Diverting Makila Mabe: Understanding responsibility in Kinshasa’s Pentecostal worlds

The main question asked in this chapter is: How does a Pentecostal understanding of responsibility relate to notions of personhood and sociality? As such, my chapter contributes to the questions asked in the introduction of this volume by paying attention to the role that the politics of responsibility play in subjectivation processes. I draw on observations in church groups, interviews with Pentecostal subjects and evangelizers, and an analysis of Pentecostal popular culture, especially my research with CINARC, an evangelizing television acting company in Kinshasa. The main argument is that responsibility within the Pentecostal community is allocated to both external agents and to the individual, yet in differentiated ways. Crucial in ‘becoming responsible’ is the process of the ‘moral movement’ (Fernandez 1979) one makes in order to become a Christian subject. This implies taking up one’s responsibilities, accepting one’s accountability for her own predicament and act upon it. Responsibility then relates to making choices in one’s social world, choosing with whom to hang out, in particular choosing Christian in one’s social environment. This selection depends on an awareness of others’ social lifeworlds, an awareness of these other’s personal pasts, and one’s intention and readiness to submit to the Holy Spirit. The production of this awareness draws on various techniques of subjectivation that are central in the Pentecostal world. I will first discuss these techniques and the influence of external actors on one’s social and spiritual well-being. Then, I move on to the role of confessions, soul healing and deliverance rituals in the construction of responsible, Christian subjects. Finally, I explore the depiction of accountability and the moral movement in one of Cinarc’s evangelizing television serials, Dilemma (produced and broadcast on a weekly basis during June-September 2005 on a local TV station), in order to show how the Pentecostal understanding of responsibility also steers practices of punishment and resolution.

ISBN:978-1-78920-359-2

Publication year:2019