My Husband Is Also My Daughter: The Social History of the Bantu Matrilineal Zone, 1450–1800

Abstract

T he title of this essay is based on an old religious concept that dates to at least 1500 CE among the matrilineal peoples in modern Zambia. A Zambian mother, to cite one instance, lost her twenty-one-year-old daughter. To nurture and ease her into the world of ancestors, a family member must take in her spirit. The mother ’ s husband agreed to this. The result is that the mother ’ s husband is also her daughter, and sister and father to the rest of their children. In various social, religious, and political contexts, individuals who were anatomically or socially one identity could, through social actions or spiritual transitions, embody various gen-ders intersecting from one world, one life stage, or one social title to the next. These kinds of changes are especially supported in ethnographic studies and oral traditions that represent social activity between 1450 and 1800.