Dervishes and Curses

In this week’s episode, we turn towards folkloric beliefs about the different ways people can percieve the world around them and what western models of mental health can learn from elsewhere.There are so many ways of knowing. The West has imposed a cerebral way of knowing onto the world and will not accept other ways of knowing, things like intuition, premonition, dreams, that kind of thing has been bundled up and thrown away as old wives’ tales. But I think, wait. Do not dare throw away this way of knowing, because it has not been interrogated. The West has thrown it away, but we don’t have to. — Jennifer Makumbi Mythological Africans is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Can’t Get Enough?Watch this talk about Enfant Terribles, a very common and yet, underdiscussed character from African folklore.Recommended Reading* So Many Ways of Knowing: An Interview with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Author of “Kintu”* Ekoué, Léocadie , et al. “Aze and the Incommensurable.” Evil in Africa: Encounters with the Everyday, edited by William C. Olsen and Walter E. A. Van Beek, Indiana University Press, 2016, pp. 128–39. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt17t75bk.12. Accessed 20 May 2024. Get full access to Mythological Africans at mythologicalafricans.substack.com/subscribe