Concluding Remarks

Bibliographic Data

ID23732306
AuthorsJessica Schafer (corresponding author)
Year2007
Pages167-173
Publication date2007-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueSoldiers at Peace (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9780230605718_8
OpenAlexW4206522030
ISBN9780230605718
LanguageEN
References cited12

Akey epistemological tenet of southern Mozambican postwar cleansing ceremonies is that “when a spirit possesses a living person they stop being two separate entities, and become one only [sic] symbiotic being, with a new and common identity.”1 For veterans, among others, an important corollary of this belief is the perception that “the one who caused others harm was not really the same living person which existed before and after possession; the person, by herself, is responsible for the bad events she putatively provoked, but she is not, in a strict sense, guilty.”2 Therefore, after a multistaged process of divination, exorcism, cleansing, and protection, “when [the veteran] finally unties his capulana [cloth] and let [sic] it drift on the river current (or lying there to be burned), he becomes a different person, free from those dangers, from impurity and from the burden of the past actions that he wanted to get rid of.”3 In this analysis, Mozambican veterans’ guilt for military activity is attenuated by local cosmology. Civilians actively reincorporate veterans into the social body by adapting and drawing on existing ritual practices and beliefs.4

Ancient history · Exorcism · Harm · Macedonian · Possession (linguistics) · Sociology · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · South African History and Culture

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