William Rea
School of Fine Art,
Art History and Cultural Studies
University of Leeds
Abstract
This paper considers two instances of witchcraft representation. The first
is a representation that develops from the author’s fieldwork and his own
experience of witnessing a witchcraft trail. The second is in Nigerian graphic
comics that were popular in the 1990s and which to an extent influenced the
current form of popular Nigerian soap opera and video films. This paper
contrasts attitudes toward witchcraft in the Ekiti Yoruba town of Ikole outlining
the multiplicity of moral attitudes toward witchcraft among the various
constituents of the town, and the way that these generate local understandings
of the town’s identity.
[1] After a gap of some years, the witch is firmly re-established in
Africanist discourse. Recent studies seek to go beyond the point where earlier
studies left off, beyond the notion that a witch is simply a cipher of social
tension, a functionalist release valve or in some way a symbolic figure of
marginality in social relations. Rather the witch, or the rumour of the witch,
is made to stand for a whole series of issues around the penetration of global
structures into African life (Englund 1996). The thrust of the new witchcraft
problematic, as Rutherford points out, is to examine “[t]he signifying
practices involved in witchcraft (accusations and beliefs) and to view them as
moral registers of local responses to the wider modern changes of which they
are a part.”[1]
[2] There are problems with this increasing literature on
the witch; not the least of these is that issues in Africa’s encounter with modernity
seemingly become centered on the figure of the witch. The witch becomes a
“localizing figure” (Fardon 1990) for Africanist writings, becoming the lens
through which everything is viewed. There is clearly a risk of here simply
adding one more paper to an already full list of publications dealing with the
position of the witch in contemporary (African) society, joining the consensus
that it is appropriate to write about Africa, or at least Africa’s encounter
with modernity, in terms of witchcraft (Van Binsbergen 2000). Parallel to the
“localizing strategy” within this writing is the problem that Meyer (1998)
identifies when she questions the possibility of writing about politics and
sorcery in Africa without invoking an image of the continent as hopelessly
backward, fundamentally different and exotic. Or, as Van Dijk (1999) argues, a
discourse that seems to primitivize the other’s capacity to deal with the
uncertainties and the porous quality of social life, which result from
engagement with the global economy.
[3]That this should be so suggests that there is more of a hint within
some of the current writing about witchcraft that refers to, but disguises,
older debates about rationality and patterns of thought. It is a reference
that suggests that in their responses to global modernity African societies
invoke different idioms of reason in order to deal with global processes,
particularly capitalism, and that the idiom that is reverted to is that of the
witch or of sorcery. It almost begins to appear that once again witchcraft is
the instrumental response of choice, one that is in opposition to the “rational
cosmology” that is science. Despite the attempt to disengage with the binary
opposition of tradition versus the modern there is the trace of Frazerian
argument about the relationship between magic and science embedded within many
of these studies. An effect of this is to make what seem to be sophisticated
accounts of the articulation of different peoples with global capitalism into a
theory of instrumentality. What strikes me about many of the debates around
“the economy of the occult” (Comaroff 1999) is that however historically
situated and nuanced, much of the recent work on witchcraft seems to return to
that old formulation of religious practice—that what this is about is
really explanation, predication and control. In part scholars of witchcraft
reproduce the functionalist style of older polemics, relating these beliefs to
wider causal patterns in society. This concern is one raised by Kapferer who
warns against the reintroduction of “the psychologism of functionalism that
reinsists a foundationalism that deflects analysis away from considering
mediating structural dynamics” (2002, 19).[2]
[4]The fact that the studies have mainly concentrated upon the modern
arena does not negate the fact that for the most part they seem to be involved
in exactly the same sort of questioning of an African mentality as the older
polemic. An effect of this is that although the debates on witchcraft are an
attempt to understand the rationality of Africa, and although they attempt to
provide a global context which denies binary opposition between a Western
modernity and other modernities (there is only one process but local forms of
response) these discourses are ultimately caught up in the rationality of the
enlightenment academy (Bowman 1997) that places the analyst at a distance from
their subject.
[5] An effect of the preponderance of writing on witchcraft in Africa
seems to have turned the witch into a form of “material thing” that has the
status of a social object (Harre 2002), one that works effects in the
narratives of the anthropologist as much as it works within the rumours and
reports of the activity of the witch. As Kapferer further argues, inherent in
this is an over sociologisation or an excessive rationalization of practices.
External categories dominate the subject matter and explanation is once again
provided by anthropological domestication. A problem with this, as this paper
hopes to point out, is that the diversity of responses to the phenomenon of the
witch gets flattened out, every account within each paper conforming to a
pattern of thought that is often, in turn, related to some expression of
current, modern practice, without recourse to the nuance of tradition.
