Citation

MacGaffey W. J. Afr. Cult. Stud. 2000; 13(1): 63-75.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

The BaKongo and other Central African peoples understand the place of violence in their lives in ways that resist translation into English because they seem to be both 'real' and 'imaginary.' In the nineteenth century, imagined violence was represented in the rituals of chiefs and in the complex forms of minkisi, fabricated objects which could be invoked to inflict retribution on others. The imaginative representation of occult violence in these objects and in the insignia of chiefship has earned many of them a place in the world's art museums. In recent years, vividly imagined violence has been central to the popular understanding of national politics, in Congo/Zaire as in many other African countries; it can in fact be regarded as a theory of political life, and compared as such with Western theories concerning the social ordering of violence.