Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home AfricaBib Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Shared Legacies of the War: Spirit Mediums and War Veterans in Southern Zimbabwe
Author:Fontein, JoostISNI
Year:2006
Periodical:Journal of Religion in Africa
Volume:36
Issue:2
Pages:167-199
Language:English
Geographic term:Zimbabwe
Subjects:spirit possession
veterans
social relations
political ideologies
Religion and Witchcraft
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Military, Defense and Arms
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27594375.pdf
Abstract:This paper explores the nature of ongoing relationships between war veterans and spirit mediums in Zimbabwe, as well as the continuing salience of a shared 'chimurenga' legacy of cooperation by these two groups, and how it has been put to use, and acted out by both in the context of Zimbabwe's recent fast-track land reform project. In emphasizing this continuity, the paper also considers whether a corresponding disparity between the ideology of the ruling political elite and the practices, experiences and performances of guerrillas, spirit mediums and others acting on the ground, which materialized during the liberation struggle, has reemerged, despite or alongside the recent collaboration of some war veterans with the ruling party's rhetoric of 'patriotic history'. Engaging with Lambek's work on moral subjectivity and Mbembe's 'logic of conviviality' of postcolonial States and their subjects, it argues that war veterans and spirit mediums sometimes share a 'moral conviviality' which appears during 'bira' possession ceremonies, in the shared demands for the return and reburial of the war dead from foreign countries, or for 'national' ceremonies to be held at Great Zimbabwe and elsewhere to thank the ancestors, as well as in the similar way in which spirit mediums and war veterans subject their agency to that of the ancestors in their narrative performances. It concludes by suggesting that although many war veterans have undeniably been closely complicit in the violent 'authoritarian nationalism' of the State, in this shared war legacy of spirit mediums and war veterans lies the opportunity for radical alternative imaginations of the State. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
Cover