Ethnographic Sorcery (15 page)

6. Hollis has warned against trying to figure out what beliefs such as Azande witchcraft are "about," for, to Azande, they are about nothing other than witchcraft (1970: 226). See also Ellis and ter Haar 1998: 186; Hastrup 1995: 33; Overing 1985: 158; Palmié 2002: 3; Peel 1969. Cf. Lattas 1993: 68; Simmons 1980.

7. Luhrmann (1989), by contrast, has described witches in contemporary England who themselves sometimes characterize their own "beliefs" as metaphorical.

8. Horton (1993: no) would agree with this and, for that reason, would suggest that there is no metaphor, or symbol, here but only an errant attempt at explanation. His conclusion, he argues, demonstrates less arrogance than symbolist defenses of failed logical thinking through suggestions that such thought is "really about" something else.

9. This is not to suggest that Muedans, or other Africans, never self-reflexively deploy metaphor. Indeed, symbolists have often suggested that they do so even within the context of ritual expression of religious "belief." See, e.g., de Heusch 1985 on the use of metaphor in sacrifice. See also Devisch 1990 and Joralemon and Sharon 1993: 246-256 on the explicit use of metaphorical statements—recognized by healers and patients as such—in the practices of Yaka healers (in Zaire) and Peruvian
curanderos,
respectively. See also Tambiah 1969 and Urton 1985 on the explicit use of animals as metaphors for social relations.

1. Langford (2002: 188-230) has given a fascinating account of similar conversations she had with those among whom she worked regarding the authenticity/fraudulence of healing practices.

2. Atkinson (1989: 75) has suggested that, among Wana, the force of magic depends both upon its operations being kept secret
and
upon the revelation to others that magic has been made. Taussig has proposed that "revelation is precisely what the secret intends" (1998: 242).

3. Whitehead (2002: 11-40) has given an account of a similar experience. See also Rasmussen 2001: xvi. Cf. Favret-Saada 1980: 18,
where she suggests that it is difficult for the investigator to occupy the vulnerable space of the bewitched.

MAKING MEANING, MAKING THE WORLD

1. See also Firth 1966: 15

2. Wittgenstein similarly argued: “All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place within a system. . . . The system is not so much the point of departure as the element in which arguments have their life” (in Tambiah 1990: 64). Winch, following Wittgenstein, wrote: “Reality is not what gives language sense. What is real and what is unreal shows itself in the sense that language has” (1970: 82). Along the same lines, Voloshinov suggested that “language is constitutive of human experience,” according to Todorov (1984: 29). “There is no experience outside its embodiment in signs. . . . It is not experience that organizes expression, but, to the contrary, expression that organizes experience. . . . Outside material expression, no experience. More, expression precedes experience, it is its cradle” (Voloshinov in Todorov 1984: 43). Following Bakhtin and Voloshinov, Williams (1977: 21–44) argued for the need to treat language as a constitutive material activity rather than as a means of expressing understandings of an a priori reality. See also Lee 1959: 8; Whorf 1956.

3. See also Hallen and Sodipo’s discussion of Yoruba witchcraft in light of the writings of the philosopher W. V. O. Quine, who “prefers to regard each natural language . . . as a unique and complex theory for describing experience that conveys its own ontology, which may be distinct from that of any other,” and who argues, according to Hallen and Sodipo: “Immediate experience does not ‘present itself’ as ordered and categorized. It is man, with his language and the theories he uses it to construct . . . who defines meaning and order” (Hallen and Sodipo 1986: 16).

4. Gottlieb has provided further evidence that through such discursive formations, people may perceive themselves as makers of their own world; a Beng Master of the Earth once told her, “My religion is powerful, it is real, but it is we who create it. Without our faith, it does not exist. Our gods are our invention” (Gottlieb 1992: 44). Davis has asserted that “‘magical’ circumstantial therapy” (the term she uses for healing among Tabwa) similarly “takes the same form as godliness and, in so far as they are able, human beings control life by standing as god in relation to themselves and their world” (C. O. Davis 2000: 300).

