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Preface 1 in Quest of the Unbeliever and the Ignoramus: Introduction. 2 Contents pp. Preface 1 In Quest of the Unbeliever and the Ignoramus: Introduction. 1-23 2 ‘Knowing the African’: Edwin W. Smith and the Invention of African Traditional Religion (accepted for publication in: Gerrie ter Haar and Jim Cox, Uniquely African?). 25-53 3 Edwin W. Smith and His ‘Raw Material’: Texts of a Missionary and Ethnographer in Context (published: in Anthropos 94.1999: 351-367). 55-88 4 ‘Honest to Jok’: Okot p’Bitek and de-Hellenising God (Dutch version published in Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, 54 (4): 273-294 (October 2000) 89-117 5 Wipe the Blackboard Clean…: ‘Academisation’ and Christianisation; Siblings in Africa? Part I: Academia and Religion; double track; Part II: Academia in Africa; following the track back; Part III: Academia in Africa: traces of alienation, dependency and opposition; Part IV: Academia in Africa; its future track? 119-169 6 And the Questions… They Flow Endlessly; Some Concluding Observations 171-176 v Summary (in Dutch) 177-180 Index of Authors 181-183 Index of Subjects 185-188 Curriculum Vitae 189 vi In Quest of the Unbeliever and the Ignoramus Ryeko pe pa ngat acel1 (Wisdom, cunningness, skill or knowledge is not for one person only) … and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. (Acts 1[8], King James Version) Defining power At the start of the 1980s, I was involved in a co-operative project between the Faculty of Theology of Utrecht University and the Department of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Classics of the University of Zimbabwe. It was the result of a ‘voyage of discovery’ to Southern Africa by the newly-appointed Missiology professor at the Utrecht Faculty. The project was funded by the Dutch government from development funds, and was also sponsored by Utrecht University. It aimed at capacity building in the field of research in ‘African Traditional Religions’ at the University of Zimbabwe and at assisting in the development of teaching materials in this subject for secondary schools throughout Zimbabwe.2 The project embodied, in a nutshell, the problem areas on which I focus in this thesis. They are those of a Western university co-operating in a spirit of partnership with a counterpart institution in the Southern hemisphere in an area which clearly belonged to a cultural and religious tradition specific to Africa, but which, at the same time, had been researched by scholars from Northern hemisphere universities, and thus to a certain extent ‘confiscated’ and appropriated by them. Paradoxically, the Northern colleagues were supposed to assist their Southern counterparts in researching, and thereby defining, a central feature of the cultural setting of the Southern partners, namely their native religious systems. In the discussions on the progress of the project, one central subject remained implicit and in the background: i.e. who defined what, how and for whom? The subject of the ‘power of defining’ (also in its institutionalised form) in religion and academia in Africa, is the thread that runs through all the articles that follow. 1 From: Okot p’Bitek, Acholi Proverbs, Nairobi: Heineman Kenya, 1985. 2 See for more detailed information on this project: Ter Haar and Van Rinsum 1994, and Ter Haar, Moyo and Nondo 1992. 1 (Western) science In the case of the link-up between Utrecht University and the University of Zimbabwe, the defining power seemed to originate largely from a university in the North nurtured, and embodied in a Western concept of science. When I say ‘a Western concept’, I actually challenge a universal concept of what science is. In what way can this Western concept be characterised? Bill Clinton, the President of the United States of America, unwittingly gave a paradigmatic answer to this question during a press conference on the occasion of the completion of the first survey of the human genome project on June 26, 2000, with these words: Today’s announcement represents more than just an epic-making triumph of science and reason [….] Today, we are learning the language in which God created life [the italics are mine]. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift. [….] Science is a voyage of exploration into the unknown. […] What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book [italics are mine]?3 Seen from this perspective, Western science is determined and destined to make humankind and its environment legible.4 Science aims at reading the ‘Book of Nature’. From this viewpoint, science and its practitioners are not restricted to solely ‘reading’ their own environment. All along the road to other parts of the world, Western civilisation appeared to be all too willing to ‘read’ the ‘Other’ but also to ‘read out’ to the ‘Other’ and to pre-scribe to those they encountered on this long journey. Here is what the Belgian missionary, Father Placide Tempels, said about his own ‘reading-the-Bantu-project’: We do not claim, of course that the Bantu are capable of formulating a philosophical treatise, complete with an adequate vocabulary. It is our job to proceed to such systematic development. It is we who will be able to tell them, in precise terms, what their inmost concept of being is. They will recognize themselves in our words and will acquiesce, saying, “You understand us: you know us completely: you “know” in the way we “know”.5 3 White House Press Release, Office of the Press Secretary, June 26, 2000 (downloaded text from internet). 4 I will come back to this idea of ‘legibility’ below. It is a prominent topic in James Scott’s fascinating study of 1998. 5 Tempels 1959: 25. The Dutch original text reads: ‘Het is heelemaal niet zeker dat de Bantu-zelf ons een volledige filosofische terminologie aan de hand zullen doen. De proeve van systematisch uitgewerkte Bantu-ontologie moet ons werk zijn. En wanneer zij er eenmaal is, zullen wij de 2 This statement by Tempels, whose Bantu Philosophy has had a tremendous influence on the thinking in and about Africa, expresses in a very concise manner the theme of this study: i.e. ‘They will recognize themselves in our words’. Our words define the ‘Other’ who are given their ‘true’ identity – of which they were not yet fully aware of - ‘revealed’ and ‘prescribed’. The purpose of this part of the study is to give an introduction to four articles that in one way or another relate to the theme of how the identity of the ‘Other’ has been prescribed within the domain of religion and academia in Africa. Introduction to the articles In the first article Knowing the African; Edwin W. Smith and the Invention of African Traditional Religion, my purpose is to demonstrate that the study of African religions by many missionaries, anthropologists and scholars of religion, was couched in a discourse ‘African Traditional Religion’. This discourse was part of a broader colonial discourse that aimed to master the ‘Other’ through a process of knowing the ‘Other’. In trying to outline this discourse, I make use of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism. The concept of ‘African Traditional Religion’ emanated from 19th century liberal theological thinking in Europe, which went on to influence early 20th century missionaries, such as Edwin W. Smith, in particular. These men translated the religious activities they witnessed in Africa into their own theological idiom, thereby designing a pyramid model of ‘African Traditional Religion’ with God at the apex, humans at the base, and the spirit world as intermediary between God and man. This discourse, I will argue, was to some extent also adopted by African theologians and scholars of religion who apparently ‘recognised’ themselves in this model of religion. In this sense, ‘African Traditional Religion’ became part of the identity not only of religious individuals but also of larger groups in society. In the second article, Edwin W. Smith and his ‘Raw Material’: Texts of a Missionary and Ethnographer in Context, I focus on the ethnographic writings of one of those early missionaries, Edwin W. Smith. He left Britain in the heyday of colonialism in order to share his religious beliefs with the Ila-people in former Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. One of his projects was to get to ‘Know the African’ and to collect ‘raw material’ on this bizarre ‘Other’ for the metropolitan armchair anthropologists of Europe. This division of labour was an instance, avant Bantu kunnen zeggen, en klaar zeggen, wat zij in hun diepste wezen denken over de wezens. Zij zullen zichzelf in onze woorden erkennen en antwoorden: Gij hebt ons verstaan, gij kent ons volkomen, gij << weet >> gelijk wij << weten >>’. (Tempels 1946: 14) 3 la lettre, of what became known later as the ‘centre – periphery’ model at a time when Europe was extracting raw material, and thus, economic wealth, from parts of the world it had colonised, for processing at home. The processing of raw materials, however, applied not only to natural products, but also to cultural constituents of the civilisations of other people which were likewise processed into theories about the ‘Other’, in the domain of ‘African Traditional Religion’ for instance. These theories were later returned to the ‘Other(s)’ who ‘recognised themselves’ in those European words. In my third article, Honest to Jok: Okot p’Bitek and De-Hellenising God, we encounter the Ugandan poet, soccer-player, academic and critic, Okot p’Bitek (1931-1982). Okot criticised in a furious, but elegant style precisely this process of ‘recognising yourself’ in other’s words through subtle mechanisms of power.
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