TALK
THURSDAY 31 MAR 2011, 19H
49 NORD 6 EST - FRAC LORRAINE - METZ (57)
News on messianisms in Africa and elsewhere: apocalypses, hopes, and politics
Serge Mboukou, doctor in social anthropology and ethnology, certified teacher of philosophy
Jean-Pierre Dozon, anthropologist, director of studies at the EHESS
André Matswa « fondateur du Mouvement de libération du Congo »
Messianism is a social, political, religious, and cultural fact, globally tied to an awareness of a crisis. As their representations of the world are overturned, people seek in the memory of the lost, sometimes mythical, past, for foundations of a more just order to come (the Golden Age). Therefore, they experience time in terms of awaiting and hope, active quest, or contemplation. These attitudes become crystallized and are often embodied in singular or collective figures destined to bring about salvation, meaning, justice, deliverance. Thus, throughout history, messianic, Adventist, prophetic, and millenarist movements have been the motivation for organizing political, social, and cultural fight and struggle.
If the messianic phenomenon can be observed in several typical social and historical-political contexts (Judeo-Christianity constitutes a paradigmatic, but not the only case), contemporary Africa, confronted with various crises, developed broad movements inspired by Messianism and which even today provide an interpretive grid for understanding burning current issues. We are going to discuss these various movements and their conceptions of time, memory, and future.
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Jean-Pierre Dozon is an anthropologist, director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and director of research at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). His research confronts the intertwining of the political and the religious in two francophone African countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.
Serge Mboukou is doctor in social anthropology and ethnology (EHESS), certified teacher of philosophy, and lecturer at the Université Paul Verlaine-Metz (department of Humanities and Arts). He defended a doctoral dissertation on messianic movements in black Africa, under the supervision of prof. Jean-Pierre Dozon. He is also interested in forms, production processes, and signification of modernity in post-colonial lands.
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