Tales of Faith: Religion as Political Performance in Central Africa (Religious Studies: Bloomsbury Academic Collections)

"This book explores African religious practice and its relation to African identity. It takes the problem of faith as its central theme, emphasizing the particular existential tensions dividing yet uniting the Christian and the African. Drawing on Heidegger and Sartre, it analyses these tensions underlying and creating the dialogues of hybridity or metissage."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Preface I God's Inflections - On the Politics of Interpretation The Concept of Religion Anthropology and Religion The 'Primitive : For a Semiotics of Absence Aesthetic of Invocation versus Aesthetic of Virtuosity II Erasing The Difference Of Genesis Missionizing The Retreat Policy 'Docile Bodies' The Power of Conversion Education The Time of Inheritance Conversion and Its New Strategies III The Practice Of Misunderstanding Relativism and Retrodiction: Christian Ethnotheology Pedagogical Experiment: Joseph Guffens (1895-1973) The Rules of Election Jean Ishaku, Teacher and Martyr (1930-1964) Alexis Kagame Priest and Scholar (1912-1981) The Question IV Acculturation - An 'Espace Metisse' An Epistemological Reconversion The Practice of African Social Sciences An Order of Succession versus the 'Colonial Library' Race and Science Epilogue Bibliography Index