René Devisch
René (or Renaat) Devisch (°Leisele, 20 January 1944) is a Belgian antropologist. He is most known for his publications on Yaka in South-West-Congo.
As an anthropologist of Yaka-speakers, Devisch aims to be, in the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss, "especially their student and their witness." He passed on this attitude to his doctoral and master's students at KU Leuven, UC Louvain and the University of Kinshasa. For his knowledge and commitment in Congo, the University of Kinshasa awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2007. A trait of his later work is the "bifocal" approach, unravelling with a Yaka gaze some unthought alienating dynamic in his natal Flemish-speaking culture.
Life[edit]
René Devisch was born as the youngest son in a farmer's family, along the French-Belgian border, 12 km from the Yzer war front. As a young man he decides to become a Jesuit. He studies philosophy at the Canisius Institute of Philosophy at Kimwenza-Kinshasa, followed by sociology-anthropology at the University of Kinshasa. He leaves the Jesuits in 1971. From January 1972 to October 1974 he stays with his de Yaka-speaking host group, in Bandundu (SW of Kinshasa, near Angola). From 1986 till 2003, he returns to the Yaka in Kinshasa for 3 weeks each year.
From 1980 to 2009, Devisch was professor of anthropology at the KU Leuven. He founded CADES, the advanced master of science in anthropology and culture-sensitive development studies. From 1980 to 86, he was involved in two-weekly workshops, seeking out a culture-sensitive family medicine, at the University of Antwerp. Devisch is also a psychoanalysis-clinician at the Belgian School for Psychoanalysis. In his later writings, Devisch seeks to disclose the “unspeakable”, in line with the later Lacan.
When Devisch retired in 2009, he founds Die-Keure, an informal group of anthropologists and artists. Members include youth writer Marita De Sterck, author Birsen Taspinar, Nadia Fadil (professor of anthropology KU Leuven), Patrick Meurs (director S. Freud Institut Frankfurt), film director Peter Brosens, Björn Schmelzer (musical artist, founder Graindelavoix), Koen Stroeken (professor anthropology UGent, co-founder CARAM), author Koen Peeters, Barbara Drieskens (author, tai-chi teacher), museum architect Lode van Pee and others
In 2017 the ECI Literature Price-winning novel “De mensengenezer” (“The people’s healer”) by Koen Peeters was inspired by Devisch’s life. It evokes his youth and his inspiration by the ethnologist-hermit Charles de Foucauld who, in the early 1900s, shared the life conditions of the Tuareg and the Berber in the Haggar mountains, as well as by the stories and traumas about the two world wars raging in the western corner of Flanders known as the Westhoek.
Work[edit]
Yaka of Kwango and Kinshasa[edit]
Kwango is located in southwest DR Congo, on the border with Angola. Devisch stayed in the Taanda area, North Kwango, from January 1972 to October 1974, and in April and September 1991. After being preceded in the region by anthropologists such as De Beir, Plancquaert and Roosens, he aimed to delve into the deeper cultural particularity of the Yaka host community in rural Kwango and networks in the shanty towns of Kinshasa. His focus is on the experience and perception of the body, healing rites, shamanism, ancestors, agents or devices of forces ("fetishes") and healers cooperating with the public health care.
Postcolonial Congo and Zaire under Mobutu[edit]
Devisch ends up in a Congo that until recently was colonized by Belgian officials, settlers and missionaries. The situation changes drastically under Mobutu and the MPR. In the 1970s, the Congolese population regains its identity and pride with the Authenticité (Zaire). The young nation, called Zaire, enters a new era through the nationalization of public health care, education, landed property and extractive companies. Devisch witnesses the large-scale riots in the 90s. The changes are analysed in his anthropological essays. His analysis emphasizes how Congolese traditions, in some aspects also rehearsing Lumumbistische and the Négritude, went on inspiring cultural development and innovation.
The anthropological encounter[edit]
The choices that Devisch made unconsciously in his contacts, research, central themes and postcolonial feeling of being ethically indebted to his hosts, entail a radical self-interrogation. Inspired by Charles de Foucauld and Merleau-Ponty he emphasizes the respectful, dynamic interaction with the other in his or her alterity. The anthropologist reflexively adopts the language and perspective of the conversation partner, in order to understand the events and representations in terms of the host culture. The anthropologist engages in the encounter as a whole person, participating in the experience with his or her own desires and feelings of indebtedness and guilt, including family secrets and war traumas.
On the marble mantelpiece at Devisch's parental home figured the cross and images of saints, side to side to the bills and wages to pay. The modernizing agricultural world, the mother tongue and class difference with the French-speaking bourgeoisie marked his childhood. In this sense, the anthropology of Devisch, indirectly is also a personal story. Typical for Devisch is the careful avoidance of ethnocentric, biassed, racist terminology. Hence his emphasis on a balanced reciprocity to return knowledge and rightful sense of identity to the Yaka host community.
Anthropology of the body[edit]
Particularly rites of passage and initiatory healing provide access to the heart of Yaka culture. They provide a metaphorical transformation between three fields of meaning in resonance: the field of the cosmogenic body, namely the lifeworld or local universe of all what is living (n-totu); the field of the social body (muutu) and close family in the homestead (ndzo); and that of the physical body (luutu) including the affects, emotions, senses. In his later work, Devisch explores the close connections between psychoanalysis and anthropology. Questions like: how do other cultures deal with effervescence, restlessness, the opaque, despair, sadness, fear, toxic desire? How can anthropology gain access to the unspeakable, including the host group’s art of living?
Selected bibliography[edit]
- 1979 - Mort, deuil et compensations mortuaires chez les Komo et les Yaka du Nord du Zaire (with W. de Mahieu)
- 1984 - Se recréer femme: manipulation sémantique d'une situation d'infécondité chez les Yaka du Zaire
- 1990 - J. Van de Loo, Guji Oromo culture in Southern Ethiopia, co-authored by R. Devisch
- 1991 - The oracle of maama Tseembu: divination and healing amongst the Yaka of southwest Zaire/Congo. Colour film. M with D. Dumon, BRT- AfricaMuseum Tervuren
- 1993 - Weaving the threads of life: the khita gyn-eco-logical healing cult among the Yaka
- 1996 - Forces et signes: regards croisés d'un anthropologue et d'un psychanalyste sur les Yaka (with Claude Brodeur)
- 1999 - The law of the lifegivers: the domestication of desire (with Claude Brodeur)
- 2011 - The postcolonial turn : re-imagining anthropology and Africa (with Francis B. Nyamnjoh)
- 2017 - Body and affect in the intercultural encounter
- 2018 - Corps et affects dans la rencontre interculturelle
- 2017 – novel about René Devisch: Koen Peeters De mensengenezer
External links[edit]
Renaat Devisch. Livre 1. Enfance, jeunesse en Flandre-occidentale
Renaat Devisch. Livre 2. Étudiant jésuite, ouverture à l’autre (...)
Renaat Devisch. Livre 3. Le choix de l’anthropologie, l’étude de la divination (...)
Renaat Devisch. Livre 4. Les Yaka du Congo : conditions de vie et ontologie
Renaat Devisch. Livre 5.La structure des grands cultes d’affliction (...)
Renaat Devisch. Livre 6. (...) saisir les cultes des Yaka du Congo et les civilisations bantoues
References[edit]
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