Opening book details…
Can I read Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People) on EtoBox?
Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People) by Covington-Ward, Yolanda is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.
What is Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People) about?
In Gesture and Power Yolanda Covington-Ward examines the everyday embodied practices and performances of the BisiKongo people of the Lower Congo to show how their gestures, dances, and spirituality are critical in mobilizing social and political action. Conceiving of the body as the center of analysis, a catalyst for social action, and as a conduit for the social construction of reality, Covington-Ward focuses on specific flash points in the last ninety years of Congo's troubled history, when embodied performance was used to stake political claims, foster dissent, and enforce power. In the 1920s Simon Kimbangu started a Christian prophetic movement based on spirit-induced trembling, which swept through the Lower Congo, subverting Belgian colonial authority. Following independence, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko required citizens to dance and sing nationalist songs daily as a means of maintaining political control. More recently, embodied performance has again stoked reform, as nationalist groups such as Bundu dia Kongo advocate for a return to precolonial religious practices and non-Western gestures such as traditional greetings. In exploring these embodied expressions of Congolese agen
Who reads Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People)?
It is typically read by self-directed learners exploring a subject in depth.
Common subject areas: history, science, philosophy, social sciences.
- Author
- Covington-Ward, Yolanda
- Publisher
- Duke University Press Books
- Published
- 2018
- Language
- EN
- ISBN
- 9780822360360
- Category
- nonfiction
- Subjects
- Religion, Anthropology, Folklore
- Updated
- 2026-03-24
Other editions & translations
More by Covington-Ward, Yolanda
Browse all works by Covington-Ward, Yolanda
Similar books
- Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People) — Yolanda Covington-Ward, Jeanette Selma Jouili (2021)
- Cachita's Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People) — Blessed Virgin Saint Mary; Blessed Virgin Saint. Mary; Schmidt, Jalane D (2015)
- Hope Draped In Black: Race, Melancholy, And The Agony Of Progress (religious Cultures Of African And African Diaspora People) — Joseph R. Winters (2016)
- Religion And The Making Of Nigeria (religious Cultures Of African And African Diaspora People) — Olufemi Vaughan (2016)
- Realist Ecstasy: Religion, Race, and Performance in American Literature (Performance and American Cultures, 2) — Lindsay Vail Reckson, 1982- (2020)
- Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes (Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People) — Hansjörg Dilger, Astrid Bochow, Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Marian Burchardt (2019)