One of the most vivid memories from my time in Punu communities is the day Gildas Doukaga and I visited Angélique Tsona and her mother Marie Oufoura. For a few weeks, I had been staying in Moungoudi, a village renowned for its talented singers. Angélique and her mother lived near Gildas’ house, where he had offered me a place to stay and assisted me with my research. That afternoon had been quiet. We had spent hours translating songs and interviews when Gildas suggested we visit Angélique. As a mother of twins fond of singing, she likely had valuable insights into the twin and water spirit celebrations – twins being the human counterparts of spirits. The air had already lost some of its brightness, announcing the sunset, which, in these equatorial regions, always happened so fast that it kept surprising me. We were fortunate to find Angélique and her mother at home, resting in the near-dark of the shimmering twilight and agreeing to talk. As we talked, Angélique shared stories of trances induced by twins and the celebrations they demanded. Then, she began singing responsorial songs, encouraging Gildas to repeat the refrains. As she explained the references to the twin and water spirit realms embedded in the lyrics, I listened intently. From the moment people learned of my interest in song and dance, they had hinted at the presence of water spirits. Little had been written about these beings in the limited literature on the region, yet sensing maternal resonances in their life-giving powers and watery abode, I had been immediately intrigued. Hence, I was delighted by Angélique’s shares that allowed me to get a closer feel of the spirit universe.
As she shifted from describing the spirits’ power to celebrating their wonder and abundance, her mood transformed into one of deep yearning. She began singing a song I had not heard before. Unlike the earlier call-and-response structure, this song flowed in long, uneven phrases, each carried to the edge of breath before dissolving into rich, swaying vocalisations. Her mother joined in spontaneously, and together they alternated phrases. I held my breath, rapt with wonder at this plea of heartfelt longing, tuning into the suspense at the end of each phrase before being carried away by the melismas. At one point, a sigh of amazement escaped me. I did not realize it at the time, but later, when I listened to the recording (see song event 22, chapter 4), I heard it and wondered what had caused it – definitely the sheer beauty of the song and the aching longing for the spirit world it conveyed. With my then-basic understanding of Yipunu, I could not fully grasp the song’s complex adages, but I recognized the names of the spirit pools to which both women directed their heartfelt (be)longing, each shaped by their own life experiences. I also caught the recurring plaintive cry of ‘mama’, a poignant call of yearning that resonated deeply with me. Without doubt, it was this same longing that had drawn me to this fieldwork. The fact that Angélique and her mother sang together also deeply touched me, as I had wanted to do research in a matrilineal society. In Punu society, where lineage is matrilineal but residence is patrilocal, mothers and daughters rarely live together. Yet here, Marie Oufoura had moved in with Angélique after her sons left for the city. This made the maternal line apparent, even more through voicing together the desire for a world of maternal abundance. Affect, spirit beings and the maternal – these themes were all there that evening and have guided my research ever since.
This study is dedicated to what the people I talked to and lived with referred to as the dances and songs ‘of the village’ (tsi dimbu), as opposed to those ‘of God’ (tsi Nyambi). The former are perceived as being rooted in the local context and are performed in Yipunu, the local language. In contrast, the latter reflect the influence of various Christian churches that have spread since the mid-twentieth century, and they are performed in Munukutuba,1 the national language. Thus, this book addresses what social scientists typically categorize as traditional practices. However, aligning with critical scholarly work (Barber 2007a, 2007b; Chidester 1992; Ingold and Hallam 2007; Ranger and Hobsbawm 1983), it challenges the conventional understanding of tradition as mere repetition of fossilized forms. Karin Barber argues that studies of artistic and ritual practices demonstrate that ‘the maintenance of cultural forms is not the outcome of inertia, and the forms are not simply repeated but are actively recreated’ (Barber 2007b: 210). In this sense, tradition is inseparable from innovation. Similarly, Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam (2007) emphasize the urgency of rethinking the polarity between novelty and convention. They reveal the impact of discourses of Western modernity in the temporal framing of this polarity, which positions the innovative dynamic of the present against the traditionalism of the past. Against such discourses, they argue that creativity is essential to maintaining established tradition. Following this line of thought, I adopt the perspective that traditional performances are inherently creative acts.
Generativity and regeneration are key concepts in Ingold and Hallam’s take on creativity, which questions the opposition between continuity and change, past and present. For them, ‘the continuity of tradition is due not to its passive inertia but to its active regeneration – in the tasks of carrying on’ (2007: 6). Improvisation is generative, as it carries on from predecessors: ‘It inheres in the onward propulsion of life rather than being broken off, as a new present, from a past that is already over’ (2007: 3). Barber applies such a generative approach to her research on African performative arts, focusing on ‘the continued generation of novelty in the very act of consolidating tradition’ (2007a: 28). Her first field research, which informed this approach, was devoted to oriki, Yoruba praise poetry predominantly performed by women. Oriki plays a vital role in making the human and spiritual relationships that constitute the Yoruba world (Barber 1991).
Similarly, this study on Punu song-dance practices explores performances in which women play a significant role in (re)connecting with more-than-human ancestral and spirit realms. These include gender-mixed performances, ideally involving equal male–female participation, as well as predominantly female performances such as lament songs and water spirit dances. The water spirit world, which is celebrated in the latter, draws an analogy with intra-uterine life, recognizing maternal birth-giving as part of a cosmological life-sustaining capacity. Performative creative power is one expression of this broader generative power embodied by the spirits. To capture this generative power rooted in maternal birth-giving, I will adopt a matrifocal perspective in this study, aligning with Jìmí Adésínà’s reclaiming of the term. Given the prevailing patricentric framing in scholarship on Africa, Adésínà posits the epistemic value of re-appropriating the concept of matrifocality to make sense of contemporary African data. Grounded in the ‘sacred/mythical power adduced to the child-bearing position of women’, matrifocality is understood not as ‘an aberration’ but as ‘the organising principle of the society’ (Adésínà 2010: 6, 9).
Barber connects the generative power of performative arts to the pleasure they evoke. According to her, these creative practices ‘are always bubbling up, always emergent, never closed off from generative processes participated in by all’, making them ‘a source of joy’ (2022: 2–3). Central to the arising of this joyfulness is the relational dimension of the performances – the shared experience of the generative process. In the three Yoruba genres Barber studied, a common thread was their ability to ‘create pleasure through enlisting participants in generative processes’ (2022: 12). This pleasure was amplified when performers synchronized with each other or the audience, when phrases or sequences were anticipated and echoed, or when variations were introduced. Such moments could even lead to ‘a collective . . . euphoria’ (2022: 9), further fuelling the desire to participate. Such relational performative processes affording pleasure closely correspond to what I experienced in Punu performances. Encounters with fellow performers – prompting intensification, imitation or variation – and engagement with the song or dance form, as it was embodied by previous, sometimes deceased performers, activated a continuous creative process. This process ensured the event’s vitality and ongoing evolution and was driven by a stirring of desire. Performers frequently used the term nzala – hunger, appetite, desire, longing – to describe their motivation for participating in singing, dancing or lamenting. The concept of joy (kini or inyunga) was also central, especially with regard to the ikoku dance, for which joy is a prerequisite for its occurrence.
