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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | At War with God: Ju/'Hoan Curing Dances |
Author: | Platvoet, Jan G. |
Year: | 1999 |
Periodical: | Journal of Religion in Africa |
Volume: | 29 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 2-61 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Botswana Namibia |
Subjects: | African religions dance religious rituals San Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Religion and Witchcraft |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1581786 |
Abstract: | In the 1950s and 1960s, only a few !Kung-speaking San, or Bushmen, continued to follow the traditional way of life of nomadic food gathering in the Kalahari semi-desert of southern Africa. One group was formed by the Ju/'hoansi of the Nyae-Nyae and Dobe areas of the northwestern Kalahari, along the Namibia-Botswana border. This paper discusses Ju/'hoansi religion. Their central rite was the curing dance, an all-night ritual which they often practised (and still practise now). It served as their main means of maintaining solidarity, partly because the dance was itself a process of sharing, of 'n/um', curing power, and partly because it served as a ritual of exclusion. God and the deceased were blamed for the evil present in the group, were declared 'personae non gratae' and refused admission to the dances as unwelcome aliens, the !Kung waging a continual ritual war upon them as their sole enemies. The special interest of this religion and this ritual for the comparative study of religions is highlighted by an examination of the link between the anthropological study of the !Kung curing dances and recent archaeological research on San rock paintings. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |