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Heald, Suzette. "The Absence of Anthropology: Critical The divinatory consultation or oracle works Reflections on Anthropology and AIDS Practice in toward identifying remedial or preventive measures Africa." Learning from HIV and AIDS, ed. George to be taken and thereby provides stepping stones Ellison, Melissa Parker, and Catherine Campbell. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003. for empowerment and a temporality of prospect and peace of mind. Sometimes, however, the Heywood, Mark. "Shaping, Making and Breaking the Law diviner's involvement may actually exacerbate the in the Campaign for a National HIV/AIDS Treatment Plan." In Democratizing Development: The Politics of conflict or indeterminate situation. Indeed, a Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa, ed. Peris Jones diviner's role may be that of the trickster, namely, and Kristian Stokke. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff one of ambivalent speech or apparent deception, in Publishers, 2005. order better to reveal and address the problem.

Strand, Per; Khabelc Matlosa; Ann Strode; and Kondwani Public scepticism toward the diviner or power Chirambo. HIV/AIDS and Democratic Governance in struggles among elders and family factions may South Africa: Illustrating the Impact on Electoral detract from the authority or acceptability of an Processes. Cape Town: IDASA, 2005. oracle's findings. While diviners reject suggestions ALEX DE WAAL that they themselves are sorcerers*, they tend not to discourage their client's depressive belief in sor• cery. That diviners have only occasionally aspired to positions of public leadership also shows the extent to which divination remains beyond political DIVINATION AND ORACLES. There power. is practically no community in black Africa that does not know divination, an institution attuned to people's basic assumption that the fundamental KINDS OF DIVINATION AND ORACLES order of things lies in the invisible, the other• In black Africa the continuum of geomantic and worldly. Divination and its clients see the other• shamanistic divination implies cross-world commu• worldly realm as underpinning the this-worldly nication and knowledge not otherwise attainable. social-symbolic order and holding the key to the Diviners are perceived as mechanisms of spiritual individual's fate, good or bad, here and now. forces that have been selected for this role at birth Despite the availability of cosmopolitan technology or identified through name-giving, through recov• and biomedicine (which assume that reality is sheer ery from a particular illness, or by descent relations; matter, i.e., something constructed and/or inde• many are endowed with a charismatic personality. terminate) to which the well-to-do have ready Through elaborate professional training and initia• access, the historical African religions, for their tion, diviners-to-be become members of trans-local part, as well as widespread Christianity and Islam, cults, sodalities, or lodges. Divination basically underscore most African people's sense of the concerns a rather stable and culturally relevant world as fundamentally reaching out human body of expert production of etiological herme- knowledge and mastery. In the case of a lasting neutics. Divinatory perception—and here a punc• disempowerment or affliction (insoluble conflict, tual observation from a psychoanalytic perspec• disaster, exceptional loss, lack of income, chronic tive—traces a kernel of forces or fate at the heart illness, misfortune, threat of death, or difficult deci• of human experience that escapes conventional sions concerning the foundation of a house, mar• understanding and other mainstream human con• riage, or divorce or migration opportunities), peo• trol yet is perceptible through its effects. ple in uncertainty may call upon a diviner's keen Divination in Africa is always to some degree sense of offering new insights into the enmeshed mediumnic in that the oracle and the divinatory ancestral, societal, ethical determinants of their tools, if not the entranced shamanic diviner him lives, so as to stir up their existence. Recourse to or herself, establish heightened sensorial awareness divination may even be linked to critical political or of, and communication with, what is defined as an communitarian decisions, the struggle over scarce otherworldly realm of unforeseeable and invisible economic resources, warfare, and similar conflicts. forces diagnosed as being coactivated by spirits,

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Most widespread geomantic techniques attested unprecedented "seeing through" at the heart of in various parts of the African continent since the neighborhood relationality. sixteenth century are the cowrie-shell and dream div• Scholars have distinguished three types of sha- ination (in Islamic West Africa), the Bilumbu, Fa, manic divination depending on whether it is pro• Hakata, Hamba, Ifa, Sikidy and so many akin forms duced by possession trance, by strict-shamanic of divination (respectively along Luba, Fon, Shona, Chokwe, Yoruba, or Malagasy cultural traditions), trance, or by a trance-like or heightened state of or the sangoma tablet divination in southern Africa, consciousness. The first category is widespread and as well as the mankala board games. In cowrie-shell involves spirit appropriation of the diviner, who and tablet divination, the seemingly at random, divi• relays or even acts out the message sent by the natory-borne manipulation of divinatory tools or possessing spirit or deity. Spirit mediums may be tokens over a geometric layout of lines or holes may associated with a shrine of an interregional cult, act as an oracular grid inducing the divinatory anal• such as Ngombo (spread across the Congo-Lunda ysis. In many mankala board games, the mechan• belt in the southwest of the Democratic Republic ical, chess-like, gaming rules may do without refer• of Congo, southeast Angola, and northwest ence to otherworldly realm. Tablet divination turns Zambia) or Mwali in southeast Africa. In the second distant time and space (or the elsewhere and other• category, the shamanic diviner is believed to initiate wise) into a geometry of here and now co-occurring visionary contact with the spirit. He or she either or intersecting paths of causes or antecedents and recounts this visionary journey or transduces the effects. actions of the spirit in his or her body through a particular alteration in his or her sensor)' capacities. While the natural sciences and usual mathe• matics would conclude that the results of cowry- It could be argued that this type of divination is shell, tablet, and Mankala geomantic techniques being reappropriated in multiethnic (peri-) urban are determined by chance, local actors consider cultures throughout Africa by many of the Christian them to be activated and guided by invisible forces. healing churches and new Christian-borne move• The diviner establishes the divinatory theme ments of the Holy Spirit. While speaking in the according to information a client reveals concern• name of the Holy Spirit, Christian diviner-prophets ing his or her needs or motivation for the consul• surreptitiously coalesce this Christian entity with the tation. The diviner then decodes the position or ancestral spirits (though often overtly diabolized) movement of an array of divinatory vehicles, and summoned to participate in the healing process of further interprets the social relevance in dialogue the most afflicted church members. The shifting with the client. These divinatory vehicles are power of the Holy Spirit-Ancestor is all the more manipulated in front of the client while standar• effective by virtue of its encompassing capacity to dized verses or questions about causes, relation• animate, re-energize and recapture life forces. That ships, and events are uttered, depending on the the divining art of these prophets tends to slide into configuration of objects. The ostensibly neutral moral prophecy focussing on individual strivings quality of the divinatory vehicles permits the demonstrates the extent to which the perception diviner to deny personal involvement in the social and explanation of misfortune and divinatory practice and otherworldly forces at stake. Elsewhere, the increasingly reflect a spirit of entrepreneurship that is client may be the interpreter, as in Ifa divination spurred by the multiethnic and commoditized urban among the Yoruba of Nigeria, whereas the Sissala context. The third type of divination is distinct in that client in northern Ghana is expected to examine diviners or seers here develop heightened sensorial or personally the divinatory apparatus while being dreamlike visionary capacities. asked a series of yes/no questions. Among the Chagga-speaking people of Kilimanjaro, the perspi• There are yet other self-arbitrating forms of cacious tuning in of the divinatory objects and the guilt divination or ordeal. The ordeal extends the everyday activity of dwelling around production shamanic divination into a self-arbitrating proof of and reproduction, with the client's subjectivity guilt. One subcategory involves the diviner's coer• and affliction, both allows for and results from an cion of an invisible force to configure items in

130 NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AFRICA DIVINATION AND ORACLES tablet or basket divination or provoke friction or SOCLAL CONTEXT other movement among the divinatory apparatus A critical distinction must be made between the (rubbing horn, cowry shells, board, or stick; divin• oracle proper and the social use of it, namely the ing cords, listening or detective horn, rattle, axe instance of divination and the subsequent interpre• handle, bones, gourd of medicine, roots, nut shells, tation, in a family council, of the divinatory asser• coins, etc.) or the reactions of a poisoned fowl tions. Diviners are expected not only to justify their to the diviner's yes/no questions. Omens and claims by offering criteria substantiating both their skills and the source of their knowledge but also to forms of hunt intended to interrogate the spirits demonstrate their impartiality. Divination entails the or recently deceased relatives constitute another basic assumption that human relations can be at the subcategory. origin of affliction. Divinatory aetiologies consider misfortune as the consequence of a tear in the social NATURE AND JURAL ASPECTS fabric. The diviner's verdict offers a possible grid for OF THE DIVINATORY PROCESS how to reweave the damaged strands in the agnatic, A subtle transaction between diviner, spirits, divi• uterine, and matrimonial weave of social reciprocity natory vehicles, and clients produces a picture and reintroduce clients into an order of discourse throwing a particular but unforeseeable light on and exchange. In other words, the oracle achieves its the client's identity and social network, making aims through the foundational discourse that the possible an authoritative rereading and interven• diviner and the clients exercise publicly in the fash• tion in the problem at hand. Though most divina• ion laid down by tradition. tory traditions operate at the margins of the local political power structure, some clearly serve to sup• The oracle's ultimate purpose is the transforma• port high political office or regulate power relations tion of disarray into the order of exchange that between families. forms the basis of meaningful-being-in-the world. The divinatory encounter and consultation enhance Geomantic and shamanic divination are more of a the client's openness to the outside world and the birthing process than an arbitration; a hermeneutics invisible realm, and contributes to the innovative of disorder more than a discourse of truth; and an art shaping of the condition of the subject in the con• of counselling rather than a factual, causal, or ethical temporary, postcolonial life-world. The divinatory inquiry. Unlike the judicial council, shamanic and oracle relativizes its own aetiology, leaving room geomantic divination is not an exercise of redressive for individual freedom and genuine initiative in the power or domination. Divinatory revelation stands to moral space. Insofar as it establishes multiple links the jural council of elders as dreamwork to representa• between the misfortune and various social and axio- tional and discursive argument, as "speaking from the logical (cosmological) registers of meaning (the heart" or "from the womb" stands to the rhetorical social organization, the rule of exchange, offences, reassertion of power relations in the masculine order curses, persecutions, spirits), the oracle domesticates of seniority. impending doom and an inauspicious destiny.

The diviner disavows authorship of vision and Most divination witnesses to a postcolonial, judgment and asserts that whatever message he or open-minded intercultural encounter and science- she may be voicing stems from the divinatory forces sharing between and across North and South in the at work in him or her, or in the divinatory media. twenty-first century's processes of globalization The diviner is a medium who simply transmits or and economic marginalization. Van Binsbergen, a utters the divinatory message. In some cases the Dutch professor of intercultural philosophy at diviner is not even conscious of what he or she is Erasmus University Rotterdam and director of saving and requires an assistant to translate his or research at the Africa Study Center in Leiden, her esoteric discourse for the client; under these describes his becoming a sangoma diviner in conditions the divinatory seance is without dia• Francistown (Botswana). Since his initiation he logue. In the Lobi area of southeastern Burkina has practiced tablet divination in southern Africa Faso, the diviner's spirit has no tongue but com• and in the Netherlands, where he devised a com• municates through hand gestures. puter program for sangoma consultation with him

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worldwide by Internet. Numerous African diviners Pemberton, John III, ed. Insight and Artistry in African or diviners initiated in an African divinatory art, at Divination: A Cross-Cultural Study. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. work in the North with clients from many African and non-African cultural horizons, invite one most Retel-Laurentin, Anne. Oracles et Ordalies chez les Nzakam. forcefully to rethink, in and from a variety of divi• Paris: Mouton, 1969. natory knowledge productions and ways of subject Turner, Victor. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu formation, one's by definition limited and biasing Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975. modes of understanding reality and representation, van Binsbergen, Wim. Intercultural Encounters: African meaning and agency, culture and power, as well as and Anthropological Lessons toward a Philosophy of place and time or locality and belonging. Interculturality. Miinster, LIT Verlag, 2003. Winkelman, Michael, and John Peek, eds. Divination and See also Death, Mourning, and Ancestors; Religion and Healing: Potent Vision. Tucson: University of Arizona Ritual; Symbols and Symbolism. Press, 2004.

RENE DEVISCH BIBLIOGRAPHY » Adler, Alfred, and Andras Zempleni. Le Baton de VAveugle: divination, maladie et pouvoir chez les Moundang du Tchad. Paris: Herman, 1972.

Anderson, David, and Douglas lohnson, eds. "Diviners, DIVORCE. See Marriage Systems. Seers and Prophets in Eastern Africa." Spec, issue, Africa 61, no. 3 (1991).

Bascom, William. Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World. Bloomington: Indiana » University Press, 1980. DJEBAR, ASSIA (1936-). Assia Djebaris

Bastide, Roger. "La divination chez les Afro-Americains." the pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, Algeria's In La Divination, Vol. 2, ed. Andre Caquot and foremost female writer. Of Berber ancestry, she was Marcel Leibovici. Paris: Presses Universitaires de born near Algiers and benefited from advanced France, 1968. education because her father was a school teacher. Devisch, Rene. "Perspectives on Divination in Contempo• In 1954 she went to Paris to study; the next year rary Sub-Saharan Africa." In Theoretical Explorations in she became the first North African woman to be African Religion, ed. Wim van Binsbergen and Mat- admitted to the prestigious Ecole Normale thieu Schoffeleers. London: Routledge and Kegan, Superieure de Sevres. But in 1956 she took to the 1985. streets of Paris with other students to demonstrate Devisch, Rene. "Parody in Matricentred Christian Healing solidarity with Algeria's struggle for independence Communes of the Sacred Spirit in Kinshasa." Contours: (1954-1962). Instead of taking her final exams, A Journal of the African Diaspora 1 (2003): 171-198. she produced her first novel, La soif (Thirst, Devisch, Rene, and Claude Brodeur. The Law of the 1957). Sought by the French police, she and her Lifegivers: The Domestication of Desire. Amsterdam: husband escaped to newly independent Tunisia in Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999. 1958, where she continued to write and work as a Jaulin, Robert. La geomancie: Analyse formelle. Paris: political activist. From Tunis she went to Rabat in Mouton, 1966. 1959 to work with Algerian refugees in Morocco;

Kassibo, Brehima. "La geomancie ouest-africaine: formes there she obtained a teaching post at the national endogenes et emprunts exterieurs." Cahiers d'Etudes university. Africaines 128, no. 38 (1992): 541-596. Out of her Moroccan period came a collection of Kuczinski, Liliane. Les Marabouts Africains a Paris. Paris: poems, a play, and a third novel, Enfants du nouveau CNRS Editions, 2002. monde (Children of the New World), published in

Myhre, Knut Christian. "Divination and Experience: Explo• Paris in 1962 and translated into English in 2005. rations of a Chagga Epistemology." Journal of the Royal Since 1957 she has produced more than twenty Anthropological Institute 12 (2006): 313-330. literary and artistic works—fiction, essays, film Peek, Philip, ed. African Divination Systems. Bloomington: scripts, and poetry. Her works often portray wom• Indiana University Press, 1991. en's political coming of age in colonial, wartime, and

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