On the mobility of ghosts

Spectral journeys in the South African lowveld

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103807
AutoresI Niehaus (0000-0002-9573-0238, Brunel University of London, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen93
Número1
Páginas159-176
Fecha de publicación2023-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972023000141
OpenAlexW4361862336
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas19

In studies of Southern Africa, ancestors and possessing spirits have received far greater attention than ghosts. It is only in recent years that fragmentary references to ghosts have begun to appear in the ethnographic record. In this article, I seek to redress this imbalance by documenting stories and accounts of encounters with ghosts in the South African lowveld. I turn to studies of ghosts in Asia and elsewhere as an analytical starting point for interpreting their social and cosmological significance. A widespread theory in this literature is that narratives of ghosts are a means of emplacement, connecting people to places. But the theory does not capture the way in which narratives in the South African lowveld depict ghosts as essentially mobile beings. This is most evident in accounts of vanishing hitchhikers on the highways and of a ghost called sauwe, which captures people's minds and forces them to walk in the direction of graveyards. These narratives speak of displacement, of spectral journeys and of routes rather than stable locations. The apparitions serve as reminders of the failure to take care of the spirits of those who suffered violent deaths and bring them home. But we can also see them as traces of past injustices and of violence in a haunted landscape, and as mirrors of villagers' own historical experiences of displacement, experiences that were a hallmark of forced removals and of the migrant labour system during the apartheid era

Art · Displacement (psychology · Ethnography · Ethnology · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Redress · Sociology · Spectacle · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology · South African History and Culture