Ancestralidade, possessão e feitiçaria na África bantu: um estudo etnográfico entre os tsonga

Abstract

In the light of afro-perspectivity, intersubjectivation and the approach of intra- and extracontinental diacronity of African contexts, this thesis sought to understand how the relationship between the world of the living and the world of ancestors in contemporary tsonga is processed, starting from the tension of the centrality of invocation and exaltation of ancestors, ancestral beliefs and practices. To achieve this goal I have taken, on the one hand, the communal and/or kinship rituals of ancestral reverence tsonga, unyanga, zionism and witchcraft (wuloyi) as ethnographic instances. And on the other hand, the individual and/or collective experiences and living experiences of the tsonga ancestry. Thus, the research hypothesis was that: “in contemporary tsonga the relationship between the world of the living and the world of the ancestors is processed through two forms of mediation: mediation by possession and mediation without possession. In this relationship, the centrality of the invocation and exaltation of ancestors, ancestral beliefs and practices, the affirmation of tsonga “tradition” and cultural authenticity are manifested as a way of dialoguing with the present instabilities of everyday life”. The research revealed that what is understood as “traditional” tsonga ancestral beliefs and practices are simultaneously reconfigured into what can also be understood today as “contemporary” tsonga ancestral beliefs and practices. Thus, it was possible to understand that as ancestral “time-spaces”, communal and/or kinship rituals of ancestral reverence and other tsonga beliefs and practices refer to intercultural dialogues that enable the creation of “spaces” for interaction with other knowledge, and , consequently, from this interaction, other epistemic references are “invented”.