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NONCONFORMITY IN AFRICA'S CULTURAL HISTORY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2017

DEREK R. PETERSON
DEREK R. PETERSON*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

This article uses E. P. Thompson's last book – Witness against the Beast (1993) – as an occasion to claim oddity, peculiarity, and nonconformity as subjects of African history. Africa's historians have been engaged in an earnest effort to locate contemporary cultural life within the longue durée, but in fact there was much that was strange and eccentric. Here I focus on the reading habits and interpretive strategies that inspired nonconformity. Nonconformists read the Bible idiosyncratically, snipping bits of text out of the fabric of the book and using these slogans to launch heretical and odd ways of living. Over time, some of them sought to position themselves in narrative structures that could authenticate and legitimate their dissident religious activity. That entailed experimentation with voice, positionality, and addressivity.

Keywords

South AfricaUgandaKenyasocialreligionculture
Type
JAH Forum: E. P. Thompson in African History
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 35 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This article was presented at the workshop on ‘History after E. P. Thompson’ at the University of Michigan (Nov. 2015), at the conference on ‘African Intellectual History’ at Yale University (Apr. 2016), and at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota (Oct. 2016). I thank the participants at each of these occasions for their helpful comments. Author's email: drpeters@umich.edu

References

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29 Presbyterian Church of East Africa archives, St Andrew's Church, Nairobi (hereafter PCEA) I/C/12 and 13, Teacher at Nyeri to R. G. M. Calderwood, 31 Oct. 1930.

30 KNA PC/CP 8/7/3, Commissioner of Police to District Commissioner, Meru, 9 Jan. 1936.

31 KNA PC/CO 8/7/3, Police Superintendent, Nakuru to Commissioner of Police, Nairobi, 21 May 1934.

32 PCEA I/C/12 and 13, Teacher at Nyeri to R. G. M. Calderwood, 31 Oct. 1930.

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41 Kenya National Archives, Kakamega depot (hereafter KNA Kakamega) DX/8/10, Kivuli to District Commissioner Kisumu, 14 June 1948.

42 KNA DX/21/9/1, Superintendent of Police, ‘The African Israel Church, Nineveh’, 6 Feb. 1957.

43 KNA DX 21/9/1, Special Branch, ‘Dini ya Israel in North Nyanza’, 4 July 1953.

44 KNA Kakamega DX/8/10, Father Guido Benedicto to D. C. Kakamega, 16 June 1950.

45 KNA DX/21/9/1, Superintendent of Police, ‘The African Israel Church, Nineveh’, 6 Feb. 1957.

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51 UNA ‘C series’ box 13, C.1002, Commissioner of Police to Chief Secretary, 18 Jan. 1927.

52 BNA FCO 141/5908, File note on Reuben Spartas, n.d. (but 1945).

53 Church of Uganda Archives, Mukono, Uganda (hereafter CoU) 02/Bp 8/1, Bishop Alexander to Mukasa Sparta, 11 Sept. 1929.

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57 CoU 02 Bp 8/1, Reuben Spartas to Archbishop of Canterbury, 26 Sept. 1933.

58 MUL Ms. 276.761 Afr., Spartas Mukasa, ‘History’, 1946.

59 CoU 02 Bp 8/1, Mukasa Spartas to Bishop Willis, 16 Feb. 1931.

60 CoU 02 Bp 8/1, Spartas to Bishop Stuart, 21 Apr. 1935.

61 CoU 02 Bp 8/1, Spartas to Willis, 17 Nov. 1929.

62 My thanks to Dr Ben Fortson for help with Spartas's Latin.

63 British National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom (hereafter BNA) FCO 141/18239, British Embassy, Athens, to Foreign Office, London, 24 Feb. 1961.

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70 UNA ‘C series’ box 23, file C.2462, Descendents of Kintu to Kabaka, 19 Sept. 1938.

71 UNA ‘C series’ box 23, file C.2462, Reubeni Spartas Mugimba and others to Governor, 29 Sept. 1939.

72 UNA ‘C series’ box 23, file C.2462, Spartas, Ignatius Musazi and 328 others to Governor, 13 Mar. 1939.

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77 Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival, 102.

78 Thompson, Witness against the Beast, 5.