Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect

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Publisher : African Books Collective
ISBN 13 : 9956550507
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect by : Didier Pclard

Download or read book Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect written by Didier Pclard and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the circularity of the witchcraft complex in Africa, given its performative potential, isnt the flood of anthropological publications on the topic counter-productive insofar as it feeds what it pretends to analyse, and even stigmatize? Wouldnt the social scientists be well advised not to emulate the media and the Evangelical preachers and to avoid bestowing on Africa the dubious privilege of being no more than a shadow theatre devoid of substance on the stage of which everything power, work, production, economy, the family would actually be played in the occult? In this publication, eight scholars namely: Jean-Pierre Warnier, Didier Pclard, Julien Bonhomme, Patrice Yengo, Jane Guyer, Joseph Tonda, Francis Nyamnjoh and Peter Geschiere engage in a lively and contradictory debate on witchcraft/sorcery in Africa in a controversial historical context.

Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect

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Author :
Publisher : Langaa RPCIG
ISBN 13 : 9956550027
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect by : Péclard, Didier

Download or read book Debating Witchcraft in Africa: The Magritte Effect written by Péclard, Didier and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the circularity of the witchcraft complex in Africa, given its performative potential, isn’t the flood of anthropological publications on the topic counter-productive insofar as it feeds what it pretends to analyse, and even stigmatize? Wouldn’t the social scientists be well advised not to emulate the media and the Evangelical preachers and to avoid bestowing on Africa the dubious privilege of being no more than a shadow theatre devoid of substance on the stage of which everything – power, work, production, economy, the family – would actually be played in the occult? In this publication, eight scholars – namely: Jean-Pierre Warnier, Didier Péclard, Julien Bonhomme, Patrice Yengo, Jane Guyer, Joseph Tonda, Francis Nyamnjoh and Peter Geschiere – engage in a lively and contradictory debate on witchcraft/sorcery in Africa in a controversial historical context.

Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality

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Publisher : African Books Collective
ISBN 13 : 9956554847
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality by : Francis Nyamnjoh

Download or read book Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality written by Francis Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to the Jensen Memorial Lectures 2023 is an invitation to take incompleteness seriously in how we imagine, relate to and seek to understand a world in perpetual motion. Despite our instinct for and obsession with completeness, we are constantly reminded that the sooner one recognises and provides for incompleteness and the conviviality it inspires as the normal way of being, the better we are for it. Fluidity, compositeness and the capacity to be present in multiple places and forms simultaneously in whole or in fragments are core characteristics of reality and ontology of incompleteness. How would we frame our curiosities and conversations about processes, relationships and phenomena with an understanding of the universality of incompleteness and mobility? West and Central Africa, for example, are regions where it is commonplace to embrace and celebrate incompleteness in nature, the suprasensory, human beings, human actions, human inventions and human achievements. The lectures indicate how we could draw inspiration in this regard to inform current clamours for decolonisation and the growing ambivalence about rapid advances in digital technologies (artificial intelligence (AI) in particular), as well as with twenty-first century concerns about migrants and strangers knocking at the doors of opportunities we feel more entitled to as bona fide citizens and insiders. The lectures draw on the writings of Amos Tutuola as well as from popular ideas of personhood and agency in Africa, to make a case for sidestepped and silenced traditions of knowledge. They highlight Africa’s possibilities, prospects and emergent capacities for being and becoming in tune with the continent’s creativity and imagination. They speak to the nimble-footed flexible-minded frontier African at the crossroads and junctions of myriad encounters, facilitating creative conversations and challenging regressive logics of exclusionary claims and articulation of identities and achievements. The traditions of knowledge discussed in these lectures do not only speak to Africans, but to the world, as the philosophies explored have universal application. “The crucial anthropological question of relationality and othering is at the heart of this original and enlightening book. Nyamnjoh cautions the missionaries of decoloniality against the risk of substituting one illusion of completeness with another. For him, incompleteness is the basis of any healthy exchange. He therefore recommends embracing the universality of incompleteness in motion and taking seriously an ancestral tradition of self-extension through creative imagination in this anxious age of artificial intelligence. Forcefully argued and abundantly substantiated – with finesse and laughter that run through it – this book will be a milestone by making us rediscover the demands and the magic of fieldwork.” Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt/Main Point Sud, Bamako, Mali

Witch Hunts

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108883435
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis Witch Hunts by : Govind Kelkar

Download or read book Witch Hunts written by Govind Kelkar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witch hunts are the result of gendered, cultural and socioeconomic struggles over acute structural, economic and social transformations in both the formation of gendered class societies and that of patriarchal capitalism. This book combines political economy with gender and cultural analysis to explain the articulation of cultural beliefs about women as causing harm, and struggles over patriarchy in periods of structural economic transformation. It brings in field data from India and South-East Asia and incorporates a large body of works on witch hunts across geographies and histories. Witch Hunts is a scholarly analysis of the human rights violation of women and its correction through changes in beliefs, knowledge practices and adaptation in structural transformation.

Mambila Divination

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 100004078X
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Mambila Divination by : David Zeitlyn

Download or read book Mambila Divination written by David Zeitlyn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a major contribution to the study and analysis of divination, based on continuing fieldwork with the Mambila in Cameroon. It seeks to return attention to the details of divinatory practice, using the questions asked and life histories to help understand the perspective of the clients rather than that of the diviners. Drawing on a corpus of more than 600 cases, David Zeitlyn reconsiders theories of divination and compares Mambila spider divination with similar systems in the area. A detailed case study is examined and analysed using conversational analytic principles. The regional comparison considers different kinds of explanation for different features of social organization, leading to a discussion of the continuing utility of moderated functionalism. The book will be of interest to area specialists and scholars concerned with religion, rationality, and decision-making from disciplines including anthropology, African studies, and philosophy.

Mystical Power and Politics on the Swahili Coast

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Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1847013848
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Mystical Power and Politics on the Swahili Coast by : DR NATHALIE ARNOLD. KOENINGS

Download or read book Mystical Power and Politics on the Swahili Coast written by DR NATHALIE ARNOLD. KOENINGS and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces changing visions of mystical power and authority on the island of Pemba, whose people's reputed resistance to outside rule has shaped the national narratives of both Zanzibar and Tanzania. For two centuries, Pemba, the second largest island of Zanzibar, has been known by East Africans and outsiders alike as rich in dangerous knowledge. Despite Pembans' reputation for piety and deep Islamic knowledge, uchawi- 'mystical work and power', sometimes termed 'magic', 'witchcraft', or 'sorcery' - has long featured in diverse visions of their identity and as key to worldly power. Today, as traditional methods of securing agency are called into question and new ways proliferate, the mystical world is an intensely conflicted realm where the nature of power, ethical action, and reality itself is continually reframed. This luminous ethnography follows Pemban notions of invisible and worldly power through the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, the trials of multiparty democracy, the rise of Islamic revival, and intensifying neoliberalism. Through an exploration of rural imaginings of power, it argues that nations and the grammars that underwrite them are made in and by their peripheries, which give 'the centre' shape. Highlighting the intersections of mystical practices, religion, and politics-as-such on the Swahili Coast, the book contributes new perspectives to studies of the imagination, power, and religious transformation in Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the larger Islamic world.

Magical Interpretations, Material Realities

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134575572
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (345 download)

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Book Synopsis Magical Interpretations, Material Realities by : Henrietta L. Moore

Download or read book Magical Interpretations, Material Realities written by Henrietta L. Moore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA 'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices. It examines the way different people in different contexts are making sense of what 'witchcraft' is and what it might mean. Using recent ethnographic materials from across the continent, the volume explores how witchcraft articulates with particular modern settings for example: the State in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the university system in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors provide a timely overview and reconsideration of long-standing anthropological debates about 'African witchcraft', while simultaneously raising broader concerns about the theories of the western social sciences.

The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell

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Publisher : African Books Collective
ISBN 13 : 9956552798
Total Pages : 766 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell by : Kiyoshi Umeya

Download or read book The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell written by Kiyoshi Umeya and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell is a highly detailed ethnography about how the Jopadhola in eastern Uganda talk about, interpret and cope with death, illness and other misfortunes. The book presents a provocative discussion that critiques the idea of the revival of witchcraft in the neo-liberalised contemporary world, as represented by the 'modernity model of witchcraft', and attempts to formulate a 'spiderweb model' that connects witchcraft to contemporary society in a more complex manner. The book is a unique ethnography of the collective memory of indigenous knowledge and local historicity. The author moves the reader from curse to misfortune to fortune as he plots the notion of 'curse' as deeply embedded in the Adhola way of life. He weaves between culture, religion, state and modernity with lived experience. Did the concept of witchcraft unwittingly endear the Adhola to the Christian way of life because of the presence of the notion of 'curse' in the Bible or make them less susceptible to the vagaries of modernity compared to their neighbours? These are some of the questions that the author puts on the table in a deeply reflective manner. The phenomenon of witchcraft is given an intriguing angle that invites the reader to reexamine earlier anthropological writings on the subject among African peoples.

The Mandaean Book of John

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Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110487861
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mandaean Book of John by : Charles G. Häberl

Download or read book The Mandaean Book of John written by Charles G. Häberl and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.

Growing Up with HIV in Zimbabwe

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Publisher : Tamesis Books
ISBN 13 : 1847010482
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Growing Up with HIV in Zimbabwe by : Ross Parsons

Download or read book Growing Up with HIV in Zimbabwe written by Ross Parsons and published by Tamesis Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Zimbabwe stands at the epicentre of the global HIV epidemic. Families are severely depleted by death and migration. HIV infection is often lived in secrecy despite obvious physical manifestations. This study seeks to describe the specificity of the Zimbabwean context as it affects the lives of HIV-positive children in the eastern town of Mutare at a time of severe crisis in the state, marked by impoverishment, organised violence and mass death." -- Book jacket.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9781472418012
Total Pages : 604 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous by : Asa Simon Mittman

Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous written by Asa Simon Mittman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.

Black Chant

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521555265
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (552 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Chant by : Aldon Lynn Nielsen

Download or read book Black Chant written by Aldon Lynn Nielsen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of postmodernism and African-American poets.

The Phantom Image

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022664829X
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

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Book Synopsis The Phantom Image by : Patrick R. Crowley

Download or read book The Phantom Image written by Patrick R. Crowley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from a rich corpus of art works, including sarcophagi, tomb paintings, and floor mosaics, Patrick R. Crowley investigates how something as insubstantial as a ghost could be made visible through the material grit of stone and paint. In this fresh and wide-ranging study, he uses the figure of the ghost to offer a new understanding of the status of the image in Roman art and visual culture. Tracing the shifting practices and debates in antiquity about the nature of vision and representation, Crowley shows how images of ghosts make visible structures of beholding and strategies of depiction. Yet the figure of the ghost simultaneously contributes to a broader conceptual history that accounts for how modalities of belief emerged and developed in antiquity. Neither illustrations of ancient beliefs in ghosts nor depictions of afterlife, these images show us something about the visual event of seeing itself. The Phantom Image offers essential insight into ancient art, visual culture, and the history of the image.

African Philosophy and Thought Systems

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Publisher : Langaa RPCIG
ISBN 13 : 9956763012
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (567 download)

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Book Synopsis African Philosophy and Thought Systems by : Mawere, Munyaradzi

Download or read book African Philosophy and Thought Systems written by Mawere, Munyaradzi and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The once acrimonious debate on the existence of African philosophy has come of age, yet the need to cultivate a culture of belonging is more demanding now than ever before in many African societies. The gargantuan indelible energised chicanery waves of neo-colonialism and globalisation and their sweeping effect on Africa demand more concerted action and solutions than cul-de-sac discourses and magical realism. It is in view of this realisation that this book was born. This is a vital text for understanding contextual historical trends in the development of African philosophic ideas on the continent and how Africans could possibly navigate the turbulent catadromous waters, tangled webs and chasms of destruction, and chagrin of struggles that have engrossed Africa since the dawn of slavery and colonial projects on the continent. The book aims to generate more insights and influence national, continental, and global debates in the field of philosophy. It is accessible and handy to a wider range of readers, ranging from educators and students of African philosophy, anthropology, African studies, cultural studies, and all those concerned with the further development of African philosophy and thought systems on the African continent.

