Intending the Spirits: Experiencing Vodu Through the “Fetish” in Togo

Abstract

Early encounters with Africa initiated a European fascination with the “fetish.” Though this term has been extensively problematized, anthropologists have kept the term, reading fetishes as cultural texts and searching to untangle the material assemblages and deep symbols that comprise them. This article contributes to our knowledge of fetishes by applying a practitioner-centric approach to their use and meaning in the matrices of Vodu. First, I elucidate meanings of these spiritual embodiments using ethnography of prayer and sacrifice in Gorovodu as practiced by ethnic Ewe and Mina communities in southern Togo. I then deploy the language of phenomenological anthropology to argue that fetishes bring intentionality into being and focus. Their filled presence directs consciousness towards the spirits and allows practitioners to sensuously experience spirituality and spiritual being. Rituals surrounding material fetishes are a means of intending reciprocal relationships with the divine into perceptual consciousness, and it is through these relationships that life and success are made possible.

Keywords:

• vodu/vodun
• phenomenological anthropology
• fetish
• West Africa
• African traditional religion
• ritual
• spirit possession

Notes

1 This brief overview is meant to orient the reader to the religious system under study in this manuscript and its context. For further readings of the history of religious movements during this time period in Ghana and Togo, please see Allman and Parker (2005); Montgomery and Vannier (2017); Venkatachalam (2015). Also, as other ethnic groups adopted these spirit complexes, they underwent significant adaptation and change. In Benin, the ritual complex is often referred to as Trowo and presents alternative histories and meanings (see Falen 2018).

2 See, for example, de Surgy (1987, 1993a); Manzon (2013).

3 Here I am using the term “things” as opposed to “object” in the manner of Meyer and Houtman (2012) who argue that “object” is “usually invoked in the framework of a subject-object relation, in which the former supposedly wields control over the latter.” “Thing,” however, signals indeterminacy, “something that cannot be clearly circumscribed” that surpasses the mere material, imbued with presence and power (16-17). I employ these connotations throughout this article.

4 For a review of phenomenology in anthropology see Desjarlais and Throop (2011) or Knibbe and Versteeg (2008). For an example of a current debate in philosophical phenomenology, see Tuckett (2017).

5 All names in this article are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of research participants.

6 In West African ritual complexes and religious systems, gender is quite fluid. I deploy the pronoun “her” in reference to Sakpata because in this community, Sakpata is a female spirit. However, in other communities and in other ritual complexes, Sakpata is recognized as male. This does not indicate confusion on behalf of adherents, but rather the dynamic nature of spirits as they adapt or are assimilated into distinctive cultures and communities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christian Vannier

Christian Vannier is a lecturer in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Flint. He is the co-author of An Ethnography of a Vodu Shrine in Southern Togo and the co-editor of Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs.[email protected]