news
on the Shikanda portal : Wim van Binsbergen's recent
publications and work in progress
1. Intro
This series (established
February 2002; on this page only current topicalities from the
year 2008- are included; click here for the years 2002 and 2003; and here for the years 2004-2005; and here for the years 2006-2007; and here for the years 2008-2009; and here for the years 2010-2011; and here for the years 2015-... ) is to
alert the visitor of new additions and changes in the Shikanda
portal, and to report on recent and forthcoming developments in
Wim van Binsbergen's professional activities in the fields of
African Studies, Intercultural Philosophy, Long-Range Cultural
Analysis, and Poetry. Hyperlinks give access to the texts in
question, and photographs accompany the entries. The information
appears in tabulated form. The closer to the top of this page,
the more recent an event is. Some events have a page of their
own, accessible via a hyperlink; others are merely summarised
below, and may then have a simple illustration to mark them.
2. Other sites in the Shakanda portal
if you are through
with the topical information below, proceed to
the Shikanda portal in order to access all other
websites by Wim van Binsbergen: general (intercultural
philosophy, African Studies);
ethnicity-identity-politics; Afrocentricity and the Black
Athena debate; Ancient Models of Thought in Africa, the
Ancient Near East, and prehistory; sangoma consultation;
literary work
3. Internal Search Facility for the
entire Shikanda portal
This search facility provides a complete
electronic index of the present website on ethnicity, and of all
of Wim van Binsbergen's other websites in the present domain, and
moreover enables you to search the entire Internet quickly and
effectively; simply enter the word(s) you require into the blank
search box, and press 'Search'
4. Shikanda Forum and Message
Board
This service has been discontinued
5. Topicalities: Wim van
Binsbergen's recent publications and work in progress
NB: the default language
in this webpage is English; however, the site owner lives and
works in the Netherlands, and writes poetry in Dutch; entries
reflecting an entirely national Dutch context will be in Dutch,
and will be marked by an orange
background; major entries will be separated by a light green
beam: ;
abstracts and blurbs appear against a light blue background.
this page has recently
been revamped so as to reduce its former, excessive memory
volume, and to make it more suitable for small- and medium-screen
computers
date
topic, links
2015 begins above this line
December 2014
you
can now order this particular book with the
printer's and have it sent to your postal
address, by clicking the link below:
you may be asked to first open a free account
; distribution through Amazon.com is also being
arranged
This 25th annual volume of Quest,
one of the leading African journals for
philosophy, brings together the edited
texts of a frank and incisive debate
between the prominent Kenyan / USA
philosopher Dismas A. Masolo, and his
South African academic critics, as
conducted in Johannesburg, South Africa,
2012; the central issue is Masolo's
communitarianism and its ethical
consequences
Now published
Although already at the
end of 2013, the 25th annual volume of Quest:
An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue
Africaine de Philosophie, was duly announced
and uploaded onto the QUEST website, technical
difficulties so far prevented the actual
publication of this volume in book form. This has
now been remedied, and the book has been
published as a separate book volume with global
distribution, under ISBN: 978-90-78382-23-2
Fieldwork on pre- and protohistoric
Sunda / South East Asian influences on the
Western Grassfields, Cameroon, during three weeks
in October / November 2014
During the last few years, much of Wim van
Binsbergen's historical research has concentrated
on the Africa's transcontinental continuities in
pre- and protohistory, as is testified by many
recent entries in the Topicalities
account of his current research and publications.
An important source of inspiration in this
respect has been the situation in the Cameroonian
Western Grassfields, whose material culture,
kingship, burial customs, and epidemiology
(incidence of thalassaemia blood
condition which renders immune to malaria) in
many ways would appear to hint at such Sunda
influence. An
earlier three-day exploration was conducted in
2006 and was provisionally reported on. In
the light of much converging evidence accumulated
since that first attempt, a somewhat longer
period will be devoted to exploratory fieldwork
now. In this connection also existing scholarly
ties will be utilised, and strengthened, with the
Université Protestante de l'Afrique Centrale,
the Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale,
the Université Yaounde I, and the University of
Buea. This trip will be supported in part by the
African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands,
with which Wim van Binsbergen has continued to be
affliated after his retirement (2012).
FOR MEDICAL REASONS THIS TRIP HAS BEEN
POSTPONED TILL APRIL 2015
Bandjoun: royal
establishment, still being reconstructed (2006)
after the fire of a few years previously
PAPER ON
HEADHUNTING
The documentation of regional,
eventually global, distribution of significant
cultural traits, and the methodology by which
from such distributions we may proceed to
historical reconstruction, has been a major
aspect of Wim van Binsbergen's research over the
years. While working on the book projects listed
below for 2014, these topics have been explored
in specific regard to the apparently antiquarian
and suspect ancient anthropological hobbyhorse
'head-hunting'. This led to a comprehensive
paper, that will u.timately be incorporated in
one of these books:
the cosmogonic (and Flood) gods Fu Xi and Nu Wa
on a Chinese wall ornament
POWERPOINT
PRESENTATION ON GLOBAL LONG-RANGE HISTORY OF MYTH
In
the context of a series of public lectures on
myth, Albertinum Society, Nijmegen, the
Netherlands, 7th April 2011, Wim van Binsbergen
gave a seminar on 'Myths we (still) live by'. The
accompanying PowerPoint presentation was never
made public (it overlapped with earlier papers
e.g. at Kyoto 2006 and Beijing 2006) yet it
appears to contain a few points of lasting
interest and value. It is therefore presented
here in slightly updated form, and exclusively in
English:
the Sanskitist Michael Witzel, doyen of
comparative mythology today (Tokyo 2009)
In this
period, Wim van Binsbergen´s publishing
activities (for years already accommodated with
Shikanda Press) have been rationalised and
integrated. Distribution is now much improved by
enlisting the services of the Lulu distributor.
Hyperlinks were provided so as to issue each of
Shikanda's books (and in future also Quest
volumes) with a product page of its own; the
interested visitor opens a buyer's account,
specifies number of copies, address, mode of
dispatch, and payment details, and the books will
arrive within a few days. For details, see the
webpages for Shikanda
Press, Shikanda
Press literair / literary, and the Shikanda
portal's literary page.
In deze periode werden de
uitgeversactiviteiten van Wim van Binsbergen (al
jaren ondergebracht in Uitgeverij Shikanda Press)
gestroomlijnd en aan de eisen des tijds
aangepast. Distributie van de boeken is nu sterk
verbeterd door deze onder te brengen bij de
distributeur Lulu. Wim van Binsbergens
webpagina's zijn nu voorzien van hyperlinks, die
voor elk boek leiden naar een specifieke
productpagiona, waar het boek besteld kan worden
door aanmaken van een aankoopaccount, invoeren
van aantal, adres, verzendwijze en
betalingsdetails -- waarna het boek met een paar
dagen wordt bezorgd. Voor details, zie de
webpagina's voor Shikanda
Press, Shikanda
Press literair / literary, en de literaire sectie van
het Shikanda portal.
FLAPTEKST: ‘Het weinig beoefende
genre ‘beeldgedichten’ biedt
van Binsbergen een manier om een tanende
inspiratie te verbloemen en een onleuk
woordenspel los te laten op afbeeldingen
die daar niets mee uitstaande hebben.
Lang na een eerste kennismaking met het
laat-middeleeuwse concept van de
dodendans (op de grens van ’s
dichters volwassenheid), ontdekt hij dat
Holbein Jr aan dat concept
onvergankelijke vorm heeft gegeven –
des te meer aansprekend nu, 50 jaar
later, de dichter zelf met één been in
het graf staat. Dit verhindert niet dat
zijn blik afdwaalt –zodat een
middeleeuwse bruid een digitale tablet
blijken te torsen als de dood haar als
zijn date meevoert; de aankomst –
vanuit West-Afrika – van de eerste
xylofoon op Westeuropese bodem
gesignaleerd wordt; en hedendaagse
politieke ontwikkelingen door Holbein
treffend becommentarieerd blijken.
Inmiddels lijkt het afficheren van de
eigen, overschatte wetenschappelijke
productie het echte doel van dit
boekje...’ Deze uitgave bevat ook
Holbeins houtsneden.
July - September 2014
TWO SHORT MOVIES SUMMER
2014
Besides the temple movies, our vacation in the
Czech Republic, 2014, also resulted in the
following two movies, one with a specialist
Africanist content, the other celebrating the
landscape at the Bohemian / Bavarian border:
No
Title
Description
Remarks
/ URL
7
The 19th-c.
Africa-explorer Emil Holub in Karlovy
Vary/ Karlsbad (CzechRepublic) today
Smichovsky
Pavilon is a restaurant in Karlovy Vary/
Karlsbad, the CzechRepublic’s main
spa. A hall of the restaurant is devoted
to the 19th-c. Czech
Africa-explorer DrEmil Holub and adorned
with Holub mementoes. Against the
author’s specialist Africanist and
regional expertise, the video reviews his
archievements, and critically situates
him in his own time and in modern trans
continental research.
(in this website,
the colour orange indicates text in the
Dutch language)
Het grensgebied
tussen Tsjechië en Duitsland was in het
midden van de 20e eeuw het
toneel van het Ijzeren Gordijn, en de
natuur is daardoor zeldzaam ongerept
gebleven. Een eeuw eerder kende het
gebied glasindustrie in de bossen, waar
hout en water in overvloed beschikbaar
waren. De wandeling voert door de streek
tussen Tachov en Bärnau, en trekt af en
toe lijnen door naar andere streken en
tijden
In the context of Wim van
Binsbergen's explorations into Africa's
transcontinental continuities in pre- and
protohistory, South Asia / India, with Hinduism
as one of its main religious and cultural
expressions has come to occupy an increasingly
important place. Complementing his undergraduate
and graduate studies on this region before he
effectively turned to African Studies, incidental
exposure to India and Hinduism in India, Bali
(Indonesia) and Sri Lanka (Tamils), obtained more
of a focus in 2012, when he and his wife made a
tour of the major temples of Tamil Nadu, South
India, and when he joined his wife in her already
well established study of Indian classic music (dhrupad).
On the basis of the 2012 tour, several short
videos were conceived, whose finalisation and
circulation was however thwarted by serious
illness in 2012. These movies have now become
available. Click on the following links for pages
giving access
This summer, as earlier this year, Wim van
Binsbergen continued work on three of his current
book projects:
Sangoma Science -- an exercise
in transcultural ontology, starting out
as an assessment of the epistemological
status of the knowledge of African
diviner-healers, in the light of his
personal fieldwork and decades of
practising experience, as well as
international studies of sangomas and
other dviner-healers in Southern and
South Central Africa, and
state-of-the-art views of the structure
of reality and of the universe in the
light of current, advanced physics
Our Drums Are Always On My Mind --
bringing together a large number of Wim
van Binsbergen's historical and
anthropological studies of the Nkoya of
Zambia, in an attempt to produce a
coherent, complete and more or less
up-to-date account especially for the
benefit of the Nkoya people themselves
Rethinking Africa's transcontinental
continuities in pre- and protohistory
-- the proceedings of the 2012 Leiden
conference on the occasion of Wim van
Binsbergen's retirement, with
substantially rewritten and updated
papers, and with much new material added
from the fields of archaeology and
genetics
June 2014
een Engelse versie van deze
studie zal worden opgenomen in Wim van
Binsbergens boek ter perse: Our drums are
always on my mind: Nkoya culture, society and
history (Zambia)
bestel bij distributeur
'Lulu' door op deze knop te drukken:
uit het voorwoord: ‘Over het
Nkoya-volk van Westelijk Zambia heb ik in
42 jaar veel gepubliceerd maar in
hoofdzaak in het Engels, naast enige
gedichten en verhalen in het Nederlands.
Steeds meer is in de wetenschapsproductie
in Nederland de aandacht komen te liggen
op het verwerven van internationale
trofeeën die tot institutioneel succes
moeten leiden. Ik heb mij daarin niet
onbetuigd gelaten. Niettemin is het
bemiddelen van kennis over de ene cultuur
naar de andere een centrale doelstelling
van de antropologie. Het ligt voor de
hand dat de onderzoeker zijn verworven
kennis ook naar de eigen cultuur wil
bemiddelen. Vandaar dat ik deze korte
Nederlandstalige etnografie hier het
licht doe zien, maar eens afwijkend van
een conventie die mij in het buitenland
een groter publiek en weerklank heeft
opgeleverd dan in eigen land.’
In 2013 publiceerde
Otterspeer De Mislukkings- kunstenaar,
eerste deel van zijn biografie van W.F.
Hermans. Dichter en wetenschapper Wim van
Binsbergen betoogt in dit pamflet (vol al
te persoonlijke kanttekeningen, en met
een schokkende titel ontleend aan Hermans
zelf) waarom Otterspeers boek hem
teleurstelt. Doel is nader te komen tot
wat Hermans bewoog, en meer in het
algemeen tot het wezen van het
schrijverschap als centrale institutie
van de wereldcultuur.
Wim van Binsbergens
titel is ontleend aan een schokkend
racistische passage in een uiting van
Willem Frederik Hermans vanuit Canada,
1948. Niettemin is deze bespreking
gebaseerd op levenslange bewondering en
navenante kennis van het werk van
Hermans.
bestel bij distributeur 'Lulu'
door op deze knop te drukken:
SAMENVATTING. Na in de
inleiding (1) te hebben aangegeven dat
het boek van Otterspeer een grote
teleurstelling is, beschrijft Wim van
Binsbergen (2) zijn levenslange relatie
met het oeuvre van Hermans, en licht hij
toe hoe deze relatie tot stand kwam
– waarbij een grote rol wordt
toebedeeld aan uitgever Geert Van
Oorschot, diens erepromotor de Amsterdams
/ Tilburgse literatuurwetenschapper Hugo
Verdaasdonk, en de vader van deze
laatste. Sectie (3) geeft technische
tekortkomingen aan in de presentatie,
integratie en (middels een register van
eigennamen) ontsluiting van Otterspeers
boek. Geboren en opgegroeid in dezelfde
buurt als Hermans (Amsterdam-Oud-West)
bespreekt Van Binsbergen de specifieke
details van deze buurt en van de
aanpalende Jordaan, en laat zien hoe deze
van beslissende betekenis zijn geweest
voor levensloop en werk van Hermans (4).
De volgende sectie (5) laat zien hoe het
de historicus Otterspeer op belangrijke
punten aan visie, methode en kennis
ontbreekt. Niettemin bevat zijn
omvangrijke boek natuurlijk veel
waardevols; het maakt het bijvoorbeeld
mogelijk om Hermans’ relatie tot de
culturele antropologie nader te bepalen
(6). Het schiet niettemin tekort in de
analyse van Hermans’ relatie tot de
natuurwetenschap (7); van de nauwe
verwevenheid van dit thema met zijn
broer-zijn van de overleden zuster Corrie
(7); van de schijnbare
tegenstelling in Hermans’ leven
tussen wetenschap en schrijverschap
(beide blijken vormen van hartstochtelijk
en levensnoodzakelijk onderzoek
– 7); en van zijn relatie tot de
filosofie (8). Rond de figuren van
Hermans echtgenote Emmy Meurs en dier
neef en zwager Rudie van Lier wordt iets
van de Surinaamse dimensie van
Hermans’ leven besproken (9). Tegen
de achtergrond van het (ook door
Hermans’zelf aangegeven) thema van
de antipathieke romanfiguur – zoals
hij er zelf een was – belicht sectie
(10) twee grote blinde vlekken in
Otterspeers biografie: de genese van
Hermans’ schrijverschap, en diens
afscheid van de poëzie – en biedt
zij een voorstel tot invulling op deze
punten: niet zozeer door Otterspeers
psychoanalytische- biografie- met- de-
natte- vinger te verbeteren (hoewel
daartoe enig basiswerk wordt
gepresenteerd), maar vooral tegen de
achtergrond van een longue- durée-benadering
van taal en schrijven vanaf de vroegste
prehistorie (10). Aldus een kader
ontwerpend waarin wij ten aanzien van
Hermans’ schrijverschap de
biografische anecdotiek achter ons kunnen
laten, volgt de conclusie (11) dat de
feitjes bijeengebracht door Otterspeer,
helaas niet tot een methodologisch en
theoretisch overtuigende visie op Hermans
schrijverschap hebben geleid.
Emaille plaquette op het adres
1e
Helmersstraat 208, Amsterdam, waar
Willem Fredereik Hermans woonde
van 1928 tot 1945
In this essay the prominent Nigerian
scholar Sanya Osha examines the work of
Africanist Wim van Binsbergen and its
effects on African studies. His work is
important for highlighting productive
fields of research. Any serious
discussion is to lead to other conditions
of possibility, parricidal ones included.
Furthermore, van Binsbergen by his close
reading of V.Y. Mudimbe reveals
interesting potentialities for African
studies. Our reading of Mudimbe
demonstrates how flows, continuities and
ruptures are employed as productive
forces for the benefity of the
deterritorialised and alienated African
consciousness. The argument (1) restates
the formidable dimensions of
Mudimbe’s project and (2)
demonstrates how van Binsbergen’s
reading of it casts the latter’s
project as a possible alternative and
reveals the ultimate limits of the
former’s oeuvre. Thus travellers
through both metropolitan and peripheral
cultures describe various destinies that
connect with or cross out each other
Sanya Osha in 2013
May 2014
Satterthwaite Colloquium on African Religion,
Lake District, England, May 2014; central theme:
The Moral Imagination
Proposed paper Wim van Binsbergen:
'Leopard-skin symbolism as an evocation of the
Moral Imagination in sub-Saharan Africa and
beyond'
Abstract: An essential
theme of the cultural life world in South
Central Africa has emanated from the
works of Victor Turner, and subsequently
those of René Devisch and his Louvain
School: the articulation of the meaning
of symbolism is indirect, incomplete,
inchoate, contradictory, and often such
verbalisations as make up our
ethnographic accounts need to be based on
painstaking but creative and imaginary
reconstructions, reflecting the
ethnographer’s introspective
juggling with implied connections and
extrapolations of the concrete field
data. This suggests, inter alia, that
‘the moral imagination’ in the
South Central and Southern African
setting may not be directly available for
our ethnographic scrutiny, but may need
to be painstakingly reconstructed with
high degree of uncertainty and
subjectivism, and transcultural
imposition.
If we wish to enhance the authority of
our ethnographic and analytical
pronouncements in such a situation, one
of our possible solutions consists in
embedding the local data in a long-range
network of linguistically, materially and
symbolically (apparently) similar
materials in such a way that even in the
absence of very explicit local clues, the
local is being more or less convincingly
illuminated by this wider context. Such
an approach is, of course, preempted on
the assumption of the plausibility of
long-range connections in space and time.
Since 1990 I have engaged in this kind of
research in relation to ecstatic cults,
divination and leopard-skin symbolism, on
the initial basis of Southern African
ethnographic data, but gradually
amplified to the regional, continental
and even global level. My other more or
less recent projects (for instance on the
global comparative mythological context
of Nkoya mythology from South Central
Africa; on the worldwide antecedents and
ramifications of the Nkoya clan system
implied to revolve on cyclical element
transformations; and on the comparative
religion, mythology and ethnicity in the
Mediterranean Bronze Age) have created a
context in which the above plausibility
has become more and more inescapable,
even though counter-paradigmatic. In the
proposed paper, I will reiterate my
analyses of leopard-skin symbolism, in a
bid to substantiate the above general
analytical claims.
The present argument is part of my work
in progress on the final publication of
my analysis of leopard-skin symbolism
over the decades. A much earlier overview
is available from the sub-site of this
portal: 'Ancient Models of Thought'. That
version, while in need of updating and
refinement on many points, can still
serve as a useful background for this
paper in the context of the Moral
Imagination
Participation
in this Colloquium is supported by the
African Studies Centre, Leiden, the
Netherlands, with which Wim van
Binsbergen has continued to be affliated
after his retirement (2012).
UNFORTUNATELY, THIS CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION
HAD TO BE CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS
March-April 2014
KRITISCH ESSAY OVER W.F.HERMANS
Juist op tijd voor de
Nederlandse Boekenweek, werd eerst in Cabo Verde
en later te Haarlem, Wim van Binsbergens pamflet
tegen het eerste deel van Otterspeers W.F.
