MATRIX OF A POSTCOLONIAL BIBLICAL CRITICISM:

CONTEXTUAL AFRICAN BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORYPRAXIS IN BEMBALAND AND THE COPPERBELT [ZAMBIA]
BY TARCISIUS MUKUKA ST MARYS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

INTRODUCTION
Matrix of a Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Postcolonial Colonial Theory-Praxis in Bembaland and the Copperbelt [Zambia] may be summarised by the following equation:
Biblical Text + African Context + African Postcoloniality + Act of Appropriation of the Text by the African Reader = Contextual African Postcolonial Biblical Criticism [Teelela Mulumbe biblical hermeneutics].

It needs to be acknowledged at the outset that: Postcolonial biblical criticism is a perspective or a postcolonial optic (Segovia 2000a: 103-114), or better a hermeneutical salmagundi (Sugirtharajah 1999a: 15).

GEO-POLITICAL CONTEXT

BEMBALAND AND THE COPPERBELT OF ZAMBIA: BASIC DEMOGRAPHICS

Zambia comprises nine provinces and a total area of 290,585 square miles (752,612 square kilometres) with a population of 13,272,553 of which Bembaland and Copperbelt account for 4,774,803. The capital city is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of the country. The population is concentrated mainly around the Lusaka province in the south and the Copperbelt to the northwest. Until 1964 Zambia was a colony of the United Kingdom, having passed into Crown hands in 1924 from the British South Africa Company since 1890.

RATIONALE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

Catholic Evangelisation in Bembaland and the Copperbelt brought about education, political emancipation and abolition of the African slave trade. It may be argued, however, that due to ingrained missionary ethnocentric monoculturalism (Sue and Sue 2008: 87), missionary education inculcated colonial values (Macaulay 1958: 49), covertly and overtly. This slavish imitation of European culture (Lugard 1965: 589) resulted in socialised autochthonous oral culture being jettisoned in favour of individualised allochthonous chirographic culture. Unfinished business include: Decolonisation of the mind, witchcraft eradication, restitution of womens role as mediators of the Transcendent [women are still ventriloquised], ecclesiastical indigenisation and the place of an alternative married and female clergy in the Catholic Church and enhancing the political and ideological nature of the Bible (Clines 2009).

AIMS
To show how subalternity, hybridity and contrapuntalism, orality-aurality and chirography-typography, modernity and vampire stories (Banyama and Mumiani) can explain the transmission, translation and reception of the biblical message in Bembaland and the Copperbelt of Zambia. To analyse the collusion between colonialism and evangelisation and their critique by protest African initiated ecclesial communities. To demonstrate how colonialism and evangelisation may be heuristically explained using a model of sexual violation of overcoming, penetrating and impregnating the mute feminised native culture and religion construed as the ambivalent symbol of the primitive-and-sexually available yet menacing-anddangerous native eroticised female.

OBJECTIVES
Investigate and critically assess the process of transmission, translation and reception of the biblical message during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Bembaland and the Copperbelt. Compare and contrast the transmission, translation and reception of biblical themes during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Bembaland and the Copperbelt. Explore diverse uses of the biblical message in Bembaland and the Copperbelt, be they oppressive, liberating or transformative. Explore a politico-contextual and postcolonial reading/hearing of Rom 13:1-7 in Bembaland and the Copperbelt [Tarcisius Mukuka (2012),Reading/Hearing Romans 13: 1-7 under an African Tree: Towards a Lectio Postcolonica Contexta Africana, Neotestamentica 46(1): 105-138]

METHODOLOGY
Approach: Quadri-partite approach summarised in the equation:
African Context + Biblical Text + Postcoloniality + Act of Appropriation of the Text by the African Reader = Contextual African Postcolonial Biblical Criticism (Teelela Mulumbe Biblical Hermeneutics).

Paradigm: Sexualised discourse of rape, penetration and impregnation. Methodology: Quadri-partite trans-disciplinary approach combining critical discourse analysis, reader-response criticism, comparative historical method and socialscientific criticism under the umbrella of postcolonial biblical criticism.

QUESTIONS
In what way does a politico-contextual and postcolonial reading of the Bible help to explain the reception of biblico-hermeneutical themes in contemporary Bembaland and the Copperbelt and how does this differ from a colonial reading? How has the proclamation of the liberating mission of Jesus (Luke 4:18-19) impacted on colonial and postcolonial Bembaland and the Copperbelt of Zambia? To what uses has the Bible been put in Bembaland and the Copperbelt during the colonial and postcolonial periods? What was the narrative function of Banyama [Vampire men] stories during the colonial era in Bembaland and the Copperbelt?

ORIGINALITY AND CONTRIBUTION TO SCHOLARSHIP

This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the triad of biblical transmission, translation and reception has been collocated with postcolonial theory in Bembaland and the Copperbelt. It is also the first time that conversion in Bembaland and the Copperbelt has been examined through postcolonial lens. It is the first time that sexuality and vampire stories are utilised as metaphors for colonisation and biblical reception in Bembaland and the Copperbelt as a way in which relations of race, of bodies, and of tools of extraction can be debated, theorized, and explained (White 2000: 307). It is the first time that biblical transmission, translation and reception are being linked to the shift from an orally managed to a chirographically managed medium. Finally, it is the first time that two protest movements Mutima and Lumpa have been studied from the two poles of biblical reception and postcolonial theory as autochthonous protest movements against phallocentric and androcentric Western initiated Christianity.

FROM ORIENTALISM TO POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE IN A SUB-SAHARAN CONTEXT

Phase I (1880s-1950s): A passive and Orientalist phase characterised by rejection and assimilation of autochthonous culture and religion. Phase II (1950s-1970s): A reactive and apologetic phase, focused on legitimising African religion and culture, dominated by the comparative method. Phase III (1970s-1990s): A reactive-proactive phase, characterised by the use of the African context as resource for biblical interpretation, dominated by enculturation, evaluative method and liberation hermeneutics particularly in the shape of black theology. Phase IV (1990s-2000s): A proactive phase characterised by the recognition of the ordinary reader, context as subject of biblical interpretation, dominated by liberation and enculturation methodologies. Phase V (2000s): A postcolonial phase characterised by hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricoeur 1970: 32), retrieval, restoration (Punt 2003: 59) and transformation.

TEELELA MULUMBE BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS AND THE GREAT ORALITY-LITERACY DIVIDE

In the Great Divide between Orality and Literacy Debate and following Werner Kelber (1983), I argue for a predominantly oral-aural hermeneutics in Bembaland and the Copperbelt. One of the advantages of oral-aural hermeneutics is that it works with multiple origins as did the Bible, rather than with single originality. If biblical scholars were more attentive to the multiple origins of orality-aurality they would not be as befuddled as they are about the three occurrences of the patriarchs passing off their wives as sisters in Genesis (12:10-20; 20: 1-18 and 26: 1-16). Robert Alter (1978: 355-368; 1981: 47-62) suggests that these so-called variants be read as biblical type-scenes in which the point of the story lies in its difference from the other type-scenes. Regrettably, for our purposes, Alter does not underscore the ur-oral nature of the narratives, describing it as a matter of conjecture (Alter 1978: 359. 360). According to Alter (1978: 358) the notion of type-scenes was first worked out by Walter Arend (1933).