Thinking with Spirits: decolonial approaches to historical agency

Thinking with Spirits: decolonial approaches to historical agency

This presentation will explore how and why the British Academy funded Spirits of Peace project carried out research into the historical role of spirits in peace and justice systems in Zimbabwe. This project wanted to see what happened when we took the agency of spirits seriously in researching the past, going beyond a phenomenological approach ('people believe that spirits did this') towards something closer to the ontological worldview of the people whose history we were exploring ('spirits did this'). The presentation will describe the context for this decision, and some of its consequences, for the academy and for the communities we worked with.

Diana Jeater is Professor of African History at the University of Liverpool. For the past forty years she has been working on Zimbabwean history. Her interests are eclectic but have always focused on challenging the narratives of the Global North and trying to represent the past in terms that are true to Zimbabwean perspectives. She has published on sex and sexuality, religion & belief, language and translation, law and jurisprudence, health and healing, spirits and reconciliation, citizenship and rights, witchcraft and politics. She is currently working on a collaborative project about the role of spirits in grassroots reconciliation practices.