Insight, Secrecy, Beasts, and Beauty
Struggles over the Making of a Ghanaian Documentary on "Afrrican Traditional Religion"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.277Keywords:
Ghanaian media, Ghanaian Religion, Pentacostalism in AfricaAbstract
Since the liberalization of the Ghanaian media in 1992, audiovisual representation has become crucial in the struggle over religion and culture. This article examines the neo-traditionalist Afrikania Mission’s struggles with audiovisual media in the context of a strong Pentecostal dominance in Ghana’s religious and media landscape. It argues that the study of religion in an era of mass media cannot be limited to religious doctrine and content. One must also take into account matters of style and format associated with audiovisual representation. This article shows how new media opportunities and constraints have pushed Afrikania to adapt its strategies of accessing the media and its styles of representation. Adopting dominant media formats such as the documentary, the news item, and the spectacle involves a constant struggle over revelation and concealment. It also entails the neglect of much of the spiritual power that constitutes African religious traditions. The question of how to represent spiritual power through audiovisual media occupies many religious groups, but the question of its very representability seems to be especially pressing for Afrikania.
References
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———. “Afrikania’s Dilemma: Reframing African Authenticity in a Christian Public Sphere.” Etnofoor 17, no. 1 (2004): 133–55.
———. “The Spectacular and the Spirits: Charismatics and Neo-Traditionalists on Ghanaian Television.” Material Religion 1 (2005): 314–35.
———. The Origin of the Bible and Pertinent Issues. New ed. Accra: African Renaissance Books, 2002.
An-Na’im, Abdullahi A., ed. Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999.
Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Beattie, Keith. Documentary Screens: Nonfiction Film and Television. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.
Behrend, Heike. “Photo Magic: Practices of Healing and Harming in East Africa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2003): 129–45.
Boogaard, Paulien. “Afrikania. Of: Hervormde Traditionele Religie: Een Politiek-Religieuze Beweging in Ghana.” Master’s thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1993.
Coe, Cati. Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools: Youth, Nationalism, and the Transformation of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Damuah, Kwabena. Afrikania Handbook. Accra: Nsamankow Press, 1982.
———. Afrikania (Reformed Traditional Religion). Common Sense Series 8. Accra: Afrikania Mission, 1984.
———. African Contribution to Civilization. Accra: Nsamankow Press, 1985.
Dijk, Rijk van. “Contesting Silence: The Ban on Drumming and the Musical Politics of Pentecostalism in Ghana.” Ghana Studies 4 (2001): 31–64.
Fauvelle-Aymar, F.-X., J.-P. Chrétien, and C.-H. Perrot, eds. Afrocentrismes: L’Histoire des Africains entre Egypte et Amérique. Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2000.
Gombrich, Richard, and Gananath Obeyesekere. Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Gordon, Tamar, and Mary Hancock. “The Crusade is the Vision: Branding Charisma in a Global Pentecostal Ministry.” Material Religion 1 (2005): 386–403.
Gyanfosu, Samuel. “The Development of Christian-Related Independent Religious Movements in Ghana, with special Reference to the Afrikania Movement.” Ph.D. diss., University of Leeds, 1995.
———. “A Traditional Religion Reformed: Vincent Kwabena Damuah and the Afrikania Movement, 1982–2000.” In Maxwell and Lawrie, Christianity and the African Imagination, 271–94.
Hackett, Rosalind. “Radical Christian Revivalism in Nigeria and Ghana: Recent Patterns of Conflict and Intolerance.” In An-Na’im, Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination, 246–67.
Hasty, Jennifer. The Press and Political Culture in Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
James, George M. Stolen Legacy. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992 (1954).
Kramer, Eric B. “Spectacle and the Staging of Power in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism.” Latin American Perspectives 32, no. 1 (2005): 95–120.
Maxwell, David, and Ingrid Lawrie, eds. Christianity and the African Imagination: Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Meyer, Birgit. Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
———. “Mediating Tradition: Pentecostal Pastors, African Priests and Chiefs in Ghanaian Popular Films.” In Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honour of J.D.Y. Peel. Ed. Toyin Falola, 274–306. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2005.
———. “Impossible Representations: Pentecostalism, Vision and Video Technology in Ghana.” In Meyer and Moors, Religion, Media and the Public Sphere, 290–312.
Meyer, Birgit, and Annelies Moors, eds. Religion, Media and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Nichols, B. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Opoku, Kofi Asare. “Damuah and the Afrikania Mission: The Man and his Message: Some Preliminary Considerations.” Trinity Journal of Church and Theology 3, no. 1 (1993): 39–60.
Port, Mattijs van de. “Visualizing the Sacred and the Secret: Televisual Realities and the Religious Imagination in Bahian Candomblé.” American Ethnologist 33, no. 3 (2006): 444–61.
Schirripa, Pino. “Afrikania: Une Église Afrocentriste du Ghana.” In Fauvelle-Aymar, Chrétien, and Perrot, Afrocentrismes, 341–52.
Steegstra, Marijke. Resilient Rituals: Krobo Initiation and the Politics of Culture in Ghana. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004.
Vries, Hent de, and Samuel Weber, eds. Media and Religion. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Williams, Chancellor. The Destruction of the Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992 (1971).
Witte, Marleen de. “Altar Media’s Living Word: Televised Charismatic Christianity in Ghana.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2003): 172–202.
———. “Afrikania’s Dilemma: Reframing African Authenticity in a Christian Public Sphere.” Etnofoor 17, no. 1 (2004): 133–55.
———. “The Spectacular and the Spirits: Charismatics and Neo-Traditionalists on Ghanaian Television.” Material Religion 1 (2005): 314–35.
Published
2005-12-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
de Witte, M. (2005). Insight, Secrecy, Beasts, and Beauty: Struggles over the Making of a Ghanaian Documentary on "Afrrican Traditional Religion". Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 1(2-3), 277-300. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.277