Hermansbibliografie geschreven, om een paar
maanden later gepubliceerd te worden (zie boven,
juni 2014)
VISIT TO THE
ISLE OF SAL, CABO VERDE
In February / March 2014 Wim and Patricia van
Binsbergen spend an inspiring vacation in Santa
Maria on the Ilha do Sal, Cabo Verde (click here for a selection of
photographs). Thirty-one years ago (1983),
one of the first test of their relationship was
joint fieldwork in Guiné-Bissau, she among the
Mandingos on bards, he among the Manjacos on
traditional psychiatry. Medical problems and
especially a nation-wide famine made this a real
test, from which they emerged ready for marriage,
and with considerable command of the Kriulu
creolised language, which was to become their
secret language before the children with which
the marriage was soon to be blessed. At the time,
less than a decade had passed since
Guiné-Bissau's armed liberation struggle (ended
1974) from four centuries of Portuguese
domination, and the spirit of the Capverdian
Amilcar Cabral and of the PAIGC / PAICV party was
still a major influence. The experience had
kindled an interest, not only in Portugal (which,
through perpectival distortion, in the Bissau
consciousness loomed large as the world's major
metropole...) but also in Cabo Verde. WEhich we
finally visited in 2014. As compared with the
lush, well-watered Manjaco lands with their giant
fromagier trees and irrigated rice
fields, Sal proved (as expected) a dull, flat
desert, but its sea and sun were great, the
remnants of our Kriulu understood and
appreciated, the few sights of the island
unforgettable, and the low-profile youth
celebrations of carnival, articulated by
deafening drumming, heart-warming.
January-February 2014
on 18 February 2014, Pascal
Touoyem, Cameroonian publicist and political
activist, for many years a lecturer of philosophy
at the Université Yaounde I, Yaounde, Cameroon,
and now teaching at the Université Catholique de
l'Afrique Centrale, Yaounde, Cameroon, defended
his PhD thesis entitled ,
Dynamiques de l 'ethnicité en Afrique:
Eléments pour une théorie de lÉtat
multinational, Bamenda / Leiden: Langaa /
ASC [ Centre d'Etudes Africaines ]
before Tilburg University, the Netherlands;
supervisors: Wim van Binsbergen and Walter van
Beek.
Wim van Binsbergen,
ter perse [ 2014 ] , Verspreide gedichten
1962-2014, Haarlem: Shikanda
VERSPREIDE GEDICHTEN
1962-2014
Wim van Binsbergen begon te dichten in
1961, en publiceerde verpreid, tot in
1977 zijn debuutbundel Leeftocht uitkwam bij In de Knipscheer.
Na twee verdere titels in 1978 en 1986
richtte hij zich vooral op proza, op zijn
wetenschappelijke publicaties, en zijn
verkenningen van Afrikaanse
spiritualiteit. Vanaf 2002 echter verbrak
hij de lange stilte in zijn poëtisch
werk met een reeks bundels waarvan de
laatste in 2012 verscheen onder de titel Dendrogram: Olijfbomen
beeldgedichten. In 2004 werd werk van zijn
hand opgenomen in Gerrit Komrij’s
gezaghebbende bloemlezing der Nederlandse
poëzie. In 2013 verscheen de bundel Overspel:
Gedichten voor Martha 1979-1982,
waarop echter voorlopig een totaal
embargo rust vanwege de schokkende
inhoud. Veel van het dichtwerk over de
jaren bleef ongepubliceerd en vindt in Verspreide
Gedichten een onderkomen. Daarnaast
zijn de bundels Eurydice,Braambos en Vloed hier integraal opgenomen. Zoals
de andere bundels, bevat ook deze vele
aantekeningen, die hun eigen net van
betekenissen weven. Het resultaat is een
veelzijdige collectie die het
weerbarstige verloop toont van een
dichterschap in de marge van de
wetenschap.
Now in
the press:
van
Binsbergen, Wim M.J., in press [ to appear 2014 ]
, Sangoma Science: From ethnography to
intercultural ontology: Towards a poetics of the
globalising exploration into local spiritualities,
Haarlem: Shikanda, Papers in Intercultural
Philosophy and Transcontinental Comparative
Studies – No. 14
The exploration of
ecstatic religion, in North, South
Central and Southern Africa, and the
attending historical and transcontinental
ramifications, has been a constant in Wim
van Binsbergen’s work over more then
four decades. He has graduated from
detached researcher to initiated and
certified local practitioner, from
empirical scientist to intercultural
philosopher, and from Africanist to
globalist. In the process, he came to
suspect that the various forms of
ecstatic religion with which he had
acquainted himself, constitute knowledge
systems endowed with relevance, validity,
and truthfulness in their own right, not
inferior to the North Atlantic academic
knowledge system privileged by modern
science and its globalisation. However,
although repeatedly making such claims,
so far he has shunned from making the
obvious next step: articulating how from
these heterogeneous and apparently
contradictory approaches to the human
life world, a pluralistic intercultural
ontology might be constructed. This book
is an attempt in that direction. Building
on the approaches to ecstasy and
veridical divination in his book Intercultural Encounters(2003, esp. Chs
5–8), the present book is organised
in several parts. Part I introduces the
problem, sketching the author’s
particular handicap as an empirical
student of culture. Part II reiterates
the author’s 2003 position. Part III
dwells on the methodology of research
into ecstatic religion through
participant observation, with detailed
reference to two recent Southern African
studies. Part IV takes up Edith
Turner’s claims, over the recent
decades, as to ‘the reality of
spirits’, against a background of
transcontinental ramifications and
methodological objections. Part V looks
at Sandra Harding’s inspiring
attempt at intercultural epistemology.
Part VI explores (with special reference
to Cremo & Thompson’s heretic
argument on Forbidden Archaeology,
1993) in how far perspectives from
outside the North Atlantic scientific
domain, notably the South Asian concept
of kalpa (‘aeon’) as an
alternative to evolution, might go
towards such an ontology. Part VII offers
the choice between a poetics of an
evasive and oscillating intercultural
ontology, and the sobering but
potentially hegemonic insistence on
ontological stability.
Over the past fifty years, Wim
van Binsbergen's literary work has been
overwhelmed by his scholarly work as an
anthropologist, historian and
philosopher. This cannot be undone, and
considering his proven aptitude at
scholarly work may all have been for the
best. Moreover, he has increasingly
approached his scientific work with an
artistic flair, engaging in ecstatic
dancing, soothsaying and healing as a
fully qualified African wizard;
broadcasting views (such as the
potentially veridical nature of telepathy
and divination; or the qualified
soundness of Afrocentricity) that have
been extremely impopular in North
Atlantic institutionalised knowledge
production; proclaiming the fusion
between academic mythologist and myth;
and engaging with ancient myths as if
they, of all texts, would contain the
secrets of the remote past. Even so,
after two years of retirement it is time
to retrieve more of his earlier, literary
orientation, and to stop sacrificing so
lavishly to an academic career that has
already had its full course. Work is now
in progress on an edition of Wim van
Binsbergen Verspreide Gedichten
('Scattered Poems' -- to return to the
scatter-centred leopard-skin symbolism
that has informed much of his scholarly
work over the last decade). In addition, a new bilingual
section Essays has been opened
in this website,
to accommodate old and new texts that
belong to a no man's land beyond
academia. Here, also his literary studies
of the work of Vladimir Nabokov and Hugo
Claus will soon be accommodated -- while
we also anticipate his sketches of an
intercultural ontology that is hoped to
provide a more systematic foundation for
his controversial views of knowledge
production. A first instalment is a
retrieved essay (in Dutch) on the Dutch
poet Gerrit Achterberg in his relation to
music.
given the nature of
this new page, also obituaries produced
by Wim van Binsbergen in the last few
years will receive hyperlinks from this
page [ still to be implemented ]
meanwhile dozens of longer and shorter
essays have been added, and the series is
still being continued
Gerrit
Achterberg ca. 1955
Nieuwe
sectie van de Shikanda website: Essays
Over de laatste halve eeuw is
het literaire werk van Wim van Binsbergen
o verstemd door zijn wetenschappelijke
werk als antropoloog, historicus en
filosoof. Dat kan niet meer verholpen
worden, en is gezien zijn kennelijke
geschiktheid voor wetenschappelijk werk
maar goed geweest ook. Bovendien, in de
loop der jaren is hij zijn academisch
werk steeds meer met een artistieke
inslag gaan benaderen, waarbij hij zich
overgaf aan ecstatische dans, waarzeggen
en genezing als volledig bevoegde
Afrikaanse tovenaar; gezichtspunten
ventileerde (zoals de potentieel
waarheidsgehalte van telepathie en
waarzeggerij; of de betrekkelijke
juistheid van het Afrocentrisme) die
uiterst onpopulair zijn in de
geinstitutionaliseerde kennisproductie
van het Noordatlantische gebied; de
versmelting benadrukte van academische
mytholoog met de door deze bestudeerde
mythen; en zich overgaf aan oude mythen
alsof uitgerekend dat soort teksten de
sleutel tot het verre verleden zouden
bevatten. Niettemin, na twee jaar na het
bereiken van de pensioengerechtigde
leeftijd wordt het tijd om meer van zijn
eerdere literaire betrokkenheid terug te
halen, en niet langer zo overvloedig te
offeren aan een wetenschappelijke
carrière die reeds zijn loop gehad
heeft. Er wordt thans gewerkt aan een
uitgave van Wim van Binsbergens Verspreide
Gedichten -- waarin toch ook weer
het op 'verspreiden, spatten' gerichte
luipaardvel-motief tot uitdrukking komt
dat in veel van zijn wetenschappelijk
werk van de laatste decade een rol heeft
gespeeld. Bovendien wordt aan deze website
een nieuwe tweetalige afdeling toegevoegd
genaamd Essays, om nieuwe en oude teksten
onder te brengen die tot een niemandsland
behoren buiten het academische bedrijf.
Hier zullen spoedig ook zijn literaire
studies van het werk van Vladimir Nabokov
and Hugo Claus worden ondergebracht,
alsmede zijn schetsen van een
interculturele ontologie die een meer
systematische uitdrukking wil zijn van
zijn controversiele opvattingen van
kennisproductie. Een eerste aflevering betreft
een hervonden Nederlandstalig essay over
de Nederlandse dichter Gerrit Achterberg
in diens relatie tot muziek.