Respectable Mothers, Tough Men and Good Daughters

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Publisher : Langaa RPCIG
ISBN 13 : 9956550264
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Respectable Mothers, Tough Men and Good Daughters by : Salo, Elaine R.

Download or read book Respectable Mothers, Tough Men and Good Daughters written by Salo, Elaine R. and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2018-08-08 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines how men and women in Manenberg township, on Cape Town’s inner periphery, manoeuvre to re-define themselves as gendered persons deserving of dignity, through the quotidian practices of ordentlikheid or respectability. Salo shows how reclamation of dignity is an intergenerational and gendered process that is messy and uneven, involves the expression of often-brutal physical and social exclusion of individuals through embodied and social violence. Theoretically, the narrative makes visible the careful, painstaking processes of place making and claiming dignity by men and women in a place represented as a wasteland in the dominant discourse of grand apartheid and in the contemporary neo-liberal turn in Cape Town.

Ori-Oke Spirituality and Social Change in Africa

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Publisher : Langaa RPCIG
ISBN 13 : 9956550035
Total Pages : 588 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Ori-Oke Spirituality and Social Change in Africa by : Yaovi, Soede Nathanael

Download or read book Ori-Oke Spirituality and Social Change in Africa written by Yaovi, Soede Nathanael and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dynamic nature of Christianity has necessitated its movement from the cathedral to the mountain top. This has occasioned a proliferation of Prayer Mountains throughout Africa. In Yorubaland of southwestern Nigeria, Prayer Mountain is known as Ori-Oke. Like many communities in Africa, the Yoruba are confronted with fundamental challenges in life for which people do not rest until they find solutions. Within the praxis of Nigerian Christian lexicon Ori-Oke is synonymous with the enactment of a sacred space on a mountain top characterised by various prayer regimes, rituals, exorcism and religious practices, aimed at eliciting the help of the divine to alleviate the existential challenges of devotees. This book explores the resacralisation of space on the mountains, highlighting how humans and the divine interact in Yorubaland. It brings into conversation 35 empirically rich scholarly essays on the role of Ori-Oke to those seeking divine intervention in their lives. Today, Ori-Oke have become centres of pilgrimage as a result of the lived experiences of devotees, creating unique religious value quite distinct from the aesthetic value of these mountain tops. The spirituality of Ori-Oke is anchored on the absolute belief in God and the infusion of traditional African worldview sensibilities in religious rites and worship. Ori-Oke spirituality employs resources of Christian tradition, introduced by the formal agents of Christianity, synthesised with traditional culture, to develop a life based on the precepts of an African Christianity. The book is an intellectual discourse on Ori-Oke spirituality, reflecting its contemporary relevance in a context of religious innovation and competition.

Unshared Identity

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Publisher : African Books Collective
ISBN 13 : 1920033335
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Unshared Identity by : Babajide Ololajulo

Download or read book Unshared Identity written by Babajide Ololajulo and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2018-12-28 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unshared Identity employs the practice of posthumous paternity in Ilupeju-Ekiti, a Yoruba-speaking community in Nigeria, to explore endogenous African ways of being and meaning-making that are believed to have declined when the Yoruba and other groups constituting present-day Nigeria were preyed upon by European colonialism and Westernisation. However, the authors fieldwork for this book uncovered evidence of the resilience of Africas endogenous epistemologies. Drawing on a range of disciplines, from anthropology to literature, the author lays bare the hypocrisy underlying the ways in which dominant Western ideals of being and belonging are globalised or proliferated, while those that are unorthodox or non-Western (Yoruba and African in this case) are pathologised, subordinated and perceived as repugnant. At a time when the issues of decolonisation and African epistemologies are topical across the African continent, this book is a timely contribution to the potential revival of those values and practices that make Africans African.