[6] Is the witch, then, only a metaphor of wider African differences in
modernity created by a North Atlantic world keen to maintain its cultural
difference? This is clearly not the case, as the witch is very much a part of
life and imagination within many African communities. What is often not clear
is which version of the witch.
[7]What this paper suggests is that there are differing versions of
witchcraft at play in the field of the modern. In the attempt to view
processes such as modernity through the figure of the witch, that figure has in
turn become somewhat monolithic. This is not a new insight; it has always been
a danger within discourses on witchcraft. Hallen and Sodipo’s (1986)
exposition of the Yoruba term Aje clearly shows how writers on African witchcraft have drawn upon other (often
European) models in their formation of the identity of the African witch. And
the European intervention into African ideas about witchcraft or the occult has
been thoroughly explored by a number of authors (White 2000). What is clear
from the cases that I outline below is that within the specific local arena of
Ikole the witch does not conform to a single category of either perception or
imagination, and that within the local arena attitudes toward witchcraft are
influenced by identities that are no doubt a part of the modern, indeed offer
plural modernities, but that within that plurality are also multiple identities
that do not necessarily draw from an idea of the modern.
Yoruba
Witchcraft
[8]This paper is based upon the particular circumstances of witchcraft in
Ikole Ekiti, which lies within the eastern Yoruba speaking region of south
western Nigeria. In general, writing about Yoruba witchcraft has tended to
emphasize one of two aspects. On the one hand the witch is regarded as a force
of malevolence and disruption. On the other, there is a definite discourse,
best exemplified by Drewal’s (1983) work on Gelede, which argues that witchcraft be regarded as a
positive force underlying Yoruba conceptions of the universe. On the one hand
the Yoruba witch is Aje, a
purveyor of occult arts and on the other witchcraft is a benign power that in
the form of “the mothers” (iya wa)
underlies societal reproduction. Clearly these two views are not unconnected
and may be seen as complementary views in a diverse and multi-layered set of
cosmological principles.
[9] Functionalist explanations of Yoruba witchcraft have generally drawn
upon the structural role of women in lineage relations. The concentration has
been upon the internal dynamics of virilocal polygynous agnatic lineages
(Morton-Williams 1956). Women were not fully incorporated into husband’s
compounds until the production of the first male child. The highly competitive
nature of Yoruba lineage relationships also meant that when a woman is released
from her obligation to live in her husband’s compound, either by divorce or as
a widow, she not only becomes marginal to the aggrandizement of the compound
but may also become a potential rival to male household heads. The ambivalence
toward women is especially pronounced in tropes of self-aggrandizement. Barber
(1991) and Schiltz (1982) have both pointed to the well established fact that
female aggrandizement is regarded as anomalous and held in deep suspicion by
household members, especially by men. To develop and enlarge a reputation as a
woman is a risky business. In part reputation relies upon the symbiotic
relationship between patron and supporters. The most trusted of these is bound
to be members of the lineage.
[10]There is little surprise then that in the terms outlined in this
functional explanation of witchcraft that the most common accusation of
witchcraft is that of disrupting the proper order of lineage reproduction.
Witches eat children, either their own or most commonly those of co-wives. Nor
does the child necessarily need to have come to term. Witches are accused of
attacking the child in the womb. Belief in the ability of the witch to disrupt
fertility was very much a theme running through explanations of the performances
of the witch’s cosmological/metaphysical alternate: the senior masquerades of
Ikole. Masquerades come for children, but at least a part of their structural
position and performative action is preventing activity of witches. The
performance spaces of the most senior masques are the alleyways of the market
place, places where witches are said to congregate.[3] It is
also clear that, as I document below, masquerades have (or had) a role in
ridding the town of witches in a most physical manner—literally escorting
the accused witch from the town (if not also executing any punishment
prescribed).
[11] There is, however, a flip side to this “witch as maleficium.” The
notion of “the mothers” (Iya Wa) stands
as a more general proposition surrounding the fertile and reproductive
potential of women. Apter (1990) and the Drewals (1983) elegantly argue that
these powers are those that underpin the ultimate reproduction of the social
formation and that this is the ultimate “secret” of Yoruba ritual. For Apter
the esoteric power of women, embodied in the Orisa priestesses, encodes not
only fertility, but also the reproduction of the social polity. Although Apter
does not overstress the benign aspect of female power to the same extent as the
Drewals, both analyses tend toward an emphasis on the witch as ultimately
conducive to upholding moral order.
[12] Wherever the stress is placed, what is clear is that the category
“Yoruba witch” does not allow for singular interpretation. There are obviously
a number of different ways that the Yoruba witch can be conceptualized. I was
certainly aware of the aspect of the witch as “Iya wa” as an underlying
attitude to certain elements of the ritual cycle in Ikole. However, the
somewhat symbolic analysis of the Drewals (and to an extent Apter) makes little
comment on the “practical practice” of witchcraft as it is worked on a day to
day basis. One event particularly brought this into focus for me. Let me at
this point introduce a witch.
Story
and Narrative
[13] At times living in the Ekiti Yoruba town of Ikole would take on a
sense of the unreal, a sense of being within (or at least close to the near
past of) the narratives of a fairy tale. There was a disjunction between
everyday normality and a life that allowed for things that were enchanted.
People’s lives, particularly those of the young men that I worked most closely
with, were full of stories; of strange meetings on forest footpaths, of rings
brewed in potions that gave the wearers superhuman strength, of bowls of still
water wherein a mother could see her sons whatever the distance that lay
between them. Any number of stories that suggested that this place was a place
not only founded upon and supported by myth or legend (although it certainly
was that), but also a place that was full of stories recognized from my
childhood and which I can only describe as fairytales.[4] And of
course every fairytale needs to have a witch.
[14] I was introduced to witches in the town of Ikole by a babalawo (lit: “father of secrets”), Ogunleye, whose dual
role as babalawo and onisegun (owner of knowledge of medicine) made him
well qualified to discuss such matters. Questions on the masquerade
performances in the town led to discussions of childbirth, which in turn led to
the discussion of witchcraft. Although content with discussing witchcraft in
the abstract, there still seemed to be an element of the fairytale about the
presence of the witch, and a heuristic device I suggested that this might be
the case, recounting stories from my childhood, arguing that this was all that
the witch could possibly be, a distant figure from a story. Sitting in the
local beer parlor that evening Ogunleye nudged me and as a number of women
passed heading back from the evening market he nodded to each women (and one
man) and then told me who was or was not a witch. Many were, and suddenly I
was living in a town full of witches.
[15] Although (under Ogunleye’s terms) I had clearly been living in a
town that had many witches, the only time that this fact seemed to have a
direct impact was an encounter that, in the overall context of my fieldwork in
Ikole, seemed so out of the ordinary that it remains for me a enduring image of
my time in Ikole. This incident occurred in the village of Ikoyi, one of the
satellite districts of Ikole town, a former village of the Ikole empire that
had become incorporated into the main town in the early twentieth century. I
was alerted by a large gathering of people of the type that generally only
occurs during the festival period. The crowd had assembled around the Baale (chief) Onikoyi’s compound. People were running
down the road in some excitement to join the agitated crowd. Judging from the
state of excitement there were “miracles happening,” of the type that is grist
to the anthropological mill.
[16] At the back of the Onikoyi’s compound was a huge bonfire, made
mainly from rubber tires spewing out black smoke. In front of this bonfire was
a committee of three men, in front of them was a desk, and in front of this was
a woman accused of being a witch.
[17] An old lady, seemingly abject, bent double and in some distress, was
standing in front of her accusers, senior men of the town. The story (told to
me by onlookers) was that she had apparently taken a knife to her son while he
slept and cut out his heart so that she could take it to her coven where it
would either be eaten or used for making money. She had had to do this because
the coven to which she was attached had demanded that she prove her loyalty to
them. Apparently as confirmation of this crime two goats had been found to
have juju (a generic word for forms of
magical medicine) in their throats. The juju—a pile of what seemed to be
oily rags—was sitting on the desk. The woman and some others had fed
this to the animals and kept it brewing there through unnatural means. It was
to be used at a later date to make money.
[18] Discussions around the central square became more
and more heated. There was much shouting and general protestation as well as directed
vilification and curses at the woman. Among the onlookers, there was also
quite clearly a sense of shock and of outrage. The things that this old woman
was charged with were clearly heinous and there was real anguish that such
things should have happened. There was a sense of shame that these things
should have happened to the village of Ikoyi.
[19] Thankfully, as things were becoming more and more heated, and I
found myself dreading the fact that I might have to either interject or (more
likely) walk away from an execution, the Olomodikole, leader of the Elegbe (war chiefs) cadre of chiefs in Ikole arrived from
the central palace. Clearly the palace had been alerted and had taken action.
The old woman was led away, her case to be tried behind the closed doors of the
palace sometime later.
[20] This was not the end of the day’s events however. Seemingly minutes
after one witch had been led away, another was making a confession in the neighboring
village of Araromi. The rumour of this event spread and my friends and I, in
just about the same state of excitement as everybody else, joined the rush to
the next baale’s palace. There a smaller crowd had gathered and there was
little of the formality of proceedings that had accompanied the “trial” at
Ikoyi. The witch in this case was a teenage girl, in her school uniform and
confessing that she was indeed a witch and that people should believe it.
There was very little actual interest in this case. Once the outline of what
was going on had been grasped, that the “witch” was self declared, and that
there was no formality attached to the case, people began to turn away, and
there was quite a lot of joking and laughter as they dismissed the young
woman’s claims. This seemed anti-climatic after the previous excitement and,
although she was taken into the Ara’s palace, the friends with me could hardly
suppress their amusement at this case, demanding from me, at my stated
astonishment at so many witches, if I could explain how this girl could really
be a witch. To them she was clearly making it up, seeking attention. We
returned home.
[21] The trial of the old woman seemed to generate a number of
conflicting emotions in the audience that witnessed it. There was clearly an
aura of excitement, that here was something out of the ordinary. The friends
that I was with did not question that the juju that had been taken from the
goat’s gullet and were clearly pleased to show the skeptical Oyinbo (white man) that such things really did happen.
Among the younger men this trial seemed to act as a type of confirmation that
what they had been telling me about magical rings and miracles taking place was
all true.
[22] Yet among much of the audience to this event there seemed to be a
genuine sense of anger. Much of this was clearly directed against the old
woman and there is no doubt in my mind that at that moment people genuinely
believed that she was responsible for the murder of her son. There was,
however, also a palpable sense of anger about the very fact that this
accusation had happened that the case had had to be brought to trial and that
it had happened in their town. This was shameful, particularly in the light of
the fact that the central palace had been called to intervene. It felt as if
the community were in some way, if not responsible, then at least tainted by
the proceedings. (That the community was tainted was borne out by the fact that
a community ritual had to be carried out in which a number of protective and
cleansing medicines were buried in front of the Baale’s palace and sealed under
a small concrete dome).
[23] A number of relevant facts and issues however, remain interesting
from this first case. The first is that I knew the woman’s son, a young man who
had suffered from polio. He used to sit outside the post office, and we were
on greeting terms. I didn’t see him after this case. The second is that I
never saw the woman again (rumour had it that she went to live with her
daughter in Akure), and third that the incident occurred during the run-up to
elections for the local government, the first stage of President Babingida’s
ill fated march to democracy. I don’t know if these events were connected, but
for a number of people in the town the connection was clear: witchcraft was
about the generation of money through sacrifice and elections required a great
deal of money ergo sum the boy had been
sacrificed and the mother, if not responsible, had been blamed for the death.
Here then would seem to be a clear example of the use of witchcraft in a
context
The Story so Far
[24] The next example of the witch that circulated in Ikole is one that
offers the witch up as a representation, not only of witchcraft but of a larger
world outside Ikole Ekiti. It is a representation that seems to correspond
well to the issues outlined by the witch-in-modernity thesis. It is a type of
representation that has been commented upon many times. This representation
might be called the media witch and in its various manifestations it is an extremely
popular portrayal of witchcraft. The media witch sells newspapers, provides
the standard character in popular videos and is a staple of soap opera. The
media witch is a star, but she/he lives outside the experience of most of
Ikole’s citizens, if not outside their imaginations. The instance of the media
witch that I want to explore is found in comic books, but these comic witches
are indicative of, and largely copied from, other representations circulating
in Nigeria.
[25] Comics enjoyed a considerable vogue among the youth of Ikole (12-25)
during the early 1990s. These comics largely came from Lagos, they were
relatively cheap to produce, used few colour graphics and cheap paper, and had
a limited production team. The main costs seemed to be in distribution (which
is why the oil hikes in the mid 90s may have killed them off in Ikole).
Although the market was led by Ikebe Super (literally, super ass), which
undoubtedly had the best production quality and highest circulation, other
titles such as Lolly, Fun
Times and Fantasy had a following among the young men and women of
Ikole. Apart from the comic graphics, they also specialized in cheap trick
photography (for instance the headline “Boy six months old and only 4 inches
tall” was accompanied by a photograph of a figure “standing” in someone’s hand),
and sensational headlines such as “woman divorced 34 times looking for husband
35.” Text stories in these magazines were salacious, and sex and sexuality had
a high profile, although placed within a context where looking for true love
was a constant theme (Renee 1993). Often stories were accompanied by crude
illustrations and pages of single joke cartoons.
[26] The main item in each of these comic books was the serialized
story. The themes of these stories were pretty much the same, and in many ways
can justly claim to be the forerunners of Nigerian soap opera.[5] Essentially, the themes centre on the trials and tribulations of well-off urban
families in their pursuit of love and happiness. True love is usually disrupted
either by bad/infertile initial marriages, adultery, accidental death (usually
in car accidents or at the hands of armed robbers), and witchcraft. The
scenarios that the characters inhabit all tend toward the highly commoditized,
and the detailing in the drawing is quite accurate enough for readers to
recognize the model of Mercedes Benz, type of lace cloth or leather upholstery.
Added to this, many of the scenes were set in the ultimate indicator of
prestige, “Overs.”
[27] It is overseas where we meet Tunde and his family in the story “The
man is not to blame.” This was a popular serialized story in the magazine Fantasy.[6] The story goes that years after
marriage to Sandra, there was no child between them. Dr Femi Teujosho, medical
doctor and family friend, discovers that the problem is Tunde’s. Sandra
already has had two children with Dr. Teujosho. Later, “finally rid” of
Sandra, Tunde Awomolo finds another wife, Arewa who unknown to him is a witch
and who has made it impossible for Tunde to have another woman. Exasperated,
Tunde takes his maid to bed, but still “can’t do.” Fortunately the maid’s
father, an herbalist, restores Tunde’s manhood and he begins to have regular
liasons with the maid with the approval of the father. Trouble erupts when Arewa
finds out and glues them together. In far away Scotland, the maid’s father
hears the news and rushes to London in a daredevil race against time.
The
Story Continues …
[28] The herbalist Pa Shofola arrives at the hospital; he is about to be unceremoniously
thrown out by the hospital staff until a Nigerian (or at least African) doctor
intervenes, leads the herbalist to the stricken couple, and despite the white
hospital staff’s complaints, works his magic. The event is proclaimed a
miracle by the hospital staff but the herbalist knows better, and that “These
Oyinbo people sabi nothing.” Tunde returns home with suspicions of witchcraft,
much to the astonishment of his wife Arewa, who thought that she had killed him
off. She immediately runs to Yeye, high priest of the Nigerian witches in
London, who is also incidentally the founder of the church that Tunde attends.
She goes to Tunde, allays his fears by throwing suspicion on to the house girl
and her father, dictating that as a Christian family they should trust each
other and not allow the devil into their home. Later that night Yeye and Arewa
plan to kill the maid’s father. Arewa leaves her body as a bird and flies to
attend the witches’ meeting, where they call upon the herbalist to kill him.
He turns the tables and kills the Yeye. See next month for the conclusion.
[29] The story “The man is not to blame” clearly contains many elements
that have become the staples of popular Nigerian video dramas. Most clearly
perhaps are the portrayals of the morality of wealth. The young man Tunde
gains wealth in a sanctioned and justified way through hard work and good
living (there seems to be little moral censure of the fact that he is engaged
in an adulterous liaison with his housemaid—Tunde is the hero of the
piece—and the babalawo returning from Scotland is the maid’s father). On
a darker moral note is the connection between the avaricious spouse (male or
female, but usually female) and the use of occult powers or witchcraft, a theme
that reappears endlessly in popular Nigerian video plays. More than this
however is a popular “playing to the gallery” that the authors of these graphic
stories clearly know resonates well with their audience. Thus there is a clear
commentary on the moral ambiguity of the Pentecostal churches in the way in
which the church is used as a front for the head of the London Nigerian
witches, and more than this the practices of the church in gaining money. In
similar vein, the Oyinbo are cast as incredulous believers in a rational
science that can make no account of the actions of (superior) Nigerian magic
(being ready to deprive Tunde of his manhood through surgical operation—an
almost exact mirror of the scares that run through Nigerian cities of magically
disappearing body parts—usually genitals).
[30] In many ways these graphic stories correspond to the category that
has been described as Fabu (Harding 2001). Okwori is surely right about the
popular forms of representation of witchcraft when he writes:
There is in
Nigeria today a kind of romance between ritual and secularity, between
traditionalism and modernity. This romance represents an interface which
captures the dichotomized consciousness of an average Nigerian; a belief in
rituals, juju and witchcraft while at the same time admitting that such belief
is just superstition. [7]
What is not so clear is how this dichotomized consciousness reacts when
confronted with the reality of the non-(media)ted witch.
Two
Stories
[31] The two
stories above are based around the central figure of the witch and two forms of
representation. One is the retelling of a field event (first hand, witnessed
and more generally presented as a form of “objective research”), the other a
representation enjoyed by the young men and women of Ikole. They have
equivalence in as much as story (event) and story (comic book) act as data in
the formation of the anthropological representation, in this case a
representation of popular attitudes toward witchcraft in Southern Nigeria.
[32] That
equivalence troubles me. Using a comic book to establish an argument about the
way that witchcraft is viewed in Southern Nigeria might seem somewhat trivial.
After all, when confronted with the very real possibility that an old woman,
far removed from the ambiguities of the commodity world so beloved by both the
graphic comic book and by western commentators on African witchcraft, might be
killed, these representational forms of witchcraft seem very tame, if not
insulting. Is it fair to compare a witchcraft trial with its surrounding
actions of divination, cleansing and (fortunately curtailed) execution with a
product of the Nigerian popular culture? Should the anthropologist ignore the
populist representation in favour of the seemingly authentic event? Perhaps
one way of resolving these problems of equivalence is to look for a register
that encompasses both stories—one that asks what links them.
[33] Reading
through the comic book text, one is struck by the similarities that can be
drawn with the current Africanist witchcraft discourses. It is almost a
reflection of the anthropology of modernity in (comic book) microcosm.
Centrally the graphic detail, the attention placed on a Western world of
commodities (a world that in the comic novel that is accessed through the powers
of the occult) seems very much a part of the fetishized or enchanted modernity
that is often touted by anthropologists as an African response to overwhelming
commodity form and the disparity that exists in people’s access to those forms.
There is also, however an implicit set of contrasts depicted in the story
between the rationality of western science and that of the Babalawo. “These
Oyinbo sabi nothing” becomes a comment on western rationality from the other
side, the failure to understand the taken for granted fact of witchcraft.
[34] Much of the
recent witch discourse works equivalence and comparison through the register of
modernity, a global force that, precisely because it is global, allows
incidents occurring within its ambit to be compared—we are all modern
now, but with obvious differences, other differences. Whether the focus on
modern is the alienating power of the capitalist economy (Comaroff and Comaroff
1993, 1999) or the bureaucratic nation state blind to the concerns of its
citizens (Geschiere 1997) this focus on the form of modernity allows for
comparison—for equivalence.
[35] The “meta
narratives” model has of course been critiqued. In its place a model of local
responses to modernity has been suggested (Englund and Leach 2000); that
responses are from within modernity but not necessarily about modernity tout
court. Clearly my descriptions rely upon
something like an idea of locality. Yet I agree with Gupta’s (2000) commentary—that
cultural definitions of locality are open to debate among the peoples that
constitute that locality, and different groups will enjoy different views of
how that locality exists in the world of the present.
[36] Perhaps
then there is no equivalence? These two stories highlight the way in which the
witch offers a space within which different communities within the same
locality manage their relationships to modernity and tradition. Perhaps the
problem of equivalence lies not with the witch but with the forms of community
that are forced into presence by the existence of the witch. What is pointed
up is a debate not about witchcraft but about how a community deals with a
model of the ideal community (and attendant moral jurisdictions) that they
would like to see in existence—an imagined community or, in the words of
Van Binsbergen (2000), a “virtual community.”
Community,
Witch and Subjectivity
[37] Ikole-Ekiti
is the second largest town in Ekiti state, and lies twenty miles east of
Ado-Ekiti, the new state capital. When the state was formed in 1996, Ikole
mounted a campaign to become state capital, seeing this as a logical move
toward gaining access to state resources, bolstering its amenities and
increasing its educational facilities. Ikole is a town that undoubtedly
regards itself as progressive and modern. The town elite, those men and women
who quite consciously see themselves as providing leadership in the local arena
(and are thereby different from the emigré elite who return from Ibadan and
Lagos increasingly rarely), are well aware of the town’s difficulties,
particularly in the provision of basic utilities. They are all too conscious
that the basic provisions of civil society in modern Nigeria have broken down,
and the modernization promised has proved little more than illusory. No one sees
this more than the Elekole, Oba (King) of the town.
[38] Ikole is in
fact a town formed by a process of fusion initiated in the 1920s by the current
Elekole’s father Adeleye I and encouraged by the British colonial
administration. Noticing that towns such as Ibadan and Ilesa had benefited in
resources and political influence by increasing their size through
incorporating surrounding villages, Adeleye I decided to follow this path
toward increasing Ikole’s influence within the modern colonial state. The
ostensible reason given to the surrounding villages was that they would then be
in a position to found a school in Ikole, the symbol par excellence of modernization and enlightenment in Nigeria,
although there was no doubt that Adeleye I also wanted to centralize Ikole’s
control over the satellite villages, in turn reinforcing his position vis
à vis the colonial administration. In
other words, it is very clear that inscribed into the modern history of Ikole
is the consciousness of taking part in twentieth century processes of modernization
from the start.