Inmiddels zijn
tientallen langere en kortere essays
toegevoegd, en de reeks wordt voortgezet
Now published
(15-12-2013)
the 25th annual volume of Quest: An African
Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de
Philosophie, is a special issue devoted to
the work of the Ugandan / American philosopher
Dismas Masolo:
EDITORIAL
Determined to bring Quest: An African
Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine
de Philosophie, up to date again, this is
the third annual volume we publish within
half a year. Two more are lined up for
imminent publication, which should put
the record straight once more. The
present volume marks Quest’s 25th
anniversary, and we wish to thank all
authors, readers, members of the
Editorial Board and the advisory
Editorial Board, subscribers (their
patience and trust have been severely
taxed in recent years), and readers, for
helping us attain this milestone. We are
particularly indebted to the two founding
editors, Roni M. Khul Bwalya (†) and
Pieter Boele van Hensbroek, who launched
this journal as a daring undertaking from
the Department of Philosophy, University
of Zambia. We are also immensely grateful
for the institutional support which Quest
has received over the years, initially
from the University of Zambia and from
Groningen University, and in the last
decade from the African Studies Centre,
Leiden, the Netherlands. For the present
annual volume 25 (2011), we have been
fortunate to draw on the intellectual
efforts of a guest editor, Professor
Thaddeus Metz, Professor (Research Focus)
and Head, Philosophy Department,
University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
This special issue Engaging with the
Philosophy of Dismas A. Masolo reflects
an important and critical exchange
between one of the leading figures in
African philosophy, and a group of
prominent South African philosophers
clustering on the Johannesburg
Department. The debate has been heated,
and initially the positions were so far
apart that constructive dialogue took
long to materialise; also due to a series
of serious medical problems – the
collection for a long time risked to be
left without Professor Masolo’s
incisive and illuminating ‘Reply to
my critics’. However, when that text
was yet written under very trying
circumstances, the road was clear for
another one of the memorable discussions
for which Quest has been famous over the
years. We thank all contributors, and
particulars Professors Masolo and Metz,
for their hard work towards this special
issue.
Wim van Binsbergen, Editor
Now published
(15-12-2013)
Osha, Sanya, 2013, Parricide
and a hardened forester: Wim van Binsbergen,
Valentin Mudimbe and African Knowledge
Systems, Papers In Intercultural
Philosophy and Transcontinental Comparative
Studies, Haarlem: Shikanda, 40 pp.
SANYA OSHA is one of
Nigeria’s prominent authors and philosophers
and a research fellow at the Institute for
Economic Research on Innovation (IERI), Tshwane
University of Technology, South Africa. Since
2002, he has been on the Editorial Board of
Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue
Africaine de Philosophie. His books include,
Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and
Thought in Africa (2005), Ken Saro-Wiwa’s
Shadow: Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni
Protest Movement (2007) and Postethnophilosophy
(2011). Other major publications include, Truth
in Politics (2004), co-edited with J. P Salazar
and W. van Binsbergen, and African Feminisms
(2006) as editor.
PARRICIDE
AND A HARDENED FORRESTER Employing the
concept of parricide, this essay examines
some of the works of the Dutch Africanist
scholar, Wim van Binsbergen and the
effects they produce in the field of
African studies. Van Binsbergen’s
work is important in the field for many
reasons and the choice of his work is
informed by the productive fields it
further highlights. Thus any serious
discussion of his work is bound to lead
to other conditions of possibility,
parricidal ones included. Furthermore,
van Binsbergen by his close reading of
V.Y. Mudimbe reveals interesting
potential formations for the field of
African studies. This essay is a reading
of van Binsbergen’s work and also a
reading of Mudimbe, in order to
demonstrate how flows, continuities and
ruptures are employed as productive
forces, and how the deterritorialised and
alienated African consciousness can
profit from these disjunctive flows,
continuities and ruptures. The argument
casts into bolder relief the original
ideas of Mudimbe and the paths through
which van Binsbergen has granted us a
rediscovery of them. This conceptual
nexus seeks to do two things – first
to restate the formidable dimensions of
Mudimbe’s project and second, to
demonstrate how van Binsbergen’s
reading of it not only casts the
latter’s project as a possible
alternative but also reveals the ultimate
limits of the former’s oeuvre. In so
doing, we shall see how travellers
through both metropolitan and peripheral
cultures describe various destinies that
sometimes connect with or sometimes cross
out each other.
October-November 2013
short trip to Malaga, Spain, to view the
medieval Islamic forts and palaces that tower
above the modern city; click for more pictures
heart of Sofia, Bulgaria:
underground station, mall, medieval underground
Orthodox Christian church, and Ottoman Muslim
mosque
presidential palace and former Communist Party
HQs, central Sofia, Bulgaria
Participation in
the International Conference for the Comparative
Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria, October 2013
(organised by the Bulgarian Comparative Education
Society), where the following paper was
presented:
Note. When considering the
final details of the Sofia 2013 conference
programme as circulated sholrtly before the
conference, it became clear to me that my draft
paper was addressing specialist issues meant for
a rather different audience – composed of
historians, archaeologists, comparative
linguists, comparative mythologists, and
methodologists, the kinds of specialists I have
been rubbing shoulders with at conferences for
the past decade. However, the participants of the
Sofia conference turned out to be mainly drawn
from educational sciences and legal studies
– engaging in rather different though
equally legitimate forms of comparative work, and
facing different methodological and theoretical
challenges. I spent the day prior to the
conference to entirely overhaul my original key
note address so as to make it more relevant to
the Sofia audience. At such short notice, this
could not immediately lead to a fully-fledged and
balanced paper. What I present in the text below
is rather a set of notes around which I
improvised my address at the conference:
Participation in this
conference at Sofia was preceded by a round trip
of Bulgaria in order to view the country's
extremely rich museum collections of Neolithic
artefacts -- the most tangible and relatively
nearby manifestations of the Pelasgian cultural
complex that plays an increasingly important role
in Wim van Binsbergen's recent approaches to
transcontinental continuities in African pre- and
protohistory. Thus the unique opportunity was
used of actually viewing many of the famous
Neolithic artefacts that have dominated the
literature on the European Neolithic and
especially the works of the influential feminist
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. Click
here for a pictorial record.
on a street corner in the
heart of downtown Sofia, capital of Bulgaria,
October 2013, two blind street musicans perform
on harmonica and guitar, while traffic and
pedestrians flow around them
Hidden in
massively forested mountains 120 km South of
Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria), the Rila
monastery is the most impressive site of
religious and cultural identity of Orthodox
Christian Bulgarians. Built a thousand years ago,
it was splendidly redecorated in the mid-19th
century. The camera sweeps around the extensive
outside portico of the central church, which is
adorned with numerous frescoes of a pious and
biblical nature, including captivating images of
heaven and hell
September 2013
Wim van
Binsbergen collated 12 of his texts on the Nkoya
people of Zambia to constitute chapters of his
new book now in preparation,
'Our drums are always
on my mind': Nkoya culture and history, Zambia.
The editing of this massive volume (over
700 pp.) with many dozens of illustrations is in
full swing and will keep the author occupied till
early 2014, when the book is scheduled to appear.
The provisional blurb text:
Photo: the two researchers as
courtiers in a Nkoya
royal court, Kaoma district, Zambia, 2011
The
first and main purpose of this book is to respond
to the requests made in recent years by the Nkoya
people of Western Zambia, to make more of the
author’s work on their history and culture
available in a readily accessible and affordable
form. This book brings together twelve of the
author’s papers on the Nkoya. In one
important way, however, it is premature: if the
production of ethnohistorical and ethnographic
texts consists in an encounter, the author should
establish the final version in close and profound
consultation with the people involved. However,
the texts of this book have so far only had an
academic circulation, and no systematic
dialogical evaluation or revision in the light of
Nkoya comments has taken place yet. In that
respect the present book is only a half-product,
meant to supplant itself by eliciting the
systematic, critical commentary from Nkoya
experts. This volume spans a period of nearly
forty years, and inevitably it shows developments
along various dimensions:
• in the author’s theoretical and
methodological skills;
• in his accommodation to and identification
with Nkoya society and culture;
• in scientific paradigms in the fields of
African and Ethnic Studies, pre- and
protohistory, comparative linguistics,
comparative mythology, and genetics;
• and in Nkoya ethnic and cultural
awareness.
Despite the collection’s eclectic nature due
mainly to copyright constraints, a fairly
balanced and complete account of Nkoya history
and society is being offered, over the four parts
out of which this volume consists. Part I
Introduces the Nkoya and their history from c.
1500 CE. This sets the scene for a discussion of
specific aspects of 20th-century Nkoya everyday
life and ritual in Part II, ‘From generation
to generation’. The Nkoya have a richly
elaborate legal system, and (thanks to South
Central African research giant Max Gluckman) much
writing in legal anthropology has concentrated on
Western Zambia. Therefore Part III deals with the
legal aspects of Nkoya society. Part IV explores
the transregional and even transcontinental
horizons of Nkoya society and culture, reflecting
the thrust of the author’s recent work.
Wim van Binsbergen (*Amsterdam, 1947), a.k.a.
Tatashikanda, started out as an ethnohistorian /
anthropologist, and was subsequently active as
Africanist / political scientist, intercultural
philosopher, Bronze-Age Mediterraneanist, and
mythologist. He is also a published poet. His
work on the Nkoya people was initiated in 1972 by
Dennis Kawangu Shiyowe, who shared the next four
decades of Nkoya research, and to whom this book
is dedicated. .
August 2013
In the past few years, Wim van Binsbergen's
research has concentrated on Africa's
transcontinental continuities in pre- and
protohistory, with special attention to East,
South East and South Asia. Music and musical
instruments play an important role in this
comparative historical research. In this
connection he has taken up the study of the pakhawaj
double drum, which is closely associated with the
primal god Ganesha / Pilleiyar. The instrument
belongs to the North Indian repertoire of dhrupad
-- originally Hindu temple music subsequently
adopted by Muslim musicians performing at Moghul
courts. In August 2013, Patricia van Binsbergen
(who is a more advanced dhrupad singer
and tanpura player) and Wim van
Binsbergen took part in a one-week dhrupad
workshop in the Czech republic, offered by the
famous dhrupad singer Marianne Svasek
and her husband the leading pakhawaj
player Nathanael van Zuilen.
The week preceding the course was
spent on a camping trip to revisit the Czech
Republic and to explore Slovakia for the first
time
June-July 2013
Martin Gardiner Bernal
around 2000
In memoriam
Martin Gardiner Bernal (1937-2013)
Over the years, extensive
attention has been paid in this website, and in Wim van Binsbergen's
academic work in general, to Martin
Gardiner Bernal, one of the most
remarkable intellectuals of our time. He
died on 9 June 2013. After a long period
of estrangement due to a combination of
personal and academic issues, he had been
in contact again with Wim van Binsbergen
since the re-publication in book form of
the latter's edited collection Black
Athena Comes of Age (2011,
see Topicalities under April 2011), and a
new and fruitful exchange promised to
develop when this process was interrupted
by his untimely death.... [
click the link and read more, also
clickable links to Wim van Binsbergen's
papers on Martin Bernal and the Black
Athena debate]
human footprints on a New
Zealand beach amidst those of birds
Wim van Binsbergen
contributes a text on the Africanist
anthropology of evil:
to a book now in the
press under the editorship of Walter van
Beek and Bill Olson; click for PDF
Cain kills his brother
Abel: depiction of the first human act of
evil at Rila monastery, Bulgaria
Reinie Raatgever in 2011
In
memoriam Reinie Raatgever (1946-2013)
The Dutch anthropologist Reinie
Raatgever died in Miélan, France, on 24
June 2013. She came ... [ click
the link and read more ]
Early June: trip via
the medieval town of Beaune, France, to
the alpine South-eastern part of that
country, in order to assist Vincent van
Binsbergen and his team in his sponsored
participation in the annual cycling event
'Alpe du 6'
to his recent work in the
global history of philosophy, Before the
Presocratics (398 pp.), Wim van Binsbergen
has now added an illuminating POSTSCRIPT /
SUMMARY:
"Before the Presocratics: Corroborating the
world-wide antecedents of Western philosophy,
while pinpointing the rupture which Empedocles
and his contemporaries
constituted" (7 pp.),
The
editor's account of Wim van Binsbergen's
contribution (van Beek and Peek, p. 18):
'The extraordinary possibilities
of historical reconstruction are most
evident in Wim van Binsbergen's
ground-breaking essay about the
distribution of divination systems in
Africa and beyond, a tour de force of
comparison. His argument first dwells on
the typology of African divination
systems, with special emphasis on the
forms and socio-cultural contexts of the
Southern African four-tablet system as
a major representative of the widespread
family of geomantic divination systems.
In the process, he identifies some of the
most striking structural
characteristics of sub-Saharan African
divination: their institutionalization,
boundary crossing, and logocentricity. In
the second part of his contribution, he
tackles the problem of intercultural
epistemology of divination. Here the
central puzzle is that African divination
has been constructed by a global
reductionist scholarship as mere
make-believe, yet often appears to
deliver truths that may be more than just
figments of the imagination and that seem
to have grounding in empirical reality.
These two visions seem to be
incompatible, but the author points to a
possible solution, which resonates well
with the approach of the other authors in
this volume: we are urged to take African
epistemologies more seriously, an
argument that is more often heard these
days'.
April 2013
A report on the 2012 Leiden conference
'Rethinking Africa's transcontinental
continuities in pre- and protohistory' in
honour of Wim van Binsbergen appears in the Caribian
Newsletter on Egyptology:
Sanya Osha,
Christopher Ehret and other delegates at the
2012 Leiden conference (photo Alain Anselin)
January-March
2013
traversing the South
Island by camper van (near the Haast
Pass)
the spectacular scene
of Milford Sound, South Island
Maori canoes at the
Okains Bay private Maori Museum, Banks
Peninsula, near Christchurch
providing special and
affordable modern health care for Maori
patients at Coromandel town
triumphantly erected,
carved poles at the highly commercialised
and virtualised, state-backed national
display of Maori culture at Rotaruwa,
North Island
In February and
March 2013 Wim en Patricia van Binsbergen
travelled extensively in New Zealand, and also
renewed their acquaintance with Bali, Indonesia.
Bali (as other parts of Indonesia and insular
Malaysia) they had already visited in 2010 as
part of their protracted exploration of traces of
transcontinental, especially 'Sunda', elements in
Africa and Eurasia. Besides enjoying the
incredible scenic beauty of New Zealand's South
and North Islands, this was their first Oceanian
extension of the Sunda explorations, and every
opportunity was seized to expose themselves to
the elusive enigma of present-day Maori identity
and its historical and artistic antecedents. The
extensive material gathered during this trip is
now being processed and will be the topic of a
webpage now under construction, highlighting Wim
van Binsbergen's naive outsider first impressions
of the construction and management of Maori
identity in present-day New Zealand.
detail of a
delapidated Maori house post, Coromandel
town
scenic beauty,
Coromandel Coast, North Island
scenic beauty near
Lake Tekapo, South Island
shockingly degraded
Maori tourist art at the national display
of Maori culture at Rotaruwa
a loop hole in the
original sense of the word: a hole in the
wall to put a gun through; peeping
through one at the Cameron blockhouse,
built out of concern over Maori violence
near Whanganui, North Island, in the
1860s
one of New Zealand's
most impressive volcano's, Mt Tongariro,
North Island, featuring as Mt Doom in the
Lord of the Rings motion picture
trilogy
superbly carved
traditional Maori weapons at the Okains
Bay private Maori Museum, Banks
Penminsula, near Christchurch
volcanic wonders at
Rotaruwa, North Island
volcanic wonders at
Rotaruwa, North Island
the small almost-ghost
town of Raetihi, North Island -- at first
sight indistinguishable from many
early-colonial towns in South Central and
Southern Africa
four elements
according to the Zulu lightning wizard
Madela
recursion
in a Tlingit room diving screen, N.W
coast, N. America
oddesses protecting
Tut-cankh-Amon's
canopian vases: indication of a
four-element system in Ancient Egypt
this book is dedicated
to the memory of Douwe Jongmans
(1922-2011), the author's beloved teacher
of ethnohistorical and ethnographic field
research in the 1960s
BLURB:
This exceptional and innovative work, the
culmination of the author’s research
over a quarter of a century, seeks to
contribute to the study of the global
history of human thought and philosophy.
Written from an Attenuated Afrocentrist
perspective, it revolves on
state-of-the-art comparative methods and
insights from linguistics, archaeology,
ethnography, and mythology. It has a
sound empirical basis (disclosed by full
indexes) in its impressive bibliography
and in its case studies of board games,
geomantic divination, a South Central
African clan system, East Asian
correlative cosmologies (e.g. I Ching),
cosmologies from Ancient Egypt, Africa,
Native America and the Upper
Palaeolithic, Greek philosophic texts
(especially Empedocles), and linguistic
continuities across Asia. It typologises
modes of thought and traces their
evolution since the Palaeolithic,
claiming:
• we can reconstruct modes of
thought of the remote past, in detail and
reliably;
• such reconstruction is predicated
on (and, in turn, confirms) two
assumptions: (a) the fundamental unity of
(Anatomically Modern) humankind, and (b)
the porous nature, therefore, of
geographical / political / identitary /
cultural boundaries;
• this in particular means that
sub-Saharan Africa has been part and
parcel of global cultural history to a
much greater extent than commonly
admitted.
Applying this perspective to the Ancient
Greek Presocratic philosophers who
allegedly founded Western philosophy, we
test Working Hypothesis (1): ‘a
transformative cycle of elements (as
attested in East Asia and Central Africa)
has constituted a global substrate since
the Upper Palaeolithic (over 12,000 years
ago), informing – from a West Asian,
‘‘Pelasgian’’,
proposedly proto-African source –
Eurasian, African and N. American
cosmologies’. An Alternative Working
Hypothesis posits (2): ‘the
transformative cycle of elements only
dates from the West Asian Bronze
Age’ (5,000-3,000 years ago). We
also examine (3) ‘the possibility of
this system’s transcontinental
transmission in historical times’.
Painstakingly, (2) and (3) are
empirically vindicated, while much
evidence of Upper Palaeolithic element
cosmologies is found (but without
cyclicity, transformation, and
catalysis). This casts new light on
Empedocles’ originality. Presocratic
thought became a path to modern science
because it constituted a backwater
mutation away (especially in its
reception) from the cyclic transformation
dominating W. Asian / N.E. African Bronze
Age cosmologies. This book’s
anti-hegemonic, anti-Eurocentric approach
from an African perspective is an apt
expression of the spirit of Quest: An
African Journal of Philosophy.
FLAPTEKST:
Er zijn opvallende parallellen tussen de
bekende filosoof Otto Duintjer, en Wim
van Binsbergen, ten aanzien van de
combinatie filosofie / spiritualiteit.
Centraal staat de vraag naar een helende
filosofie. Heelmakingstechnieken zijn
vooral ook lichamelijke technieken
– en het ontlichamelijkte woord
is voertuig van transcendentie.
Dit laatste begrip wordt vergelijkend en
historisch nader beschouwd. Een
belangrijke inspiratiebron daarbij is het
volk der Nkoya in hedendaags Zambia
(Zuidelijk Centraal Afrika). Verrijkt met
Afrikaanse inzichten, gaan wij terug naar
Plato’s beschrijvingen van
transcendentie die Duintjers vertrekpunt
vormen. Wij onderkennen spiritualiteit
als het bevorderen van de dynamische
zielevlucht van immanentie naar
transcendentie en terug. Bij nadere
beschouwing van het voertuig van
transcendentie, blijken Duintjer en Van
Binsbergen het oneens over de
ontologische voorwaarden en de aard van
de spirituele zielevlucht, over de
liefde, en over de mogelijkheid van een
vóórcultureel, vóórtalig bewustzijn.
Na een kritische beschouwing over
ahistorische trekken in de hedendaagse
filosofie, identificeert de conclusie
denkmodellen die voor spiritualiteit de
grootste beloften lijken in te houden:
modellen uit de academische
Noordatlantische filosofie, de
feministische kritiek daarop, de
denktradities die van buiten het
Noordatlantisch gebied stammen, en het
impliciete niet-academische denken
waarbij ook aan de eeuwenoude artistieke
expressies van vrouwen aandacht wordt
geschonken.
November
2012
Wegens het
bereiken van de pensioengerechtigde leeftijd
legde Wim van Binsbergen per 1 maart 2012 zijn
aanstelling bij Afrika-Studiecentrum te Leiden
neer, hoewel hij vanaf die datum aan het centrum
verbonden bleef als 'geassocieerd onderzoeker'.
Medio april 2012 werd zijn afscheid feestelijk
gevierd met de internationale conferentie
'Rethinking Africa's transcontinental
continuities in pre- and protohistory', waaraan
vele speciialisten uit binnen- en vooral
buitenland deelnamen. Ondanks de ernstige en
langdurige ziekte die hem spoedig na deze
conferentie overviel en waarvan hij pas eind
october 2012 hersteld was, maakt het werk aan de
publikatie van deze conferentie goed voortgang,
dankzij de inzet van de conferentiegangers /
auteurs. Intussen bleek dat zijn collega's aan
een dergelijke wetenschappelijk gedenkteken een
meer persoonlijk wilden toevoegen. Op 17 november
werd aan Wim van Binsbergen feestelijk
aangeboden, ten overstaan van een deel der
auteurs, door de samensteller Wouter van Beek, de
dichtbundel 'Afrika & Africa',
waarin duidelijk werd dat Wim van Binsbergen
bepaald niet de enige dichtende Afrikanist is, en
waarin zijn pad door de Afrikanistiek en door het
leven feestelijk en collegiaal, met vele foto´s
verlucht, wordt bezongen. Aan het feestelijk
karakter van de bijeenkomst werd bijgedragen door
voordracht van twee klassieke liederen door
Patricia van Binsbergen (zang) en Carine Hazelzet
(piano), Patricia's Senegalese yassa
maaltijd (het was in Senegal in 1982 dat zij en
Wim elkaar leerden kennen), pakkende
poëzievoordrachten door Wouter van Beek, Louise
Müller en Thera Rasing, aanwezigheid van
Vincent, Dennis en Hannah als kinderen van
Patricia en Wim (Nezjma en Sarah, en partners,
waren helaas verhinderd), en toespraken door
Wouter en Wim -- waarin deze laatste benadrukte
hoezeer hij als mens en als onderzoeker te danken
heeft gehad aan 35 jaar Afrika-Studiecentrum, en
aangaf hoe de afgelopen tijd vol ziekte toch tot
de nodige boekproduktie had geleid, in zowel
wetenschappelijke als poëtische zin.
Gekend te worden, en als naaste erkend
te worden in zowel zwakte als sterkte, is wat
vrienden en collega´s voor een mens betekenen,
en de bundel is voor Wim dan ook een bron van
grote vreugde en ontroering; en een teken van
zijn blijvende band met het Afrika-Studiecentrum,
de Afrikanistiek, en Afrika.
October
2012
In 1996, Danielle
de Lame was awarded, cum laude, a PhD
from the Free University, Amsterdam, under
supervision of Wim van Binsbergen, with her book Une
colline entre mille, of which an English
edition appeared a few years later. As a
prominent specialist on Rwanda, and doing her
main fieldwork during the prelude to the Rwanda
1994 tragedy she has meanwhile developed into an
international authority on ethnocide and
reconciliation, and a leading researcher at the
Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren,
Belgium. In October 2012 she retired, and was
offered a high-quality, peer-reviewed
Festschrift, to which Wim van Binsbergen made the
following contribution:
Entering
initiatory training (utwaza) in 1990, and
graduating as a fully-fledged and certified sangoma
diviner-healer-priest a year later, in the next
two decades Wim van Binsbergen (under his cult
name of Johannes Sibanda+) was active in this
capacity, gradually shifting from face-to-face
sessions, to worldwide consultations via the
Internet. This practice went hand in hand with
extensive writing on the theory and practice of sangomahood,
and on the challenges it represents (as
demonstrably valid African knowledge yet
apparently unaccounted for by current North
Atlantic science) in the field of intercultural
philosophy, especially epistemology (for a
reasonably complete listing of Wim van
Binsbergen´s scholarly and popular texts on
these topics, click here: http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/diviner.htm ). With his intensified scientific and
literary book production in the final years
before his formal retirement as an Africanist
researcher and professor of intercultural
philosophy (2012), he temporarily had to suspend
his Internet activities as a sangoma
– hoping that his research and publication
activities in regard of sangomahood would
yet count as discharging the professional and
spiritual obligations imposed by his sangoma graduation.
However, it now appears that the ancestors
presiding over his sangomahood have
little appreciation for scholarly output -- they
want their adepts, in the first place, to be
dancing, divining, healing, and offering
sacrifices. Therefore, reading (as any sangoma
would do) his considerable and protracted
personal medical misfortune in the years 2011-12
as a sign of ancestral wrath, and having ruled
out (through medical and ritual action) many
other possible sources of illness and misfortune,
Wim van Binsbergen has now decided to fully
resume his Internet sangoma practice as
from 1st October 2012. Individual clients, from
whatever country, nationality, creed or language
group, seeking spiritual and ritual advice are
referred to the electronic SANGOMA CONSULTATION
REQUEST FORM (click here ( =
http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/standard.htm)), which is to be sent throught the
Internet by clicking the 'Send' button there, and
which has now been simplified and adapted to
PayPal as the standard form of payment (see
Google to locate your national PayPal webpage for
further information). Wim van Binsbergen’s /
Johannes Sibanda’s sangoma
consultation fees have now been greatly reduced
but no special rates or free consultations are
available any more; also, the amount due has to
be received on Wim van Binsbergen’s PayPal
account before the consultation request
can be acted upon. The client will receive an
English-language report of at least 10 pages on
the specific, highly personalised sangoma
consultation which Wim van Binsbergen will have
conducted on the client’s behalf, and the
client will have two weeks to ask additional
questions in so far as these do not require
another complete divination session.
June-August
2012
The Fra Mauro mappamundi,
produced in Venice in the middle of the
15th c. CE, half a century before the
great European voyages of exploration,
and yet already depicting the shape of
the African coastline surprisingly
accurately, especially around Cape of
Good Hope. Menzies sees the Chinese naval
expeditions under Zheng He as the only
possible explanation. The paper presented
here adds to the critical work of
scholars who dismantle Menzies' claims.
Yet we must not throw away the baby with
the bathing water.
The gradual unfolding of the proposed
global maritime network from the
Neolithic on
In the
last few years, working on on the world
history of geomantic divination, on his
book Before the Presocratics, and on his
various papers on Africa's
transcontinental continuities in pre- and
protohistory, Wim van Binsbergen has paid
particular attention to China, its
intellectual history, and its record in
global exploration. Africanists
specialising in transcontinental
relations have known for decades that a
massive fleet under the eunuch admiral
Zheng He visited the East
African coast and facilitated diplomatic
contacts between African rulers and the
Chinese imperial court, in the early 15th
century CE. In 2002, with his
best-selling book 1421: The year
China discovered the world, the
British retired naval officer Gavin
Menzies launched the claim -- not totally
new, but this time with effective,
best-seller producing media attention --
that the Chinese beat European explorers,
by almost a century, in their 'discovery'
of Australia, Oceania and the New World.
Menzies has been severely criticised by
the academic community, and for excellent
reasons. Still, his argument (even though
it has to be considered a work of fiction
ineffectively disguised as accomplished
scholarship) raises questions that are of
great importance for an understanding of
Africa's transcontinental continuities.
In particular, it brought the challenge
to further develop, and empirically
underpin with distribution maps and full
bibliographic references, Wim van
Binsbergen's alternative model as
presented at the 2012 Leiden conference:
that of a transcontinental, ultimately
global, multicentred and
multidirectional maritime network
gradually being established from the
Neolithic onward. That challenge has now
been met with the following paper soon to
be published:
ABSTRACT / CONCLUSION:
This argument is an instalment in
the author’s ongoing
research into Africa’s
transcontinental connections in
pre- and protohistory. While
sidestepping to Bernal’s Black
Athena thesis and
Oppenheimer’s Sunda
thesis, the immediate focus is on
Gavin Menzies’ book 1421:
The year China discovered the
world. Identifying this book,
by explicit criteria, as fiction
under the disguise of
counter-hegemonic scholarship,
and pointing out some of its
weaknesses (e.g. in relation to
the alleged Chinese ability to
measure longitude correctly), the
argument yet seeks to go beyond
Menzies. Looking for an
alternative to his extreme myopia
(virtually reducing all
transcontinental exchanges in
global history to specifically
Chinese navigation in
specifically admiral Zheng
He’s time, early 15th
c. CE), the present argument considers
explicit and
empirically-underpinned models
for transcontinental maritime and
overland exchanges (worldwide and
especially with a view on Africa)
since the Upper Palaeolithic.
To the shared cultural,
linguistic and genetic background
suggested by the widely accepted
Out-of-Africa hypothesis and the
*Borean hypothesis, the more
recent Old-World communalities of
the author’s Pelasgian
hypothesis are added. As a
result, the image arises of a
global background of
communalities and feedbacks,
among which the specific effects
of Zheng He’s exploits could
hardly be identified, and
certainly not with Menzies’
untutored methods. Instead of his
claim to the effect that global
maritime continuities have
resulted from unicentred,
unidirectional and ephemeral
impact of Chinese navigation in
the early 15th c. CE,
the present argument proposes the
radical alternative of a
multicentred, multidirectional
global maritime network
established and sustained from
the Neolithic onward.
Subsequently, dozens of
ethnographic, art-historical,
archaeological, mythological,
zoo-/ phytogeographical, genetic,
and linguistic traits are
discussed, complete with
distribution maps and extensive
references, in order to
empirically and bibliographically
underpin the proposed maritime
network. The second achievement
of this argument is the
following. While transcontinental
continuities have been widely
accepted for Africa’s east
coast, the crucial problem has
been to find corroborating
evidence for such transcontinental
continuities of Africa’s
Atlantic West coast as have
been suggested by the
author’s own research over
the years and as are argued and
referenced in the present
argument. In line with recent
work by Oppenheimer (1998) and
Dick-Read (2005) on South East
Asian impact on Africa in pre-
and protohistory, and extending
these approaches to include South
and East Asia, these empirical
indications for a South, South
East and East Asian impact on the
African Atlantic coast in the
course of the last two millennia
are discussed in detail. Thus
Menzies’ work scarcely
throws any new light on crucial
transcontinental continuities,
yet inspires fruitful further
research.
From early June,
2012, Wim van Binsbergen has suffered from a
protracted serious illness, which made it very
difficult for him to attend to his academic work
and contacts. Apologies are offered for any
inconvenience this may have caused. It is hoped
that things will be back to normal by the end of
October 2012.
May
2012
In May 2012, Wim
van Binsbergen retired from the C4 Commission
(Philosophy and Science of Religion) of the
Foundation for Scientific Research, Belgium. In
recognition of his services over the years, he
was awarded the medal of honour of that
organisation
A classical Chinese
depiction of Confucius, whom Chinese tradition
associates with the I Ching Canon of Changes
(incidentally, the black cloak is reminiscent of
Southern African sangoma diviner-healers)
pre-publication
copies
Wim van Binsbergen
was requested to finalise his keynote for the
2012 International Conference 'Rethinking
Africa's transcontinental continuities in pre-
and protohistory' for translation into Chinese
and publication in the First Yearbook of Chinese
African Studies. This resulted in the following
revised English version:
ABSTRACT.
African Studies (and in general, regional
studies in the humanities and social
sciences) are in the midst of a paradigm
shift: instead of continuing to take the
continent-centred definition of their
subject matter for granted, there is
increasing emphasis on transcontinental
continuities. This at long last allows us
to liberate ourselves from a long
tradition in which especially the North
Atlantic region has defined itself
culturally, intellectually and
somatically in contradistinction from
Africa.Why should we study Africa’s
transcontinental continuities, and how
could this be a surprising and
counter-paradigmatic topic, more than a
century after the professionalisation of
African Studies? Let me explain how I
myself came to study Africa’s
transcontinental continuities. My purpose
here is not autobiographical
self-indulgence, but to help lay bare the
structures and preconceptions of
Africanist research to the extent to
which they determine our view of these
transcontinental continuities. I will
show in detail how my own vision of
Africa’s transcontinental
continuities resulted from my
familiarity, as an ethnohistorical and
ethnographic fieldworker, with two
concrete African settings: (a) the
sangoma cult of North-eastern Botswana
(one of several African contexts
featuring the globally distributed
institution of geomantic divination, of
which also Chinese I Ching and
Islamic cilm al-raml
are varieties), and (b) Nkoya society
of Western Zambia. I will thus highlight
general paradigmatic trends as they
manifest themselves biographically and
anecdotally in one concrete research
practice over time. This will allow us to
identify a few major factors
paradigmatically obscuring
transcontinental continuities:
Underestimation of the
scope and antiquity of nautical
technology
‘Africa for the
Africans’: The insistence,
in African Studies, on explaining
African phenomena by exclusive
reference to Africa
Localisation and
presentism as central to the
paradigm of classic anthropology
Contempt, also built
into the paradigm of classic
anthropology, for material
cultural and physical
anthropology
In the process we shall
also address the important issue of why
transcontinental continuities were
obscured, not only from the (potentially
hegemonic) view of Western scholars but
also from the consciousness of historical
actors in Africa and Asia. We will end
with the question of what a fuller
awareness of transcontinental
continuities brings to Africa, and what
it risks to take away from Africa.
In the context of revising his
2012 keynote, also the following paper was
produced as a by-product:
This paper is to be one of the
final instalments in his current research,
spanning over twenty years, into the global
historical and comparative context of a Southern
African divination system -- now approaching
culmination in book form.
A revised, final version of
this paper has now been included in Wim van
Binsbergen's new book Before the Presocratics
(2012, see above, December 2012)
ABSTRACT.
I Ching became known to Europe
as a result of the communications of
Jesuit Christian missionaries working in
China from the late 16th century onwards,
and the famous German mathematician and
philosopher G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716 CE)
was the first to recognise the
system’s binary numerical
implications. The idea of an Ancient
Mesopotamian origin of the Chinese
people1 and of I Ching was
launched, both in well-received lectures
before the Royal African Society, London,
and in numerous publications, by the
distinguished French Sinologist A.E.J.-B.
Terrien de Lacouperie (c. 1845-1894), who
at the time of this untimely death from
typhoid fever was professor of
Indo-Chinese linguistics at University
College London, one of the principal
institutions of higher learning in the
United Kingdom. In the present paper,
after vindicating the stature of
Terrien’s scholarship and situating
it in its own time and age, I will
summarise his theory as to the Western
origin of the Chinese people and of the I
Ching in Ancient Mesopotamia,
consider its weaknesses, and dismiss his
reductionist view of the whole sale
origin of the Chinese people. However, I
will also maintain that his point as to
the Western origin of I Ching
still stands, adducing much new material
to that effect, including a long excerpt
from my book in press Before the
Presocratics: Cyclicity and
transformation as features of a substrate
element cosmology in Africa, Eurasia and
North America.
Evidence from Pre-Pottery
Neolithic B, Anatolia, ca. 8400 BCE, as to
elongated labia (natural or artificial)
testifying to a proto-Khoisan or proto-Bantuoid
-speaking presence, possibly relating to a
submerged West Asian Africoid context which the
text associates with the origin of I Ching
To this conference, Wim van
Binsbergen is contributing the following papers:
van Binsbergen, Wim
M.J., 2012, ‘Key note –
Rethinking Africa’s transcontinental
continuities in pre- and
protohistory’, paper presented at
the International Conference
‘Rethinking Africa’s
transcontinental continuitiesin pre- and
protohistory’, African Studies
Centre, Leiden, 12-13 April 2012, at: http://www.shikanda.net/Rethinking_history_conference/wim_keynote.pdf
van Binsbergen, Wim
M.J., 2012, ‘The relevance of
Buddhism and Hinduism for the study of
Asian-African transcontinental
continuities’, paper presented at
the International Conference
‘Rethinking Africa’s
transcontinental continuities in pre- and
protohistory’, African Studies
Centre, Leiden, 12-13 April 2012, at: http://www.shikanda.net/Rethinking_history_conference/wim_leiden_2012.pdf
van Binsbergen, Wim
M.J., 2012, ‘A note on the
Oppenheimer-Tauchmann thesis on extensive
South and South East Asian demographic
and cultural impact on sub-Saharan Africa
in pre- and protohistory’, African
Studies Centre, Leiden, 12-13 April 2012,
at: http://www.shikanda.net/Rethinking_history_conference/wim_tauchmann.pdf
colleagues who have worked
with Wim van Binsbergen over the years are
invited to attend this conference's first day as
observers; for this, and for all other
communications concerning this conference, please
contact: Marieke van Winden (WINDEN@ascleiden.nl )
Locatie:
Pakhuis de Zwijger, Piet Heinkade 179, 1019 HC
Amsterdam
Datum: 26 maart 2012
Tijd: 19.30 – 21.30 (aansluitend een borrel)
Presentatie: Marcia Luyten
Deelnemers: Ellen Mangnus, Jan Breman, Henk
Molenaar, Willem Elbers, Wim van Binsbergen en
Eleonora Nillesen
Insteek:
Het programma heeft als doel om de oude
en jonge generatie met elkaar in gesprek
te brengen: wat kunnen zij van elkaar
leren, wat onderscheidt hen van elkaar?
Dit kan aan de ene kant door het
vertellen over eigen ervaringen, maar er
mag ook kritisch naar elkaar gekeken
worden. Moet de jongere generatie de
brokstukken van de oudere generatie
opruimen, of is het juist andersom?
Achtergrond: In zijn speech op de
Afrikadag 2011 zei staatssecretaris Ben
Knapen afgelopen najaar: ‘Natuurlijk
brengt niet iedere generatie een nieuwe
Tinbergen voort. Maar deze ambitie moeten
we wel blijven koesteren. Die drang
moeten kennisinstellingen en jonge
wetenschappers wel koesteren.’
Er zijn meer redenen om juist nu een
debat over kennis en wetenschap te doen.
Er is een continue stroom op gang gekomen
van promoties in het kader van de IS
Academy, waarin jonge wetenschappers de
kans kregen om onderzoek te doen dat
relevant is voor het Nederlandse
ontwikkelingsbeleid. In haar reportage in
de nieuwe Vice Versa schrijft Ellen
Mangnus, bezig met een PhD naar
collectieve vermarkting in Mali, over het
dilemma waar veel onderzoekers mee
worstelen. ‘Ik doe dit onderzoek vol
overtuiging. Ik ben er absoluut van
overtuigd dat wetenschap bijdraagt aan de
praktijk. Ik geloof ook dat de wetenschap
ons kan helpen reflecteren op onze
gangbare denkpatronen. Waar ik over
twijfel is de betekenis van mijn
onderzoek voor de mensen die ik
bestudeer. Meer dan honderd Nederlandse
PhD’s en postdocs doen op dit
moment, net als ik, onderzoek dat
gefinancierd wordt door de NWO-Wotro, de
Nederlandse organisatie voor
ontwikkelingsrelevant onderzoek. Zouden
mijn collega-onderzoekers er net zo over
denken?’
Sunda ethnic calendars for 2007 and before
Stephen Oppenheimer and Wim
van Binsbergen at the 1st Annual Conference of
the International Association for Comparative
Mythology, at Edinburgh, Scotland, 2007
In August 2007,
Wim van Binsbergen visited Indonesia for the
first time, and among his seminars before the
Philosophical Faculty, Parahyangan Catholic
University was the following:
The seminar was attended by
many notables, including traditional rulers and
their descendants, of the Sunda ethnic 'minority'
of Western Java -- still a sizeable population of
30 million people, but then, Java is one of the
most densely populated parts of the world. They
took Stephen Oppenheimer's Sunda thesis (in his
1998 book Eden of the East), which was
the topic of this seminar, to refer not to the
Indonesian subcontinent as a whole (with the
Sunda Plateau drowned since the onset of the
Holocene so as to form the South East Asian
archipelago, including Major and Minor Sunda
Islands etc.), but to their own specific ethnic
group. Thus a surprising, local ethnic slant was
given to Oppenheimer's far-reaching claim
(largely contested by Wim van Binsbergen, click
here for details) as to the 'Sunda' origin of
major civilisations (Indus, Sumer) and of the
core mythology of Western Eurasia including that
of Genesis. At the seminar the Sunda
delegates presented Wim van Binsbergen with
nicely illustrated recent calendars, a device to
propagate and keep alive Sunda culture --
interestingly, the Nkoya people of Zambia, South
Central Africa, who have played a major role in
Wim van Binsbergen's research since 1972, have
used privately-printed and marketed calendars for
the same purpose. Recently a new page has been
added to this petite histoire: on the
latest, 2012 Sunda calendar, both Stephen
Oppenheimer and Wim van Binsbergen (daggers drawn
on earlier occasions, notably the 1st Annual
Conference of the International Association for
Comparative Mythology, at Edinburgh, Scotland,
2007) both feature as the international scholars
who at long last have recognised the central
position of the Western Java Sunda people in
global cultural history. Attempts are now made to
publish Wim van Binsbergen's original seminar
paper in an Indonesian context, so as to put the
record straight.
