Ecstasy-Belonging in Madagascar and Brazil

Anti-colonial uprisings in Madagascar and Brazil were diagnosed as choreomania by missionary physicians and neuroscientists, who framed trance-like demonstrations—involving shaking, frothing, falling, and visions—as pathological movement disorders. Unlike earlier cases, these large-scale protests entered government administration, with physicians arguing that choreomania spread by pathological sympathy. In Madagascar, demonstrators angered at missionaries' black hats gathered at sacred sites, convulsing, and unseated a pro-European king, representing a form of ecstasy-belonging and a choreopolitics of revolt. In Brazil, revolutionary underclasses were dismissed as suffering a choreomaniacal epidemic of religious psychosis.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Choreomania became distinctly political. Missionary physicians and neuroscientists stationed in Madagascar and Brazil compared trance-like revolutionary uprisings to the literature on choreomania. Unlike earlier cases, however, these ‘movement disorders’, large-scale anti-colonial demonstrations characterized by shaking, frothing, falling, and visions—as well as, in Madagascar, ancestor worship—tipped ‘choreomania’ (and ‘epidemic chorea’) into the realm of government administration. Worried that uprisings could take place in other colonies, physicians argued that choreomania spread by pathological sympathy; it migrated. Demonstrators angered at the missionaries’ black hats, gathering at sacred sites, convulsing, and ultimately unseating a pro-European king represent, following Giorgio Agamben, a form of ecstasy-belonging: a state of exception characterized by spirit possession and repossession, through which they take back what is rightly theirs. The disorder of ‘choreomania’ represents a choreopolitics of revolt. Similarly, in Brazil, revolutionary underclasses gathered together in what was dismissed as a ‘choreomaniacal’ epidemic of delusion—a religious psychosis.