The poetics of wisdom divination
Renewing the Moral Imagination
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2252941 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard Werbner (0000-0002-3493-6742, Social Anthropology, University of Manchester University of Manchester Arthur Lewis Building Manchester M13 9PL UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 81-102 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9655.12545 |
| OpenAlex | W2561360746 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 42 |
This article makes a critical contribution to interpretive anthropology by recovering its interest in the moral imagination, while linking this to the poetics of wisdom divination, primarily among Tswapong of Botswana and more widely across a vast part of Southern Africa. This mode of divination appeals to imaginative moral reflection and ethical deliberation along with practical wisdom in the quest for well-being. The esoteric oral literature in wisdom divination is rich in cross-cultural understandings, transmitted over considerable barriers, and re-created over centuries. Its evocative praise poetry, having no known author, is archived in the memories of experts, the diviners, and is recited and interpreted selectively during diagnostic séances. Yet anthropologists and literary scholars have not paid serious attention to the oral poetry and its remarkable wide-ranging archive. Against that, this article documents the acrobatic stylistics of the divinatory poetry and shows how it appeals artfully for reflexivity, for heightened consciousness, and for unmasking the hidden in everyday life. The main analysis carries forward an anthropology of ethics that overcomes the usual division of labour between the study of ethics and aesthetics
Aesthetics · Art · Divination · Epistemology · Fides · Literature · Poetics · Poetry · Praise · Reflexivity · Sociology · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Philosophy · South African History and Culture
Moral imagination in Kaguru modes of thought
Divination's Grasp
The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics
Bwiti
I Could Speak Until Tomorrow
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
Things As They Are
Orality and Literacy
Tradition as Truth and Communication
A Companion to Moral Anthropology
The Art of Divination as Practised by the Bamasemola
The Praises of the Divining Bones Among the Basotho
Moral Imagination
The Body in Bwiti
Oral literature in Africa
Essays presented to C. G. Seligman
Native Witchcraft and Superstition in South Africa
Ethnology
Holy Hustlers, Schism, and ProphecyApostolic Reformation in Botswana
Linguistic Anthropology 2000
The Sisala Universe
Regional and Historical Connections of Four-Tablet Divination in Southern Africa
Bwiti in Reflection
Ambivalent Commitments
Significant differences
Resistances of Psychoanalysis
Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual
Praise Poems of Tswana Chiefs
Ritual Passage, Sacred Journey
The Superabundance of Understanding
Freedom, reflexivity, and the sheer everydayness of ethics
Anthropologies of ethics
The ethical turn in anthropology
"Cultural" Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus
Just Anger
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |