Gewissheit und Geheimnis
Anne Storch
January 18, 2018 DOI: 10.1515/9783110561210-115 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Citations | 8 |
| Key points | Argues that colonial-era Africanist writings on spirit possession and secret language practices both constructed the colonized as a traditional, static Other and served to position the linguists and missionaries who wrote them as specialized cultural brokers and border-crossing pioneers able to reveal and explain hidden secrets to academic and metropolitan audiences. The paper examines the mimetic interpretations of the colonial Other in these texts and the ways Africanists performed and mimicked expert identities. |
Abstract
In its colonial context, Africanistics has been defined as inherently interdisciplinary: the study of African languages was intended to unveil African thinking, history and culture. Early research on spirit language practices and secrecy had a particular meaning in this context, as it helped to produce images of ‘African thought’ alongside ideas about expert identities. Linguists and missionaries who wrote about spirit possession and secret language practices, in these texts therefore not only constructed the colonial Other (traditional, static, located in another time), but also were able to present themselves to a wider academic and metropolitan audience as highly specialized cultural brokers, border-crossing pioneers who were able to reveal the hidden secrets of the colonized parts of the world and explain them to other scientists. In this contribution, I focus on the mimetic interpretations of the colonial Other in Africanist texts on spirit possession and on the ways in which Africanists of this period performed and mimicked expert identities.