In Kinshasa thousands of prophetical churches of the Holy Spirit, particularly those in the Koongo area, fill in the ethical gap left, according to the people, by the marginalisation of traditional authority in the city, as well as the failure of civilisationist ‘white’ models, such as the collapse of public health and education sectors, and the dissolution of the State party. Confronted with economic collapse and miserable conditions in urban areas, these charismatic healing churches deconstruct the colonial and missionary heritage that ‘invented Africa’ in a white mirror, and the evolutionist utopia relating to modern progress. The dogmatic use that they make of biblical texts, their immoderate liturgy, and above all their ostentatious healing rituals parody and ridicule people's experience of post-colonial state constraints, the dichotomisation of the society operated by Christian conversion, and postcolonial mirrors opposing modernity and reactionary tradition, Christian values and pagan life. Healing churches deconstruct the daily seduction of the town folk by hedonistic ideals of capitalist consumption and Northern television channels which control the world. The Holy Spirit, as a substitute for the ancestral spirit, expresses itself in an heterodox manner and with multiple voices in the shape of glossolalia, dreams, and trance. During these very intense celebrations these communities, through the spirit, remobilise and, in particular, reinforce interpersonal links woven through the care of the body and from the mother within the matrifocal community or the matri-centered villagisation operating in the city. Here, in the daily quest for survival, people reassert their sense of criticism and community in the face of the fragments of state and tribal structures as well as their desire for moral integrity and sharing. And, above all, in this process of villagisation, healing churches recycle as symbolic capital the so-called forces of western imperialism, and particularly those which come from written material and electronics: the Bible, money, television, and satellite communication.
Against a monolithic view of knowledge production and the tendency to universalize science, this article calls attention to the unique genius and distinctive creativity and originality which underlines production of knowledge in any given cultural context. It takes seriously, the fact that, at its roots, knowledge production is context bound. Hence the authors emphasize the fact that all knowledge is first of all local knowledge. From this fundamental understanding of the true wellsprings of the production of knowledge, it argues against a mythic veil, which reformist modernity, especially, tended to place on the process of producing and transmitting knowledge. This deceptive myth about knowledge production, it opines, has had the negative impact of stereotyping, blackmailing, inferiorizing and derailing the production and sharing of knowledge and its artefacts in cultures other than the West. The colonial encounter, with its assumptions and presumptions, helped to rub in this vision of reformist modernity and to muffle the voices of colonised cultures. Hence such labels as 'indigenous' knowledge. In recognition, therefore, of the creative and genuine originality latent in every culture, this article seeks to empower cultures to realise, work on and appropriate the riches embedded in their own local knowledge tracts and trajectories. This appropriation by cultures, of their own rich genius, is, for the authors, the gateway to re-acquiring cultural dignity and self-confidence and indeed an opportunity for each cultural node to positively contribute to the commonwealth of world knowledge. Such variegated approach to mining the wisdom and ecological advantages of various cultural groups will enhance the sharing of knowledge in a spirit of both vertical and horizontal border-linking exchanges of riches found in different cultural contexts and knowledge fields. The ancient wisdom of the Igbo of south eastern Nigeria is used in the article as an illustration of this latent, culture specific genius. The article also highlights the mission of Whelan Research Academy for Religion, Culture and Society, Owerri, Nigeria, in creating awareness, space and forum for paying closer attention to indigenous knowledge tracts endangered in this derailment of a wider spectrum of cultural nodes of knowledge.
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