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Sarah Demart

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Location: Belgium

Institution: University of Liège, CEDEM

Contact: E-Mail

I'm currently Postdoctoral Researcher FRS-FNRS. I've been working for several years on differents issues of congolese pentecostalism.

Grounded on a social anthropology of inspiration and phenomenological understanding, my doctoral dissertation (2010) has questioned the emergence, mobility and reconstruction process of the congolese Revival, which has grown exponentially since the 1970s within and outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The perspective adopted is historical (from the late fifteenth to nowadays) and multisite (Brussels, Kinshasa, Paris, Toulouse). It is justified by the forms of continuity of this theology of Salvation with the prophecies of precolonial and colonial periods, while inserting it in a vast movement of religious globalization, pentecostalism. Basing on this framework, various "deliverance" devices have been examined, missionary migrations in Europe and modes of political participation (in DRC), significantly marked by processes of demonization. The different angles of the thesis aim to contribute to the understanding of this religiosity’s intrinsic conflicts (Bible/Witchcraft) considering the different trends and spatiotemporal reconfigurations of the Revival taken as a potential memory construct that is impossible to reduce to imaginary or identity issues. The development prospects of the way that religious discourse “makes” territory then leads to the historical depth of the new missionaries’ and migratories’ dynamics.