1. Killing God.
- Author
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Straight, Bilinda
- Subjects
- *
MISSIONARIES , *ANTHROPOLOGY , *ONTOLOGY , *METAPHYSICS , *CULTURE , *SOCIAL sciences - Abstract
This paper pivots around an exceptional moment of colonial missionary encounter—the attempted "murder" in the 1930s of an incarnation of Samburu Divinity (pastoralists, northern Kenya). Examining this event through a comparative focus on other strange cases of "divinicide," I elucidate certain key moments of intense metaphysical struggle that typically become effaced, forgotten, or flattened in the process of colonial witness. Focus on the ontological micropolitics of exceptional moments of the colonial encounter such as these affords us the opportunity to illuminate crucial, often elusive, even substantially forgotten dimensions of the unequal process by which shared cultural imaginaries are forged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
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