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African Systems of Thought
African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing
"This volume of finely crafted case studies is also the vehicle for an important general theory of divination.... this is a book overflowing with ideas that will powerfully stimulate further research." Journal of Ritual Studies
"The essays in this collection provide a very useful overview of both the diversity of African divination systems and of recent approaches to their study." Choice
This unique collection of essays by an exceptional international group of Africanists demonstrates the central role that divination continues to play throughout Africa in maintaining cultural systems and in guiding human action. African Divination Systems offers insights for current discussions in comparative epistemology, cross-cultural psychology, cognition studies, semiotics, ethnoscience, religious studies, and anthropology.
"The essays in this collection provide a very useful overview of both the diversity of African divination systems and of recent approaches to their study." Choice
This unique collection of essays by an exceptional international group of Africanists demonstrates the central role that divination continues to play throughout Africa in maintaining cultural systems and in guiding human action. African Divination Systems offers insights for current discussions in comparative epistemology, cross-cultural psychology, cognition studies, semiotics, ethnoscience, religious studies, and anthropology.
- GenresReligionAnthropology
230 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
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August 12, 2023
Just gimme that ol’ time ethnoscience!
Try as they might, ethnographers can not escape a fundamental irony. In Peek’s fantastic collection of small ethnographic studies called African Divination Systems, that irony emerges from the inevitable incongruity between what the diviner thinks he or she is doing and what the ethnographer thinks the diviner is ‘actually’ doing. If the anthropologists feel they know best, then they must show that divination ‘functions’ in socially beneficial ways that the natives are not likely to be conscious of. Yet if the natives apparently know best, then the task of ethnography is more interpretive, angling to achieve an insider’s perspective on how local, native knowledge is produced and structured. In this review, I will abstract from some of Peek and Co.’s poignant ethnographic vignettes, hopefully giving some sense of what Peek means by “non-normal modes of cognition.” As the authors of these studies show, it is possible to maintain useful functionalist assumptions, with the proviso that they be balanced with phenomenological or psychological insights. I will conclude with some remarks about the mapping of power in the divination landscape and about the time and place of divination in the postmodern world.
The particulars of divination systems take many forms, but the focal event is generally a client’s consultation of a diviner. The client may or may not be the person in need of help. During the consultation, the diviner generally makes a hidden world legible through the manipulation of an apparatus of some kind. The diviner may have expertise in “reading” the pattern of stones or shells cast on the floor, or may consult an oracular book or astrological chart, or might “read” the dreams of the client or patient. Or the diviner could lapse into glossolalia, speaking in tongues the untranslated words of the gods or ancestors who momentarily possess the diviner. In any event, the divination experience results in a truth, a fact that appears to be “written” in the signs of the divination, but which actually has the more emergent and intersubjective character of a translation. This means that the truth of the oracle turns out to be a negotiated truth, the outcome of an intense linguistic and semiotic interaction between diviner and client. In this way, the divination process typically results in a convergence on an answer appropriate to the client’s problem or dilemma. Yet the diviner doesn’t just provide an answer to the client’s questions. He or she also typically prescribes a remedial course of action—a sacrifice to be made, a social relationship to be repaired, a taboo to be observed, a banquet to be hosted, a course of medicine to be consumed.
While both scientists and Christians despise divination practice, seeing it as either a malevolent hoax or else as devil worship, the anthropological tradition encourages a more sympathetic range of observations of what often turn out to be effective and productive cultural systems. Divination really can help a patient get well, both through the placebo effect brought about by the intense interaction and by reintegrating the individual more snugly into his or her society. As Evans-Pritchard noted nearly a century ago, for a diviner to provide the (‘objectively’) wrong answer or sub-optimal course of action is vastly superior in most cases to being left with no answer and doing nothing at all. Even if the divination rite or process is ineffective (the patient might die, or the bad luck might continue), the outcome will often obliquely benefit both client/patient and society.
In Almquist’s contribution, “Divination and the Hunt in Pagibeti Ideology,” the presence versus absence of social solidarity is key to understanding different types of divination rituals. In some cases, divination takes place in a large social gathering, before a collective hunt. For an individual hunt, the hunter seeks divination privately, at night, and in secret. The private hunter, rather than participating in a collective fete indicating the beginning of a hunt, slips into the forest unnoticed before the break of dawn. Thus, while the collective hunt is marked by many people coming together, the private hunt is secretive, since bad luck follows any hunter who has been observed leaving the village alone. This contrast between public and private reinforces the sanctity of the collective as well as the profane character of the solo individual, much as Durkheim would expect.
But Peek’s book is so much more than a rehashing of functionalist ways of knowing. By examining closely the diviner’s “non-normal modes of cognition,” one begins to envision how divination can generate its own logic. At times, the diviner’s logic might even resemble a pragmatist’s logic, since the movement from doubt/inaction to belief/action during the close and intense examination of alternatives comes close to summing up both divination and Dewey.
But there is a non-rational, partially random aspect to divination as well. By consulting the movements of the planets or by casting cowrie shells, the diviner incorporates an arbitrary element of chance that makes the divination consultation open-ended and amenable to an improvised result. But it is a bit like gambling, too. Sometimes people became diviners by choice. At other times, fate or fortune call the sickly and schizophrenic to the profession. There is an element of randomness to this as well. But since the ill are in more frequent contact with the spirits who cause illnesses, it is assumed that those ailing would be best at learning how to consult the gods or ancestor spirits through oracles. In this way, those physically or mentally non-normal can find in divination not only a place in society but also their own source of power.
In Blier’s “Diviners as Alienists and Annunciators among the Batammaliba of Togo,” we learn of how diviners occupy a central role in society while being regarded as entirely marginal and other in that same society. It is almost as though the alienation of diviners from normal social roles gives them an objective, outsider’s perspective on the social relations and symbolic resources of the community. Diviners can vocalize for the ancestors, and so for the whole tribe, by being in some sense alien and at a remove from more normal modes of social action.
As I have said, these ethnographic studies are wonderful. At this point, however, they are also quite old. The cultures described in Peek’s collection are most likely no longer tied to particular locales but have been dispersed in a postmodern diaspora, or else they have been linked by communications, education, missionaries, and media to a wider and less insular world. Pure isolated cultures tied to a specific location or territory are becoming hard to find, if they ever really existed as such. But I for one see an opportunity here for the study of divination. It now seems possible to look beyond mid-twentieth century sub-Saharan African ethnography to get a grasp of divination as a timeless and natural human phenomenon. I would like to see more comparisons, for example, between African divination and Ancient Greek and Roman divination. In Greek divination too there was an element of androgyny, as with the famous seer Tiresias. And bearing close resemblance to the African diviner’s consultation of Arabic books is the Roman practice of consulting the cryptic divination texts of the Sybil whenever the senate didn’t know how to respond to an emergency.
Unfortunately, the dynamics of power and history are not adequately addressed in African Divination Systems. An exception is Whyte’s “Knowledge and Power in Nyole Divination.” In this piece, we learn of how male clients seek consultation with a diviner on behalf of a kinswoman. Herein lies an act of symbolic domination, according to Whyte. With men having control over how the symbolic and social realities of women are comprehended and made public, the act of divination is also an act of power/knowledge which may subject women to an inferior and derivative set of roles in Nyole society.
Likewise, historical realities such as colonialism and capitalism are not given much space in Peek’s book either. While all of these little ethnographies delve into unique sociocultural contexts of divination, they all seem to lack insights into wider historical realities, such as how divination acts as a conservative force (in resisting missionary advances, for instance) and also as an instrument of change (in providing a counter-hegemonic discourse in the post-colonial state). In the cultures brought to light in these papers, modernity seems to be always waiting in the wings, poised to destroy or transform divination in the wake of education reform, language shift, and economic restructuring.
The “Afterword” contributed by Fernandez makes a fine case for appreciating the ironic manner in which apparent nonsense can disclose a truth, one which emerges from both the diviner and the client as they jointly navigate the ragged edges of metaphors at the limits of language itself.
