Copresent jurisdictions: Spirits, theopolitics, and the rise of Akan spirituality in the United States

Abstract

AbstractAkan spirituality, originally from Ghana, has risen in popularity in the United States since the 1960s and recently has expanded, as shrine houses grow. Akan spiritualists promote reconnecting to ancestors and spiritualists in Ghana, and they offer spiritual avenues for pursuing healing and justice, particularly for African Americans and other diasporic Africans. This article draws on extensive collaborative ethnographic research with a prominent shrine house in Maryland and its ties to a key shrine in Larteh, Ghana. It foregrounds two elder priestesses, focusing on their spiritual governance and work in the realms of healing, adjudication, policing, and protection. They serve in these ways within their spiritual communities and sometimes alongside or with state institutions, or as an antidote to them. This article advances a new concept called copresent jurisdictions—here, defined as Akan spiritual assemblages of Abosom (exalted spirits), ancestors, priestesses, priests, and spiritualists who operate with their own spiritual laws and authorities within their sacred communities and in relation to state institutions. It argues that these copresent jurisdictions offer alternative pathways of law, politics, spirituality, and justice within the contexts of imperiled democratic orders. Copresent jurisdictions expand current theoretical debates over theopolitics, postjuristocratic transitions, cosmopolitical assemblages, and transnational copresences.