Time, Prediction, and the Future in Retrospective Divination: A Case from Zambia (original) (raw)

2018, Anthropologie et Sociétés

Current notions of time in the study of African divination press us to choose between mantic and retrospective techniques. Faced with the fact that mantic divination is infrequent in sub-Saharan Africa, we reach out to the retrospective label. Yet so-called African retrospective methods are oriented toward the future. Drawing on her research on basket divination in northwest Zambia, as well as the work of Bourdieu, Gell, Guyer, and Zeitlyn, Silva shows that the future orientation of basket divination is embedded in the internal dynamics of each séance. Basket divination encompasses the entire trajectory from diagnosis to prognosis. In addition, diviners frame each séance in terms of two intersected time shapes that orient the séance participants in their travels: the divination journey through time and space, and the material signs contained in the baskets. As a result, the past is interpreted retrospectively, in the light of present concerns, and the future is prospectively laid out as an extension of the present. By focusing on the temporality of the present-in-process, a long present that extends to the near past and the near future, the retrospective methods of divination are able to help the consulters as well as contribute to the study of time and the future.