Body and Affect in the Intercultural Encounter

Description

The volume draws from René Devisch’s encounters with groups in southsaharan Africa, primarily. The author had the privilege to immerse himself, around the clock, in the Yakaphones’ activities and thoughts in southwest DR Congo from 1972 to 1974, and intermittently in Kinshasa’s shanty towns, from 1986 to 2003. The author first examines what sparked his choice to come to Congo, and then to pursue research among the Yakaphones in the borderland with Angola. He then invites us to follow the trajectory of his plural anthropological view on today’s multicentric world. It leads us to his praise for honorary doctor Jean-Marc Ela’s work. He then examines the proletarian outbursts of violence that rocked Congo’s major cities in 1991 and 1993. These can be read as a settling of scores with the disillusioning colonial and missionary modernisation, along with president Mobutu’s millenarian Popular Movement of the Revolution. Furthermore, after considering the morose reduction of a major Yaka dancing mask into a mere museum-bound curio in Antwerp, the book unravels the Yakaphones’ perspectives on spirits and sorcery’s threat. It also analyses their commitment to classical Bantu-African healing cults, along with their parallel consulting physicians and healers. By sharing the Yakaphones’ life-world, the analysis highlights their body-group-world weave, interlaced by the principle of co-resonance. A phenomenological and perspectivist look unfolds the local actors’ views, thereby disclosing the Bantu-African genius and setting for a major reversal of perspectives. Indeed, seeing 'here' from 'there' allows the author to uncover some alienating dynamics at work in his native Belgian Flemish-speaking culture. To better grasp the realm of life beyond the speakable and factual reasoning, the approach occasionally turns to the later Lacan’s focus on the unconscious desire, the body and its affects. The book addresses students and researchers in the humanities and, more broadly, all those immersed in the heat of the encounter with the culturally different. Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. ix Plates .................................................................................................................... xi Preface, Koen Stroeken ........................................................................................ xv 1. Introduction: the co-implication of anthropologists and their hosts ........................................................................... 1 The book and this chapter ......................................................................... 1 The intercultural encounter: perspectives and challenges ...................... 3 The anthropologist and the host groups........................................................ 5 Feeling affected and questioned ..................................................................... 9 Ethical commitment and shared humanity ................................................. 12 The Yakaphone people ..............................................................................18 Reciprocal anthropology and innovative research ............................... 24 Reversal of perspective: seeing here from there ............................................ 24 The body-group-world weave ..................................................................... 31 Towards an ontology of resonance and co-naturality .................................. 36 A matrixial understanding of subjectification ............................................ 38 Overview .................................................................................................... 40 Part 1 The shock of the multicultural 2. The multicentric world: interview by Jan Van Pelt ................. 53 3. In praise of Jean-Marc Ela, advocate of the people of below ................................................................................... 71 4. Frenzy, violence and ethical renewal in Kinshasa ....................... 77 Method of inquiry ..................................................................................... 81 Kinshasa ....................................................................................................... 82 vBody and affect in the intercultural encounter An orgy of violence and ruptures in the 1990s ................................... 89 From illusion to fury .................................................................................90 Proletarian uprisings ................................................................................. 92 Positions of failure .................................................................................... 94 Predatory economy of the street ................................................................ 96 Violence seeking to reverse social injustice ................................................... 97 Ideals and norms fade away ...................................................................... 99 Poor and wealthy in a common void ....................................................... 101 The ethical dawn of oniric regeneration ............................................. 102 Mimesis ends in exhaustion ................................................................... 104 Frenzy and ostentation ........................................................................... 106 Critique and creativity ........................................................................... 111 The dawn of a new cosmology .......................................................... 114 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 116 Part 2 Cultural embedding of the body, senses and meaning 5. A dancing mask, estranged in the museum ................................ 119 The dancing masks ................................................................................. 120 A cult enactment turned into a curio ................................................... 122 The masculine gaze and its incipient deconstruction ......................... 124 The mask’s view upon the observer ................................................... 127 6. Affects and senses in healing .......................................................... 131 Affliction cults’ life-bearing meaning ................................................... 132 Blending of sensory capacities ............................................................. 134 Borderlinking and the dynamic of homeopathy .............................. 141 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 144 viContents Part 3 The moral economy of the intercultural 7. Salvation of souls: the Belgian masculine missionary ........... 149 The “civilising mission” ......................................................................... 151 The Belgian missionary endeavour in the Congo .............................. 153 Christian modernisation in the homeland ................................................ 153 The missionaries’ styles and strategies .................................................. 155 Indigenising or the adaptation effort........................................................ 155 The assimilation strategy ....................................................................... 159 Harmonious association attempts ........................................................... 160 The whitening trap ................................................................................ 161 The educational endeavour ................................................................... 163 Schools and books as subjugation ........................................................... 165 Different styles of education ................................................................... 166 The indigenising approach to education ................................................... 167 Towards a practical education, but unsuccessful ....................................... 169 The association option ............................................................................ 169 Higher learning and university .............................................................. 170 Epilogue ................................................................................................... 172 8. Anthropology cataloguing classical African medicine René Devisch and Mbonyinkebe Sebahire ................................. 175 Classical African medicine and health care ......................................... 176 Local cultural perspectives on body and health ................................ 182 The life-force and life-flow ....................................................................... 182 The gendering of health ......................................................................... 186 Symptoms and cultural etiology .......................................................... 189 Diagnosis ............................................................................................... 189 Cultural idioms of distress ..................................................................... 191 Divinatory etiology ................................................................................ 194 viiBody and affect in the intercultural encounter Treatment ................................................................................................. 197 Affliction and healing cults ..................................................................... 198 The synergism of healing procedures ....................................................... 201 Transforming devices and cultural inducers ............................................. 203 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 211 9. Plural health care in Kinshasa René Devisch, Lapika Dimonfu, Jaak Le Roy and Peter Crossman ............................................................................ 213 The action-research ................................................................................ 216 Research setting...................................................................................... 216 Research techniques ................................................................................ 217 Findings ................................................................................................ 221 From data to interpretation ................................................................... 226 From research to action ........................................................................ 228 Quality of care ...................................................................................... 232 Organisation of the healers .................................................................... 233 Benefits for the community ...................................................................... 233 Collaboration with biomedical care ......................................................... 234 Cooperation with faith healers ................................................................ 234 Discussion ................................................................................................ 235 Contemporary Congo’s shattered mirrors ............................................... 236 The lay therapy management group ........................................................ 237 The mind set of the researchers .............................................................. 241 Product of Western-derived science ......................................................... 246 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 248 Interdisciplinary thesaurus ................................................................................. 249 Notes ................................................................................................................ 277 References .......................................................................................................... 281 Index ................................................................................................................ 301