The Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe 2000-2020

Bones, Rumours & Spirits
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-84701-364-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, 366 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 508 g

Innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics.

In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesised that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics.

Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize.

Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana): University of Johannesburg Press

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fontein, Joost

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Thanatologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Tod, Sterbehilfe: Soziale und Ethische Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Changing death and human corporeality across Africa and beyond
The politics of the dead in Zimbabwe

The power of uncertainty

Sources and structure of the book

1 Liberation Heritage: Bones and the politics of commemoration

The burial of Gift Tandare

Heritage and commemoration

Heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe
Liberation heritage

Unsettling Bones

2 Bones & Tortured Bodies: Corporealities of violence and post-violence

Resurfacing bones

Emotive materiality, affective presence and transforming materials

Tortured bodies

Towards 'healing' and 'reconciliation' during the GNU 2009-2013

Conclusions

3 Chibondo: Exhumations, uncertainty and the excessivity of human materials

The Chibondo exhumations

Too 'fresh', 'intact', fleshy, leaky and stinky?

The torque of materiality and the excessive potentiality of human remains

The politics of uncertainty

Conclusions

4 Political Accidents: Rumours, death and the politics of uncertainty

The death of Solomon Mujuru

Factionalism, rivalries and murky business dealings

The inquest

A particular kind of death

Conclusions

5 Precarious Possession: Rotina Mavhunga, politics and the uncertainties of mediumship
Rotina Mavhunga - the diesel n'anga

Precarious occupation

6 Mai Melissa: Towards the alterity of spirit and the incompleteness of death

Towards the alterity of spirit

Conclusions

7 After Mugabe

Burying Bob

Conclusions

Bodies and spirits, change and continuity

AIDS, cholera, Congo, prisons, Chiadzwa, diaspora, FTLR, and charismatic Pentecostalisms
New directions for liberation heritage

Ambuya Nehanda returns?

Exhuming Bob?

Über Autor(innen)

Fontein, Joost
Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize.