Lambertz, Peter - 2016 - Gardening the Past - in Festschrift Adam Jones

Gardening the Past: Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa Peter Lambertz his contribution is about the ritual touching of soil (French terre, Lingala mabelè) during individual and collective gardening sessions of two spiritual movements in Kinshasa. he practice allows participants to uplit and reconcile with their own ancestors, as well as with those of the Congolese nation. Seen as an alternative form of memory politics, these practices generate a sense of ‘attouchment’ with the material surroundings of the city. he chapter addresses the question of how to address and access the past, and how to do this properly, from the perspective of Congolese spiritualists. Far from being trained historians, they are very well aware of how important it is to cultivate and take good care of personal memories and one’s relationship with personal and national forefathers. Part of the eschatological pluralism resulting from a foisonnement of the most diverse kinds of ‘churches’ is also a variety of alternative, non-conformist ‘spiritual movements’, as they are locally called. Rather elitist and secretive in the 1980s and 90s, the picture today tends to resemble that of a mainstreaming of alternative spirituality as has been observed in Brazil.1 hese movements include Eckankar, the Grail movement, and AMORC, but also Sûkyo Mahikari, Sokka Gakai International, the Brahma Kumaris Spiritual University, and the Japanese new religion Sekai Kyûseikyô. Founded in 1935 by the Japanese Mokichi Okada, whom his followers call Meishu Sama (Jap. Master of light), today this movement has diferent branches in Kinshasa: the Mokichi Okada Association (MOA), the Church of World Messianity (Église Messianique Mondiale, short EMM), and the Temple Messianique Art de Johrei (short TMAJ). Except for the Brahma Kumaris movement from India, all these movements are ‘imports’ by Congolese individuals and have come about according to the old Central African logic of schism and renewal, which today is entangled with transnational dynamics. From a local, praxeological point of view it is clear, however, that rather than being completely ex- 1 Vgl. Carpenter, he mainstreaming. 575 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History otic and alien movements from elsewhere, spiritual movements are, like so many other ‘churches’, part of the longstanding Central African ‘tradition of renewal’.2 An important diference to most Pentecostal Charismatic churches, which nowadays dominate Kinshasa’s public sphere, is that ‘spiritual movements’ propagate what may be termed ‘psycho-genealogical reconciliation’ rather than a ‘break with the African past’.3In Japanese fashion, ancestral spirits are seen as being discarded and therefore in need of love and gratitude. he followers of EMM and TMAJ, who are the protagonists of this contribution, appease and please their ancestors by tuning their own bodies into emotional states of tranquillity and well-being, which is thought to uplit one’s ancestors.4 his reconciliatory attitude with the ancestral past contrasts with the missionary dualism between good and evil forces, which African Pentecostalism so ardently revives. For Pentecostal Christians, evil forces are oten thought to be ancestral, with Jesus and his Holy Spirit being the only liberators capable of undoing the ties of the past. It is not surprising that in this context spiritual movements are popularly accused of being ‘occult sciences’ (Fr./Li. sciences occultes), where upwardly mobile individuals sacriice their kin for their own personal proit.5 Ater an opening vignette, which illustrates how alternative spirituality is lived in contemporary Kinshasa, the second section focuses on the miraculous surplus of EMM’s messianic gardening activities and the entanglements of soil, crops, sentiment, and ancestors. It will become clear that Messianiques in Kinshasa re-/produce ‘Japanese’ and ‘Congolese’ spiritual technologies as one harmonious whole. A third section presents EMM’s ritual gardening as national memory work, which serves to ‘ancestralize’ the nation. Lastly, the importance of the senses is elucidated so as to stress the importance of material attouchment beyond the level of conceptual discourse. 2 3 4 5 576 Janzen, Tradition; De Craemer, Fox and Vansina, Religious Movements. Meyer, Make a complete break. his is achieved through spiritual puriication during the channelling ritual of ‘Johrei’ (Jap. puriication of the soul), which purges both humans and the world from sins and blockages. Johrei is done in a way similar to Reiki. Installed on two plastic chairs facing each other, one person transmits invisible ‘light’ to the receiver with a cupped and raised up hand. Locally understood as a prière en silence, Johrei works best if streamed in proximity with and aligned in the direction of the energy lowing from the Goshintai, which is a Japanese calligraphy installed inside the Johrei Center. Concentration and silence are preconditions for Johrei to be efective, which confront the most diferent people in unusual and unexpected ways, with each other and with themselves. For a more thorough analysis, see Lambertz, Divisive Matters. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa Satanic Spiderwebs It is a Saturday morning in June 2013. EMM’s Minister Jacques and I are riding my motorbike to his church’s new organic plantation, close to Mount Mangengenge, on the outer periphery of Kinshasa. his mountain has been a sacred site for at least several hundred years. Today it hosts a Catholic crosswalk on its ascent, and its summit frequently hosts prayer groups. Clearly, EMM’s choice of locating their ield/garden at the foot of this mountain indicates how EMM, and also other spiritual movements, implant themselves into the local spiritual geography of the city. he ield is located in the middle of the hills that separate the city from the ‘plateau des baTeke’. We head of from the Johrei Center of Mokali and jostle through the diicult entry to the Pascal crossroad where turning taxi buses, taxi cars, motorcycle taxis, and pedestrians compete for the few inches needed to pass. Ater driving for a good 20 minutes on Boulevard Lumumba, Jacques signals a right turn a short distance beyond the N’Djili airport, and I realize that we are entering Camp zeta, one of Kinshasa’s larger military camps. At the second barrier we are made to stop and salute the soldier on guard. I am told to park the motorbike, while he puts our names down in a book, and directs us to the second door of the adjoining building. A sign above the door indicates that we are going to meet an oicer of the Bureau 2, which is the colloquial term used for the national intelligence service. Upon entering, we are greeted very warmly by a polite oficer, and Jacques explains that we intend to go to the Église Messianique ield, located behind the camp. he way in which he addresses the oicer informs me that Jacques assumes that everyone here knows about the church’s ield there. Indeed, the oicer does seem to know about it. On the wall behind the oicer, a rather scary poster attracts my attention, with photographs of diseased, mutilated, and stitched-up faces. he photos are hardly visible, because of a thick layer of cobwebs which have accumulated black dust over the years. he oicer asks for our IDs and I hand him the copy of my passport and the letter I carry from the University of Kinshasa. He takes a close look and I explain that I am a student carrying out research here with the messianic church. He gets up and leaves the room with our papers, probably to make a copy or show them to his superior. As he comes back into the room, he informs me with an authoritarian voice: Mr Peter, vous êtes arrêté! (you are arrested). I understand the joke and respond smiling Excellent! Merci beaucoup!, while putting the papers he hands over to me back into my bag. We start chatting and I ask him about the poster on the wall. he people in the photographs, he explains, were successfully treated here in the camp’s hospital. I understand that the poster is meant to celebrate emergency medicine at the camp. On seeing the poster, Minister Jacques intervenes, asking whether he could come back with a group of members from the Église Messianique to clean the oicer’s working 577 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History space, ‘because in our church cobwebs are considered very evil’.6 he oicer, surprised, responds at once and without hesitation: ‘(If this is what you preach in your church), in my church, they teach us that cobwebs are an important thing to have in your oice. And if they gave me a certain power, what would you say?’ I could not make out whether this was just a response to distance himself from EMM, whose non-Christian and therefore questionable reputation might have reached his ears long beforehand, or whether he was simply responding in this way because he felt embarrassed, he as a Capitaine, to be incited to cleanliness by some random visitor and in front of a foreigner. In the latter case, a humorous counter-insult about the active role of a cobweb is clearly a very intelligent thing to do. When consulting with Jacques about it the next morning he told me he thought that, by saying this, the man had wanted to suggest that he was using fétiches, and that the cobwebs were part of the conditions he had to observe for the fétiche to work properly. his is in keeping with the logic, known from older ethnographies, according to which a charm, in order to work successfully, requires the observation of a number of ritual obligations, which oten involve the ‘dangerous’ part of the purity-danger dichotomy.7Aside from these historical repetitions, the sociological implications of the incident are of interest: the cobwebs in the oice had become a thing around which to profess a spiritual expertise, and thus place an authority claim, a stake for a debate about the active role of things such as cobwebs. Despite the somewhat humoristic and exaggerated nature of the scene, I had become the witness of a marvellous little incident of competing conceptions about what cobwebs can do. he conceptions are mobilized here to negotiate purity and power. As so oten in Congo, the issue was easily resolved through heartfelt laughter bathed in a well-wishing gesture, which are the performative tools so common in Kinshasa, not only to sublate and cover up putative transgressions of respect and the boundaries of status, but chiely to enhance the binding of one’s own (spider)webs of sociality, or one’s invisible architecture of the city.8 Ater a few transitory seconds of silence, we let the oice with a warm handshake, answering the Capitaine’s wishful thinking about the upcoming harvest by explaining that the irst crops are still growing but that there will surely be some harvests in the future (which of course implied that he will not be let out of the distribution chain). 6 7 8 578 he next morning Minister Jacques would include the story about the general importance of cleanliness in his Sunday gospel, stressing that ‘cobwebs are parabolic antennas of Satan, they are the satellites of Satan’. he post-colonial career of this logic culminates in rumours about Mobutu’s personal secret society, Prima Curia, requesting that members eat their own faeces to ensure the continuous low of money and power. Cf. Braeckman, Le Dinosaure, 183; or Cheri Cherin’s painting ‘L’étrange messe noire’, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna. See De Boeck and Plissart, Kinshasa, 233. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa Gardening Miracles Touching Soil with Sentiment When we arrive, six youngsters from the Mokali unit are already there. Minister Jacques starts entertaining them with the account of a faith experience (a witness account), which had been collected the week before. About iteen more people arrive soon ater, bringing watering cans, spades, rakes, machetes, and four bags of draf, a fertilizing letover from the local brewery. While on weekends, gardening sessions are oten organized for the entire Messianique community, and are attended by an average of 50 Messianiques, on this day the session is only intended for one of EMM’s units, in this case the Johrei Center of Mokali. Once everyone has arrived, the activity is formally initiated with a short address. Minister Jacques reminds the community of the importance of EMM’s organic gardening practice, referred to in Lingala as bilanga (ield, ield work) and in French as agriculture naturelle (nature farming). Standing in front of and directed towards the nearby palm(oil)-tree, which is sided with little lower beds as messianic adornments, a little group of practitioners begins a prayer sequence, repeating EMM’s repertoire of Japanese, French and Lingala prayers. As soon as the prayers are over, the group walks together over to the ield, which borders a tiny stream and therefore does not dry up during the dry season (elanga). About forty wide beds have already been created and planted with lines of cassava and sweet potato. Today’s goal is to make two more beds by cutting down and ripping out the bush, digging ditches on the sides and throwing the earth from the ditches onto the new bed in the middle. he earth is then mingled with freshly cut grass from elsewhere, which ‘organically’ fertilizes the soil. While the boys are busy digging new beds and cleaning others, young ladies carry watering cans to and fro, watering the beds. hree other boys continue cutting down the bush on the side of the garden with machetes. I join an old father, who is removing weeds from in between the sweet potato leaves on one of the beds, when ater a while I hear one group of youngsters singing:9 Bakoko bakoko bakoko bakoko bakoti paradiso ee, Bakoko bakoko bakoko bakoko bakoti paradizo ya Nzambe, (…) Meishu Sama, aa Meishu Sama, Miroku Omikami (…). 9 Our ancestors, ancestors, ancestors, they’re entering paradise, eee, Our ancestors, ancestors, ancestors, they’re entering God’s paradise, eee, (…) Meishu Sama, ah Meishu Sama, Miroku Omikami1 (…). Japanese for ‘God’. 579 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History Bilanga labour is a central task within EMM’s catalogue of ritual activities, which every Messianique is to observe if he/she wants ‘results’ or changement to come about in her/ his life. Along with Johrei and the practice of beauty through Ikebana lower arrangement, it is one of the three colonnes du Salut (pillars of salvation), which are at the heart of this movement’s messianic programme. As Jacques and several other Messianiques explained to me, the activity is very much dependent on the ‘sentiment’ (the French word sentiment is used also in Lingala) of love (Li. bolingo, Fr. amour) and gratitude (Li. botondi, Fr. gratitude) towards the soil one is to touch, which is understood to be the abode of ancestors. Every follower is encouraged to develop this sentiment within himself/herself. And indeed on several visits to the ield I witnessed conscious eforts not only to execute the tasks fervently and without hesitation, but also to do this with the right attitude of respect and gratitude. Merely showing the sentiment on the outside is not enough, however. Everyone ought to concentrate and work on his/ her inner sentimental constitution vis-à-vis the soil itself, as well as the labour he/she ritually carries out. he practice very much resembles that of salongo, as Messianiques call the collective sweeping campaigns of streets and public places carried out by them on Saturdays in the city of Kinshasa, which are inspired by zen Buddhist notions of ritual labour.10 Most carry it out with the same exceptional enthusiasm and dedication, indicating that for many, this is more than gardening in a simple everyday routine. Similar to the arrangement of lowers, the concentrated singing of learned Japanese mantras, and the practice of Johrei, EMM’s agricultural labour is designed as a technique of self-cultivation, which has its origins in zen Buddhism. Perhaps contrasting with this precept, the work, as I observed it, was mostly executed as a community exercise with laughter and fun, as can be easily imagined, and the determination to get things done. However, on several occasions I observed individuals who had separated from the group to continue labouring alone, as if in a conscious efort to concentrate and strengthen their sentiment of gratitude. On one occasion a man repeatedly murmured the sentence ‘Nazo sala musala oyo pona bakoko ya mboka na biso oyo’ (I am doing this work for the ancestors of this country of ours), which I spontaneously interpreted as a creative exaggeration of the prescriptions of zealous gardening with sentiment. For more longstanding members this ieldwork has grown into a pattern of action that they have already executed on a regular basis over many years. Yet even for them it is not an everyday routine, but remains a structural requirement for living a ‘Messianic’ life and ensuring the worldly beneits it promises. Followers who have joined the movement more recently, like the man murmuring the sentence, for example, seem to be following the prescriptions more rigidly, at times even creatively exceeding the orthodoxy in their fervour. It is apparent that they are happy and excited about having discovered a 10 580 See Reader, Cleaning loors. