The Daughter she will Eat Agousie in the World of the Spirits' Witchcraft Confessions in Missionised Onitsha, Nigeria

Bibliographic Data

ID2590375
AuthorsMisty L Bastian (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume72
Issue1
Pages84-111
Publication date2002-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3366/afr.2002.72.1.84
PMID21038711
OpenAlexW2069037401
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited36

This article deals with witchcraft, missionisation, domestic slavery and social life on the emerging colonial 'frontier' of Onitsha, Nigeria, during the last years of the nineteenth century. The analysis centres on the confession of an accused witch and former domestic slave in the Waterside area of the town. It uses the document as a springboard for a larger discussion of the intersecting lives of Africans and Europeans in this marginal location at a moment when social relations there were undergoing radical transformation. By addressing such a text, taken down verbatim at the time of the confession, the author argues, we can gain a privileged insight into women's unofficial (and even prohibited) religious practice as well as the everyday lives of persons-notably female domestic slaves-who ordinarily receive little notice in the African colonial record. From Okuwan's confession we also learn something about how the increasing flows of commodities and new forms of colonial authority along this mercantile border were changing (and possibly devaluing) African women's labour as well as their religious power

Art · Colonialism · Confession (law · Daughter · Frontier · Notice · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Witch · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Religion and Sociopolitical Dynamics in Nigeria

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub