Papers by Alessandra Brivio
The article aims to discuss the role of the magical-religious dimension in the subjection and sex... more The article aims to discuss the role of the magical-religious dimension in the subjection and sexual exploitation of the women Nigerian migrants in Italy, and the resonance that this dimension has in public discourse. Drawing on my involvement in a court case against a woman accused of trafficking and enslavement, the article aims to provide an Africanist perspective to the discussion on Nigerian women migration. It develops on two main issues. First, I reconstruct the frame that produced what is commonly called juju; then I analyze the correlation between dependence and debt in the frame of the Atlantic and colonial history. The purpose of the article is to give a historical and political dignity to migrants and to question the juju as a device that in Italy contributes to strengthening gender discriminations, individual suffering and to produce racist discourses.
Journal of West African History, 2018
This article explores the genealogy of the gorovodu religious order, a relative newcomer in the w... more This article explores the genealogy of the gorovodu religious order, a relative newcomer in the wider vodun landscape of Togo and Benin. Gorovodu was born from the combination of many of the antiwitchcraft movements that swept across the Gold Coast between the 1910s and the 1930s. Crossing the Volta River to the east, these movements encountered a space dominated by vodun orders that were able to absorb and transform them gradually. In Togo and Benin, the northern gods lost their explicit association with witch finding and were recontextualized within the parameters of vodun practices while retaining their strong moralistic aptitude. What remained was a neat dichotomy between good and bad that was not so typical of vodun: gorovodu’s moral dictates were and are clear and offered a sense of stability by the immediacy of reward or punishment. This article analyzes the initial stages in the genesis of a new vodun and the transformation within an antiwitchcraft movement with the intentio...
Journal of Africana Religions
The article discusses the struggle between vodun priests and Roman Catholic missionaries in Togo ... more The article discusses the struggle between vodun priests and Roman Catholic missionaries in Togo during the first decades of the twentieth century. I analyze several cases that involved the two traditions and follow the tensions aroused by a new vodun called Goro. Assuming that the Catholic religion is pervaded by the culture of presence, my aim is to show that such religious conflict cannot be fully understood solely as a response to political tensions and personal incertitude engendered by the new colonial order. It needs to be viewed also in the light of a number of concepts that brought the perspectives of the Catholic missionaries closer to those of the vodun priests.
L’article se propose d’aborder, a travers l’analyse du vodun Tchamba, la memoire de l’esclavage p... more L’article se propose d’aborder, a travers l’analyse du vodun Tchamba, la memoire de l’esclavage partagee par les adeptes du culte, chez les populations de langue ewe et mina des aires cotieres du Ghana sud-oriental, du Togo et du Benin.Tchamba est le lieu ou les esprits des esclaves et ceux des maitres se rencontrent. Sur l’autel, on celebre soit les ancetres impliques dans le commerce d’esclaves, soit leurs victimes, les esclaves integrees dans la famille. Les ceremonies collectives, au-dela de la sphere familiale, consacrent les esprits de tous les esclaves et de tous ceux qui sont morts loin de leurs terres. En suivant l’ambiguite ethique de la pratique du vodun, cet article presente une enquete sur les imaginaires opaques a l’interieur desquels agissent les fideles de Tchamba ; sur des lieux du sacre rememorant un passe de mort et de privation, mais aussi de passion et de desir de richesse.
Anuac, 2021
The article aims to discuss the role of the magical-religious dimension in the subjection and sex... more The article aims to discuss the role of the magical-religious dimension in the subjection and sexual exploitation of the women Nigerian migrants in Italy, and the resonance that this dimension has in public discourse. Drawing on my involvement in a court case against a woman accused of trafficking and enslavement, the article aims to provide an Africanist perspective to the discussion on Nigerian women migration. It develops on two main issues. First, I reconstruct the frame that produced what is commonly called juju; then I analyze the correlation between dependence and debt in the frame of the Atlantic and colonial history. The purpose of the article is to give a historical and political dignity to migrants and to question the juju as a device that in Italy contributes to strengthening gender discriminations, individual suffering and to produce racist discourses.
Journal of West African History, 2018
This article explores the genealogy of the gorovodu religious order, a relative newcomer in the w... more This article explores the genealogy of the gorovodu religious order, a relative newcomer in the wider vodun landscape of Togo and Benin. Gorovodu was born from the combination of many of the antiwitchcraft movements that swept across the Gold Coast between the 1910s and the 1930s. Crossing the Volta River to the east, these movements encountered a space dominated by vodun orders that were able to absorb and transform them gradually. In Togo and Benin, the northern gods lost their explicit association with witch finding and were recontextualized within the para meters of vodun practices while retaining their strong moralistic aptitude. What remained was a neat dichotomy between good and bad that was not so typical of vodun: gorovodu's moral dictates were and are clear and offered a sense of stability by the immediacy of reward or punishment. This article analyzes the initial stages in the genesis of a new vodun and the transformation within an antiwitchcraft movement with the intention of showing the peculiar interaction between motion and the colonial encounters, the agency of charismatic leaders and the influences of world religions. résumé Cet article explore la généalogie de l'ordre religieux gorovodu, ordre rela-tivement nouveau dans l'ensemble du paysage vodun du Togo et du Bénin. Goro-vodu est né de la combinaison de plusieurs mouvements opposés à la sorcellerie qui ont déferlé sur la Côte-de-l'Or entre les années 1910 et 1930. Ayant traversé la Volta à l'est, ces mouvements se sont retrouvés dans un espace dominé par des
Antropologia, 2018
Nei primi decenni del secolo scorso, in Ghana, i casi e le accuse di stregone-ria aumentarono in ... more Nei primi decenni del secolo scorso, in Ghana, i casi e le accuse di stregone-ria aumentarono in modo sensibile e divennero una questione quasi esclu-sivamente femminile. Ciò fu accompagnato dal diffondersi di alcuni culti ritenuti in grado di identificare i colpevoli e quindi curarli. Le donne adotta-rono strategie differenti nei confronti delle accuse rivolte nei loro confronti; alcune si ribellarono apertamente mentre altre fecero proprio lo sguardo esterno, dei familiari e della comunità, e confessarono, non senza drammati-che contraddizioni, di essere delle streghe e di avere compiuto delitti efferati. Attraverso l'analisi delle fonti di archivio, (trascrizioni di processi e resoconti delle indagini degli amministratori coloniali) e di alcune fonti secondarie, quali le trascrizioni delle confessione, raccolte dall'antropologa coloniale M. Field, si vuole qui discutere il significato della pratica della confessione come strumento per cercare di normalizzare i comportamenti e la sessualità fem-minili che in quegli anni apparivano sempre più eccentrici. A partire dai primi anni del secolo scorso, la Costa d'Oro, la parte meridio-nale dell'attuale Ghana, vide il rapido diffondersi di un numero crescen-te di movimenti antistregoneria. Si trattava di culti praticati nelle regioni settentrionali e che nella loro migrazione verso la Costa d'Oro erano stati riconfigurati e adattati, spesso perdendo il loro significato originario. La popolazione delle regioni costiere che li adottò riteneva fossero in grado di curare le malattie, di scoprire le mogli adultere e i ladri, di proteggere le gravidanze e soprattutto di identificare le persone che volontariamente o * [email protected] 1 Questo articolo è stato possibile grazie al contributo di MEBAO (Missione etnolo-gica in Benin e Africa Occidentale), e dell'European Research Council, ERC project 313737: Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond: A Historical Anthropology.
Gender & History, 2017
New insights into the personal agency displayed by slave women in the Gold Coast (present-day Gha... more New insights into the personal agency displayed by slave women in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) can be gleaned from a careful analysis of colonial court cases brought by them in the period immediately following the colonial government's abolition of slavery and the slave trade. 1 The first measure, the Gold Coast Slave-Dealing Abolition Ordinance of December 1874, outlawed the importation of slaves into the Gold Coast and prohibited both pawning and dealing in slaves; the second, the Gold Coast Emancipation Ordinance, abolished the legal status of slavery and empowered slaves to leave their owners at will. Before emancipation, slavery could easily blur into marriage or concubinage and slaves could be assimilated within the master's kinship. 2 Slave women could also be purchased, especially as concubines for the sons of the family or simply be sold as wives by their master or mistress in exchange for the dowry money. British administrators had great difficulty in judging the marital status of local people and in evaluating the differences between a wife and a slave. Their attempt to establish a strict definition of marriage not only created confusion but contributed to the crystallisation of traditional customs in one fixed institution. 3 Much of the colonial legislation on family and marriage was aimed at defining and reinforcing the marital bond in opposition to the lineage bond. Whereas local custom emphasised the involvement of two lineages in a social system that stressed the circulation of wealth-the bridewealth presented to the woman's family and polygyny-the European emphasis was on the conjugal bond, monogamy and the dowry. 4 In a social context in which heterosexual relations differed in terms of both the rituals performed and the exchanges between partners and kin, and where marriage was considered more a process than a state of being, there was much room for the manipulation of the institution. Colonial administrators preferred to speak of dowry instead of bridewealth, thereby stressing the exchange between two persons, not two kinships, and highlighting the economic dimension at the expenses of the ritual one. The difference between a 'bought' wife and a 'free' wife was quite unclear and men bringing or defending cases before the courts generally adopted the British point of view on marriage, claiming their rights over the wives on the basis that they had paid the dowry. The British did not adopt just one single strategy to solve these cases: a male-centred approach that viewed women as pawns to be exchanged between lineages was in general more inclined to accept the idea of the
Conserveries Memorielles Revue Transdisciplinaire De Jeunes Chercheurs, Jun 1, 2007
Antropologia, 2013
La città che esclude. Immigrazione e appropriazione dello spazio pubblico a Milano Se si pensa ch... more La città che esclude. Immigrazione e appropriazione dello spazio pubblico a Milano Se si pensa che dopotutto un battello è un frammento di spazio galleggiante, un luogo senza luogo e che è affidato al contempo all'infinità del mare e che, di porto in porto, …da una casa chiusa all'altra, si spinge fino alle colonie per cercare ciò che esse nascondono di più prezioso nei loro giardini, voi comprendete perché il battello è stato per la nostra cultura non solo il più grande strumento dello sviluppo economico, ma anche la riserva più grande dell'immaginazione. Il naviglio è l'eterotopia per eccellenza. Nelle civiltà senza battelli i sogni inaridiscono, lo spionaggio rimpiazza l'avventura, e la polizia i corsari.
African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, 2016
MONDO CONTEMPORANEO, 2013
African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, 2013
Quando diciamo tron diciamo luce, la luce con la quale si salva il mondo […] Tron è la religione ... more Quando diciamo tron diciamo luce, la luce con la quale si salva il mondo […] Tron è la religione più popolosa del mondo perché dentro il tron ci sono tutti i musulmani, tutti i cristiani, tutti possono andare dal tron e seguire la sua preghiera, senza inquietudini, perché il tron è pace e al suo interno non ci sono inquietudini.
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Papers by Alessandra Brivio