In what ways can spirit possession among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte (Comoro Islands, East Africa) be said to be a creative performance? Situating trance episodes in the broader life context of the performer enables us to see that style is in large part a product of frame management. A good performer provides a clear and resonant articulation of her identities as character, medium, and...
What does it mean to know one's own mind, to make up one's mind, or to be of two minds? The paper explores some of the assumptions Westerners make about mind and confronts them with elements from the ethnography of spirit possession among Malagasy speakers. It challenges the assumption that a unified state of mind, exemplified by pure reason as opposed to passion, is the necessary basis for...
Using a broadly Aristotelian framework I propose poetic form as a means for distinguishing historicities. I analyze Sakalava performances of possession by royal ancestors as the creative production of a kind of history, distinguish it from a dominant occidental model of history, and elaborate the chronotope on which it is based and the heteroglossia and historical consciousness it enables. I...
When the identities of the spirits that possess particular individuals in communities of Malagasy speakers in Mayotte are taken into account, it becomes evident that spirits are frequently passed on from generation to generation and thus associated, though not exclusively, with particular families. The paper presents a number of case studies of spirit succession, attempting to draw out some of...