Spirit and Matter: The Materiality of Mozambican Prophet Healing

Tracy Luedke

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2007, vol. 33, issue 4, 715-731

Abstract: As sufferers and healers, the prophets (aneneri) of central Mozambique engage in complex relationships with the Christianised spirits who possess them. In these relationships, and the transformative processes and activities involved, particular material items play a central role. The objects that figure in Mozambican prophet healing, including clothing, bibles, mirrors, certain foods, church and hospital buildings and flags, materialise powerful social forces of the past and present; in the hands of prophet healers and their patients, they provide a means to direct these forces toward the resolution of suffering at the level of the body and the community. As they are made, held, worn, inhabited and utilised, these items in turn construct the subjectivities of those who wield them. This article addresses the material culture of the prophets as potent objects engaged by powerful subjects towards the work of bodily and social transformation.

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1080/03057070701646779

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