Kukumirwa Semombe Dzamavhu: When Voices Begin to Erupt from Bottoms, African Anthropology Becomes Colonial

On a continent where Africans suffered crises of dispossession, it is inaccurate to describe such crises as crises in representations. Drawing on Shona (people of Zimbabwe) proverb kukumirwa semombe dzamavhu (being mooed for as if one is a cow made of clay), this paper argues that colonial anthropology did not only generate crises in representations but anthropologists took it upon themselves to ‘moo’ for Africans. Similarly, emergent futures herald human minds being nanotechnologically scanned and transferred to clouds and into technological substrates. In this sense, crises of dispossession will worsen when humans are dispossessed of their minds, so scanned and transferred from biological brains to clouds and into technological substrates. Contributing insights to the anthropology of science and technology studies, this paper argues that with minds transferred from the biological brains, in the guise of defying mortality, Africans will be dispossessed of their voices and their minds.