Embodying Immobility: Dysphoric Geographies of Labour Migration and Their Transformations in the Therapeutic Context of ‘Venda’ Ancestor Possession in Post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Critiquing analyses of immobility as personally and socially pathologized condition-the ‘incapacity to move’ from location, psychic state and/or social position-several authors have stressed empowering dimensions of immobility at different levels of contemporary social praxis (Khan in Keywords of Mobility: Critical Engagements, 93-112. Berghahn Books, New York, 2016). The chapter aims to contribute to our understanding of ‘immobility’ as meaningful (and socially viable) option, focussing on historical processes through which radical curbing of embodied movement has emerged as a therapeutic concern in the context of ‘Venda’ ancestor possession in South Africa. Initially registered as ‘illness’ incapacitating labour migrants in urban employment since 1960s, the ‘gift’ bestowed upon them by their ancestors has acquired an important territorial parameter since apartheid’s dissolution during 1990s. The re-gaining of ‘health’ has been conditioned by migrants’ return to the ‘Venda homeland’ in the enhanced capacity as spirit mediums, associated with the inability to venture beyond lest symptoms recur. Articulated as ‘ancestral wish’ inscribed in bodily experience, the therapeutically mediated consensus as to the benefits of immobility in ‘Venda’ does not map easily onto earlier conceptualizations of ‘home-journeys’ in the context of labour migration in (post-)apartheid South Africa. Analytical debates have often appropriated emic discourses pitting ‘cultured’ rural areas against ‘evil’ cities as sufficient explanations for the motivations of ‘home-comings’ of migrants understood to seek moral rejuvenation at different stages of the life cycle. The ‘returns’ and immobilities associated with ‘Venda’ ancestor possession do not lend themselves to such simple accounts essentializing ‘rural locations’ as repositories of cultural values. Rather than drawn to the pre-existing cultural creativity deemed to be ‘located’ in the rural area, ‘immobilized’ labour migrants have been creative agents in sociocultural processes through which the ‘homeland’ has been re-invigorated as significant ‘cultural entity’ in present practice. The ethnographic materials introduced in this chapter draw on fieldwork of the author in South Africa during 2004-2006.