Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes

320 Pages·2019·5.379 MB·English

by  Hansjörg Dilger, Astrid Bochow, Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Marian Burchardt

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-P ublication 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.
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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