Summary
In his monograph, Whitmore takes his readers through a series of phases along his ethnographic journey: (1) attention (ch. 2-3), (2) discernment (ch. 4-6), (3) commitment (ch. 7), and (4) return (ch. 8). These phases organize the book and thus warrant basic definitions. Attention involves using sensory perception to notice “the way of being” in a community. Discernment refers to the reshaping of the researcher’s own worldview. Commitment is the decision to incorporate key dimensions of the worldview of subjects. And finally, return signals the going from “field” to “home” as a changed researcher (24). Whitmore’s delineation of these four moments evinces a reflexivity that runs throughout his book.
He describes his methodology as mimesis or “mimetic theology,” which further correlates with “anthropological theology.” Mimesis is the “reenactment” and “revivifying” of Jesus Christ “in whom God and human meet” as to further inspire others to imitate Christ (imitatio Christi) (2). Relatedly, “mimetic theology” is decidedly “unsystematic theology” as it prioritizes the full array of sensory experience–especially orally/auditorily–as the site of theological knowledge over a textualized and systematized theology (3). Finally, “anthropological theology” is Whitmore’s intervention to classical articulations of theological anthropology as a “theologically inflected” philosophical account of the human person. With recourse to ethnography, Whitmore proffers “anthropological theology” whereby a theological account of the human person emerges at the site of lived religion (4). All of this, mimesis and anthropological theology, is conducted in media res (in the middle of things), on the go, a living tradition, not yet solidified, that is, between systematic and practical theology, between fieldwork and the textual analyses, between researchers and subjects.
For Whitmore, gospel mimesis is not only for the Litter Sisters but is also an invitation to academics where ethnography can be a form of apprenticeship (135). Whitmore also sees the Little Sisters, the Acholi peoples (i.e., “cultures that have key elements in common with that of ancient Palestine” as a “bridge culture” to the early Jesus followers, p. 154), and their neighbors as correcting his “Western academic encultured faith” (140). This goes against the convention of maintaining “objective” distance between anthropologist/ethnographer and their subjects, but it is analogous to Whitmore’s notion of anthropological theology as apprenticeship to the Other (140). For instance, Whitmore learns from Cecilia, who imitates the Good Samaritan in taking care of Santo in Pabbo by bathing and feeding him.
Reflections and Questions
Whitmore’s reflexivity on mimesis/mimetic theology pierces the core of his project. The title of his book may have been Imitating Christ in Magwi and in the American Academy. At times, he is clearly investigating the mimetic practices of his subjects such as the Little Sisters and their devotions to Bishop Nigri and Mother Angioletta. Yet, at other times, Whitmore is also the subject of his mimetic ethnography, that is, an auto-ethnography on the mimetic practices of the Christian ethnographer. Whitmore evinces interest in both questions: (1) How do the Acholi imitate Christ? As well as (2) How do academic ethnographers imitate Christ in their fieldwork? Simply put, who is the primary subject of this ethnographic theology?
(Question) Whitmore’s reflexivity permeates the core of his project. Does this permeation simply embody the rubric of mimesis his project champions, or does this permeation detract from his project (i.e., does Whitmore as subject eclipse the Acholi and their communities as subjects)? Examined in the other direction, had Whitmore not sought to embody mimesis but merely espoused it rhetorically, how might this be consequential to his project?
Chapter 5 explicitly makes Whitmore, specifically, or the academic researcher, more generally, the primary subject. It is a chapter devoted to Whitmore’s reflexivity and concern regarding the power dynamic he brings as a white, Western, male academic (see p. 163). Contra. Loïc Wacquant (French sociologist), Whitmore wants to maintain the integrity of human difference in resisting “sameness” within the theological practice of mimesis both of Christ of the “bridge cultures” he identifies the Acholi and the Little Sisters to be for him. Whitmore suggests that theology has resources to prevent the error of collapsing ourselves into sameness of the Other or vice versa (164). The “limits of mimesis” include the gap between self and Other where we risk collapsing ourselves to the Other or Other with ourselves, especially in Whitmore’s case a white man in Africa (191).
(Question) Whitmore’s reflexivity indicates the inherent contradictions in the field of ethnography, especially when the ethnographer is Western, white, and male. What do we make of these inherent contradictions? How do we alleviate them? Or, are they just part and parcel with the discipline of ethnography? (see pp. 206-7 for an explicit discussion of reflexivity and power relations).
Whitmore testifies to his own epistemic conversion/reversal by the other from the “objectifying [white] gaze of ethnography” to a “magical world” without its pejorative connotations (204-5).
(Question) Recalling Timothy Jenkins’ central question: Is fieldwork capable of representing the objective reality outside the subjectivism of the ethnographic researcher? And Fadeke Castor’s question “How do African Diaspora religions (ADR) add an interesting dimension to our debates and understandings of religious subjectivities?” How might these enter conversation with Whitmore’s wrestling of “discernment” or “commitment” (where as a “modern/post-modern Western academic” he struggles to but ultimately accepts the emic epistemology of the spirit visitation)? (It seems multiple subjectivities take one two meanings: (1) there are two “Todds” in Whitmore, the Western/modern Todd, and (2) the magical world Todd, but also there are multiple subjectivities in the sense of spirit possession or spirit crossings/transgressions as Whitmore describes in chapter 6 “Crossings: The Surprise of Mimesis”).
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