Guided Mobility
Guided Mobility
This chapter examines technology from the perspective of vaShona philosophy of life as guided by ancestral spirits (vadzimu) and treats the forest as a sacred space. Using Shona praise poetry (prayers), proverbs, and registers, it proposes the concept of guided mobility to examine what technology might mean in a realm of ancestral spiritual sovereignty over the living. Investing philosophical and epistemological value in Shona knowledge, it traces the origins of ideas and practices that European colonists later appropriated as their own. To be able to navigate the forest required a specific understanding of the spiritual relationship among Mwari/Xikwembu (God), ancestral spirits, the living, the animal world, and indeed the trees, rivers, and mountains. As guided mobility, the hunt poses interesting questions on what constitutes technology under regimes of spirituality. In the way of life of vaShona, all mobility was guided mobility. The chapter also considers the epistemology of guided mobility and what it says about technology under sacred conditions.
Keywords: technology, vaShona, philosophy of life, ancestral spirits, forest, sacred space, guided mobility, hunt, spirituality, epistemology
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
