In The Weight of the Past, Michael Lambek explores the complex ways that history shapes, constrains, and enables daily life. Focusing on ritual performances of spirit mediumship in a multifaceted religious landscape, Lambek's analysis reveals the multiple ways that Sakalava "bear" history. In Mahajanga, Madagascar, to bear history is at once a weighty obligation, a creative re-birthing, a scrupulous cultivation, and an exuberant performance of the past. To bear history is to serve and to suffer it, but also to be informed, enlightened, and sanctified. Royal ancestors emerge in spirit mediums to comment on the present from multiple voices and generate a refracted, ironic historical consciousness. This book describes the division of labor, creative production (poiesis), and ethical practice (phronesis) entailed in imagining, embodying, and serving the past. It is at once a vivid ethnography of Sakalava life and a significant intervention in anthropological debates on culture and history, structure and practice, advocating a theoretical approach informed by Aristotelian categories of understanding. Ethnographically rich and engagingly written, this book will be essential reading for courses in the anthropology of religion, ritual, or historical consciousness.
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Michael J. Lambek is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is author of Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte, Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession, and editor of A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion.
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In The Weight of the Past, Michael Lambek explores the complex ways that history shapes, constrains, and enables daily life. Focusing on ritual performances of spirit mediumship in a multifaceted religious landscape, Lambek's analysis reveals the multiple ways that Sakalava "bear" history. In Mahajanga, Madagascar, to bear history is at once a weighty obligation, a creative re-birthing, a scrupulous cultivation, and an exuberant performance of the past. To bear history is to serve and to suffer it, but also to be informed, enlightened, and sanctified. Royal ancestors emerge in spirit mediums to comment on the present from multiple voices and generate a refracted, ironic historical consciousness. This book describes the division of labor, creative production (poiesis), and ethical practice (phronesis) entailed in imagining, embodying, and serving the past. It is at once a vivid ethnography of Sakalava life and a significant intervention in anthropological debates on culture and history, structure and practice, advocating a theoretical approach informed by Aristotelian categories of understanding. Ethnographically rich and engagingly written, this book will be essential reading for courses in the anthropology of religion, ritual, or historical consciousness.
Loading... Features - Weight of the Past Table of Contents Table of Contents List of Figures and IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsStylistic ConventionsExchange RatesGlossary for Frequently Cited WordsKey PersonaePt. IA Poiesis of HistoryCh. 1Bearing Sakalava History: A Glossary of Key Terms3Ch. 2Into the Maze: Surface and Center, Place, Person, and Potency21Ch. 3The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past through Spirit Possession49Pt. IIStructural Remains: Contemporary Divisions of Historical LaborCh. 4Mechanical Division: Structure and History in the Northwest73Ch. 5The Legacy of Lord Diviner, Ndramisara: Organic Division, "Kindedness," and Sakalava Subjects97Ch. 6Personal Particularism, Mediumship, and Distributive Memory125Pt. IIIServing the AncestorsCh. 7Popular Performances: Paying Homage and Gaining Respect143Ch. 8The Great Service (Fanompoa Be)167Pt. IVPracticing HistoryCh. 9Kassim's Burden: The Practice of an Exemplary Spirit Medium191Appendix: The Plan of Bezavo214Ch. 10Answering to History: Conflict, Conscience, and Change217Ch. 11The Play of the Past: Historicity in Daily Life237Ch. 12Conclusion: Imagined Continuities261Notes275Bibliography297Index313 All Marketplace (--)
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