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa way to be actively involved in something that generates a certain amount of bliss, which some are clearly desperately in need of. Such a spiritualization of labour is most visibly expressed in the sentiment of gratitude a Messianique develops in relation to the earth she/he touches. his resembles conceptions of earth and agriculture from Rudolf Steiner’s bio-dynamic agriculture, which promoted similar conservative understandings of emotional attachment to soil and the cosmos.11 One may think of the initiative to institute agricultural community labour as a repetition or a reminiscence of agricultural education promoted at Catholic schools in colonial times and ater. Every pupil had his/her own tiny patch of garden next to the school compound, on which he/she was to grow and cultivate crops. However, the idea promoted by the ritualized understanding of bilanga labour by Messianiques, aimed at creating a miraculous payback efect in other domains of life (such as in health or material prosperity), isa considerable departure from these purely educational purposes. Clearly, EMM’s spiritualized version of bilanga labour is understood by most to be a prosperity technique. hus, besides the pragmatic advantage of yielding crops, which are distributed for little money to the labouring community, gardening has, like Johrei, prayer, and ‘cleaning’ (Fr./Li. nettoyage) more generally, a powerful efect of spiritual ‘puriication’. Bilanga labour not only puriies the earth as such. It also puriies the soul of the individual who does it, as well as the souls of one’s ancestors. he metonymic connection between earth and ancestors, whose abode it is, is a longstanding notion of spirituality in Africa, which inds itself re-/produced here. Accounts referring to the miraculous efects of gardening at Mangengenge resemble those caused by Johrei healing. In 2012, I was told, EMM’s young missionary Abdoulaye had attempted to found a point de lumière (a very small unit of about 10 members) in the neighbourhood of Kingabwa. A child had joined him at the house where he was staying and would come there on a daily basis to receive Johrei from him. he young boy had been in conlict with his parents for some time and, because he looked rather ill, Abdoulaye had taken him to the Mangengenge garden. he story goes that upon arrival at EMM’s ield site, the child had started vomiting ‘strange things’ (biloko bizarres) and had become all green (akomi tout vert). Abdoulaye had given him Johrei on the ield site. he next day, the child had changed his entire appearance. In Kinshasa such stories are born and vanish with a half-life similar to televised news. As I discuss below, just as evil can be expulsed from the human body by Johrei, problems that are rooted in the past can be ‘unearthed’ (déterré) from the soil. 11 While Steiner shared a close intellectual connexion with other spiritual thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore in India, his links to Japan still need to be explored. It is unclear whether Okada knew of Steiner’s writings, or vice versa. 581 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History his is mainly possible because the idea of the fétiche, which one’s forebears might have hidden in the soil, ofers them a materialized and lasting form. Jacques summarized the miraculous efect of the ieldwork thus: ‘Somebody who has a problem, for example, which has been troubling him/her for some time, he/she receives an instruction to go to Mangengenge, and upon return he/she has the solution to his/her problem, which has been troublesome for a long time. We are convinced that (the work we do there) is related to the events that happen to us.’ (Jacques, Mokali, September 2013) Food, Fertilizers and Ancestral Sins Expressing his dissatisfaction about the miserable quality of food generally available and consumed in Kinshasa, Jacques validates his point, as he oten does, by presenting it as one of Mokichi Okada’s teachings: ‘Meishu Sama, he has exposed all the inconveniences of this kind of alimentation, of the chambre froide,12 of the cuisse,13 of ish, which are kept endlessly in freezers and all this, with the help of chemical products, utterly harmful to our health.’ (Jacques, Mangengenge, September 2013) Being unhappy about the bad quality of edibles available in Kinshasa’s markets is part of the Messianic habitus. On diferent occasions it was explained to me that the imported mackerels referred to as hompson, which together with cuisse are the main animal protein consumed in Kinshasa, are treated with formalin in order to ‘survive’ the journey from Namibia. Formalin is generally known for its use in the conservation of corpses in the morgue. In addition to these food taboos, EMM and TMAJ categorically oppose the use of chemical fertilizers (Fr./Li. engrais chimiques) in the cultivation process of corn, manioc, or any other vegetable. Fertilizers are seen as ‘unnatural’ and containing ‘toxins’, which, if consumed, enter our blood. Here these imaginary molecular elements have the same ‘clouding’ efects as sinful behaviour. A ‘cloud’ (Fr. nuage) around one’s soul is understood to be a blockage and ofers a handy idiom to think of and explain witchcrat as received through the food chain. Although nobody described fertilizers to me as being, essentially, a form of witchcrat, they are seen as having similar efects, resulting from the poisoning of the divine energy a plant carries naturally. his energy was explained to me as reiki. ‘If we use fertilizers (engrais chimiques), we are diminishing the mysterious power contained in the earth (terre). We are despising the earth, in fact. he earth has a mysterious power of multiplication and of reproduction, and this power should be acclaimed 12 13 582 Chambres froides are grocery stores specialized in selling frozen meat. Literally thigh of a chicken, meaning a frozen chicken that has been imported from Europe. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa and valued. In the moment we use chemical fertilizers, we not only kill this mysterious power. We also, by consuming these toxic crops, spoil our own blood (souiller notre sang).’ (Jacques, June 2013, Mangengenge) his discourse is part of a wider critical stance Mokichi Okada had developed visà-vis modern science in general. It seems to be very welcome to some intellectual ‘Afrocentric’ ears in Kinshasa, who are eager to ind resources to counter and criticize the West by ‘occidentalizing’ it. Jacques explained that ‘all this has to be taken into account. Meishu Sama says that with science one runs the risk of obtaining alimentation which is no longer suitable for consumption.’ While this anti-scientiic attitude reminds us of other critical New Age discourses concerning appropriate food quality and consumption, the ‘semiotic ideology’14 explaining the way in which food afects the body also echoes longstanding understandings about edibles being a medium of bewitchment. I was told that the life force (Fr. force vitale, Li. nguya ya bomoyi), or divine force (nguya ya Nzambe), which Minister Jacques explicitly linked to ‘the book by Tempels’,15 was called reiki in Japanese. According to him, it is identical to the energy transmitted when practising Johrei. his also explained my repeated observation of Johrei being transmitted to plants on the ield or to Messianiques’ home gardens. Consuming ‘natural crops’ (Fr. aliments naturels) is thus compared to ‘eating light’, and as wholesome as transmitting or receiving Johrei. he analogy with Johrei does not end here. Johrei is efective essentially because it enables one to spiritually reach out to and touch one’s ancestors with the ‘warm’ and purifying light of God. It spiritually uplits them and thus earns their favour and protection for one’s own upcoming activities. he practice of organic agriculture is understood as doing just the same: ‘By touching the earth, by growing crops over here, we are touching our ancestors in the spiritual world.’ (Jacques, Mangengenge, June 2013) In a metonymic logic the earth is the ancestors’ abode (by virtue of them having been buried there). hus while touching the earth with the sentiments of love and gratitude, one transmits and ‘gets in touch’ with them and so purges their sins, or forgives them, with a pleasing, honouring and upliting efect: ‘Our ancestors have been buried (in this soil), their bodies have been buried (here). his soil has been spoiled with the sins of our ancestors who have caused blood to be spilled, of their brothers, who have sold their brothers into slavery. If there is war, 14 15 he notion of ‘semiotic ideology’ is taken from Keane, Christian Moderns, 21 and designates what people know about what ‘music, visual imagery, food, architecture, gesture and anything that enters into actual semiotic practice’ are granted to be doing. Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy has been part of the oicial curriculum in secondary schools, which institutionalizes the feedback and longevity of missionary anthropology and ofers a discourse to order the world similar to the teachings of spiritual and religious movements. 583 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History blood is spilled and the earth has been spoiled (souillé), not only by toxic products (…).’ (Jacques, Mangengenge, June 2013) Earth is also known to be the receptacle of ancestral fétiches, which were buried there by former fellow humans who have now become ancestors. In this way, touching the soil of the garden also ‘neutralizes’ the long-lasting efects of the ancestors’ sinful practice of fétiche, which cease to be active as the ancestors cease to feel vengeance. ‘By virtue of eating natural food, we even save future generations. We save the roots, we save the ancestors, where are the ancestors? hey are in our blood. You see, before I die I will have ofered a child to the world, and I transmit my blood to my children. (…) When I purify my blood over here, I purify my future children at the same time.’ (Jacques, Mangengenge, June 2013) In the same way gardening also promises to solve conlicts such as marriage problems, which are oten seen as resulting from jealous or unhappy ‘ancestral’ spirits, i. e. somebody who died unhappily.16 In other words: not only do current conlicts cause afliction, also former conlicts, if unresolved, continue to have negative repercussions in current lives. In this account, the spirit of the husband’s irst wife, whom EMM accepts to be a full-scale ‘ancestor’, is pleased and appeased by the gardening work of her living husband. She feels she is honoured and respected to the extent that she decides to let go of her vengeance. hus, gardening and caring for plants and soil is metonymically equated with ‘handling the roots’ of social conlict, which are oten located in the past. hrough gardening, as through Johrei, they can be ‘brought to light’. TMAJ’s Régine explained to me, for instance, how ‘Johrei will unearth everything that was evil, even what you once said, even what the family did. Johrei will unearth all this (…) and you will see, one day you will realize this through the (bond) you have with your ancestors’ (Régine, Yolo Sud, June 2013). EMM’s gardening practice is like psychotherapeutical attention to the conlicts of the past, which implies metaphorically digging it up and healing it. Although originating in the ‘Japanese’ tradition of zen Buddhism, Messianiques consciously re-/produce their gardening activity as a revival of their own ‘African’ ancestral culture. he metonymical link between soil and ancestors, the conception of food and ingestion as the source of healing and/or bewitchment, as well as the notion that fétiches and unhappy ancestors are to be ‘neutralized’ so as to undo evil intentions from the past, are all instances of cultural continuity. Messianiques use a seemingly foreign and imported spiritual tradition so as to come to terms with their own past and both re-/produce and attouch(see below) themselves to their own ancestral culture. 16 584 EMM’s Japanese ‘ancestor’-concept includes every dead person, regardless of gender, lineage, or generational belonging. See Smith, Ancestor worship; as well as Lambertz, Divisive Matters, 256–299. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa The Ancestralisation of National Soil As we have already explained, by touching soil, not only is the garden or the ield transformed, but the small-scale changes are expected to have repercussions at the level of the body. As Jacques phrased it: ‘By touching the earth, the earth is our physical body, if we clean our earth, in fact we clean ourselves’ (Jacques, Mangengenge, June 2013). In the Messianiques’ conception, the same holds true for the entity of the nation as well. Body, garden, and nation are synechdochically intertwined as each other’s respective micro- and macrocosm. hus, touching the soil of EMM’s ield is also equivalent to the soothing of Congo’s national ancestors and founding fathers, i. e. of its national past. he logic of the territory-bound ancestor, who is attached to the ancestral homeland of birth, is upscaled here to the level of the nation. An analogical link is established between the clean self (materialized by the body, including one’s ancestors in the blood) and the clean garden/soil (material space on the small scale), as well as the Congolese nation (Fr nation Congolaise). It should be noted that Congolese Pentecostals also ardently pray for the health of their bodies and the nation alike,17 just like new religious movements such as Eckankar, where adepts pray for the ‘karma’ of the nation. Shortly before the celebrations of Congo’s Cinquantenaire for the 50th anniversary of independence in 2010, a commemorative bronze statue of the historic irst president of the DRC, Joseph Kasavubu, was unveiled on the roundabout named ater him. he statue closely resembles that of the irst Prime Minister Patrice Eméry Lumumba at the Échangeur de Limete. Messianiques were proud to announce that this initiative by the government was the material consequence of their prototypical ‘messianic’ eforts of venerating the ancestors of the nation. heir model eforts were now inally emulated by the country’s authorities. In fact, the intention of home gardening is also to trigger imitation by neighbours, other urbanites and, ideally, the authorities. Like a snowball efect, the ethical model will eventually lead to the establishment of paradise on earth (without conlict, disease, poverty). EMM’s concern for the nation is relected in the fact that Messianiques include the names of former national leaders in ancestor lists, which are enshrined according to the Shintô principle in front of the altar calligraphy on the weekly ‘prayer for the elevation of ancestral souls’. Included in a sample were a variety of illustrious individuals from the zairian epoch, such as ‘(ex-) président Mobutu Joseph (Désiré)’, also referred to as Mobutu-Maréchal, ‘(ex-) président Laurent (L. D.) Kabila’, ‘ministre Lumumba’, and Joseph Kasavubu. 17 See Pype 2012, he Making of, 221. 585 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History Far removed from international shunning campaigns against former ‘dictator’ Mobutu Sese Seko, it is he who appears most oten among the former political leaders. In an article in 2005, Bob White had asked the question ‘Is it possible to mourn for Mobutu’s zaire?’, pointing to the general ambivalence and unease with which Mobutu should be but cannot be remembered, mainly because of the political implications of the connection between the body of the deceased and the body of the nation.18 EMM’s eforts point to the necessity of remembrance beyond a normative judgment of the past and contemporary political opportunism: ‘Our politicians, we really should remember them and feel gratitude towards them, because Meishu Sama has said to show love to your brothers not only while they’re alive. Even when they are no longer (on this earth) is it possible to show them one’s love by making prayers for the elevation of their spirit.’ (Jacques, Mokali, July 2010) Territorial Re-Attouchment A powerful side efect of this kinetic work is an engaging bodily attitude towards the surrounding material space. his attitude is a powerful mechanism of territorialization that exceeds the levels of the symbolic and the social by emphasizing the ‘material’ bond between the human senses and their material landscapes. During the gardening and cleansing activities, both the senses and the world participate in a mutual tuning, in a key, or indeed a ‘signature’, much like Gernot Böhme’s Stimmung of the world.19 From this perspective, the senses are the phenomenological building blocks of one’s attitude to space. Such an attitude can be politically desired and even institutionally enhanced (by drawing borders, for instance), but actual territorialisation, that is, the institution of a spatial order, will always depend on the extent to and the way in which it is aesthetically implemented. Particular sensual or visceral attitudes to space can be crucial in this regard.20 Despite its more recent re-apparition under the guise of what is referred to as the ‘spatial turn’, the question of territorial attachment and detachment is not new. Robin Horton’s theory of conversion is a good example of earlier preoccupation: conversion, for him, was an intellectual transition from a village-based microcosm, which was governed by ‘lesser spirits’, toward an urbanized or industrialized living condition in which a ‘higher God’ reminiscent of the ‘wider world’21 was more apt to ‘explain, predict and control’ the vicissitudes of ordinary everyday life in this new setting. If we agree with 18 19 20 21 586 White, Political Undead, 76. See Böhme, Athmosphäre, 163, 261. See Rancière, Politics of Aesthetics. See Horton, African conversion. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa Horton, Christianity’s success in Africa and its complicity with the ‘modern situation’, as he calls it, is mainly due to its ability to un- and re-tune people’s attitude to material space. Or, in more radically constructivist terms, Christianity managed to ofer conceptual tools: a set of portable practices with which to build the world in a way more suitable to the intellectualist necessities of the novel living conditions. True, for Horton this attitude to space was mainly meaning-based and intellectual. It largely discarded the ‘intellect of the body and the senses’, which were un- and re-tuned as a whole into a new ‘symphonic’ arrangement out of surrounding things and its surrounding senses, both of which mutually conjure each other in emotional virtuosity. Despite the questionable relevance of the conversion concept in the contemporary settings of religious pluralism, which are no longer only missionary irst-contact situations, and where ‘belief ’ is essentially