Intersections of Sensorial Perception and Imagination in Divination Practices in Postwar Mozambique

Abstract

Following a long-term analysis of diverse divination practices in central Mozambique, this article examines how the civil war (1976–1992) and developments since the war’s end (2004–2010), which triggered new forms of consumption of mass-media technologies such as television and film, significantly changed the role played by clients, their visual senses, and their imaginative abilities in the production of divinatory knowledge. These novel forms of client engagement in divination have increased the popularity of divination practices while also revealing the possibilities and constraints attached to processes of identity transformation through media technologies. Televized and film-based divination have helped to publicly expose the activities and culprits of serious evil-doing, but they have also shaped the identities of divination clients by offering a meta-commentary that denounces their own links to evil and witches in everyday life