Divination's grasp : African encounters with the almost said

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Divination's grasp : African encounters with the almost said

Richard Werbner

Indiana University Press, c2015

  • : pbk

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Richard Werbner takes readers on a journey though contemporary charismatic wisdom divination in southern Africa. Beginning with the silent language of the divinatory lots, Werbner deciphers the everyday, metaphorical, and poetic language that is used to reveal their meaning. Through Werbner's skillful interpretations of the language of divination, a picture of Tswapong moral imagination is revealed. Concerns about dignity and personal illumination, witchcraft, pollution, the anger of dead ancestors, as well as the nature of life, truth, cosmic harmony, being, and becoming emerge in this charged African setting.

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction Part I. Socio-linguistics and poetics 1. Deep Dialogue with Evans-Pritchard 2. In Praise of the Moral Imagination 3. Acrobatic Stylistics, Agonistic Vision Part II. From Tablet Archive to Wisdom Seances 4. Poetics and Archives 5. Family Seances: Rhetoric, Deliberations and Decisions 6. Cosmic and Personal Understandings: Diviners, Headmen, Strangers Part III. From Hooved Archive to Charismatic Seances 7. A Charismatic Diviner's Archive: Hooved Divination 8. The Cross-Over: Originality, Hybridity and Metamorphosis 9. The Charismatic Seance: Arguments, Intimacy and Intimations Conclusion: In Comparison Notes Bibliography Index

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