based on pragmatic eicacy in terms of prosperity efects (Kirsch 2004), nothing refutes the ongoing validity of Horton’s intellectualist paradigm. It merely deserves to be complemented, I would argue, by a focus which overcomes the body-mind dichotomy by foregrounding the body and the sensory fullbody friction with the wider social and spatial worlds. It is through such viscerally felt full-body friction that persons make and constitute themselves, as well as the world around them. From this perspective, the (re-)‘scaling’ of one’s belonging, whether in relation to the microcosm of the village or the ‘wider world’ of the ‘modern situation’, as proposed by Horton’s theory, goes through sensory practices that tune a bodily attitude towards (and of) the immediate material surroundings, including territory, from which human life cannot be dissociated. Indirectly, Horton points to the territorial detachment novel urbanites encounter ater leaving the cosmic continuum of the village and the countryside. Against this background, the city thus appears to be a de-ethicized, de-ancestralized space, where the person is no longer territorially bound to surrounding landscapes. he Pentecostal conception of the Holy Spirit as a capricious and inherently evanescent Spirit, who refuses to be contained or territorialized,22 has more than merely an ‘elective’ ainity with capitalism in its neo-liberal format. It actively tunes people’s sensitivities into mobility and the ability to personally de- and relocate, just like their Spirit does, ofering a ‘portable practice’ and a ‘transposable message’ to do so.23 Joel Robbins has shown how members of the Urapmin ethnic group in Papua New Guinea have been willing to give up their ancestral land under the impact of Pentecostalism. He writes: ‘(T)he history of Urapmin occupation of their territory, a history that formerly took tangible form in the bones of their ancestors, has ceased to be relevant to their ability 22 23 Cf. Kirsch, Spirits and Letters. hese conceptual tools have been suggested by Csordas, Introduction. 587 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History to work the land. God now helps them in this, just as he would help them as Christians to prosper on any territory or perform any other work they might be able to secure elsewhere. hat they now lack special, ritual competencies that allow them to work a particular territory is an important sense in which the Urapmin are no longer tied to their land.’24 Accordingly, ‘(t)he speed and extent of the spread of this style of Christianity has important implications for changing regimes of territoriality.’25 his corresponds to the necessities posed by the economic, social, and infrastructural instabilities inherent to the city, which itself appears to be a idgeting continuum in constant cross-fading motion. he telos of social and geographical mobility, modelled upon the Holy Spirit and encouraged by the churches’ millennial prosperity focus, reinforces the longstanding postcolonial logic of social stratiication. he thing called soil is a powerful resource through which to demonstrate distinction. As Robbins has documented for the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea, the idea of the city in Congo also appears to go hand in hand with the transformation of one’s labour regime away from soil work and agriculture. Pentecostalism indirectly fosters the ‘denigration’ of soil-related labour, encouraging territorial detouchment. In the case of the DRC, one may see this as strengthening a striking paradox, at least if we take the classical stages of development economy for granted: while Congo has an elaborate cultural music industry and is in a general state of intense urbanisation, there is still no green revolution that may secure these processes of specialisation. he tension between the urban and the rural conjugates itself diferently in a variety of settings. For most people living in Kinshasa, for instance, it is materially impossible to carry their deceased parent’s body ‘home’ to the ancestral land on the countryside, which for many urban settings in West Africa, such as Accra or Cotonou, is still a viable and habitual option.26 his explains the impressive funeral industry in Kinshasa27 and seems to depart from tendencies in other African cities, where the ideal of burying one’s elders in the ancestral homeland, usually in the village of birth, still remains a realistic and de facto practised alternative. As a result, the ‘ancestralization’ of the urban territory through EMM’s/TMAJ’s bilanga and salongo activities seems to be an astute move, perhaps more suitable for Kinshasa than for other cities. hrough the inscription of the names of Congo’s former national leaders during their weekly culte des ancêtres, and the conception of the Mangengenge ield as the nation’s microcosm in which to reconcile and soothe the nation’s ancestral past, EMM and TMAJ turn Congo’s former national ‘chiefs’ into ‘ancestors’. 24 25 26 27 588 Robbins, On giving ground, 76–77. Ibid., 82. Tilo Grätz, personal communication, January 2014. Cf. De Boeck, Dead society. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa hat Lumumba, Kasavubu, and especially Mobutu have received considerable recognition by Congo’s/zaire’s population as ‘founding fathers’ is well-known.28 And the watchtower-inspired Kitawala movement has considered Lumumba a prophet with powers that are clearly ancestral.29 But EMM’s/TMAJ’s explicit transiguration of these founding fathers into the nation’s ancestors, regardless of their moral qualities – even the infamous Belgian King Leopold II was said to be an important ancestor of the nation – deliberately applies an ‘ethnicizing’ and/or ‘traditionalizing’ logic of heritage production à l’Africaine to the nation as a whole. his also resembles attempts by other traditionalizing movements such as the Ghanaian neo-traditionalist Afrikania movements studied by Marleen De Witte.30 By contrasting diferent ‘relationship(s) between spiritual power and space or territory’ in Accra, she