Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part One EATING/BEING EATEN
- Part Two TERROR AND HEALING IN TOORO
- Part Three THE CANNIBAL IN COLONIAL MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS
- 9 The Making of a Christian King and ‘Pagan’ Persecutions
- 10 Christian Catechists and Missionaries in Tooro
- 11 Missionaries, the Eucharist and Cannibals in Tooro
- 12 Resurrecting Cannibals
- 13 Medical Spectacles of Resurrection and Colonial Mirroring
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - The Making of a Christian King and ‘Pagan’ Persecutions
from Part Three - THE CANNIBAL IN COLONIAL MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part One EATING/BEING EATEN
- Part Two TERROR AND HEALING IN TOORO
- Part Three THE CANNIBAL IN COLONIAL MISSIONARY ENCOUNTERS
- 9 The Making of a Christian King and ‘Pagan’ Persecutions
- 10 Christian Catechists and Missionaries in Tooro
- 11 Missionaries, the Eucharist and Cannibals in Tooro
- 12 Resurrecting Cannibals
- 13 Medical Spectacles of Resurrection and Colonial Mirroring
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
When exploring the figure of the cannibal in Tooro, I was surprised to find elements that were obviously taken from Christian discourse and practice. Cannibals in Tooro were not solitary figures like most witches but organized in a secret society and were, in particular, bound together by a common meal. They ate their victims following the widespread ‘classical’ image of the ‘cannibal feast’ that also recurs in fantasies as witches' Sabbaths. Cannibals in Tooro celebrating their sinister banquets thus appeared as an inverted form of the Eucharist, the Holy Communion.
The most astonishing aspect of the cannibal in Tooro was, however, his capacity to resurrect his victims. Cannibals were said to bring the dead back to life to be eaten, to be killed a second time. After the funeral, cannibals would resurrect the dead by playing a bamboo flute or by other means. They would call the dead body to reach the place where they had gathered and then give orders to fetch water, gather fire wood, sharpen a knife and place banana leaves on the ground. When the water was boiling, the resurrected body lay down on the banana leaves; a cannibal would take a knife and cut the body into pieces, to boil them in a pot. He called the other cannibals together and they started their sinister banquet. The cannibalistic witches in Tooro thus practised a diabolic caricature of the Christian resurrection: not God, but a cannibal made the dead rise; the resurrected did not enter heaven but ended up in the stomach of the cannibal.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Resurrecting CannibalsThe Catholic Church, Witch-Hunts and the Production of Pagans in Western Uganda, pp. 133 - 142Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011