Bwiti in Reflection: On the Fugue of Gender

Abstract

In a series of essays culminating in a powerful ethnography of the religion of Bwiti among the Fang of Gabon, James Fernandez has advancd a model of ritual, its sequencing and its tropes (1974; 1977; 1982; 1984; 1986). I want to take up his argument by seeing how it applies to movement and the unfolding of body imagery in the all-night vigil of Bwiti and, particularly, in its ascetic ordeal. The all-night vigil follows three movements or sequences of distinct scenes. Each such scene, itself a segment or course of events, is culturally framed and labelled by reference to space and movement to and from or within the forest and the chapel. The scenes are a) meeting places of origin or birth (njimba), b) trails (minkin), c) paths (zen), and d) pools (yombo). Each of these scenes is repeated, but in counter-versions. The sequence of scenes is recursive. Repetition in the action qualifies its progression, and reciprocally, the progression qualifies the repetition. The repetition occurs, on the one hand, within a movement during repeated returns to an earlier scene, usually in three such returns, and, on the other hand, between movements by a mode of mirroring. Mirroring is the replaying of a movement in reverse; that is, from scene c, to scene b, to scene a against the earlier order of scenes a, b, c. Like the repetition, the progression is within and between movements, and it unfolds dialectically