Ghostly Vengeance: Spiritual Pollution, Time, and Other Uncertainties in Acholi

This dissertation is an ethnography that describes problems of spiritual upset in northern Uganda, where the repercussions of recent war (1986—2008) intermingle with older legacies of colonial and post-colonial violence. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in the Gulu and Amuru Districts of the Acholi sub-region, it describes spiritual effects and affects in ordinary life, encompassed by what many Acholi people understand in the concept of “dirty things,” or ajwani. The pollution of ajwani manifests in phenomena such as cen (sometimes interpreted as ghostly vengeance), malevolent spirit possession, misfortune, premature death, and other uncanny problems with unclear or uncertain causes. The ethnography shows that while ajwani can be broadly understood as the manifestations of spiritual pollution caused by transgressions of a moral order, this order—or orders—is the site of myriad epistemic and ethical collisions. The thesis thus considers how transgression is variously understood in Acholi, and how ghostly vengeance and other dirty things act as contextual, contingent, and subjunctive phenomena through time. The work features interlocutors of varied religious orientations and social positions, and shows how they consider spirit forces to be subjunctive —be they living or dead, human or extra-human. It further suggests that the contingency of ghostly vengeance and other dirty things points to the ways in which the distress such phenomena cause, and the timely responses they demand, provoke and reflect immanent and imminent ethical challenges in Acholi. In so doing, the thesis contributes ethnographic exposition to the anthropological literatures on violence, ritual, social repair, and authority in post-war Acholi; haunting, religiosity and Christianity(ies); contemporary witchcraft and conspiracy; and ordinary ethics.Ph.D.2020-11-19 00:00:0