Time for Self-Sacrifice: Temporal Narratives, Politics and Ideals in African Prophetism

Abstract

In this article I propose an approach to sacrifice through notions of time, memory and expectation, moving away from classical formalist definitions that highlight the 'nature and function' of sacrifice, and into ideas of meaning and experience and their insertion in particular ideologies of time. I will argue that sacrifice entails particular temporalities, participating in political and experiential realms of memory and expectation. For this, I will invoke a particular regime of sacrifice: the notion of selfsacrifice, as it circulates among a prophetic and messianic Christian movement of Angolan origin, the Tokoist Church.

The optimistic utopia: sacrifice and expectations of political transformation in the Angolan Revolutionary Movement

“…But, as I will try to demonstrate below, this process of self‐sacrifice is in fact a form of political performance that is more about creative interlocution than of passive subjection to external force. In a previous paper (Blanes 2014), I explored the problem of self‐sacrifice beyond its traditional ritualistic and theological framing (e.g. Hubert and Mauss 1964 [1898]; de Heusch 1985), in a Christian prophetic and messianic movement of Angolan origin called the Tokoist Church.…”