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This paper looks at a particular autochthonous medical knowledge and practice of Yaka healers in peri-urban Kinshasa and rural southwestern Congo. It first presents a sequential analysis of the well-known mbwoolu healing cult, directed at types of affliction most of which I would characterize as deep depression and related insanity. The mbwoolu patient is first led into a state of fusion with the group, with the aid of rhythmic movement and music culminating in a trance possession. Following this, the initiate undergoes a therapeutic seclusion lasting from one month to some nine months in an initiatory space in which a dozen or so statuettes or figurines are laid on a bed parallel to the patient's. In a play of mirrors between the figurines and the patient, the latter's sensory perceptions and body movements are redirected and rejuvenated. The figurines thus function as doubles that the patient incorporates or inscribes in his or her own bodily envelope, which now constitutes a new interface with others. In the course of a verbal liturgy that unfolds to the rhythm of the initiatory rite, the initiate is gradually enabled to decode and incorporate traces of the collective imaginary conveyed by these figurines and liturgy. The statuettes enact a cosmogony in which the patient is intimately involved throughout. In this, the patient is led into an ontogenetic passage from a fusional and primal state towards a particular and sexualised identity, one with precise contours and situated within a social hierarchy and a historicity of generations and of roles.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Photographs -- Preface -- Introduction -- Maps -- Part One ITINERARY AND METHODS -- Chapter 1 From anthropology to psychoanalysis -- Chapter 2 From psychoanalysis to anthropology -- Exchange and confrontation -- Part Two THE YAKA: PRINCIPAL FIGURES -- Introduction The Yaka -- Chapter 1 Sorcery and fetish -- The sorcerer -- Chapter 2 Divination: The birth of uterine discourse -- The diviner -- Chapter 3 The therapist: Healing the affects by remodeling the body -- The therapist -- Chapter 4 The paramount chief: The introduction of the order of ethical law -- The chief -- Chapter 5 Death and the dialectic of limits -- Life and death -- Chapter 6 Four figures of the Yaka unconscious -- A brief synthesis -- Body and discourse -- Part Three INTERSECTIONS -- References -- Index

Against a monolithic view of knowledge production and the tendency to universalize science, this article calls attention to the unique genius and distinctive creativity and originality which underlines production of knowledge in any given cultural context. It takes seriously, the fact that, at its roots, knowledge production is context bound. Hence the authors emphasize the fact that all knowledge is first of all local knowledge. From this fundamental understanding of the true wellsprings of the production of knowledge, it argues against a mythic veil, which reformist modernity, especially, tended to place on the process of producing and transmitting knowledge. This deceptive myth about knowledge production, it opines, has had the negative impact of stereotyping, blackmailing, inferiorizing and derailing the production and sharing of knowledge and its artefacts in cultures other than the West. The colonial encounter, with its assumptions and presumptions, helped to rub in this vision of reformist modernity and to muffle the voices of colonised cultures. Hence such labels as 'indigenous' knowledge. In recognition, therefore, of the creative and genuine originality latent in every culture, this article seeks to empower cultures to realise, work on and appropriate the riches embedded in their own local knowledge tracts and trajectories. This appropriation by cultures, of their own rich genius, is, for the authors, the gateway to re-acquiring cultural dignity and self-confidence and indeed an opportunity for each cultural node to positively contribute to the commonwealth of world knowledge. Such variegated approach to mining the wisdom and ecological advantages of various cultural groups will enhance the sharing of knowledge in a spirit of both vertical and horizontal border-linking exchanges of riches found in different cultural contexts and knowledge fields. The ancient wisdom of the Igbo of south eastern Nigeria is used in the article as an illustration of this latent, culture specific genius. The article also highlights the mission of Whelan Research Academy for Religion, Culture and Society, Owerri, Nigeria, in creating awareness, space and forum for paying closer attention to indigenous knowledge tracts endangered in this derailment of a wider spectrum of cultural nodes of knowledge.

This book seeks a reconsideration of the phenomenon of sorcery and related categories. The contributors to the volume explore the different perspectives on human sociality and social and political constitution that practices typically understood as sorcery, magic and ritual reveal. In doing so the authors are concerned to break away from the dictates of a western externalist rationalist understanding of these phenomena without falling into the trap of mysticism. The articles address a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas