The Spirit of Affect - Song-Dance Encounters in Matrilineal Congo

In rural Punu communities, song and dance are profoundly relational and affective practices, generated ever anew through ritual encounters among humans and with more-than-human beings. In this ethnography, the author immerses the reader into the rhythms of resonance, attunement and amplification that intensify the performances and open pathways to participation into the water spirit world. Following African feminist scholars and Ingold’s anthropology of life, she offers a matrifocal, ontogenetic reading that critically engages with affect theory, advocating for its re-animation.