Deities and Divas: Queer Ritual Specialists in Myanmar, Thailand, and Beyond

Abstract

Focused on the growing numbers of gay and trans female ritual specialists found in the proliferating spirit possession cults of mainland Southeast Asia, Deities and Divas illuminatingly brings the scholarship of queer studies and spirit possession studies into an otherwise previously neglected dialogue. Through analytic overviews and empirical case studies, Peter Jackson and Benjamin Baumann's edited volume explores how the personal lives of queer spirit mediums are remade in the ambiguous, contentious interactions among queer social life, Buddhism, and spirit possession, as well as how cultures of spirit mediumship are changing in response to the increasingly public prominence of queer mediums. A broad-ranging and revisionist introduction by the editors sets the stage for the book's two topical subdivisions, the first on deities and the queering of ritual specialists and the second on divas and the queering of ritual performance and aesthetics. In addition, Jackson contributes critical introductions to both parts of the book, resulting in a greater overarching unity of theoretical framing and argumentation than is typically the case in edited volumes.Identifying contemporary capitalist markets and mass media technologies as powerful engines fueling the expansion and transformation of both queer identities and spirit possession cults, Jackson and Baumann argue that the region is witnessing the novel intersecting efflorescence of these two worlds rather than the eclipse of transgender ritual specialists previously argued by other scholars. As a consequence, queer ritual specialists are pursuing and navigating new possibilities of religious prestige and cultural recognition. The editors propose a new analytic framework and conceptual vocabulary that distinguishes among cross-dressing, cross-gender, queer, and cisgender identifications and presentations inside and outside ritual settings; differentiates between emic understandings and etic analyses of gender and sexual nonnormativity; and situates gay and trans female ritual specialists at the center, rather than the periphery, of cultures of possession and ritual potency.Jackson's sole-authored introductions to the book's two subdivisions are topically wide ranging, advancing novel arguments that critically interrogate and insightfully advance prior scholarship about religion, spirit possession, and sex/gender in Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam. In the first he maps out the complex and varying gendered forms of spirit possession within these three countries, explores the historical decline of hermaphroditic and androgynous deities in the region, and explicates the social and cultural limits to queer spirit mediumship as a transgressive ritual practice. In the second he explores not only the resonances between trance possession and diva worship with regards to skilled aesthetic and bodily self-fashioning, presentation, and performance but also similarities in their accompanying ideologies of mimicry, excess, and entertainment. A resulting novel argument Jackson advances is that capitalist development has expanded the vocational opportunities available to cisgender women who previously dominated earlier spirit possession cults. Their increasing departure from this field, in turn, has opened up this ritual space to queer actors whose skill in navigating the arts of performative display, plural identities, and alluring ambiguity leaves them particularly well suited to occupy it.The more narrowly focused empirical case studies in the volume inevitably are unable to address the full range of historical, social, and cultural dynamics, much less theory, explored in the book's three analytic introductions. Instead, they provide a more intimate exploration of the contemporary intersections of spirit possession, ritual performance, and queer gender/sexual identity in Myanmar and Thailand. Chapters on Thailand explore the performative choreography of nondiscursive, embodied desire and sexuality in the possession rituals of the rural Northeast, how devoted followers and the anonymous public react very differently when a spirit medium reveals his homosexuality online, and the ambivalent, oscillating appeal of life as a spirit medium for a beautician who deeply identifies with the persona of Paris Hilton. Chapters on Myanmar document how spirit possession fosters crucial supplemental kin relations—both human and divine—for trans women and the struggle of a Yangon gay man choosing between life as a spirit medium or as a queer activist.A noticeable strength of the volume is how through detailed attention to individual biographies it illuminates those unique psychological and social benefits obtained by queer individuals when they claim the role and identity of a spirit medium. A significant weakness, however, lies in its uneven substantive discussion of deities versus divas. While there are four case studies of the queering of ritual specialists, there are only two case studies of the queering of ritual performance and aesthetics. And unfortunately, one of these case studies is a cinematic analysis of mimesis, death, and the sublime in a scene of diva worship in the American movie Philadelphia, which has little to contribute directly to understanding the historical, social, or cultural dynamics of Southeast Asian queer performativity in ritual contexts.