Description
Present days refashioning of African practices of mediation with spirits and non-human entities shows the openness of a domain deeply shaped by the entanglements of global forces. While the impact of Euro-American movements has been widely addressed, the Asian influence has not received much attention. In a widely Christian country like Ghana, where religion is a market by itself, neo-traditional priests have to challenge rumors, widespread assumptions and misconceptions. Standing against public bias and worldwide imaginaries about invisible forces, capricious spirits and occult realms, the adoption of audiovisual media has been instrumental to them in order to regain control on the image of traditional spirituality and develop new discourses. Entering the space of a Vodu shrine in Accra, the presence of electronic media "from Asia”, next to spirits from Thailand and Japanese posters reveals the trace of a global exchange in spiritual and human matters that links up with the peculiarities of Eastern and Southern Asian cultures. Recalling the experience of Asian religiosity in the life history of a Ghanaian traditional priest, this paper aims to address the impact that technologies and spirits from Asia had in the preservation and mediatization of Vodu practices on a local and global scale.| Period | 25 Oct 2018 |
|---|---|
| Held at | Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea, Republic of |