Going Bush
Black Magic, White Ambivalence and Boundaries of Belief in Postcolonial Kenya
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4813274 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Mcintosh (0000-0002-8182-6589, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 3-4 |
| Pages | 254-295 |
| Publication date | 2006-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Religion in Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-4200 • E-ISSN: 1570-0666 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/157006606778941922 |
| OpenAlex | W2011154550 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 13 |
This article examines the ways in which contemporary white Kenyans know about, talk about and sometimes interact with what they call 'witchcraft' and 'magic' in ways they find deeply discomfiting. Although white Kenyans are at pains to justify their postcolonial advantages in Kenya in terms of a level-headed and pragmatic kind of personhood, many of them interact with indigenous religious ontologies more than ever, sometimes as manipulators of the occult and sometimes as its fear-stricken victims. Because of these contradictions between ideology and experience, white narratives about 'witchcraft' and 'magic' are frequently riddled with tensions and equivocations. Many white Kenyans find creative rhetorical strategies for dealing with these tensions, strategies that sometimes fly in the face of simple models of 'belief ' as a commitment to truth value by treating it as a state of vulnerability that can lay one open to mysterious ontological forces
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Divination · Epistemology · Ideology · Indigenous · Literature · MAGIC (telescope · Narrative · Personhood · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · White (mutation · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
Legitimation of belief
Colonial evangelism
Waiting
Whiteness just isn't what it used to be
Savage systems
The Making of English National Identity
Postcolonial Identities in Africa
Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power
Europe's Invisible Migrants
Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers
Colonial Inscriptions
Heteroglossia, "common sense," and social memory
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2023 (10) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |