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Date: 14 Aug 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Subject: Re: The Matamoros Affair (was Palo Mayombe: The 'Dark Side' of Santeria?...)
Message-ID: <20000814105630.21998.00000942@ng-cj1.aol.com>
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Subject: Re: The Matamoros Affair (was Palo Mayombe: The 'Dark Side' of
>Santeria?...)
>From: eballard@sas.upenn.edu (E. C. Ballard)
>Date: 8/13/00 6:30 PM EST
>Message-id:
>
>In article <20000813151640.24318.00000304@ng-fb1.aol.com>,
>
>
>
>> I disagree. To recognize difference is not ipso facto to deny
>commonality...
>> which is the Zulu name for a religious society whose members are drawn
>from all the peoples of Africa.[1, 2]...
>> the language. So, when you take a perfectly clear African concept, and
>> translate it into European languages, what you get is confusion, not only
>the
>> confusion of using value-laden words to translate value-free notions, but
>also
>> the confusion that arises from European condescension, which gives us
>nonsense
>> constructs such as "witch-doctor".
>
>
>Yes, and when you create this mishmash of philosophical tidbits from five
>or six or more relatively unrelated cultures and systems you end up with
>ideas that sound thoughtful but have no firm basis in any reality. It's a
>duck soup of new pseduo-philosophy. You can't discuss anything meaningful
>that way., Precisely what you have been doing is using a lot of value
>laden words. That was my point.
Really? I thought the point to which I was responding was your claim that it
was IMPOSSIBLE (capitalization yours) to speak of African religion in general.
I think I offered a very cogent rebuttal as to why what you say is not true.
You now respond with a mish-mash of scare words like "mish-mash",
"pseudo-philosophy", "duck-soup", etc., all straining mightily, but failing, to
make any point, other than to help you, again, to make the dogmatic assertion
that allegedly "unrelated" systems must remain in watertight mental
compartments at all costs, or else.... what?
>As for discussing a subject such as
>African distinctions between sorcery and religion, Webster has to be the
>weakest definition to start from.
>
Not if the discussion proceeds in the English language.
>> I would again point out that the Kikongo and Bantu traditions embrace
>more than
>> witchcraft/sorcery (take your pick as to value imputations). There is also
>a
>> religious tradition, as distinct from witchcraft/sorcery, in the sense that
>I
>> have defined earlier. Perhaps this religious tradition is foreign to Palo.
>I
>> would really like to know.
>
>Of course they do. That was my point exactly. That religious tradition is
>not foreign to Palo.
I am relieved to hear it, although I would have been more relieved had your
choice of words been something more affirmative than "not foreign to".
>In fact, given the cultural, religious and political
>situation in Central Africa today, Palo is doubtlessly more traditionally
>Congo than practically anything you will find in the Congo or Angola
>today. It certainly contains more ancient survivals than anything you will
>find there today.
Not the point. The issue is not whether Palo is a fossil remain of 18th century
Kikongo tradition -- that I would readily grant -- but what kind of tradition
it is, a religious one, or a sorcery tradition. The Kikongo teachers I have had
come from a clearly religious tradition, and the teachings they had to impart
are from a tradition that goes back thousands of years, and survives the
attempts of the Belgians to wipe it out. From the little I could gather of the
Palo tradition from the discussion thus far, I am not seeing a religious
tradition in the sense I have defined it. But possibly the discussion is skewed
that way because of the Matamoros matter.
>We're not talking reconstructions or multicultural
>neo-religions either.
>
I continue to assert that there is a unity within the diversity of African
culture, religious and otherwise.
>Eoghan
>
Peace,
Grisso
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