[39] That
different moral perspectives play back and forth between tradition and
modernity within the same locale should not really be surprising. The Ilu (town) has been the source of identity for any
number of different constituencies, each having an investment in the town;
whether living at a distance as an urban (i.e., Ibadan or Lagos) elite, or
operating as a local elite or living in the town as a day to day existence, the
town defines a form of identity. Clearly however there is competition over
this identity—over how it might be imagined, and clearly in the case of
Ikole, this imagining has been operative through out the twentieth century.
[40] Yet it is
an imagining that crucially relies upon competition over the versions of
traditions allowed into being within the modern. For the Elekole (the Oba or
King) the fact of a witchcraft trial was clearly precisely the wrong form of
tradition. His responses to the case were expressed to me with an air of
exasperation about the whole business; this was something I should not concern
myself with. Not in the sense that, as an outsider, this was secret business
and therefore I had no business sticking my nose into such secrecy but rather,
that, as an educated person like himself, I should not be paying such attention
to these matters. The whole thing was regarded, it seemed, as a little
embarrassing, a fracas that was a little de trop. It was something that in his capacity as traditional ruler of the
town he had to take an interest in, if only to prevent bloodshed, and he had
appropriate representatives in form of the Olomodikole to deal with such
matters.[8] However, as far as he was concerned
this was not the light in which he wanted his town represented. It was not the
“tradition” that he wanted marketed as part of the package that surrounds
“Ikole-Ekiti” as an identity. This was part of general attitude among the
town’s elite, tradition was there to be used selectively, when and where it
bolstered the reputation of the town. Thus festivals such as the Ogun
festival, the major celebration of the Palace’s articulation with the town’s
ritual system, had been “promoted” by the town’s elite to the status of an
Ikole day festival, whereas the festivals surrounding Orisa Ojuna had been
quietly left to fade away as the main adherents to this cult died.
[41] It is in
the context of this re-evaluation of what tradition means that the
embarrassment surrounding the discovery of “a witch” needs to be regarded. The
trial of this old lady, at least to some members of the town, particularly
those of an educated elite, was deeply irritating as a reminder that certain
segments of Ikole’s population were not modern, that they were, to the elite,
behaving in an irritatingly irrational fashion. Yet this view of the elite was
also a perspective on tradition at odds with the unreflexive but clearly
demonstrated horror and excitement of people in finding a witch.
[42] It is this
double order that structures the attitudes of the audience for the comic books.
The producers of these comics know their audiences, just as those who produce
the popular video stories. A visual objectification is at work here, one that
offers a double act of imagining (Mbembe 1997). One is the fetishization, an
enchantment if you like, of the ciphers of the material wealth of modernity.
The other is an imagining of the witches’ coven, another transnational
landscape that never the less underpins the action of people within modernity.
As Geschiere and Meyer (1999) suggest, this act of imagining runs right through
the understanding of how national politics operates. Are they playing to, as
well as providing, a genuinely held belief in the power of the occult concealed
behind beautiful and successful appearance, are they just one more
representation of occult modernity. Is this how it plays with the young men
and women of Ikole?
[43] There were,
of course, numerous different ways in which these comic books were read. Among
the younger members of the compound that I lived in there was indeed a
fascination with them—my collection was repeatedly depleted by friends
borrowing them, and circulating them to other friends around the town.
Reactions to the stories were, however, multiple. For some of the audience,
there was an expressed belief that this really was the way things were. For
the most part, however, the feeling toward these comics seemed to be a kind of
knowing, amused skepticism. In their irreverence toward everything, the comic
popular press was undoubtedly pointing up the fallacy of success, the inadequacy
of the state, the subversion of authority. Yet this is all accomplished within
a context of knowing parody, and the audience knows the knowing. Here then the
figure of the witch is recognized as being a part of popular consciousness but
is also a figure of fun—a fairytale.
[45] Do these
popular perceptions actually feed on people’s notion of occult power or do they
know that people are knowedgeable enough to understand the joke? that what is
represented here is in part also a knowing wink one that is shared with their
readers. These popular representations to the “hidden Occult” may be working
with people’s knowing cynicism, but also with their knowledge that this is
entertainment. The failure of commentators to see the joke tends to suggest a
fixation on reducing all representation to the assumption of a general African
mentality that really believes this stuff.
[46] In part,
this range of reactions is borne out by the audience’s reaction to the witch in
Ikole. The force of the actual witchcraft trial, the very shock that it
produced in some people, suggests that once put into the land of rumour and
popular representation, witchcraft is safely confined in a world of
superstition, and that the reality of a witch may gradually slip out of lived
consciousness. Eruptions such as that at Ikoyi bring the presence of the witch
far too close to home for many of Ikole’s citizens.