Details of the Louvain townhall, 2012
Wim van Binsbergen (left) with fellow twaza's
(sangoma novices) during a dancing
session at MmaShakayile's lodge et Monarch
township, Francistown, 1990
On 19-20 March
2012 Wim van Binsbergen will be the guest of the
CADES (Culture and Development Studies) Programme
of Louvain University. In addition to a formal,
general seminar on:
The
Brihadeeswarar Temple in Thanjavur, in the state
of Tamil Nadu, on of the culminating points of
the present journey.
From mid-Februari to
mid-March, Wim van Binsbergen and his wife will
continue their explorations in South, South East
and East Asia with a trip to South India
Tamil
Brahmin couple, South India, 1945
Now
in the press:
Three new annual volumes of Quest:
An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue
Africaine de Philosophie are now in the
press and are hoped to be published by mid-April
2012. Substantial delays were sustained as a
result of (a) termination of the five-year
hospitality agreement (2004-2009) between Quest
and the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and (b)
protracted illness of the Editor in 2011. The
Editor apologises for any inconvenience this may
have caused.
An apparent
evocation of the four elements or directions by
the South African lightning doctor Madela --
cover illustration of one of the imminent Quest
volumes
Matthew Schoffeleers 1928-2011
Now
published:
van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2011,
'Matthew Schoffeleers (1928-2011)', Journal of Religion in Africa, Volume 41, Number 4, 2011 ,
pp. 455-463
A Malagasy sikidy
diviner lays out his geomantic theme
Notational
conventions of geomantic systems worldwide
A revised and updated version
of this paper has now been included in Wim van
Binsbergen's new book Before the Presocratics
(2012, see above, December 2012)
ABSTRACT.
When in 1997 I published my collection Black
Athena Ten Years Later (a critical
but constructive re-assessment of Martin
Bernal’s Black Athena
thesis) as a special issue of the
archaeological journal TALANTA, my
principal empirical contribution to that
volume consisted of a long article
entitled ‘Rethinking Africa’s
contribution to global cultural history:
Lessons from a comparative historical
analysis of mankala board-games and
geomantic divination’ (van
Binsbergen 1997b). Mankala is the
academic name for a widespread
board-game, played on two or more rows of
holes, over which the players distribute
and redistribute tokens (stones, nuts,
etc.) according to intricate rules.
Geomancy is a widespread family of
divination systems, based on the
systematic generation (by locally
standardised stochastic methods involving
man-made random generators) of formal
configurations (usually consisting of a
number of superimposed lines, where each
line can take either of two values, e.g.
broken or unbroken, one dot or two dots);
the nature and combination of such
configurations is then interpreted in
divinatory terms.
In the fifteen years that have passed
since the TALANTA collection was
published, I have continued to grapple
with mankala, geomancy, the Black
Athena debate, and transcontinental
continuities – in fact, these themes
have come to dominate my research. When
in 2011 an expanded and updated version
of the TALANTA collection was published
with LIT (Berlin / Boston etc.; for
clickable fulltext chapters, see below,
Topicalities August 2011; for publicity matters click
here), my 1997
analysis was reprinted there in its
original form and could not be updated.
The present article contains such an
update, which is in line with my overall
criticism of Bernal’s Black
Athena thesis, and the alternative
model (‘the Pelasgian
hypothesis’) which I advanced in my
various publications of the last few
years.
village at Kazo valley, eastern Kaoma district,
2011
Now completed:
For a Festschrift
still under embargo (therefore no clickable PDF
offered yet), Wim van Binsbergen extensively
revised, updated and expanded a text 'Class
formation and the penetration of capitalism in
the Kaoma rural district, Zambia, 1800-1978', 40
pp.; the new version is to replace an earlier version available in this
website; the final,
printed version is listed above under October
2012, with a link to the fulltext document as
published.
The blessings of modern
technology at Nkeyema rural town, eastern Kaoma
district, 2011
retiring: Wim van Binsbergen and his wife on the
banks of the Rhône river, Lyon, France, 2011
On 1st February,
2012, Wim van Binsbergen will formally retire
from the African Studies Centre, Leiden, after 35
years, during which period his functions included
that of scientific co-director (1980-1989), head
of Political and Historical Studies (1980-1989),
member of the Management Team (1996-2002), and
leader of the Theme Group on Globalisation
(1996-2002). A valedictory conference in his honour
and reflecting his recent, transcontinental
historical research, is scheduled at Leiden,
12-13 April, 2012
(click for details). Over the years the African
Studies Centre has been the mainstay in Wim van
Binsbergen's career, the indispensible
institutional and funding basis from which he
undertook his field trips, conference / seminar
trips, his part-time or visiting professorships;
most important of all, the Centre has
constituted, over the decades, the stimulating
and facilitating environment for his writing,
publication and editing. Much to his delight, Wim
van Binsbergen will continue to be an Affiliate
of the African Studies Centre and (since 2009 no
longer under the African Studies Centre umbrella)
Editor of Quest: An African Journal of
Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie.
Januari
2012
Local musicians
take a break prior to the slamatan
ritual meal at the top of Nagara Padang,
Indonesia, May 2010. Video clips
presenting their music in the context of
Wim van Binsbergen's analysis of the
shrine are now in preparation
In
Februari 2011 Stephanus Djunatan defended
his PhD thesis in philosophy ('The
principle of affirmation'), under the
supervision of Wim van Binsbergen, before
Erasmus University Rotterdam, the
Netherlands. Over the years, this
supervision enabled Wim van Binsbergen to
familiarise himself with Sunda / West
Javanese popular religion, for which he
is greatly indebted to Dr Djunatan, the
Catholic University of Bandung (UNPAR),
the shrine guardian Mr Undang, the people
of Rawabogo dessa, and Dr. Robert
Wessing. As a complement to Wim van
Binsbergen's far more extensive
Africanist fieldwork, this Indonesian
experience is one in a series of recent
Asian explorations (also involving
Thailand, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Bali,
Malaysia and India) in preparation of his
current research into Africa's
transcontinental continuities with Asia
in pre- and protohistory.
(from
left to right:) Wim van Binsbergen, an UNPAR
philosophy lecturer from Kalimantan / Borneo, and
the latter's colleague Dr Stephanus Djunatan ('Orang
belanda, orang dayak, orang sina') , during
the slamatan ritual meal at the top of
Nagara Padang, Indonesia, May 2010.
The qubba (domed)
Islamic shrine of Sidi Mhammad al-Wilda in the
highlands of Northwestern Tunisia, North Africa:
the focus of Wim van Binsbergen's ongoing
research on popular Islam in that region, and one
of the inspirations for his analysis of
Indonesian syncretist popular religion in the
present article.
for an
abstract of this argument, see below,
Topicalities for November-December 2010
unfortunately,
on closer inspection it turns out that the legend
in Fig. 11 p. 44 came out completely wrong. The
proper legend appears here:
Bunga Tanjung: Sunda music
at Nagara Padang pilgrimage (this is the
explanatory text accompanying the video clip to
the left)
After the slamatan (collective
sacrificial meal) marking the geographical and
spiritual culmination of a mystical pilgrimage
(by villagers from the desa Rawabogo, and Bandung
students, all dressed for the occasion in black
Sufi uniforms) to the syncretistic devotional
mountain shrine of Nagara Padang, Ciwidey, West
Bandung, Java, 1st May 2010, local folk musicians
(human voice, bamboo flute and kacapi stringed
instrument) perform the popular Sunda song 'Bunga
Tanjung' in honour of the shrine. In preparation
of this they have, in a 90 minutes journey,
carried their instruments from the valley to the
mountain top, along with large bamboo platforms
containing elaborate food and flower
arrangements. The Bunga Tanjung flower (Mimusops
elengi L.), lotus-like in appearance although
from a very different plant family, may carry
implicit reminiscences of Buddhism and Hinduism
(now incorporated in Sunda syncretist Sufism). It
is a standard Sunda reference to beauty,
perfection and ethnic identity, and thus
obliquely expresses the main spiritual themes of
the pilgrimage.
current year: 2012 (begins above this line; the closer to
the top of the page)
proceed
to the Shikanda portal in order to access all other
websites by Wim van Binsbergen: general (intercultural
philosophy, African Studies);
ethnicity-identity-politics; Afrocentricity and the Black
Athena debate; Ancient Models of Thought in Africa, the
Ancient Near East, and prehistory; sangoma consultation;
literary work
;
abstracts and blurbs appear against a light blue background. 
I Ching),
cosmologies from Ancient Egypt, Africa,
Native America and the Upper
Palaeolithic, Greek philosophic texts
(especially Empedocles), and linguistic
continuities across Asia. It typologises
modes of thought and traces their
evolution since the Palaeolithic,
claiming: 
visited the East
African coast and facilitated diplomatic
contacts between African rulers and the
Chinese imperial court, in the early 15th
century CE. In 2002, with his
best-selling book 1421: The year
China discovered the world, the
British retired naval officer Gavin
Menzies launched the claim -- not totally
new, but this time with effective,
best-seller producing media attention --
that the Chinese beat European explorers,
by almost a century, in their 'discovery'
of Australia, Oceania and the New World.
Menzies has been severely criticised by
the academic community, and for excellent
reasons. Still, his argument (even though
it has to be considered a work of fiction
ineffectively disguised as accomplished
scholarship) raises questions that are of
great importance for an understanding of
Africa's transcontinental continuities.
In particular, it brought the challenge
to further develop, and empirically
underpin with distribution maps and full
bibliographic references, Wim van
Binsbergen's alternative model as
presented at the 2012 Leiden conference:
that of a transcontinental, ultimately
global, multicentred and
multidirectional maritime network
gradually being established from the
Neolithic onward. That challenge has now
been met with the following paper soon to
be published: 
