Affective Trajectories Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes
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AFFECTIVE TRAJECTORIES RELIGIOUS CULTURES OF AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA PEOPLE Series editors: Jacob K. Olupona, Harvard University; Dianne M. Stewart, Emory University; and Terrence L. Johnson, Georgetown University The book series examines the religious, cultural, and political expressions of African, African American, and African Caribbean traditions. Through transnational, cross- cultural, and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of religion, the series investigates the epistemic boundaries of continental and diasporic religious practices and thought and explores the diverse and distinct ways African- derived religions inform culture and politics. The se- ries aims to establish a forum for imagining the centrality of Black religions in the formation of the “New World.” AFFECTIVE TRAJECTORIES RELIGION AND EMOTION IN AFRICAN CITY- SCAPES HANSJÖRG DILGER, ASTRID BOCHOW, MARIAN BURCHARDT, and MATTHEW WILHELM- SOLOMON, editors DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and London 2020 © 2020 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Aimee C. Harrison Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro and Myriad Pro by Copperline Book Services Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Dilger, Hansjörg, editor. Title: Affective trajectories : religion and emotion in African cityscapes / Hansjörg Dilger, Astrid Bochow, Marian Burchardt, and Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon. Description: Durham : Duke University Press Books, 2020. | Series: Religious cultures of African and African diaspora people | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers:lccn 2019023966 (print) lccn 2019023967 (ebook) isbn 9781478005490 (hardcover) isbn 9781478006268 (paperback) isbn 9781478007166 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Cities and towns—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Cities and towns—Africa. | Psychology, Religious—Africa. | Emotions— Religious aspects—Christianity. Classification:lcc br1360 .a435 2020 (print) | lcc br1360 (ebook) | ddc 200.96/091732—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023966 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023967 Cover photograph: Marisa Maza CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION 1 Affective Trajectories in Religious African Cityscapes HANSJÖRG DILGER, MARIAN BURCHARDT, MATTHEW WILHELM- SOLOMON, AND ASTRID BOCHOW PART I AFFECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURES CHAPTER ONE 29 Affective Regenerations: Intimacy, Cleansing, and Mourning in and around Johannesburg’s Dark Buildings MATTHEW WILHELM- SOLOMON CHAPTER TWO 52 Emotions as Affective Trajectories of Belief in Mwari (God) among Masowe Apostles in Urban Zimbabwe ISABEL MUKONYORA CHAPTER THREE 77 The Sites of Divine Encounter: Affective Religious Spaces and Sensational Practices in Christ Embassy and NASFAT in the City of Abuja MURTALA IBRAHIM CHAPTER FOUR 98 Religious Sophistication in African Pentecostalism: An Urban Spirit? RIJK VAN DIJK PART II EMOTIONS ON THE MOVE CHAPTER FIVE 119 Affective Routes of Healing: Navigating Paths of Recovery in Urban and Rural West Africa ISABELLE L LANGE CHAPTER SIX 138 The Cleansing Touch: Spirits, Atmospheres, and Attouchment in a “Japanese” Spiritual Movement in Kinshasa PETER LAMBERTZ CHAPTER SEVEN 160 Learning How to Feel: Emotional Repertoires of Nigerian and Congolese Pentecostal Pastors in the Diaspora RAFAEL CAZARIN AND MARIAN BURCHARDT PART III EMBODIMENT, SUBJECTIVITY, AND BELONGING CHAPTER EIGHT 185 “Those Who Pray Together”: Religious Practice, Affect, and Dissent among Muslims in Asante (Ghana) BENEDIKT PONTZEN CHAPTER NINE 202 Longing for Connection: Christian Education and Emerging Urban Lifestyles in Botswana ASTRID BOCHOW CHAPTER TEN 222 “Here, Here Is a Place Where I Can Cry”: Religion in a Context of Displacement: Congolese Churches in Kampala ALESSANDRO GUSMAN CHAPTER ELEVEN 243 Men of Love? Affective Conversions on Township Streets HANS REIHLING BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 CONTRIBUTORS 299 INDEX 303 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume was developed from selected papers from the conference “Spirit and Sentiment: Affective Trajectories of Religious Being in Urban Africa,” which was held at Freie Universität Berlin on May 28 – 30, 2015. The confer- ence was organized by the editors of this volume on behalf of the research network Religion, aids, and Social Transformation in Africa (rasta). The conference was cosponsored by the research project “Salvaged Lives: A Study of Urban Migration, Ontological Insecurity, and Healing in Jo- hannesburg,” based at the African Centre for Migration and Society, Uni- versity of the Witwatersrand, in collaboration with