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    Stories of ‘Born-Again’ Women in Uganda: Epistemic Violence, Visceral Faith, and Subversive Performances of Subjectivity

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    Bauman, Noelle
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    Abstract
    Between 1986 and 1991, missionaries “pioneered” the Hope Land base of the

    international missions organization: Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Situated just

    outside of Jinja, Uganda, the Hope Land base’s vision is “to be a training center, running

    schools accredited by YWAM’s University of the Nations,” and to be “committed to

    discipling men and women, while equipping them with the professional skills necessary

    to serve and reach the world for Christ”. Run by a small group of

    leaders, the British directors of the Hope Land base oversee a community of international

    and national students and staff, who live “To Know God and Make God Known”.

    Using data collected in qualitative interactive interviews with Ugandan women, I

    discuss the lives of a diverse group of ‘born-again’ Christian women whose lives have

    been influenced, in some way, by the work of YWAM in Uganda. Using a discussion of

    global coloniality, with particular attention given to the coloniality of power and the

    coloniality of knowledge, I consider the ways that

    hegemonic epistemic violence has worked to produce the ‘born-again’ conversion

    experiences among the women. Inspired by Mahmood (2005) use of Foucault’s Modes of Subjectivation and Techniques of the Self, I examine the ways that ‘born-again’ women continually work

    towards their own Christian discipleship, through actively transforming their own moral

    and ethical selves. Finally, using Bhaba’s concept of Colonial Mimicry (1994), I

    present evidence that argues that the YWAM missionaries use strategic ambivalence to

    perpetuate their work in Uganda. I argue Ugandan women resist the

    missionaries metonymizing gaze, and engage in subversive behaviors with these

    missionaries, as a means of perpetuating their access to the material benefits provided by

    YWAM.

    This project relies on women’s stories as articulations of unique knowledges. It

    acknowledges that in a neocolonized postcolonial world, asymmetries of power result in

    violent epistemic interventions that produce subjects and subjectivities marked by

    hegemonic ways of knowing. Despite this, this thesis finds that those subjectivities

    actively experience their own visceral responses to the Christian God, and as such,

    produce their own conceptions of God and their own ways of knowing about the world.
    URI for this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/1974/22669
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