Barber emphasizes not only the pleasure found in emergent creativity, but also the aspiration to create forms that are memorable enough to be detached from their immediate context and re-enacted in different times and places (2022: 3). I observed similar aspirations, noting how the migration of song phrases or dance movements – sometimes crossing repertoire boundaries – could intensify and boost the creative process. To account for the importance of shared joy, desire and aspiration in the generative dynamics of Punu performances, I will draw on affect theory, which has become a dominant paradigm in social science and deals with the kind of bodily felt intensities that were central to the events in which I participated. However, affect theory, situated in continuity with Western modernist discourses, often celebrates affect as a disruptive force that challenges the stasis of structure. This binary between creativity and structure, as Barber and Ingold caution, is one I aim to avoid. Therefore, I will engage with affect theory critically. Examining it from a non-Western, ‘traditional’ research context, I will highlight its limitations while suggesting potential expansions, particularly by emphasizing the ongoing process of form-taking that affect, as a vital flow, both propels and is itself shaped by.
The primary criterion by which Punu performances are assessed is their energetic potency. The verb used to refer to water spirit dances, u kimba, denotes movement – the capacity to generate a shared entrainment that invites encounters with the spirits. This entrainment arises only through collective, enthusiastic participation in the ongoing, swirling motion of the dance. Similarly, in dances of rejoicing, full-bodied engagement, generating intensity is essential to creating a lively performance. Performers insisted on how lack of shame and the willingness ‘to go for it’ are the conditions for building momentum. When performed with such commitment, the hip rotation gathers and concentrates energy through ‘cutting the belly’, i.e. isolating the lower and upper parts of the body. This concentrated energy, when communicated to fellow dancers, produces a communal joy. A comparable form of relational intensification emerges in responsorial songs, where creativity is shaped through dialogue and resonance. In monodic songs, this relational dynamic takes on an ancestral dimension expressed through transgenerational adages that in their continuous flow accumulate intensity, unfolding new layers of pain, memory and meaning.
Brian Massumi, a key figure in the development of affect theory, defines affect as bodily intensity – a felt, lived experience of intensity. This intensity, which manifests as an ‘accompanying sense of liveliness’, is considered as inherently relational; it engages with ‘modes of becoming-with’ (Massumi 2021: xix). Massumi further emphasizes that the intensity of affect cannot be separated from the body’s capacity to move and sense (2021: xxxv). Since this approach to affect foregrounds energy, encounter and movement, it offers a particularly relevant framework for studying Punu song-dance performances. Erin Manning (2009, 2013), a close collaborator with Massumi, has drawn on these insights to explore the dancing body, demonstrating how attention to affect illuminates the incipient, intensive and form-taking dimensions of dance as a co-compositional process.
Ethnomusicologists have also increasingly recognized the relevance of affect theory for studying sound, song and music (Garcia 2020; Graber and Sumera 2020; Gray 2020; Hofman 2015; Thompson and Biddle 2013). Luis-Manuel Garcia, for instance, emphasizes how the dual nature of affect as both movement and relation ‘provides an opening for understanding affect through sound, which passes between bodies as forceful vibration while also establishing relations of synchrony and resonance’ (Garcia 2020: 25). Apart from resonance and vibration, concepts such as amplification, contagion and attunement – widely used to trace the dynamics of affective intensity – are particularly useful in analysing sonic phenomena. In this study of Punu performances, attention to these dynamics, particularly the incipient aspects of song and dance, will shed light on how resonance, amplification and attunement drive and shape the affective experience of performance.
Despite the growing interest in affect, ethnomusicologists have identified significant challenges in engaging with affect theory. These challenges echo critiques raised by anthropologists who have turned to affect theory (Long and Moore 2013; Lutz 2017; Martin 2013; Moore 2011; Navaro-Yashin 2009; Newell 2018; Skoggard and Waterston 2015). One of the central critiques targets the notion of affect as pre-linguistic and pre-subjective. While acknowledging the importance of reconnecting with the vitality of the world and relationality beyond the bounded self, scholars like Yaël Navaro-Yashin (2009) and Henrietta Moore (2011) caution against dismissing language and subjectivity altogether or treating competing paradigms as mutually exclusive. Instead, they emphasize the need to examine how affective intensities – whether occurring between humans or between humans and heterogeneous others – are oriented, interpreted and given meaning in culturally specific ways attuned to shared sentiment and knowledge. These scholars highlight that such intensities not only shape subjects, but are also shaped by them in the very act of interpretation, which influences their future manifestations and expressions. Building on these critiques, this study delves into both the intensity of affect and its amplification in performance, while also foregrounding the subjective and cultural entanglement of affect. Each engagement with the affective dynamics of a song or dance event amounts to an immersion into the Punu lifeworld – a world brought to life and animated by the singing and dancing participants who inhabit it.
In the preface to the revised edition of Parables for the Virtual, Massumi asserts that ‘there is no antinomy between affect and language’, but rather ‘accompaniment and becoming’ (Massumi 2021: xlviii). At the same time, he maintains a clear distinction between affect and emotion. Yet in the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon – whose definition of affect Massumi draws upon – affect and emotion are not positioned as an opposition. Instead, they are integrated into Simondon’s broader theory of individuation which is ontogenetic; this refers to phases within the ongoing process of becoming (Celis Bueno and Schettini 2022: 121). For Simondon, individuation is a dynamic, creative process – an ongoing sequence of emergence that generates not only individual beings, but also thought, imagination and signification (Keating 2019: 217–18). To explore affect without opposing it to signification or subjectivity, I will adopt this processual perspective of things morphing – of affective intensity taking bodily form, inspiring moves, triggering thoughts and shifting into gestural or linguistic expressions as an ongoing rebirth of subjective being. Form-taking is continuous; affect not only spurs it, but also moves through it, keeping the creative momentum alive.
Simondon emphasizes that emotion ‘only integrates affective intensities through a collective, transindividual relation’, highlighting the importance of the individual’s connection to their environment. Therefore, individuation is always a coupling of the individual and their milieu (Celis Bueno and Schettini 2022: 130). This collective dimension is crucial in the performances under study, where shared cultural understandings and cosmologies shape and sustain collective being. These shared frameworks are continually regenerated, undergoing subtle or significant transformations with each creative act. This attention to the regeneration of collective being will also entail following the travel of dance moves and song texts as they become a shared cultural reference, attaching and accumulating affective intensity, and sparking the reiterated process of subjective sense-making.
