The article addresses the sociopolitical history of mental otherness within the Western discourse on shamanism. It explores how the inability of various discourses to reveal the ‘truth’ concerning the nature of shamanism has been continuously underpinned by a parallel inability to definitively describe the nature of the mental disorder commonly referred to as schizophrenia. The analysis focuses...
Abstract A manuscript entitled Ongγod qar-a sakiγus-un teüke sudur bičig orosiba , written in the Classical Mongolian script, was acquired by Henning Haslund-Christensen in the Barga area of the Chakhar province of Inner Mongolia during the Royal Danish Geographical Society’s Central Asian Expedition (1938–1939). The text is currently preserved in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. Scholars who...
Abstract During the last decades of the eighteenth century, knowledge about Siberia inspired Catherine II to create the main character of one of her comedies, The Siberian Shaman. Taking Foucault’s dispositif-concept as its theoretical premise, the present paper discusses the historical context in which The Siberian Shaman was written, deconstructs the identity of the comedy’s main character,...