describes how Afrikania promotes a ‘decoupling’ of traditional religion from ‘traditional governance of local, ethnic territory’, while simultaneously ‘re-coupl(ing) its reformed traditional religion to the national, multi-ethnic territory’.31 his closely resembles EMM’s territorializing endeavours, which also promote the nation-state as the primordial scale of identiication, as is relected in the importance of Congo’s national ancestors. he territory of the nation, which is ritually touched and ‘cultivated’ on EMM’s microcosmic ield of Mangengenge, thus becomes an ancestral home turf on the national scale, with a genealogy proper to its former ‘chiefs’. An attempt is thus made to overcome the alienation between the longstanding attitude to the inalienable soil and territory and the exploitative attitude of a detached (post-) colonial Bula Matari state. Conclusion he motives that underlie EMM’s nature farming and home gardening (bilanga) are multiple. Besides the immediate pragmatic efects of hygiene and crop production, community labour generates a particular kind of somatic intersubjectivity, i. e. of belonging to a community. It also expresses the movements’ messianic attitude of ‘gratitude’ and charity for the wider society. he motive I have paid particular attention to is the ritual dimension of labour, gardening being done to wipe clean the soul of one’s own self, as well as the souls of one’s personal and national ancestors. his is in line with the emic concern for the spiritual efect of the labour, which consists of soothing and upliting ‘ancestors’ and unhappy spirits. he motivation here is a longing for spiritual payback in one’s wider destiny. 28 29 30 31 Cf. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy. Cf. Mwene-Batende, Mouvements Messianiques. De Witte, Afrikania’s Dilemma; Idem, Accra’s Sounds. Ibid., 703. 589 Cultures of Memory and Politics of History he messianic optimism regarding the civic abilities and the real possibilities of the Kinois and the Congolese is decisively ‘anti-utopian’ in Messianiques’ self-understanding. Even if they do not talk about it in public, EMM’s ardent labourers, men and women, old and young alike, see their clean(s)ing eforts as a powerful voice against persistent Afro- and Congo-pessimism, which is so widespread among Kinois at large. hrough their bilanga gardening activities, but also through the salongo cleaning campaigns, EMM and TMAJ promote territorial re-attouchment, thus promoting a conception of space which is locally very diferent from the de-territorializing endeavours of Pentecostalism. he work actively turns the nation as well as the city into an ancestral home turf. his works through a combination of two putatively diferent religious conceptions of space: EMM follows the model of many African Independent Churches, especially those that have lourished owing to an Afrocentric discourse. By considering Kimbangu’s birth place Nkamba in the Lower Congo, as well as Kinshasa, to be their ‘New Jerusalem’ in the ancestral homeland,32 Kimbanguists follow the axis mundi model, which posits a geographical centre of the world. As André Mary argues, Kimbanguists, just like the followers of the Nigerian Celestial Church of Christ, come ‘home’ to the sacred centre of their movement to strengthen the ‘umbilical bond to the ancestral land’.33 Messianiques’ axis mundi is not easily localizable. While Japan is clearly well-known as the movement’s geographical origin, other important places include Brazil and Angola, while the most important spatial reference remains no doubt the ‘world’ as such. Hence, on the one hand, EMM promotes a conception of space, which focuses on emplacement, soil, anchorage and locality. On the other hand, it advocates a ‘free-loating everywhereness’34 of its ‘world messianic’ doctrine, which is similar to the deterritorializing space conception of Pentecostalism. Although originating in Japan and motivated by the precepts of the movements’ Japanese founder, Messianiques consciously re-/produce their gardening activity as a revival of their ‘African’ ancestral culture. he conception that soil and ancestors are metonymically linked, that food and ingestion are the source of healing or bewitchment, as well as the notion that fétiches and unhappy ancestors have to be ‘neutralized’ so as to counter evil intentions from the past are all in cultural continuity between Japan and Africa. hus Messianiques in Kinshasa use a seemingly alien and imported tradition of spiritual technology so as to embrace and set forth what is ‘African’ to them. As mentioned in the introduction, even the most exotic spiritual movements are here part and parcel of the longstanding Central African ‘tradition of renewal’. 32 33 34 590 Sarro and Santos, Gender; Garbin, Symbolic geographies. Mary, Pilgrimage, 119. Kirsch, Spirits and Letters, 137–142. PETER LAMBERTz | Ancestors, Soil and Territorial Attouchment Among Spiritualists in Kinshasa It has become clear that spiritualists do not aim to ‘break with the past’, as Pentecostalists do. On the contrary, they seek to ‘get in touch’ and generate a harmonious continuity with it, without at the same time barring the way for innovation. hose who know Professor Adam Jones will have identiied some similarities beyond his creative ability to merge ‘Japan’ and ‘Africa’. he intense demographic luctuations, the market-driven city planning, intense socio-economic cleavage, and a highly ambivalent attitude to the GDR’s communist past invite one to ponder whether Adam Jones’ academic home turf of Leipzig has its own particular spirit of ‘post-coloniality’. Here, beyond his work as a historian, Professor Jones’s and his wife Mariko’s active cultivation of architectural heritage at their ‘Dreiseitenhof ’ in Polenz, their love for Europe’s musical heritage as well as Saxon village life, but more than that, perhaps, Jones’s own particular passion for unkempt gardening, resemble Kinshasa’s spiritualists’ endeavours to generate attouchment with the past. 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