Warriors of the Water: A Luba Mai-Mai Story of Agency, Personhood and Ancestral Power Restricted; Files Only
Ledgister, Georgette (Spring 2018)
Abstract
Engaging accounts of supernatural power and extraordinary feats of valor are not what most typically expect when studying the agency of African women in war. However, in the Upper Lomami Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luba Mai-Mai women not only deploy their agency in unforgiving socioeconomic and physical conditions, but they do so through access to mystical ancestral power. Focusing on the story of Chatty, a Luba woman who fought in the Congolese Five-Year War (1997- 2002) as a member of the mystico-political Mai-Mai movement, this dissertation presents the findings of a sociolinguistic and ethnographic study of Luba Mai-Mai agency, using narratives of the Mai-Mai’s ancestral power.
Drawing from Chatty’s lived experience of the war, and on the supernatural feats she performs during the conflict, this dissertation unfolds in four movements. I begin by engaging the Congolese religious imaginary and the negative reception of the Mai-Mai in Congolese Christian communities. I explore accounts of kindoki or “witchcraft” as Congolese Christians erroneously identify Mai-Mai power, to locate the root of the tension between the Mai-Mai and non-Mai-Mai communities during and after the war. In the second movement, I use the work of Felix Munyaradzi Murove and Laurenti Magesa to locate and analyze the ancestral origins of Mai-Mai power—a power that exists and is cultivated in community. In the third movement of this dissertation, I focus on the themes of gender and agency, demonstrating the ways in which Chatty’s access to ancestral power enables her to negotiate and overcome the constraints of her gender and socioeconomic status, and allows her to exercise her agency in unexpected and remarkable ways as a Mai-Mai fighter. I turn to the work of Saba Mahmood and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí to interrogate Eurocentric conceptions of agency, calling for a reframing of the ways in which such conceptions associate agency with physical capacity. Finally, I construct a Luba ethic of agency in the fourth movement, which takes seriously the role of indigenous spirituality and practice in the public sphere—a phenomenon that must be addressed in present-day Congo to achieve sustainable peace in the country.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
RUSHING WATER AND STINGING BEES: A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO
LUBA WAYS OF BEING AND KNOWING...............................................................1
Questions as a Bridge Between Tale and Theory .........................................................9
Testing the Waters: Identity, Epistemology, and Method............................................20
Incorporating Mai-Mai Women into the Feminist Corpus on Gender and War..........22
Agency and Virtue.................................................................................................30
Questioning Methods and Knowledges..................................................................32
A Different Stream of Knowledge: Structuring and Framing the Argument................39
CHAPTER TWO
TROUBLED WATERS: A BEHEADING, A HISTORY, AND A MAKING OF
WARLORDS ...............................................................................................................44
The Decapitated Priest and the Cook Turned Peacebuilder.......................................44
Warriors and “Witchcraft”........................................................................................49
“They Kill People:” Locating the Mai-Mai Sociopolitically ......................................56
“They are Bad People:” Encountering the Source of Mai-Mai Power.......................62
CHAPTER THREE
WADE IN THE WATER: ANCESTRAL POWER, SPIRITUALITY AND
AGENCY OF THE MAI-MAI....................................................................................77
“This is the Soil of Our Ancestors”: Engaging the Luba Lifeworld............................82
Vital Force: From Vulnerability to Agency ................................................................90
Vital Force as Ntu .....................................................................................................95
On Becoming a Mai-Mai .........................................................................................101
From Vulnerability to Agency..................................................................................106
CHAPTER FOUR
WOMEN OF THE WATER: GENDER, BEING AND KNOWING AMONGST
THE LUBA MAI-MAI..............................................................................................124
“I’d Rather Die than Wrestle:” Chatty the Woman and Chatty the Warrior.............127
“Power Belongs to Women”....................................................................................133
“Each Bird Has Its Own Voice and Its Own Call:” (De)Constructing Post-Conflict
Mai-Mai Identity and Gender..................................................................................145
Identity: Can One Un-Become Mai-Mai? ................................................................156
Gender: Are the Warrior and the Woman Diametrically Opposed? .........................160
Conclusion: Does the End of War Mean the End of the Mai-Mai? ...........................162
CHAPTER FIVE
RISING TIDES: THE ENCOUNTER OF AGENCY AND THE SILENCE, AND
THE FUTURE OF MYSTICO-POLITICAL MOVEMENTS IN CONGO...........166
“War Eats People:” A Luba World-Sense on War...................................................174
Decentering the Body and Re-Turning to the Person: Silence as Agentive Practice .186
Paying Attention to Make Sense of Tension..............................................................192
Prison-Breaks and Mystical Warfare: Concluding Remarks ....................................196
APPENDIX A: RIDING THE WAVE OF THE MAI: RESEARCH METHODS
STATEMENT............................................................................................................199
APPENDIX B: HISTORICAL TIMELINE.............................................................204
BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................210
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