In addition to Simondon’s concepts, notions like imitation and contagion frequently appear in affect theory to articulate the transindividual dimension of affect. These terms, rooted in the work of Gabriel Tarde – whose ideas influenced Gilles Deleuze, the main source for Massumi’s theorization of affect – merit a closer examination. Revisiting Tarde’s original work, much like Simondon’s, offers a way to conceptualize the relationship between subjectivity and what lies beyond it in a fluid fashion. Anna Gibbs (2010: 187ff) provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship on ‘mimetic communication’, highlighting a tension between humanist and nonhumanist perspectives. The former emphasize a shared form between humans and other organic bodies, while the latter, exemplified by Teresa Brennan (2004), focus on asubjective forces. Brennan, drawing on neuroscientific research, interprets affect transmission as a process of biochemical entrainment. Lisa Blackman (2012: 84ff), who adopts a humanist stance, critiques this biochemical reduction, advocating for a return to nineteenth-century thinkers like Tarde, whose primary concern was human sociality. For Tarde, imitation is not merely mechanical reproduction, but a complex form of imitative desire (Blackman 2012: 211). Tarde views imitation as an inherently intersubjective process (Karsenti 2010: 48), in which subjects are not self-contained entities, but porous beings with permeable boundaries, open to resonance and impression through waves of imitation (Blackman 2012: xiv). In my analysis of Punu song-dance events, I will examine these imitative processes, where performers engage in more than just literal mimicking through gestures, hand clapping or song. Instead, their openness to the transmission of desire leads to an intensified energy that surpasses the boundaries of the individual self.
By integrating the strands of thinking coming from Simondon and Tarde, I aim to investigate subjectivity in its pre-subjective, intersubjective and trans-subjective dimensions. How does affect in performance catalyse the creative emergence of subjects? And how does it propel already-formed subjects beyond the confines of their individual boundaries, towards a shared and resonant becoming?
The energetic potency and liveliness that Punu performances aim for are deeply related to the spirit world. The water spirit dances are dedicated to these beings and are performed only when their presence is signalled, for instance, through the birth of twins, who are regarded as their human counterparts. As the world’s genesic potential the water spirits put things in motion, traversing the boundaries between human and more-than-human realms. As ancestral entities who bestow sustenance, abundance and fertility, they embody vitality and the continuous generativity of life. This same life force, as it manifests in human fecundating sexuality, is celebrated in ikoku dancing. Likewise, the ongoing motion of lament song expresses the continuity of life itself, persisting even amid the disruption of death and pain. Affect, as conceptualized in current theorizing, points at this vitality. Yet its life-giving dimension remains undertheorized and insufficiently acknowledged in its more-than-human autonomy – an omission, I argue, that stems from the Euro-American foundation of affect theory.
Yaël Navaro (2017) has pointed at how the conceptualization of affect has arrived with scholarly genealogies overwhelmingly inspired by Western philosophies. To broaden our understanding of affect, she advocates for greater diversity by tracing non-Western imaginations and inspirations. Interestingly, drawing from her fieldwork in Turkey, she introduces the notion of ‘the transcendent’ as a potential avenue for expanding affect theory (2017: 211). This focus on religious and spiritual experiences has been echoed by other ethnographers who seek to expand affect theory rather than reducing such experiences to pre-existing Western concepts of affect (Cassaniti 2015; Rytter 2015). In a more radical approach, Samuele Collu (2019) challenges the imposition of Western frameworks on non-Western contexts by reversing the typical analytical process. In a study of couples’ psychotherapy in Buenos Aires, he interprets the therapeutic affects that are experienced and talked about by his interlocutors as ‘late modern spirits’. In this way, he wants to trouble ‘the classic tendency to re-interpret the ‘spirits’ of anthropological Others through social scientific frames’ (2019: 292). He deliberately provides ‘a mystical or almost religious perspective to understand a secular practice’ (2019: 308), in order to challenge the secular understandings of the dominant social science frames which inherit ‘modern ‘disenchanted’ theories’ (2019: 292).
In The Affect Theory Reader, Gregory Seigworth and Caroline Pedwell (2023: 5) highlight the ‘ongoing historical persistence of Eurocentric blind spots in affect inquiry’. One might ask whether the tendency to dismiss the spiritual falls within these blind spots. If we go back to the early modern philosopher Spinoza, a foundational figure for affect studies, we see that the religious is not absent. Drawing on Spinoza’s Ethics, Seigworth and Pedwell outline three registers of affect inquiry, ‘the third being ‘the infinite potential for connectedness’, ‘God, nature, substance’ (Seigworth and Pedwell 2023: 6). Brian Massumi’s interpretation of affect, influenced by Spinoza through Deleuze, equates affect with potentiality, aligning with this third register. Massumi views affect as autonomous vitality, the very sense of aliveness, asserting that it operates independently of consciousness (Massumi 2002: 38ff). However, this framing of affect as an autonomous, vital force has faced significant critique. Scholars argue that it veers into spiritual or mystical territory and makes ontological claims about an elusive entity called ‘affect itself’. Ben Anderson (2016: 78) cautions against equating affect with the vital powers of life, asserting that it is not synonymous with the generative immediacy of ‘an always overflowing life’ (2016: 93). He concludes: ‘We can, in short, say nothing about this mysterious substance affect “in itself” or “as such”’ (2016: 93). Similarly, Clare Hemmings critiques Massumi for promoting ‘a faith in wonders’ (Hemmings 2005: 563) and extends this critique to Eve Sedgwick, another prominent figure in affect studies, arguing that Sedgwick’s work ‘borders on the spiritual’ (Hemmings 2012: 148).
In response to such critiques, Seigworth and Pedwell insist that autonomy does not fix affect as a separable, unknowable object: ‘Often misunderstood, “autonomy” is not a mystical beyondness but rather the diffuse everywhere/everywhen-at-once-ness of intensity. Autonomy is not an immutable locale or residence but is made and remade through the cyclings of affect as precipitate and producibility, as bodies and worlds recursively engage each other’ (Seigworth and Pedwell 2023: 35). The descriptions of water spirits by the Punu people resonate with this conception of affect’s autonomy, highlighting the immanent potencies of emergence that stir becoming. These spirits, while inhabiting aquatic realms, also manifest across diverse natural phenomena in sudden and unpredictable ways, unleashing energies that are both unsettling and life-generating. In this figure of the water spirits, the suspected spiritual dimension of affect, denounced by critical readings, is given a culturally recognized, tangible existence.
In his unique approach of using the etic concept of spirits to interpret affects in a secular therapeutic context, Collu suggests that ‘to consider affects as spirits gives them an ontological existence and allows us to situate them historically’ (2019: 298). This invalidates the critique of affect’s mysticism as unknowable otherness. It is precisely the foreclosure of this so-called ‘mystical dimension’ that makes it an unknowable, separate thing. When the spiritual is acknowledged within society, it can be studied as a culturally specific human experience that recognizes a dimension before/beyond the human as generative of its very being. In comparing new materialisms, such as affect theory, with Indigenous studies scholarship, Jerry Lee Rosiek, Jimmy Snyder and Scott Pratt highlight the lack of performative engagement with particular, historically situated, nonhuman others in the former. Such engagement would imply ‘risking the transformations of self and being’ (Rosiek et al. 2020: 336). In line with this argument, in this study, I not only draw connections between affect theory and Indigenous cosmologies, such as Punu spirit cosmology, but also demonstrate how taking such cosmologies seriously can enrich affect theory by confronting the dominant secular biases within social science that ultimately seeks to preserve a self-contained subject position.
Affect is all about movement; so, too, are the Punu water spirits. During the rituals dedicated to these spirits, they are most intimately experienced through the disturbing and highly moving energies of possession trance. Singing and dancing are essential to meet these spirits and soothe their discontent. The term u kimba, used for spirit song-dance ceremonies, is derived from kimbu, meaning ‘a big commotion’. This commotion is similar to the impact of the giant catfish ngwangi, whose sudden movement creates large waves, a clear sign of the spirit’s presence. Similarly, torrential rains, whirlwinds and thunder also embody this spirit manifestation. These events leave no one unaffected – here, the affective and the spiritual seem to merge. Tim Ingold is one of the few anthropologists to have explored the connection between weather and affect. He suggests, much like my observations of Punu experiences, that ‘weather and mood are not just analogous but, more fundamentally, one and the same’. There exists a ‘unison of the affective and the cosmic’ (Ingold 2015: 72). Taking seriously discussions of spirit beings helps us think about this unison and provides space for the cosmic dimension within affect theory.
I use the term ‘spirit’ to translate the Yipunu word muyisi (plural bayisi), which derives from the Proto-Bantu root -kicj, also translated as ‘spirit’ (Guthrie 1967: 281, C.S. 1073). Etymologically, the English word ‘spirit’ is related to wind and can also refer to a person’s prevailing mood. Thus, it embodies the unison of the cosmic and the affective, of weather and mood, which the Punu experience of the bayisi also suggests. In contemporary usage, shaped by Christian influences, the spirit’s invisible, ephemeral nature is mostly attributed to an immaterial, supernatural realm beyond the sensuous. However, as David Abram argues, this need not be the case. He contends that invisibility can imply depth, describing it as ‘a dimension to which we refer whenever we say that we are “in the depths” of something – wandering in the depths of a great sadness, or caught up in the depths of an all-consuming task – as thoroughly as fish are immersed in the sea’ (2014: 126). It is such depth of feeling, of engagement and of originary being held in the water world, that I wish to evoke in the title The Spirit of Affect.
However, I want to emphasize that it might just as well be The Spirits of Affects, since there is no singular, unitary, distinct entity, but ‘myriad energies that move in the invisible depth of the sensuous’ (Abram 2014: 128). The energetic intensities that were palpable to me during Punu song-dance events take on many diverse qualities, modulated by the song or dance form and expressing themselves uniquely in each performer. Similarly, the water spirits are multifarious. Each Punu village has a primary tutelary spirit. Although it is named in the singular, like the pool where it resides, this spirit is never solitary, but always exists as a couple and manifests through various beings and forces. If there is a unifying aspect, it is vitality – embodied by the spirits and participated in by humans. As Mary Keller suggests, the core condition for spirit possession traditions is ‘an animated, connected, material world’ (2022: 199). These traditions accommodate animist cosmologies. Recently, Ingold has sought to rethink animism, arguing that rather than being a belief system about the world, the animic ontology is ‘a way of being that is alive and open to a world in continuous birth’ (2022a: 63). This sense of aliveness and to the genesic potential of the world is central to both Punu spirit cosmology and ceremony. As recent scholarship in affect theory within religious studies suggests, it is this attention to vitality – the ‘ebb and flow of energy’ (Supp-Montgomerie 2015: 341) – that enables affect theory to recognize a spiritual dimension.
Women play a key role in the studied performances. They are the main participants in the celebrations dedicated to the water spirits, which are led by mothers of twins or water spirit healers. The world of these spirits is envisioned as maternal, a conception underscored by the parallel between the pools that serve as the spirits’ abode and the intra-uterine space. In Punu society, the acknowledgement of maternal life-giving power takes on a structural dimension through the matrilineal descent system. The spirit world is aligned with this matrilineal principle: the pools inhabited by the spirits are owned by the ruling matrilineage of each village. Through singing and dancing, women sustain the vital relationship with the spirits, ensuring their continued benevolence and willingness to nurture the community. Beyond the water spirit celebrations, women also preside over funeral ceremonies, where they mourn the irruption of death but also affirm the cyclical renewal of existence and the continued relationship with the deceased as ancestor. In these ceremonies, death becomes part of the ongoing cycle of life, while the songs’ and dances’ rhythmic continuity and energetic intensity stand as palpable manifestations of this vitality.
In addition to exposing the Euro-American foundation of affect theory’s genealogies, Navaro has emphasized that they are dominated by male perspectives, referring to them as ‘theoretical patrilinies’ (Navaro 2017: 213). However, in their review of affect theory’s various directions, Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth incorporate the work of feminist philosophers. Alongside Massumi, they recognize Elizabeth Grosz as a pivotal figure who has developed the Spinozist approach to affect (Gregg and Seigworth 2010: 7). Referring to Luce Irigaray, Grosz highlights the neglect of both the cosmological and maternal elements in Western thought on life and energy: ‘We have forgotten where we come from. This is a double forgetting: of the elements through which all living things are born and live, a cosmological element; and of the specific body, indeed a chain of bodies, from which we come, a genealogical or maternal element’ (Grosz 2004: 2). These two elements – the cosmological and the maternal – are at the core of the Punu understanding of the water spirit universe in its maternal and matrilineal features.
Standard anthropological interpretations often depict matrilinearity as a different configuration of male authority. However, feminist scholars, challenging the ‘patrifocal syndrome’ that has shaped these interpretations (Arnfred 2011: 219f; James 1993; Peters 1997), have demonstrated that matrilineal societies provide significant scope for women’s authority and the recognition of maternal power (Johnson 2023: 4). This holds true for the region under study. Rhonda Gonzales, Christine Saidi and Catherine Cymone Fourshey assert that in the Bantu Matrilineal Belt, older women have long been central to religion, often holding roles of spiritual mediation (Gonzales, Saidi and Fourshey 2017: 32ff). This region includes Punu communities (2017: 25).
To recognize the powers, spiritual and otherwise, associated with the procreative role, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (2016) introduces the concept of ‘matripotency’. Alongside Ifi Amadiume (2005, 2015), Oyěwùmí is an influential Nigerian feminist who has critiqued the colonial gender impositions that have framed African societies as male-dominated. In contrast to these unfounded assumptions, she presents a radically matrifocal perspective (Oyěwùmí 1997). This study on Punu performances will adopt such an approach, focusing on the prominent role of women in these performances, especially in relation to their life-giving abilities, as they mediate between the living and the dead as well as between the human and the more-than-human realms. In order to address the prenatal dimension in particular – since this is the one the water spirit world resonates with – I will draw on the work of feminist scholar Bracha Ettinger. Based on her artistic work and critical approach to Lacanian psychoanalysis, Ettinger has developed a theory which she coins as ‘matrixial’ and which takes the intra-uterine experience as a model. Her theory will prove useful to explore in more detail the specifics of the water spirit world in connection with the prenatal realm. Many of the matrixial dynamics Ettinger describes align closely with the workings of affect as explored by Massumi and other affect theorists. As such, her theory will be invaluable in uncovering the affective dynamics in Punu performances, shedding light on their connection to the centrality of the maternal in Punu cosmology and society.
A key anthropological critique of affect theory, as discussed above, is its neglect of subjectivity. Ettinger’s matrixial theory, which references the prenatal phase and early infancy, focuses on processes of attunement and ‘borderlinking’ between what she terms ‘becoming-subjects’ or ‘partial-subjects’. The matrixial realm pre-dates and coexists with gendered difference and sexuate subjectivity. The water spirit universe is such a realm. The celebrations for these beings are initiated by these beings and are all about attuning with the life-giving maternal world. However, the Punu song-dance repertoire I observed also includes gender-differentiated performances, where virtuosity, individual creativity and the celebration of reproductive sexuality are central. This requires a different perspective, one that emphasizes affective processes such as form-taking, and shifts into gestural and linguistic expressivity and sense-making as the ongoing rebirth of subjective being. It also requires attention to expressions of sexuality and sexuate difference that play a role in the dynamics of subjectivization.
Similarly to what I have pointed out regarding the maternal and matrilinearity, studies of female sexuality in Africa have often overlooked women and female power (Arnfred 2015, 2023: 301ff). Again, African feminists have been pivotal in challenging colonial assumptions that link sexuality to women’s subjugation, seriously examining woman-centred cultural aesthetics of sexuality on the continent (Nzegwu 2011; Tamale 2011). These scholars have also questioned the very idea of gender, implying a rigid dichotomy with a strict opposition and hierarchical organization between male and female (Oyěwùmí 2002). Saidi (2023) extends this critical framework in a historical study of the Bantu Matrilineal Belt, asserting that gender there did not adhere to a binary logic. I will follow the path laid out by these feminists, exploring affirmative and pleasurable expressions of sexuality and the fluid embodiment of gender in the dances I studied. However, I question the utility of the term ‘non-binary’, as Saidi suggests, since in contemporary gender studies, this notion tends to downplay the relevance of anatomical differences. This distinction, however, remains affirmed by Saidi and is apparent in the Punu performances, where reproductive sexuality is addressed through the organization of the dance space into two rows: one each for male and female dancers.
In this context, notions such as duality or complementarity seem more fitting. Irigaray (2013: 43, 92) differentiates dualism from duality, arguing that while dualism creates hierarchical oppositions between categories, duality represents the mutual coexistence of elements within a cosmology of life. Decolonial thinkers Maria Lugones (2010: 750) and Walter Mignolo (Mignolo and Walsh 2018: 155) highlight complementarity, which derives from a similar attention to cosmological understandings and contrasts with the modern/colonial logic of dichotomization. Nigerian feminist Nkiiri Nzegwu also explores this notion in her article ‘“Osunality” or African Eroticism’ (Nzegwu 2011), which will serve as a major inspiration in reflecting on sexuality and sexuate difference as expressed in the two-row dances.
A central critique of affect as a mystical form of ‘beyondness’ stems from its portrayal as resistance and an escape from the containment of emotion, positioning it as synonymous with freedom (Massumi 2021: xxxi, xxxv, xxxvi). However, feminists theorists (Ahmed 2004; Berlant et al. 2017) have countered this association of affect with freedom by highlighting its tendency to attach itself and its ‘stickiness’ – that is, the way in which it reinforces rather than escapes from established power structures. Nevertheless, the analysis of the stickiness of affect reveals an underlying ideal of fluidity as resisting normative boundaries. This resonates with Massumi’s view that the solidification of form represents a capture by pervasive discursive and institutional structures enmeshed with power. Given that all these works emerge from Western poststructuralist thought and share a critical stance towards global capitalism (Ahmed 2014; Berlant et al. 2017; Massumi 2015), this connection is unsurprising. However, the applicability of this perspective is questionable when addressing a Central African society where global capitalism’s influence is uneven, particularly in rural areas, and where the primary reference for action, especially in ritual action and performance, is continuity with the past.
I recognize that invoking the notion of tradition calls attention to the critique that tradition is constructed in opposition to modernity, a construction that is itself a product of the very modernity it critiques (Lugones 2010; Mignolo and Walsh 2018). As the ‘other’ of modernity, tradition is often situated outside of time and place, relegated to the premodern and primitive, thus denying the coevalness and validity of nonmodern worlds and peoples (Fabian 2014). However, Mignolo argues, acknowledging this construction should not dismiss these worlds, but rather should ‘open up the richness of knowledges and praxis of living that the rhetoric of modernity demonized and reduced to tradition, barbarism, folklore, underdevelopment’; such an acknowledgement should include the ‘spirituality denied in the name of reason’ (Mignolo and Walsh 2018: 22). This is the goal of my study and the reason I critically engage with affect theory. To achieve this, I propose not to discard the term ‘tradition’ as merely an antithesis to modernity, but instead to question it critically.
The opposition between the dynamic and the static, innovation and repetition, which aligns with the modern/premodern divide, is particularly problematic. Ingold notes that in medieval times, ‘tradition’ did not refer to ‘a corpus of teachings or codified knowledge to be passed from generation to generation’ (Ingold 2022b: 69). Instead, it referred to ‘a way of life along which it is possible to move on, in continuity with the values of the past, while laying down a path for others to follow’ (2022b: 274). This definition challenges the static/dynamic and repetition/innovation oppositions, in which tradition is typically framed in opposition to modernity. Rather than a fixed body of customs that traps one in a fossilized past, tradition refers to a process of ongoing generativity; ever-renewed connections are established with predecessors for living and improvising the present and projecting oneself into the future. Ingold distinguishes between novelty and newness, explaining that novelty arises from looking backwards and identifying differences from what has been, while newness looks forwards, focusing on the unfolding of relationships and processes that give rise to beings and their expressions. Newness is to see in creation the ceaseless upspringing of the new (Ingold 2022b: 26). Tradition as the following of a path allows such an upspringing of newness – it is a continuous birthing process of form that hence cannot be understood when contrasting structure and fluidity (for example, power versus freedom) as opposing forces.
Rhythm lies at the heart of understanding this generative process. When I asked how to join the dance – a question driven by my eagerness to participate – the response was simple: listen to the drum and follow the step, dibandu. Interestingly, dibandu also means ‘rhythm’ and originates from the verb u banda, which translates to ‘to strike’ and ‘to begin’. This highlights the Punu perspective that rhythm is primordial for both singing and dancing to unfold. Ingold emphasizes that no pattern can exist without rhythm, as every pattern records the movement of its formation. To sense this, one must ‘enter this movement and join it with the arc of one’s attention’ (Ingold 2022b: 279). The expressions u kotila muna (to enter into) and u wendila muna (to go into) were omnipresent in Punu discourse on dance. These phrases applied to various rhythmic elements – dance steps, hip movements, song refrains and hand clapping – underscoring the necessity for performers to immerse themselves in the collective rhythm and respond to the contributions of others for the performance to succeed.
Ingold (2015, 2022b) compares this rhythmic process of correspondence to weaving, plaiting, braiding, knotting or the twisting of cords in basketing, the latter activity commonly practised by Punu women. Interestingly, ikoku, the name of the dance of rejoicing, refers to the knot dancers tie with a loincloth at their back or front. Furthermore, in one of the key closing formulas of water spirit songs, the soloist sings ‘Desire for the water spirit’, to which the chorus responds ‘Braid for yourself’. Here, braiding evokes the rhythmic song-dance ritual, the culturally appropriate path to engaging with this life-giving spirit world. Similarly, Renaat Devisch’s Weaving the Threads of Life (1993) uncovers the profound meanings associated with weaving and braiding in the Lower Congo region. His study of a gynaecological healing ritual among the Yaka people – from which the Punu originate – presents dance as rhythm: ‘rhythmic autogenesis in perpetual emergence’ (1993: 261). In this view, dance becomes a fabric, intertwining the flow of life with the collective and the cosmos.
Don Handelman (2021: 178) likens ritual in general to the act of braiding, emphasizing in this way its generative aspects rather than its representational function. Similarly focusing on generativity, Bruce Kapferer (2004) argues that ritual space enables participants to engage with the dynamics of life itself, offering a means to adjust to these forces. This occurs through the creation of an ‘imaginal space’ which Kapferer describes not as a fictional realm counterposed against reality, but as one that nurtures imagination as ‘the really real’ (Kapferer 2004: 47) – or, as Ingold (2022b: xiii) puts it, ‘an opening into the fullness of the real, in both its temporal incipience and experiential depth’. Ritual achieves this through its rhythmic modalities and performative structures, unlocking a creative potency. This is what I call affect – not as a beyondness of structure, but as emerging from within the enactment of ritual forms as they take shape and give way to one another. In Punu cosmology, the watery realm of the spirits symbolizes this vital, creative flow, the source from which all things emerge and to which they ultimately return. Ritual provides a way to access this deeper reality and its inherent generative potency. Contrary to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ (1990) assertion that the search for fluidity in ritual is in vain, I argue that fluidity, as the originary experience of life, can indeed be imaginally experienced. This occurs through full immersion in ritual song and dance, where participants align themselves with the processes of emergence inherent in these rhythmic forms.
Despite its emphasis on newness as rupture, affect theory does not entirely exclude the notion of generative temporal continuity, often associated with concepts like tradition and ritual. This continuity is particularly evident in the conceptualization of the event, a foundational idea in the philosophical framework of affect theory alongside emergence (Massumi 2021: xiv, xxxix, xl). The understanding of the event as both an encounter and a space-time where affect resides informed my methodological approach upon returning from the field. I chose to study Punu performances by focusing on specific song-dance events in which I had participated. This decision was based on the understanding that a consideration of particular events would make it easier for readers to tune into the affective power of encounters.
The study of events has a long-standing presence in anthropology. Kapferer highlights that events have traditionally been central to ethnographic description in two primary and often intertwined ways: ‘(1) as exemplifications or illustrations, usually in the form of case studies, of more general ethnographic descriptive or theoretical assertions, or (2) as happenings or occasions, slices of life, that establish a conundrum or problematic that the presentation of an ethnography and its analysis will solve or otherwise explain’ (Kapferer 2015: 1). While Kapferer acknowledges the continuity of this approach with traditional event-as-case approaches, he also introduces a significant departure. This shift is influenced by a Deleuzian orientation, where events are no longer seen as mere representations of social structures, but rather as critical sites of emergence. In this view, events are spaces where new possibilities and realities can unfold. Victor Turner (1969, 1974), particularly in his later work on rituals, had already highlighted the generative potential of the event as a locus of creativity. Building on this, Kapferer, through Deleuze, emphasizes the event as a ‘wellspring of emergence’ and a ‘creative crucible of new, hitherto unrealized potential’ (2015: 16), a perspective echoed in affect theory.
The song-dance events selected for this study all showcase creative potential tied to the uniqueness of the individuals involved. Dancers create new movement variations or stylistic elements that either build on or contrast with previous ones. Singers improvise phrases on the spot in response to the specific context of the gathering. Lamenters link together adages in a continuous flow attuned to their life experiences and accumulated song knowledge. Spirits interrupt, expressing grievances through trance possession, which prompts a soothing response and more dynamic dancing. In every event, affect is tangible – whether through moments of attuning or disattuning, gradual intensifications in dance energy, sudden breaks in the sound flow, or in various verbal, gestural, facial or somatic expressions. Affect also surges via the repetition of particular movements, phrases or the ever-renewed performance of songs from past events. This emergence of affect prompts creative in situ inspirations.
While these events bring forth singular beings and unique moments, they also reveal how affectivity and creativity emerge through the very structure of the performance. These structural features of Punu performances vary according to the type of performance. In song, performers typically distinguish between responsorial or call-and-response forms (tumbu), which unfold between a lead chanter and a chorus, and monodic expressions (makingu) performed by a single singer. Monodic songs are often inserted into responsorial performances, intensifying them and re-igniting their rhythm. However, when enacted as laments, they stand alone, leading to a progressive deepening of affect. In dance, a similar structural distinction is made. Circular formations involve dancers following one another counterclockwise while maintaining a same rhythm, whereas linear formations unfold between two parallel rows of gender-differentiated dancers. A performer enters the dance space between the rows, dances in the centre and, upon returning, invites the next participant, creating a chain of individual dance sessions that may evolve into couple dances. In both forms, responsorial chanting precedes and accompanies the dancing. These song-dance compositions occur at three principal occasions: celebrations dedicated to water spirits, rejoicing events and funeral ceremonies. In each context, their affective and creative expression takes on a distinct form and tonality in line with the event’s specific atmosphere and purpose.
In attending to these structural features, the presented events serve the goal of illustration or exemplification, but this does not contradict the focus on singularity. Following Massumi’s perspective, an example is singular – it is not merely particular, as it can extend to everything else with which it might be connected. Nor is it general, as it does not aim to demonstrate a rule or concept (2002: 19). The events in this study are presented in this manner, revealing patterns and possibilities common in Punu performances, without adhering to a fixed rule. In the same vein, Michael Jackson argues that an ethnography of events explores ‘the interplay of the singular and the shared’ (2005: xxvi), bypassing both the individual subject and culture as sui generis phenomena. It unveils ‘the space of appearances – where what is potential becomes actual, disclosed, brought forth, given presence, or embodied’ (Jackson 2005: xiv).
To trace these dynamics of appearance and emergence, I offer detailed, close descriptions of selected events. This allows readers to follow how an event unfolds, evolving into moments of heightened affect and creative openings. Jackson defines an event as ‘an occasion, a happening, where something vital is at play and at risk’ (2005: xxx). Each of the events presented are moments when something vital takes place. This can be due to the occasion, whether it is a sudden manifestation of spirits, a dignitary’s visit promising prosperity or the unexpected passing of a relative triggering suspicions of witchcraft. It also depends on the internal dynamics of the performances leading to moments of remarkable synergy between dancers or inventive and deep-felt song expression. The exclamation I often heard in such moments – ‘ah, that is something’ (a mwa dyambwè) – expresses the recognition that something significant is taking place, something affectively powerful that cannot be fully articulated.
When discussing the methodological challenges of working with affect, Timm Knudsen, Crogh and Stage emphasize the importance of attending to the body in moments of affect, especially when affect is generated in the heat of the moment. This involves detecting moments of rhythmic intensification or destabilization of affective energy, keeping a trace of the nonverbal dimensions of affect while giving attention to communicative content about experienced or attributed affect (Timm Knudsen et al. 2022: 9). They further suggest that visual – and I would add auditory – methods can be particularly helpful in this process (2022: 16). The descriptions I provide are based on audio and video recordings, which are included in this book. This enables a detailed analysis, as Gray (2020: 324) recommends, by zooming in close and analysing micro-movements in the body or voice to uncover what they might reveal about affect, such as releases in stylistic nuances, melodic variations or sudden ruptures and shifts. With access to the recordings, readers can experience or sense the affectively charged moments and creative surges identified in the description. Another methodological approach for studying affect, as suggested by Timm Knudsen, Crogh and Stage (Knudsen et al. 2022: 18), is to examine circulating texts, where textuality becomes a trace of affective movements. Some of the selected events feature the same song, but with context-specific improvised phrases and/or changes in the refrain. In one instance, several earlier versions of the song are chanted consecutively before a new version is introduced. By closely studying these textual shifts and travels, we can trace the accumulation of affect and creative trajectories.
In my decision to describe a series of events, I also aim to practise ethnography in a way that aligns with Johannes Fabian’s concept of a ‘commentary’. Fabian defines a commentary as a type of ethnography that is not predicated on the absence of its object, or on prose that withholds from the reader the events and documents on which it must ground its authority (2008: 10). The writing in Part I of this study remains closely tied to the events it describes. It tracks, with analytical detail, the unfolding of each event and highlights its affective-creative contours, rhythms and peaks as shaped by the performance’s formal elements and the human and more-than-human encounters they evoke. The goal is to immerse the reader in the event itself, enabling them to sense the stakes for the performers – what participants bring to each encounter, and what comes to them through it. Contextual information is interwoven into the narrative as elements of cultural structure and sense that acquire significance within the unfolding moment. Accordingly, no general overview of Punu culture is offered prior to the description of particular events. This approach avoids reification and fossilization, allowing readers to gradually gain familiarity with aspects of the Punu lifeworld as these both shape and are shaped by the performances in ever-new ways. My own participation in the events – involving a similar process of gradual discovery – provides the foundation for this close ‘reading’. My personal experience of being affected (Favret-Saada 2012) feeds into the way in which I guide the reader to sense what is unfolding.
Part I of this book, which is dedicated to the detailed description of selected song-dance events, comprises four chapters. The opening chapter foregrounds the relational dimensions of performance, exploring how contrasting styles – responsorial versus monodic and circular versus linear – invite distinct modes of encounter among humans and more-than-human beings. The second chapter turns to the intensities that emerge and build within these song-dance encounters, tracing how such affective forces find expression and meaning within the different performance contexts, namely water spirit celebrations, rejoicing events and funerary ceremonies. While these categories are recognized by Punu performers, I frequently observed transitions between them made possible by the transcontextual occurrence of performance styles and a high degree of improvisation. This contextual and improvisational fluidity forms the focus of the third chapter. The fourth chapter then examines the fluidity of affective expression itself that resists simple contrasts between sorrow versus joy, much as the water spirit realm brings both anxiety and abundance. Part II of the book delves more deeply into this spirit cosmology and imagery, connecting the described events to broader theoretical frameworks. It engages particularly with the concepts of affect, rhythm and the maternal, each linked to vitality, the core of the spirit world and the foundation of the flow that it embodies. In bringing these two parts together, the study seeks to blend ‘the arts of showing with the sciences of knowing’, as ethnography is meant to do according to Jackson (2017: 48).
The ethnographic fieldwork in which I took part during the song-dance events took place between May and October 2005, and again between June 2006 and September 2007, in the Nyanga district of southwestern Congo-Brazzaville. During the first phase, I spent some time in the centre of Nyanga before moving to several small villages, each with populations ranging from 100 to 500 people. All of these villages, except for Kana-Nyanga, are located along the main road connecting Dolisie to Ndendé, a road built in the 1930s. This construction marked the end of the semi-sedentary lifestyle of the Punu people, who had previously migrated in search of fertile land, abundant wildlife and fish, or due to conflicts or accusations of witchcraft (Perrois and Grand-Dufay 2008: 21). During my first fieldwork period, I primarily stayed in the village of Moussogo, where I focused on learning the local language and familiarizing myself with various song and dance genres. In the second phase of my research, I became more mobile, travelling to different villages such as Moungoudi, Bihongo and, to a lesser extent, Kana-Nyanga. My choice of locations was influenced by the presence of renowned singers and dancers, with Moungoudi also selected because it was the only village where ceremonies were still performed near the pool of the tutelary spirit.
In rural Punu villages, social roles based on occupation are minimal. Everyone I encountered was engaged in agriculture, with men also participating in hunting and women in collective pool fishing. Some individuals took on other roles, such as bricklaying, truck driving, small-scale trading or operating shops. This lack of occupational specialization extended to ritual and performance practices, where there was no professional division. Those called singers or dancers were simply individuals with notable skill, often taking part in song-dance events. All performances I observed were open to anyone willing to participate. However, gender played an important role. While ikoku dancing was ideally performed by both men and women, each in their respective rows, spirit celebrations and lamentations were predominantly performed by women. The masked mukuji performance, once reserved for initiated men, has not been practised in the Nyanga district for several decades. Moreover, the rise of women’s associations in Punu villages during the 1990s, coupled with the large-scale migration of men to urban areas, has led to a more female-dominated performance culture. Dingumba dancing, once a mixed-gender activity, had evolved by the time of my fieldwork stay into a mostly female event, performed in a circle rather than in two rows.
A distinct repertoire of songs by witchcraft healers (nganga diboka) also existed; however, these songs were rarely performed and primarily by healers from outside the district of Nyanga. Consequently, I chose not to include them in my study – a decision consistent with my determination, early on in my fieldwork, to avoid focusing on witchcraft. I observed that inquiries into this domain often provoked suspicion among ordinary villagers who would redirect me to the healers themselves. This reaction was reinforced by my expressed interest in the water spirit world, which stands in opposition to the asocial, death-bringing realm of witchcraft.
Performances were public, which made it easier for me to participate. I had two main reasons for emphasizing direct involvement in the singing and dancing. First, my focus on affect required proximity to truly experience the bodily and energetic dynamics of the performances (Chrysagis and Karampapas 2017: 3). By actively participating in song-dance events, I came to understand the crucial role of repetition, improvisation, creative inspiration and immersion in an ongoing generative impulse. The second reason for my direct involvement was to help me integrate into the village communities that had welcomed me and gain a form of ‘cultural intimacy’ (Braun 2023: 26). In addition to my efforts to learn the language, my involvement in performances often sparked amusement and amazement among the people I stayed with (see, for example, song event 8, chapter 2). Initially, some had assumed that, as a white Belgian woman, I had come to assist one of the churches in the region with its missionary work. They were surprised by my interest in what they referred to as ‘village things’. As a result, my active effort to learn and speak Yipunu – rather than Munukutuba, the national language used in the churches – and my clear enthusiasm for participating in the dances were essential in helping me become part of the social fabric and form connections beyond racial and cultural divisions. My relatively young age also somewhat reduced the power dynamics involved, though I remained acutely aware of my privilege in being able to travel abroad for research purposes.
Michael Jackson, an anthropologist committed to immersing himself in the communities he has studied, observes that in social anthropology, observation and participation are often conflated, with little attention given to the oxymoronic nature in the so-called participant observation method. He argues that ‘in practice, one can observe and participate successively, but not simultaneously’ (Jackson 2013: 32). This tension between observation and participation was particularly evident in my fieldwork, where my focus on participating in song-dance events made this conflict more palpable. I prioritized being an active participant, taking notes only during less intense social interactions. The decision of whether and how much to film also raised this issue. While people were generally comfortable with me recording and readily gave consent, given the public nature of the performances and my enthusiastic participation and contributions to organizers and leading performers, I opted to minimize the time I spent filming, as this would position me as an outsider and potentially affect the performance itself due to the power the visual medium exerts (Diettrich and Stepputat 2021: 4). For example, in one ikoku event, performers altered their usual face-to-face formation for the hip rotation, turning towards me to accommodate filming (see dance event 2, chapter 1). Technical challenges, such as limited access to electricity for charging batteries and the difficulty of filming at night – when most performances occurred – also contributed to my reluctance. In contrast, I encountered fewer challenges and reservations when making audio recordings. These were more easily compatible with participation in the performance, leading to a greater number of such recordings in this study.
Anthropological scholarship has increasingly focused on examining not just the ethnographer’s physical presence in the field, but also their affects, aspirations and the influence of their personal histories on their choice of and approach to a topic (Davies and Spencer 2010; McLean and Leibing 2007; Stodulka et al. 2018, 2019). Ellen Corin contends that there is an ‘intricate network of threads and motives that link research interests, questions, and findings to issues and positions anchored in an intimate, personal history’ (2007: 243). She reflects on her own Ph.D. work on the father figure among the matrilineal Yanzi people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she explored the dominant and threatening role of the maternal line of descent and the mediating, protective and individualizing function along the paternal line of transmission. These findings, though grounded in rigorous data analysis, closely paralleled dilemmas and questions intimately connected to her personal life – like the powerful and ambiguous character of her mother’s figure in the absence of her father, who died a few weeks after Corin’s birth (2007: 245). I have noticed a similar resonance between my focus on affect, body expression and the cosmic maternal in this study and aspects of my own life history – particularly my confinement to an incubator after my birth and the sense of lacking a caring environment due to a physically and emotionally distant mother. The opening vignette illustrates this link, as well as my amazement and wonder at the powerful, affectively intense and highly refined expression of the longing for the maternal spirit world that the monodic song for the water spirits conveys. Having grown up in Flanders in a farming family where women had enjoyed little education and lacked female-identified self-esteem, somehow – unconsciously – I had not anticipated such artistic sophistication and a strong, sensitive female presence among seemingly similar rural women, while at the same time I had been looking and longing for it.
Corin, feeling perplexed about the unintentional convergence between her findings and her life history and related motives, wonders if her findings were a projection of her own psyche and repressed imagination, or a result of her attentiveness to aspects that genuinely belong to the community she studied. She posits that ‘knowledge is neither purely about the other nor purely about ourselves’ and sees influences between research questions and findings, on the one hand, and the researcher’s intimate, personal issues, on the other hand, as two-directional, operating ‘in the realm of “resonance”, not “causality”’ (Corin 2007: 243). I hope that my attention to the primary, deeply affective importance of the maternal in Punu cosmology, along with the associated view on the fertility of sexuate difference, stems from such resonance – one that not only reflects my motivations for research, but also illuminates the Punu performances and lifeworld I studied. The alignment of my emphasis on the maternal with decolonial African thinkers’ calls for a matrifocal approach to understanding contemporary African data, beyond the prevalent Western denial of maternal and female power, further supports this hope. It also speaks – again, I hope – to the power of cultural differences ‘to question and destabilize’ (Corin 2007: 241). My critical examination of Western-centric, patrilineal affect theory, viewed through the lens of matrifocal Punu perspectives and cosmology, hinges on this power and seeks to spell out its implications.
Corin (2007: 241), noting the growing taboo around the concept of difference in anthropology, questions whether this stance might be a manifestation of a new form of Western hegemony that confines difference to the notion of identity. Similarly, Ingold (2022b: 359), in advocating for a one-world anthropology, critiques the overriding focus on identity, which he links to the logic of naturalism underpinning mainstream Western science. He calls for an emphasis on animistic concerns with differentiation and distances himself from the ontological turn in anthropology, which, he laments, results in ‘worlds collapsed into themselves, impenetrable to others.’ Drawing on Simondon’s ideas, Ingold proposes an ontogenetic turn, where the world is seen as a space of ‘ever-emergent difference’ (2022b: 359), an ‘always worlding world . . . of becomings that, like voices in a conversation, are ever differentiating themselves from within the matrix of their common life’ (2022b: 362). This ontogenetic perspective situates cultural difference as a distinct actualization of a shared potential, and I adhere to this view in this study. It grounds my decision, amongst others, to connect Punu cosmology with Ettinger’s matrixial theory, inasmuch as both explore the dynamics of intra-uterine life as a shared human experience. Ingold’s emphasis on becoming in his call for an ontogenetic turn also shapes my approach to creativity in performance, seen as the ever-renewed realization of a potential that, while shaped by transmitted forms, is never limited by them. It constantly differentiates, forging new paths to follow and converse with.