the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation Knowledge for Tomorrow — Cooperative Re- search Projects in Sub- Saharan Africa Programme. The editors would like to thank the keynote speakers of the Berlin con- ference, Filip De Boeck and Rijk van Dijk, whose interventions informed the debates in the volume. We also would like to thank the following insti- tutions and individuals for their invaluable support in the development and final production of this volume: Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg Konstanz for funding the proofreading of the manuscript before submission; Karoline Buchner for formatting the chapters, communicating with contributors, and preparing the manuscript for submission; Robert Parkin and Zoe Gold- stein for language editing; and the three external readers for their highly insightful comments on the volume. We are extremely grateful to Miriam Angress at Duke University Press for her facilitation of the contracts and production; and the series editors Jacob Olupona, Dianne Stewart, and Ter- rence Johnson, who showed tremendous interest in this book project from its very beginning. This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION AFFECTIVE TRAJECTORIES IN RELIGIOUS AFRICAN CITYSCAPES HANSJÖRG DILGER, MARIAN BURCHARDT, MATTHEW WILHELM- SOLOMON, and ASTRID BOCHOW This volume is the first of its kind to focus comparatively on the multiple articulations between the varied affective and emotional states of people living in and beyond urban Africa, on the one hand, and the religious prac- tices, ideas, and infrastructures present in African cities that impact them, on the other. In an important sense, the affective and emotional dynamics in urban Africa,1 and the social, political, and material configurations that sustain — or are sustained by — them, are bound up with religion, its politics of collective aspirations and presence in public spaces, as well as its mate- rial practices. In this volume, we envisage the intertwining of religion, affect, and emo- tion in African cityscapes and, more specifically, the ways in which religious symbols and rites structure — and are reworked through — embodied and affective relationships with urban materialities and power relations, on five levels. First, religious ideas and practices offer affective regimes that regu- late the hermeneutics of the self; second, religion allows people to encode their emotional states in moral and/or spiritual terms that shape their maps of meaning and guide their actions; third, religion supplies affective forms of belonging that are often simultaneously localized and transnational, and thus forge new notions of emplacement; fourth, religion produces ritual spaces for catharsis, peace, and elation and hence offers an outlet for the discord and anxiety of city life, though religious groups and rituals also foster aggression toward those considered to be outside their moral order; and fifth, religious communities often provide concrete material, emotional, and organizational support and care to those living in precarious and dan- gerous situations. In order to explore these various intertwinings between affect, emotion, and religion in urban African settings, the volume engages with two bod- ies of literature that have not yet been systematically applied to the analysis of religious practices in African cityscapes and beyond. First, the volume builds on the literature on affect, emotion, and sentiment that has flourished in the social sciences and cultural studies in recent years, and whose ana- lytical potential for the field of religion still needs to be fully explored — not only in Africa but also in other parts of the world. Second, it connects the literature on affect, emotion, and sentiment — and the way in which it has been applied by individual authors to the study of religion so far (e.g., Riis and Woodhead 2010; Herbrik and Knoblauch 2014; Scheer 2015) — to the exploration of the diverse religious, symbolic, social, political, and material mediations of urban space in Africa and beyond. Taken together, these two bodies of literature inform our notion of af- fective trajectories, which we consider central for thinking about how the affective and emotional dimensions of religious ideas, practices, and ma- terialities coalesce to shape specific urban environments in contemporary Africa and beyond, and how they are simultaneously shaped by them. We argue that scholars of religion should focus more systematically on the ways in which theoretical notions of affect, emotion, and sentiment can be ap- plied when exploring religious lives in the cityscapes of global Africa, which today extend far beyond the “narrow” confines of the continent, and how they provide unique entry points for analyzing the entwinement between religion, affect, emotion, and sentiment in the twenty- first century. AFFECT, EMOTION, AND SENTIMENT IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN AFRICA: