jason price
People choose to pray at HOGEM, in part, because of its ecstatic and embodied practice, a practice similar to many traditional forms in terms of synæsthetic articulation and expressive genius. And yet these traditions are disavowed, even demonised (at least on the official record). This might appear counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when we consider the undeniably contemporary ethical/moral ideals to which HOGEM aspires. By contemporary I mean pragmatic. Within the context of an unequal, uncertain and unsafe society whose defining characteristic may very well be the looming presence of death, there is really only so much you can do. 3 This is why so many people are in search of miracles. Attempts to conceptualise and/ or approach problems and misfortune throught rational-secular means are rarely efficacious in this context. This is another reason why Pentecostals seem to be doing so well. When churches like HOGEM shift questions of causation away from the historical/material/collective and towards the symbolic/spiritual/subjective, they open up spaces for agency and hope. Once this shift is made, the world can appear reasonable, manageable and even fair. Congregants can attain a sense of security and perceive a degree of control over their lives. They can even be endowed with a 3 And please don’t label me an Afro-Pessimist just because I wrote that. All you need to do is sit in on a handful of deliverances to get a sense of the “rich eschatological phantasmagoria” (Hirschkind 2001: 631) that hovers over people’s lives here. To focus exclusively on this would be to indulge in narrow, exploitative imagining, but to deny its salience in moments like these would be to slip into a trap of fanciful delusion and abject irresponsibility. 4 Nearly every major Christian thinker since Augustine has acknowledged as much, as Hirschkind points out (2001: 639).
motive force which propels them forward along a program of ethical living. But there’s a catch. These ethical programs are often radically individualistic. They encourage people to conceptualise their problems as theirs and theirs alone, as being – quite literally – confined to their own particular bodies and souls. All history, all contingency, any sense of a social body, is erased. This may seem oppressive, but it actually has the opposite effect. It is emancipatory. This is precisely why, at the end of a long deliverance, Pastor Jiya says “you are free”. You are free because you have addressed the demons that are behind your problems. You may now proceed on a path of moral action which will enable you to actualise your self, and your self alone This transformation does not happen in a sensorial vacuum. Reason alone is not enough. People must feel in order to believe. 4 This is the work of “ Holy Ghost... FIRE! ” The song stokes bodily belief in an ethic of individualism that enables people to continue moving forwards in the face of near-impossible rational-secular odds. But this comes with a cost. The ‘fire’ and ‘burning’ which rage during deliverances blot out anything that might expose the fact that problems and misfortune are never solely subjective. And without this 5 This claim is not, of course, original. Anthropologist Harri Englund (2007) points out that a small horde of scholars have made similar observations about the rather dubious political and economic explanations proffered by religious and spiritual movements in contemporary Africa. He cites Mark Green (2005) who, writing about witchcraft in Tanzania, argues that popular spiritual beliefs “turn people’s gaze inwards to their own community rather than outwards to the content of policy processes which produce poverty and vulnerability” (2005: 260). Englund is not convinced: the problem is not a lack of awareness
awareness – without this belief – little is likely to change. 5
Traditional religions were largely aware of this, which is why they tended to work with people over time, emphasising the material and historical elements of their collective lifeworlds in the process of spiritual healing. The fact that those practices have been resuscitated should come as little surprise; what might, however, is that they seem to have been effaced of a certain ethical disposition. j Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. ‘Alien Nation: Zombies, Immigrants, and Millennial Capitalism.’ The South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4) 2002. pp779–805. Englund, Harri. ‘Pentecostalism Beyond Belief: Trust and Democracy in a Malawian Township’ Africa 77(4) 2007. pp477–499. Green, Mark. ‘Discourses on Inequality: Poverty, Public Bads and Entrenching Witchcraft in Post- adjustment Tanzania.’ Anthropological Theory 5, 2005. pp247–66. Hirschkind, Charles. ‘The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary Egypt.’ American Ethnologist 28(3), 2001. pp623–649. Hirschkind, Charles. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Hirschkind, Charles. ‘Interview with Charles Hirschkind, Author of The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and the Islamic Counterpublics.’ 2012. http://cup.columbia. edu/static/Interview-Hirschkind-Charles (last accessed on 7 September 2012). among Pentecostals about the structural roots of their problems, but a lack of awareness among critics like myself and Green who do not seem to grasp that “neither Pentecostalism or policy provides a panacea” (2007: 495). Pentecostals already know this, according to Englund, which is why they engage in religious practice not to solve their problems once and for all, but to ease their burdens a bit with the help of friends they make at church. The error I am making, he would say, is that I consider Pentecostals as believers. While the error he is making, I would say, is that he has a narrow idea of belief.
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