5. See also Atkinson 1989: 16, 37–39; M. F. Brown 1986: 50; Humphrey 1996: 76; Lattas 1993; Stoller 1989: 14.

1. Israel (2005; forthcoming) has conducted extensive research on masquerade in the Mueda plateau region and reports that this dance, called
nshindo,
is a genre of the
mapiko
masquerade with which Makonde residents of the Mueda plateau region are closely associated. His research has demonstrated that
nshindo,
which literally means “foot stamping,” arose in the late 1940s in the lowlands around the Messalo River.

2. This was just under $4 at the time.

3. According to Israel’s research (forthcoming), the fact that
nshindo
was performed at funerals contributed to its historical disappearance on the plateau itself, where colonial-era missionaries condemned such practices as heathen. Israel also reports that in the wake of Catholic evangelization, plateau residents set aside this genre of masquerade due to its depiction of sorcery.

4. See Dias and Dias 1970: 391–393. Bortolot (forthcoming) has recently conducted research on masquerade in the Mueda region and writes that the secret of the
lipiko’s
identity has long been a public one.

5. See also Bortolot, forthcoming; Dias and Dias 1970: 200; Israel, forthcoming.

6. This
nshindo
performance differed somewhat from the norm, perhaps owing to my having commissioned it. For a description of the typical
nshindo
performance, see Israel, forthcoming.

7. Israel (forthcoming) explains that the
nshindo
genre of masquerade generally includes this kind of theatrical component, although no word exists in Shimakonde to differentiate it from the dance.

8. A
capulana
is a rectangular printed cloth, worn by women as a wrap skirt but also serving dozens of other functions.

9. Historically,
lipiko
have represented spiritual entities (Dias and Dias 1970: 391–393). According to Israel (forthcoming), other entities were also represented by
lipiko
masks in the
nshindo
genre, including Ngoni fishermen (present in the region), Masaai warriors (whom Makonde might have encountered while in Tanzania), and Germans (who passed through the region during World War I and who owned sisal plantations in the region thereafter). By his account, the character of the sorcerer dates to the introduction of a mask in the 1950s that
represented an individual widely suspected of having been a sorcerer. According to Israel, this reinforced prior associations of
nshindo
with sorcery;
nshindo
in fact derived from
mapiko a shilo,
a genre dating to the 1930s that was widely associated with sorcery because it was danced at night and used masks representing animals and dangerous spirits.

10. Whitehead (2002: 169) has offered a similar account of healers treating dark sorcerers made sick by their consumption of victims.

11. Whether sorcerer or not, the
lipiko
and his dancing by all accounts produced an atmosphere conducive to sorcery. According to Bortolot (forthcoming):
“Mapiko
performers, dancing alone at the center of crowds of people animated by emotions of competition, pride, and jealousy, are left completely exposed to all manner of unseen attacks. . . . By laying themselves open to attack, the actors involved essentially ‘call out’ those who would engage in such antisocial behaviors and demonstrate their knowledge of
uwavi
by effectively protecting themselves against them. . . . People say that during performances the air is thick with
uwavi,
and anyone who stands out from the crowd may get caught, quite literally, in the crossfire.” (Bortolot has written that he in fact fell violently ill the day after filming a performance from the elevated perspective of a chair.) Israel (forthcoming) has reported that
nshindo
performers “mine” the enclosure in which they perform with antisorcery
mitela
and sometimes post a healer at its opening to mitigate these dangers.

12. According to Israel (forthcoming),
nshindo
performers themselves often speak of their performance as an “antisorcery dance” rather than a “sorcery dance.”

13. Israel (forthcoming) has reported that dancers are instructed in how to portray sorcery by elders who often are countersorcery healers; where this is the case, he suggests, the question is one of how these elders know what sorcery looks like without having undertaken it.

14. Stoller has similarly suggested that Songhay spirit possession, as theatrical performance, constitutes “a deliberate attack on reality but for the transformation of life” (1989: 209–210). Kingdon has suggested that the ritual unmasking of
mapiko
in the context of male initiation rites itself constituted a “revelation” of the “true . . . cosmological order”; in other words, it revealed the existence of that which it represented (2002: 49). Elsewhere, he has offered fascinating commentary on the way that Makonde sculpture has, similarly, mediated
between "experiential realms," producing images of things at once "not quite known" and "not quite unknown" and, ultimately, affording "astonishing disclosurefs] of a frightening ontological incompleteness" (2002: 146, 199).

