culture in relation to referents within the culture and the newer valorization of the term in Western thought as a feature of Western culture.
Nigerian Benin "azen" conceptions also demonstrate a similar complexity.
In a story from the Yoruba branch of Ifa, Orunmila, travelling from orun, the world of primal origins, to aye, the Earth, gives the aje a ride in his stomach, only for the ungrateful and bloodthirsty creatures to feast on his intestines during the journey.
Yet, the Ifa corpus in it's multivalence also has a story in which it is declared that the deity Oshun, erotically potent beauty and master of esoteric arts without whom the activities of other primary spiritual powers are impotent, is aje, as all women are aje.
Contemporary aje discourse struggles to reconcile these constructions which suggest, to me, orientations of different oral composers at different points in time and space, orientations eventually conflated in the culture.
I would like to learn about the inspiration and meaning of the term "repaircraft". What is being repaired and what are the tools of repair?
While eager to learn about "repaircraft", I remain excited about the positive restructuring of the term "witchcraft" beceause of it's historical freight of the uncanny, the numinous, the feminine mysterious, of reality restructurings at the intersection of the human and the non-human, just like I love the term "wizard", such fictional wizards as Gandalf of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Stephen Strange of Marvel Comics, Sylvester Turville of Lion and Thunder comics, among othe depictions, introduced me to the world of magic, inspiring my unwittingly beginning my magical career by employing Stephen Strange's spells in pretending to try to transform a fellow secondary school student into a frog, such transformations prominent in Western fairy tales at the hands of bad witches or mysterious fairies.
One of the best accounts known to me of what would be known as a witch in the Western context is Toyin Falola's account of his mentor Iya Lekuleja in his autobiographies A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth, even though her spiritually is only incidentally aligned with that of Western witchcraft ideas, and she is not explicitly depicted in terms of "aje" and "Iyami osoronga" references in the books.
One conception of witchcraft in the modern Western sense might be a nature centred and magical spirituality, in which the witch, through employing powers innate to nature and to the human being as part of nature, seeks to understanding and shape reality, Leku, the short form of her name, could be understood as a witch in the modern sense .
Such a description has intercultural value in emphasizing the manner in which Falola's depiction of Leku embodies classic features of depictions spiritually powerful people outside conventional religion, the zone of activity of the witch and wizard.
For me, she joins in my thought world the succession of memorable images of spiritually powerful women in liminal spiritual spaces, in fictional and factual depictions, the imposing naked woman Orunmila encounters in the forest, feasting on his sacrifice of uncooked animal entrails as she explains to him the hidden workings of the universe, as described in Ifa literature, the witches of Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, spanning ancient and modern knowledge systems in Western history as visualized in novel and film, Morgaine Le Faye of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, a positive reworking of a villain of many Arthurian narratives in terms of pre-Christian English nature spirituality, Agatha Harkness of Marvel Comics, and many more.
Thanks
Toyin
On Wed, Oct 4, 2023, 2:34 PM David Agogo <agogodavid@gmail.com> wrote:
I understand, Ken. You speak of reclaiming a term used pejoratively against the African cultural establishment. Let's call it 'The N word maneuver ".
Only one question as a post academic utopia pro capitalist realist, does that approach work?
Repaircraft and witchcraft. Solves that issue.
--
On Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 9:47 PM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
Witchcraft is evil by connotation to a western, christian, scientific epistemology; not to most of us in the humanities who understand and reject that reading of the term. I am thinking of maybe the most significant scholar on the topic, peter geschiere, whose works, and whose field, rises above the negativity.I want to add that the last section of my last book, African Cinema in a Global Age, dealt largely with the elderly—with old people. Many many of the elderly were unjustly accused of witchcraft, sometime so that they might be stripped of their lands or goods, that would devolve onto their children. We all know of famous films dealing with that topic, like The Witches of Gambaga. In my section i saw these tragic figures presented often as victims but also heroic.I used the term trash in an earlier book so as to reverse the prejudices against african culture and film. The term witchcraft could be used in a similar manner, defiantly; not in submission to an outsider's prejudices, not in submission to a religious program that damns traditional african religious beliefs.Ken
Get Outlook for iOS
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of David Agogo <agogodavid@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 3, 2023 6:09:46 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Degree in MagicThere is need to make program offerings contemporary and timeless, so kudos to Exeter. I'd like to know if they have a focus on Repaircraft which is my positive coined matching term for the near opposite of witchcraft, which is typically evil by connotation.
--
On Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 5:58 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM4PR06MB9024132CF3451E59DC6F19D1F8C4A%40DM4PR06MB9024.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
--To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAC76%2B8vgUJ0S-VLJa8DD%2ByciHqTHxpKJfGiPRL6U_acpjfB8dg%40mail.gmail.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/IA1PR12MB8287A40B0ADE0B602FCAD19ADACBA%40IA1PR12MB8287.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAC76%2B8u8K3HYuQRVjE3caRqT%2BEqvPtf4NV93sRVQyLHGH86ODQ%40mail.gmail.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfN4DAL9U9sExFN1jFoBb%3D4H5s6v%2Br2zBM_B%2BXJ%3DkUsHJA%40mail.gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment