The shade of religion
Kyangyang and the works of prophetic imagination in Guinea‐Bissau
in Social Anthropology/Anthropologie socialeSearch for other papers by Ramon Sarró in
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This article focuses on the Kyangyang (‘the shadows’ or ‘the shades’), a prophetic movement that emerged in Guinea‐Bissau in 1984, in which ‘animistic’ Balanta farmers‐and‐herders learned to pray as Muslims and Christians do. We want to propose that (a) more attention needs to be paid to religious movements that bridge the polarisation between Islam and Christianity in West Africa and (b) a broader focus on the overall pluralistic setting is necessary in order to understand the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a particular religion. We want to propose, too, that some religions glossed as mimetic (such as Kyangyang) are not as ‘secondary’, in relation to a putative primary source (Islam or Christianity being the model to be copied), as we may intuitively assume at first sight. Copying is part and parcel of human action and transformation but, paradoxical as it may sound, it may not be as opposed to originality as we tend to think. By looking at how Kyangyang works, how imagination is put to play by prophets in order to make Balanta farmers ‘move forward’ towards a potential ‘new world’, we may be getting at the very heart of what it means to be original, at least in terms of religious creativity.