40 african appropriations
during numerous séances, the new spirit, speaking through the mouth of
its medium, and the nonpossessed bori adept, talking to the spirit, each
has equal share in establishing the spirit’s personality, paraphernalia,
and ritual.
Possession by alien spirits, such as the Babule, is a practice which, like
spontaneous mimesis, is not primarily purposive in itself, but “‘irrational,’
even though it appears in contexts which are otherwise determined by ra-
tional actions” (Kramer 1993: 247). But once the spirits have been properly
established and are recognized as meaningful by others, they may be used
for all sorts of purposes. They may empower those who lack power; they
may give a voice to those who otherwise must remain silent; or they may
be employed to hea l or ha r m, to enter ta i n, or to ma ke a l iv i ng. A fter a l l, it is
a pious fiction that the agency lies solely with the spirits, and bori mediums
know very well how to manipulate their spirits. Therefore, the relation-
ship between humans and spirits in ritual may not only be expressed by
a phrase such as “Babule ya hau Shibo” (a Babule spirit mounted Shibo),
but likewise by saying, “Shibo ya hau Babule,” which literally translates
as “Shibo mounted a Babule spirit,” providing Shibo with considerably
more agency and making the spirit her “patient.” Hence, even within the
local conceptualization of possession, the relationship between humans
and spirits is seen as being quite mutual.
To claim that the French provided the cause of and at the same time
(a model for) the remedy for the crisis, which the local societies experi-
enced since the French colonizers intruded into their life-worlds, is be-
wildering, to say the least. Since the French had proven to be the most
powerful force within the life-world of the peasantry, it is perhaps only
consequential that the Babule spirits, to be effective—that is, stronger
than the traditional spirits and able to endow those who venerated them
with qualities the older spirits could not provide—garnered their inspira-
tion from the ever-powerful French. Given the nature of the relationship
between original and copy under discussion here, in which the original
is valued for certain qualities thought to be transferred onto the copy, I
propose to conceptualize the Babule as embodied pastiches. R ichard Dyer
(2007: 1) has defined pastiche, as “a kind of imitation that you are meant to
know is an imitation.” I wish to extend this definition, which he reserves
for a particular type of relationship—that between works of art, which