Paper short abstract:

‘African Traditional Religion’ is a colonial invention and inadequate to theorize traditional religious presences in Africa. In its stead, I devise empirically grounded theories from and with the Global South for more nuanced understandings of an integral part of Africa’s multireligious lifeworlds.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional religious presences are an integral part of Africa’s multireligious lifeworlds, but they remain widely ill-conceived as ‘African Traditional Religion’. As indicated by the fact that many African languages have no word for ‘religion’ and as excavated by the genealogical critiques of the concept, the notion of ‘African Traditional Religion’ is rooted in the colonial invention of Africa as Europe’s Other. As such, this concept is inadequate to theorize the complex presences of local religious traditions in African lifeworlds. Drawing on a lived religion approach, I suggest rethinking traditional religious presences from the grounds on which they are lived and considering people’s discourses on them as theories, i.e., as means to contemplate and debate the forms of life that they articulate and find themselves embedded in. Based on research in Ghana’s Asante region and cooperations with Ghanaian scholars, my project aims to devise ethnographic theories of traditional religious presences in an African lifeworld. Such an empirically grounded rethinking of ‘African Traditional Religion’ from and with the Global South results in new conversations with African interlocutors, careful translations, and a thinking across traditions. In the process, my project devises theories from the South, opens new conversations and hermeneutics across traditions, and contributes to the decolonization of religious studies and the study of Africa. In my paper, I discuss the epistemological problems with ‘African Traditional Religion’, present how I aim to rethink traditional religious presences in an African lifeworld from and with the Global South, and delineate the project’s broader theoretical aims.