Channeling Alterity: Toward a Theory of Shamanic Audiovisualization

Abstract

This article theorizes the concept of ‘shamanic audiovisualization’ – a process whereby the cinematic apparatus itself functions as a ritualistic medium channeling alterity – to challenge logocentric models of testimony and trauma that dominate the archive. Moving beyond the imperative to ‘give voice’, which risks re-performing the violence of the event, I examine how Korean screen media offers an alternative ethical framework. Through an analysis of the Korean film Spirits’ Homecoming , directed by Cho Jung-rae in 2016, I argue that the cinematic medium functions as a shamanic conduit. This process, inherently gendered and coded feminine, facilitates a mode of ‘channeling’ alterity that operates through receptivity rather than extraction. Shamanic audiovisualization thus proposes a new social temporality for trauma – one that acknowledges the past without being entrapped by it – and models a politics of emotion that moves beyond wound-based identity toward a future-oriented embrace.

In the evidence

This study is part of the evidence base for a synthesis in the library. Here is how each one recorded it.

• State of the evidence: Shamanism ?Unclear

  Argues that the cinematic apparatus can function as a shamanic medium channeling alterity through receptivity rather than extraction, proposing 'shamanic audiovisualization' as an ethical alternative to logocentric testimony and trauma models.

  Synthesized October 25, 2026

Comparable studies

Other theoretical and historical papers on shamanism, most cited first.