To sum up, I feel Peek’s collection makes a fine contribution to old-fashioned (not obsolete) ways of knowing the cultural other. I recommend this book to all who wish to know about alternate epistemologies, including ways of knowing how symbolic manipulation and interpersonal translation can give rise to meaningful (and useful) social action. To appreciate African Divination Systems, a knowledge of twentieth century African ethnography is helpful but not necessary. What is essential is for the reader to feel an openness to the possibility that there can be more than one or two ways of discerning a certain truth, whether that truth be that of the diviner or that of the ethnographer who consults in divination.
Try as they might, ethnographers can not escape a fundamental irony. In Peek’s fantastic collection of small ethnographic studies called African Divination Systems, that irony emerges from the inevitable incongruity between what the diviner thinks he or she is doing and what the ethnographer thinks the diviner is ‘actually’ doing. If the anthropologists feel they know best, then they must show that divination ‘functions’ in socially beneficial ways that the natives are not likely to be conscious of. Yet if the natives apparently know best, then the task of ethnography is more interpretive, angling to achieve an insider’s perspective on how local, native knowledge is produced and structured. In this review, I will abstract from some of Peek and Co.’s poignant ethnographic vignettes, hopefully giving some sense of what Peek means by “non-normal modes of cognition.” As the authors of these studies show, it is possible to maintain useful functionalist assumptions, with the proviso that they be balanced with phenomenological or psychological insights. I will conclude with some remarks about the mapping of power in the divination landscape and about the time and place of divination in the postmodern world.
The particulars of divination systems take many forms, but the focal event is generally a client’s consultation of a diviner. The client may or may not be the person in need of help. During the consultation, the diviner generally makes a hidden world legible through the manipulation of an apparatus of some kind. The diviner may have expertise in “reading” the pattern of stones or shells cast on the floor, or may consult an oracular book or astrological chart, or might “read” the dreams of the client or patient. Or the diviner could lapse into glossolalia, speaking in tongues the untranslated words of the gods or ancestors who momentarily possess the diviner. In any event, the divination experience results in a truth, a fact that appears to be “written” in the signs of the divination, but which actually has the more emergent and intersubjective character of a translation. This means that the truth of the oracle turns out to be a negotiated truth, the outcome of an intense linguistic and semiotic interaction between diviner and client. In this way, the divination process typically results in a convergence on an answer appropriate to the client’s problem or dilemma. Yet the diviner doesn’t just provide an answer to the client’s questions. He or she also typically prescribes a remedial course of action—a sacrifice to be made, a social relationship to be repaired, a taboo to be observed, a banquet to be hosted, a course of medicine to be consumed.
While both scientists and Christians despise divination practice, seeing it as either a malevolent hoax or else as devil worship, the anthropological tradition encourages a more sympathetic range of observations of what often turn out to be effective and productive cultural systems. Divination really can help a patient get well, both through the placebo effect brought about by the intense interaction and by reintegrating the individual more snugly into his or her society. As Evans-Pritchard noted nearly a century ago, for a diviner to provide the (‘objectively’) wrong answer or sub-optimal course of action is vastly superior in most cases to being left with no answer and doing nothing at all. Even if the divination rite or process is ineffective (the patient might die, or the bad luck might continue), the outcome will often obliquely benefit both client/patient and society.
In Almquist’s contribution, “Divination and the Hunt in Pagibeti Ideology,” the presence versus absence of social solidarity is key to understanding different types of divination rituals. In some cases, divination takes place in a large social gathering, before a collective hunt. For an individual hunt, the hunter seeks divination privately, at night, and in secret. The private hunter, rather than participating in a collective fete indicating the beginning of a hunt, slips into the forest unnoticed before the break of dawn. Thus, while the collective hunt is marked by many people coming together, the private hunt is secretive, since bad luck follows any hunter who has been observed leaving the village alone. This contrast between public and private reinforces the sanctity of the collective as well as the profane character of the solo individual, much as Durkheim would expect.
But Peek’s book is so much more than a rehashing of functionalist ways of knowing. By examining closely the diviner’s “non-normal modes of cognition,” one begins to envision how divination can generate its own logic. At times, the diviner’s logic might even resemble a pragmatist’s logic, since the movement from doubt/inaction to belief/action during the close and intense examination of alternatives comes close to summing up both divination and Dewey.
But there is a non-rational, partially random aspect to divination as well. By consulting the movements of the planets or by casting cowrie shells, the diviner incorporates an arbitrary element of chance that makes the divination consultation open-ended and amenable to an improvised result. But it is a bit like gambling, too. Sometimes people became diviners by choice. At other times, fate or fortune call the sickly and schizophrenic to the profession. There is an element of randomness to this as well. But since the ill are in more frequent contact with the spirits who cause illnesses, it is assumed that those ailing would be best at learning how to consult the gods or ancestor spirits through oracles. In this way, those physically or mentally non-normal can find in divination not only a place in society but also their own source of power.
In Blier’s “Diviners as Alienists and Annunciators among the Batammaliba of Togo,” we learn of how diviners occupy a central role in society while being regarded as entirely marginal and other in that same society. It is almost as though the alienation of diviners from normal social roles gives them an objective, outsider’s perspective on the social relations and symbolic resources of the community. Diviners can vocalize for the ancestors, and so for the whole tribe, by being in some sense alien and at a remove from more normal modes of social action.
As I have said, these ethnographic studies are wonderful. At this point, however, they are also quite old. The cultures described in Peek’s collection are most likely no longer tied to particular locales but have been dispersed in a postmodern diaspora, or else they have been linked by communications, education, missionaries, and media to a wider and less insular world. Pure isolated cultures tied to a specific location or territory are becoming hard to find, if they ever really existed as such. But I for one see an opportunity here for the study of divination. It now seems possible to look beyond mid-twentieth century sub-Saharan African ethnography to get a grasp of divination as a timeless and natural human phenomenon. I would like to see more comparisons, for example, between African divination and Ancient Greek and Roman divination. In Greek divination too there was an element of androgyny, as with the famous seer Tiresias. And bearing close resemblance to the African diviner’s consultation of Arabic books is the Roman practice of consulting the cryptic divination texts of the Sybil whenever the senate didn’t know how to respond to an emergency.
Unfortunately, the dynamics of power and history are not adequately addressed in African Divination Systems. An exception is Whyte’s “Knowledge and Power in Nyole Divination.” In this piece, we learn of how male clients seek consultation with a diviner on behalf of a kinswoman. Herein lies an act of symbolic domination, according to Whyte. With men having control over how the symbolic and social realities of women are comprehended and made public, the act of divination is also an act of power/knowledge which may subject women to an inferior and derivative set of roles in Nyole society.
Likewise, historical realities such as colonialism and capitalism are not given much space in Peek’s book either. While all of these little ethnographies delve into unique sociocultural contexts of divination, they all seem to lack insights into wider historical realities, such as how divination acts as a conservative force (in resisting missionary advances, for instance) and also as an instrument of change (in providing a counter-hegemonic discourse in the post-colonial state). In the cultures brought to light in these papers, modernity seems to be always waiting in the wings, poised to destroy or transform divination in the wake of education reform, language shift, and economic restructuring.
The “Afterword” contributed by Fernandez makes a fine case for appreciating the ironic manner in which apparent nonsense can disclose a truth, one which emerges from both the diviner and the client as they jointly navigate the ragged edges of metaphors at the limits of language itself.
To sum up, I feel Peek’s collection makes a fine contribution to old-fashioned (not obsolete) ways of knowing the cultural other. I recommend this book to all who wish to know about alternate epistemologies, including ways of knowing how symbolic manipulation and interpersonal translation can give rise to meaningful (and useful) social action. To appreciate African Divination Systems, a knowledge of twentieth century African ethnography is helpful but not necessary. What is essential is for the reader to feel an openness to the possibility that there can be more than one or two ways of discerning a certain truth, whether that truth be that of the diviner or that of the ethnographer who consults in divination.
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