Identity discourses show their faces

Do you have an identity? Or are you an identity? These are the questions philosophers usually busy themselves with. However, in this section we shall ask:

1. What are the (religious) identities governing the lives of the research population? And, of course,

2. What would have been their preferred (religious) identities?

When a person’s identity has been robbed, that person’s spirit dies. Seodi Venekai-Rudo White (and others) in their book on gender violence call the stealing away of identity spirit injury. Or in their own words: “‘Spirit Injury’ leads to the slow death of the psychology, the soul and identity of the individual”. ²⁶¹

Have religious discourses robbed the research population of their identity? When the patient’s religious identity is placed in binary opposition to his/her other identities, which are cultural, financial or gender focused, the answer to the above question may be yes. It has been found that when religious leaders insisted that their adherents gave priority to their religious identity at the expense of all other identities, tension developed within the patient because of the conflict of identities. When a patient is, for instance, advised by her pastor to submit to her husband according to Old Testament laws,

261 Seodi Venekai-Rudo White, Dorothy nyaKaunda Kamanga, Tinyade Kachika, Asiyati Lorraine Chiweza, Flossie Gomile-Chidyaonga, Dispossessing the widow:

Gender based violence in Malawi (Balaka, Malawi: Montfort Media, 2002), p 12.

185 her religious identity comes into conflict with her gender identity as defined by contemporary human rights.

In therapy, of course, we explored the dialogical spaces between fixed identities which are opposing one another in order to shift the identity from fixed to dialogical. In exploring dialogical identities, it may be useful to remind oneself briefly of the insights on

“identity” of the philosophers who have informed narrative therapy:

Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault:

1. Ricoeur introduces the term “narrative identity”, with a reference towards “I am what I am because of how I am narrated”.²⁶² This researcher sees this as an important insight for narrative therapy which invites many voices into the process of identity narration, including those of the patient him- or herself and those of significant others.

2. Derrida aims at deconstructing the self by gaining insight into the social and linguistic processes by which tradition is constructed. Edward Sampson²⁶³ sums this up as follows:

Derrida’s works revolve around the fundamental structuralist thesis that all social practices, including the meaning of subject and subjectivity, are not simply mediated by language, but are constituted in and through language. Therefore, it becomes important to examine both the signifying system of language and the tradition by which language has thus far been understood.

Derrida’s aim is to deconstruct that tradition and so provide a better understanding of the manner by which persons are constituted in social and linguistic practice.

262 Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, Religion, Narrative and Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).

263 Edward Sampson, “The deconstruction of the self”, in John Shotter & Kenneth J Gergen (eds), Texts of identity (London, Newbury Park, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989), p 8.

186 3. Finally, it was Foucault²⁶⁴ who liberated humanity from the

ideal of “finding oneself”. He did this by deconstructing the self into many selves, and unfixing identity into a variety of shifting identities. Narrative therapy, then, empowers the patient to find him- or herself situated within several selves, and co-authoring his of her life as one within many preferred identities.

In this subsection we are first going to look at the faces of fixed religious identities within township spiritualities (2.4.1). Then, we shall explore the dialogical spaces between fixed religious identity when it comes into conflict with other identities. Under “other identities” we shall understand those identities which have earlier been identified as therapeutically significant to this study. They are religious affiliation (2.4.2), culture (2.4.3), money (2.4.4), gender (2.4.5) and age (2.4.6).

2.4.1 Religious Identity within Township Spiritualities

Based on oral history interviews with church leaders, as explained in chapter 1 (paragraph 1.4.2), religious identity in the township takes on fixed forms by means of the following discourses:²⁶⁵

1. Morality as explained in the Old Testament is sufficient and compulsory for Christians today.

2. Morality as explained in the Old Testament transcends and is

264 Alec McHoul & Wendy Grace, A Foucault Primer: Discourse, power and the subject (Washington Square, New York: New York University Press, 1993), p 76.

265 I have described the main characteristics of township spiritualities in my M Th presentation, “Relanguaging religious and cultural discourses”, which was presented on 4 March 2002 and gave access to the present study.

187 superior to all cultures, also my own.

3. My church has been revealed through dreams as the true church, and offers prosperity and health.

4. It is unthinkable to practice one’s faith outside of a church.

Religious identity in the township, then, is old testamentically moral, mercilessly churchy, with an indispensible focus on faith healing.

This researcher would call this a post-colonial religious identity, in that it is an identity assumed by Christians who have reclaimed their religiosity from its western forms of expression. Yet, religious identity in the township also is not “African” in any generic sense. It is a (albeit fixed) mixture of

1. a variety of African cultures

2. adapted forms of traditional and charismatic Christianity, and

3. contemporary peri-urban legends, needs and fears.

With each of the churches (there are at least 150 churches in Atteridgeville alone) taking on its own fixed form of religious identity, the challenge of therapy is to enter into dialogue with the patient’s prescribed religious identity in order to harmonise it with his/her preferred identity.²⁶⁶

266 Relevant here is an article on postcolonial religion written by Ananda Abeysekara, “Identity for and against itself: Religion, criticism, and pluralization”, in Journal of the American Academy of Religion72.4 (December 2004), pp 973-1001. On page 975 Abeysekara notes that, parting from the foundationalist concerns of (postcolonial) identity “does not necessarily guarantee safe recourse to the obvious opposite: antiessentialism, namely, that culture is not homogeneous, that identity is not fixed, that religion is not essential, and so on.” This is a relevant warning and describes the challenge of the therapeutic process to be described in this section.