ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

“Crippled Surgeon, Infirm Sorcerer”: Disability and Empowerment in Early Modern West Central Africa

• In Event: Early Modern Medicine 1

English Abstract

This paper investigates 17th and 18th century Italian missionary writings to illuminate the role of physical and intellectual impairments as unique opportunities of social empowerment in early modern West Central Africa.
Since their presence had been requested by the Kongolese king, Italian Capuchins’ accounts provide a unique point of entry to investigate the internal regions of West Central Africa. A careful analysis reveals significant insights into West Central African perceptions of disabled bodies as markers of an individual’s connection with the world of the Ancestors and signs of enhanced spiritual powers, usually connected to the healing world. For example, the missionaries often remarked on the role of people with disabilities as renowned healer-diviners, sometime in service of royal families. By virtue of their extra-ordinary occurrence, conditions such as albinism or blindness were believed to grant the individuals special healing and divining abilities, allowing them access to prestigious social roles.
While the field of disability studies has expanded to examine non-European societies, the experiences and perceptions of impairments in pre-colonial Africa have remained overlooked in the scholarship. By reading against the archival grain, this paper argues for the need to investigate past experiences and meanings of disability from outside Western categories of thought. Exploring the connection between bodily differences, spirituality and the healing world shaping the experiences of people with disabilities in early modern West Central Africa, it highlights the existence of socio-cultural frameworks that allowed for positive and empowering interpretations of impairments in the premodern world, which warrant further investigation.

Author

• Myriam Carmen Iuorio, University of Toronto