8 african appropriations
recognize as ‘media’: that, in fact, local worlds are necessarily already the
outcome of more or less stable, more or less local, social technologies of
mediation.” Looking at media technologies in terms of their relationship
to socia l tech nolog ies of med iat ion a l low s us to e x plore “t he i ntersec t ions
of two or more systems of mediation” (353). Birgit Meyer’s (2005) work
surrounding Ghanaian video films illustrates this point. She argues that
Pentecostal videos may be understood as “religious remediations” (160).
They remediate older forms of mediating the divine and the demonic
previously associated with other media, such as the Bible, sermons, and
church services. Remediation, of course, implies a relationship between
the new and older systems of mediation, which is far more complex than
the mere portrayal on video of priests delivering sermons and congrega-
tions holding services. The intermediality of Ghanaian video films is owed
rather to the fact that they are made to work just like sermons, and that
t hese fi l ms enable t hei r aud iences to have v isions, just a s chu rch members
do in Pentecostal services (Meyer 2003). Nowhere, however, do social
technologies of mediation come as close to media technologies as does
spirit mediumship (chapter 1). As a social technolog y of mediation, spirit
med iu msh ip is i nt i mately l i n ked w it h t he hu ma n body, wh ich is employed
to serve as a conduit. Through their bodies, spirit mediums enable contact
and communication between humans and spirits. They either transmit
verbal messages thought to originate from a realm of spiritual beings, or
embody and thus represent such beings in complex rituals. Spirit medium-
ship merges mediation and mimesis.
MIMESIS AND MIMICRYMimesis, which roughly translates as “imitation,” is another key con-
cept of my study. It embraces ritual, dance, music, theater, art, media,
mediation and representation, and above all requires alterity, or otherness,
as a conditio sine qua non—because a difference between imitator and
imitated, the representation and the represented, must always be given in
speaking of mimesis in a meaningful sense. At once product and process,
mimesis bridges the gap between alter and ego, original and copy. Etymo-
logically, the term mimesis goes back to the Greek word mimos, denoting