Response to ter Haar and Ellis

In his review article, Terence Ranger raises two major issues. First, he is concerned about the relation between exoticizing ideas about an 'African occult' in Western societies (for example, Scotland Yard investigations, media reports, etc.) and Africanist work on this topic. This is a pertinent issue. Pointing out worrisome overlaps between popular ideas about bloodthirsty ritual practices and scholarly research, Ranger urges us to reflect more deeply about the political field into which the knowledge we produce about 'occult matters' is being launched. Second, Ranger critiques a certain type of study – especially work on 'occult economies' and 'the modernity of witchcraft' – for inventing an 'aggregated African occult' that is too generalizing and present-centred to achieve real insight into the modes through which different African societies grapple with questions of evil. Instead, he advocates a historically grounded, ethnographically specific perspective. Both issues raised by Ranger are central to Africanist scholarship, and need our utmost attention. Therefore it is laudable that Africa is creating space for further debate.

There is a tension in Ranger's argument. For even the position of 'splitter' rather than 'lumper' (2007: 277) is predicated on acknowledging a broader category such as that of the 'occult' (a notion which Ranger clearly uses with unease). This tension can in my view not be resolved by retreating into the study of the particular, but needs to be acknowledged as intrinsic to our scholarship. Even though I have great sympathy for detailed studies (and if pressed would certainly side with the 'splitters'), I consider it unproductive to play off the level of the particular (or local) against that of the general (or global). At least in my understanding, the notion of 'occult economy' and the framework of the 'modernity of witchcraft' (interestingly, Ranger as well as ter Haar and Ellis, notwithstanding major differences, converge in their critique of the Comaroffs) may well be employed for the sake of detailed research. Highly diverse societies may still face similar challenges. As I have also tried to show in my own work, attention paid to modernity and globalization does not necessarily imply a disregard for local specificities, but may, on the contrary, entice a historical and ethnographic study of how the aggregation of the occult occurs in particular settings. Examples that come to my mind are missionary demonizations of local religious traditions, or Nigerian films of the Nollywood type that excel in visualizing witchcraft, revenge ghosts, ritual murder and the like, and which certainly enhance prejudices about Nigerians as 'occultist' throughout Africa. Remarkable figures such as Credo Mutwa – 'this old charlatan' (ibid.: 274) – also partake in practices of aggregating an African occult, suggesting spectacular links between Zulu visionary practices and Hollywood movies such as Spielberg's ET. In my view, such phenomena require more than unmasking them as inauthentic. They call us to pay detailed attention to actual practices of aggregation that mobilize resources from far away and close by. It goes without saying that such research requires historical and ethnographic specificity. At the same time we need to keep on reflecting on the very notions and concepts we employ to make sense of what we find 'on the ground'.

How far is the proposition made by Gerrie ter Haar and Stephen Ellis useful in this endeavour? Their main point is that Ranger, notwithstanding his plea for a more specific approach, still mobilizes a broad notion of 'the occult', and thus takes part in the very project he critiques. Explaining that they do not use the notion of the 'occult' in their own work at all (hence they feel misinterpreted by Ranger, who charges them with being party to the project of 'aggregating the occult'), these authors advocate discarding this notion altogether. As an alternative, they introduce religion as a more 'neutral', 'value free' and more encompassing term (p. 400). They argue that a Christian, moralistic understanding of religion as 'whatever is good and life-affirming' underpins the work of Ranger and other Africanists. This needs to be replaced by a focus on spiritual powers that act both constructively and destructively, depending on context. This shift, they argue, would allow scholars...