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Métissage and Bricolage in the Making of African Christian Identities

CNRS, Centre d’Etudes Interdisciplinaires des Faits Religieux de l’EHESS (Paris), amary{at}ehess.fr

English

Métissage, bricolage, or hybridizing - the argument continues over the appropriateness of metaphors in the study of contemporary religious productions, and we are invited to question and confront the dialectical or "dialogical" processes which are at work in the appropriation of differences, and the handling of disputes which are part of these processes. A detour by way of all that is involved in the Christian invention of African identities, all that individuals and groups have invested in that invention, the remnant of the colonial encounter, all this contributes to the comparisons which are made in the present writing, and to its conclusions. When we speak of the post-modern re-enchantment with métissage, with its subversive transgressions exemplified by hybridization, or of our fascination with a vanishing bricolage which now is breaking up into simple collage, we may regret the way in which the fecundity of misunderstandings inherent in any encounter has been cancelled, and especially the ambivalent postures which beset the worlds of cultural mixture, and which contribute to their instability.

French

Métissage, bricolage ou hybridité, la dispute sur les métaphores dans l'approche des productions religieuses contemporaines invite à questionner et à confronter les processus dialectiques ou dialogiques qui sont à l'oeuvre dans l'appropriation des différences et la gestion des différends. Le détour par les enjeux de l'invention chrétienne des identités africaines au coeur de la rencontre coloniale nourrit la comparaison et les conclusions de cet article. Dans le ré-enchantement postmoderne des métissages, les transgressions subversives de l'hybridité ou dans l'éloge d'un bricolage qui dérive en simples collages, on peut regretter la manière dont se trouvent évacuées la fécondité des malentendus inhérents à toute rencontre et surtout les ambivalences de posture qui travaillent les mondes meêlés et entretiennent leur instabilité.

Key Words: Africa • bricolage • constraints • hybridizing • individualization • mixture • prophetism • syncretism • Yoruba

Social Compass, Vol. 52, No. 3, 281-294 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0037768605055647


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