Le travail symbolique des prophètes d'Eboga : logiques syncrétiques et entre-deux culturel.

A. Mary — The Symbolic Work of Boga Prophets: Syncretic Logic and the Cultural Inbetween. Beyond the ambiguity that takes syncretism to be an expression of a culture's genius or anomie, beyond the limits of the way "syncretism" is empirically used in typologies of new religious movements, this article analyzes the "logics" of the syncretizing process involving African prophets. Among the Fang (Gabon), the symbolic work performed in the Bwiti cuit illustrates the way a local prophetie tradition obtains legitimacy by accumulating resources from both the Judaic model and sources of power in Fang culture. By telescoping the sorcerer's force and God's power, by diverting the initiate's visionary experience for the sake of revelation, by shifting the meaning of messianic, therapeutic or cuit duties, the prophet's syncretic work turns out to be based on a logic different from that of a collage. The oscillations in a prophet's discourses and actions play so much on the ambivalence of basic schemes of Bwiti thought that it jeopardizes them and opens the way to a symbolic recomposition.Mary André. Le travail symbolique des prophètes d'Eboga : logiques syncrétiques et entre-deux culturel.. In: Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 33, n°132, 1993. pp. 613-643