This article puts Protestant Christian communal practices that identify canonical figures in conversation with academic efforts to decolonize canons. It examines the enigmatic life of Malagasy Lutheran pastor and anticolonial activist Eugene Rateaver (1884–1962). Rateaver was controversially excommunicated from the Lutheran mission church in Madagascar in 1937 after being found guilty of unethical conduct. However, competing stories of him circulate today among retired white American missionaries and Rateaver’s US-based descendants. I take Rateaver’s case as an entry point to closely examine what it means to “cite” or reclaim previously overlooked ancestors in canonical traditions or histories. Highlighting important differences in what ancestors are culturally can illuminate the potentials and limits for transforming canonical conversations in both academic and religious communities.
AhmedS (2017) Living a Feminist Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
3.
BardolphDN (2014) A critical evaluation of recent gendered publishing trends in American archaeology. American Antiquity79(3): 522–540.
4.
BlochM (1986) From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
BriggsCLBaumanR (1992) Genre, intertextuality and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology2(2): 131–72.
6.
BurawoyM (2021) Decolonizing sociology: The significance of W.E.B. Du Bois. Critical Sociology47(4–5): 545–554.
7.
CannellF (2021) How DNA can get in the way of history, sometimes: Family historians as kinship artisans across both “religious” and “secular” contexts. In: FertigGGuzzi-HeebSTimmE (eds.) Popular Genealogy and Historical and Anthropological Research: Motives–Practices–Resources. Jahrbuch für die Geschichte des ländlichen Raums. Institut für Geschichte des ländlichen Raumes, 45–66.
8.
ChiovendaA (2019) From metaphor to interpretation: “Haunting” as diagnostic of dissociative processes. Ethos47(4): 489–500.
9.
ColeJ (2001) Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10.
ColeJ (2010) Sex and Salvation: Imagining the Future in Madagascar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DavisDMullaS (2023) The unbearable whiteness of citational practice in US medical anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly early view online access. https://doi-org.colby.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/maq.12761.
15.
DundonA (2011) DNA, Israel and the ancestors: Substantiating connections through Christianity in Papua New Guinea. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology12(1): 29–43.
16.
GoodBJ (2019) Hauntology: theorizing the spectral in psychological anthropology. Ethos47(4): 411–426.
17.
GoodBJChiovendaARahimiS (2022) The anthropology of being haunted: On the emergence of an anthropological hauntology. Annual Review of Anthropology51(1): 437–453.
GuptaAStoolmanJ (2022) Decolonizing US anthropology. American Anthropologist124: 778–779.
20.
HalvorsonB (2010) Translating the Fifohazana (Awakening): The politics of healing and the colonial mission legacy in African Christian missionization. Journal of Religion in Africa 40(4): 413–441.
21.
HalvorsonB (2018) Conversionary Sites: Transforming Medical Aid and Global Christianity from Madagascar to Minnesota. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
22.
HalvorsonB (2021) Malagasy art on the move: Materiality, home displays, and problems in decolonizing Christianity. Journal of Material Culture 26(2): 142–161.
23.
HalvorsonB and Hovland I (2021) Reconnecting language and materiality in Christian reading: A comparative analysis of two groups of Protestant women. Comparative Studies in Society and History 63(2): 499–529.
24.
HarrisonF (1992) The Du Boisian legacy in anthropology. Critique of Anthropology12(3): 239–260.
25.
ImhoffSKaellH (2017) Lineage matters: DNA, race, and gene talk in Judaism and Messianic Judaism. Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation27(1): 95–127.
26.
KellerE (2005) The road to clarity: Seventh-Day Adventism in Madagascar. Palgrave Macmillan.
LarsonP (1997) “Capacities and modes of thinking”: Intellectual engagements and subaltern hegemony in the history of Malagasy Christianity. The American Historical Review102(4): 969–1002.
McKinnonS (2017) Preface. In: ThomasTMalikAWellmanR (eds.) New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties across the Abrahamic Religions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. vii–xi.
34.
McKittrickK (2020) Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
35.
MiddletonK (ed) (1999) Ancestors, Power and History in Madagascar. Brill.
36.
MitchellHJ (2002) Postcards from the edge of history: Narrative and the sacralization of Mormon historical sites. Journeys3(1): 133–157.
37.
MottCCockayneD (2017) Citation matters: Mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of “conscientious engagement”. Gender, Place & Culture24(7): 954–973.
38.
NielssenHSkeieKH (2014) Christian revivalism and political imagination in Madagascar. Journal of Religion in Africa44(2): 189–223.
39.
Pina-CabralJ (2023) Anthropology’s ancestors: A review essay on a new Berghahn collection. Vibrant19:1–10. http://doi.org/10.1590/1809-43412022v19e605
40.
RabakaR (2010) Against Epistemic Apartheid: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
41.
RandrianjaSEllisS (2009) Madagascar: A Short History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
42.
RateaverE (1911) The French administrative policy in Madagascar. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. University of Minnesota.
43.
SaadaE (2012) Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
44.
SmithCAGarrett-ScottD (2021) We are not named: Black women and the politics of citation in anthropology. Feminist Anthropology2(1): 18–37.
45.
SmithCAWilliamsELWadudIAPirtleWNL (2021) Cite Black women: A critical praxis. Feminist Anthropology2(1): 10–17.
46.
Taylor-SeymourR (2022) Intimate rites: Remaking ancestors and queerness in Zimbabwe. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago.
47.
ThomasT (2021) Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
48.
ThomasTMalikAWellmanR (eds.) (2017) New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties across the Abrahamic Religions. Palgrave Macmillan.
49.
TuckEYangKW (2021 [2012]) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Tabula Rasa38: 61–111.
50.
Van KlinkenA (2019) Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism, and Arts of Resistance in Africa. Philadelphia: Penn State University Press.
51.
YanagisakoS (2002) Producing Culture and Capital: Family Firms in Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