Then
again …
[47] The
eruptions of fieldwork are not meant to follow one home. One of the quirks of
fieldwork is that the point of the field is left behind to be engaged again
only in the confines of the study as Euro-American knowledge is brought to bear
in analysis. This is the double order that Strathern (1999) writes of, and it
is perhaps why in earlier versions of this paper I had been able to suggest
that the comic book witch had a representational status that was perhaps more
of a metaphor than an illustration of known practices.
[48] Yet … some
years ago a torso was taken out of the River Thames, decapitated and without
any identifying features apart from a white singlet and orange shorts. The
initial police response was to give the body a name—Adam. What then
followed was an intensive police investigation—moving from Woolwich in
London to South Africa and then finally to Nigeria.
[49] As Van Dijk
(2000) has shown with the case of voodoo prostitution in the Netherlands, a
case such as this points inextricably to the politics of identity in a context
where European state policing of identity has become a major principle of
government. It would also point to the culturally different constructions of
late capitalism and incommensurable differences in that construction. Indeed,
the rhetoric around the investigation seems at pains to demonstrate these
differences. Reports of the case lay the greatest stress upon the scientific
methodology by which the police traced the racial identity of the body; DNA
tracing, gut analysis, particle analysis from the clothing and so on. Rather
less stated although lurking within the discourse is the fear that this case
has generated, fear that this has happened many times before within the
Nigerian community in London and a fear that feeds directly into a current
British obsession over child abuse and the proper order of family relations.[9]
[50] Here,
however, I am more concerned with the eruption, for suddenly the river Thames
becomes an enchanted place, as a Yoruba place (or perhaps Edo). Yet, as with
the citizens of Ikoyi, it is the enchantment of horror. But we know this, for
the pool of London, the place where they pulled the body out of the water,
always was the horror—always was the true heart of darkness.
[51]
Thus we have a coincidental coming together—the body of a small
child probably sacrificed in order to make money, bumps up against the banks of
the largest money market in the world—horror within horror. And yet this is of course
where the relations of modernity between West Africa and Europe have their
origin, for at the heart of the city lies the royal mint, and as Simon Shaffer
points out, one of the objects of the mint was the establishment of equivalence
of value in the coinage of the realm, which in seventeenth century Britain was
perceived as an attack on idolatry. Of course as Pietz (1985) shows, that
assay of value was entirely entangled with the perception of the fetish upon
the guinea coast. The value of gold, particularly guinea gold dust, became the
driver behind the development of a so called scientific rationalism propounded
by Boyle, Locke and Newton.
[52]
Shaffer points out that in the network of relations surrounding the assay of
gold relations between Europe and Africa, the relations of measurement become
confused, the gold weight fetish of the Akan trader often mirrored by the
ascription of fetish like qualities to European measuring equipment, objects
with the power of truth and falsehood. The mirroring extends to the reversal
of attitudes toward gold—Akan knowing that it is from the earth, while Europeans
reserved a literally sacred position for gold—to the point that Dutch
trader states of the Akan gold traders, that they “know very well there is no
gold in Holland, that it is for its sake that we come here and that so much
diligence is applied to get it, and therefore say that gold is our god.”[10] What is observed, however, is that the measurement of exchange was geared
toward sorting pure gold from adulterates, and this difference increasingly
became the “difference between European reason and indigenous errors and crimes.”
Yet the relationship could be easily turned on its head, and it was clear that
in London there was an ambiguity of thought about the way in which the exchange
of gold destabilised boundaries and led to the exchange
of natures, commerce at the margins making the metropolis vulnerable. The
savage antithesis of civilization lies in the metropolitan centre, just as
Latour (1993) reflects that the critique of fetishism “gives access to a
universe just as unstable as the world allegedly turned upside down by the
illusory belief in fetishes.” Again as Latour indicates, perhaps we have never
been modern.
[53]
Why should this be significant? In numerous ways, but I would just like to
point to the imaginings of the youth in Ikole—imagining that operates
around a notion of “overs” represented in material such as Fantasy and Ikebe Super—they know that
success in leaving the virtual community of the village means entering into
another set of relationships that are also virtual, ambiguous and fraught, and
that the witch might provide a metaphor for those sorts of relationship that on
the one hand can be laughed at but on the other is acknowledged as having
reality. Yet the forms of imagining that the youth of Ikole have would also
seem to be mirrored, as with the mirror of the fetish, in the types of
imagining that Europe still insists upon writing onto the lives of people in
Africa.
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Notes