15. Bortolot has reported that, in the village of Matambalale, practitioners of another dance genre,
mang'anyamu
(in which dancers dress in animal skins), were similarly suspected by fellow villagers of practicing sorcery and that they similarly responded with ambivalence, "[taking] these rumors very seriously, while also finding them somewhat empowering" (personal communication, 16 November 2005). According to Israel (n.d.), this genre had long been considered an innocuous, playful dance, but within the context of a spate of lion maulings in 2002-2003, the dance was interpreted as more sinister.

1. Individuals claiming to be sorcerers were, in fact, generally dismissed as insane.

2. See also Middleton 1963: 266.

3. Sefu's words are reminiscent of Sandombu's in Victor Turner's classic ethnography
Schism and Continuity
([1957] 1996: 95, 118)— words that ended in his being expelled temporarily from his village and barred from becoming chief. Marwick described Chewa convictions that sorcerers could be detected by their "threatening and prophetic language" (1967: 107). The threat of sorcery, like sorcery accusations, was often veiled in euphemism in Mueda, as elsewhere (see also Mair 1969: 219; Whyte 1997: 31). Middleton has asserted that, among Lugbara, the euphemism "You will see me later" was understood by all as a threat (1967: 58). Chavunduka has told us that, in Shona, "We shall meet" is considered to be a sorcerer's threat (1978: 17). Scott has argued that euphemism provides a way of making political statements with which regnant powers have difficulty dealing (1990: 152-154). Fisiy has provided evidence of this in his account of a Cameroonian legal research project that debated whether or not the euphemism "You shall see!" could be considered a threat in a court of law (1998: 147).

4. Boddy has similarly referred to Zar healing rituals as "metasocial" and "metacultural" productions (1989: 9). Van der Geest and Whyte (1989: 361) have argued that metaphors and metonyms are used to render illness concrete and, thus, treatable by concrete inter
ventions. See also Luedke 2005. On the place of rhetoric in "symbolic healing," see Kirkmayer 1993: 163.

5. See also Fadiman 1993; Middleton and Winter 1963: 21; Thompson 1982.

6. Geschiere (1997) has argued, along similar lines, that witchcraft may be understood to operate as a force favoring either social differentiation or the leveling of social difference; see also Fisiy and Geschiere 1991; cf. Kluckhohn 1944: 118-121; Lattas 1993: 52; Middleton and Winter 1963: 13.

7. See also Beattie 1963: 51-52; Fadiman 1993; Thomas 1970: 67-68.

8. See also Bongmba 2001: 54; Evans-Pritchard [1937] 1976: 54; Green 1994: 27. In such cases, sorcery discourse may be said to act as a "hidden transcript" of resistance, to use James Scott's (1990) terminology.

9. See also Bond and Ciekawy 2001: 14; Crawford [1967] 1970: 323-324

10. See also Bastian 2003; Bongmba 1998: 178; Devisch 2001: 119; Goheen 1996: 146; Sanders 2001: 170.

11. Ardener has told us that, among Bakweri in West Cameroon in the late colonial period, the relatively more prosperous were widely suspected of having built their tin-roofed homes with zombie slave labor (1970: 147-148).

12. See also Bayart 1993: 248-249; Goheen 1996: 160-161. Geschiere (1997: 113) has argued that such accusations may have negative repercussions for the accusers insofar as they may drive elites away from the village permanently, foreclosing all possibility of the sharing of wealth. See also Fisiy 1998: 146; Fisiy and Geschiere 2001: 236; Geschiere and Nyamnjoh 1998: 81-82.

13. Cf. Bastian (2001), who has described the confessions of teenage prostitute witches in Nigeria who claimed to have rendered their business-class clients economically impotent. Through such confessions, these young women not only "criticized" the destructive acts that they themselves perpetrated but also, arguably, produced restraining anxieties among the category of people they claimed to have acted against.

14. I give greater detail of this elsewhere (West forthcoming); see also the account provided by Israel (n.d.), who was conducting research in the district at the time of these events.