Spirited Things
eBook - ePub

Spirited Things

The Work of "Possession" in Afro-Atlantic Religions

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Spirited Things

The Work of "Possession" in Afro-Atlantic Religions

About this book

The word "possession" is anything but transparent, especially as it developed in the context of the African Americas. There it referred variously to spirits, material goods, and people. It served as a watershed term marking both transactions in which people were made into things—via slavery—and ritual events by which the thingification of people was revised. In Spirited Things, Paul Christopher Johnson gathers together essays by leading anthropologists in the Americas that reopen the concept of possession on these two fronts in order to examine the relationship between African religions in the Atlantic and the economies that have historically shaped—and continue to shape—the cultures that practice them. Exploring the way spirit possessions were framed both by material things—including plantations, the Catholic church, the sea, and the phonograph—as well as by the legacy of slavery, they offer a powerful new way of understanding the Atlantic world. 

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Yes, you can access Spirited Things by Paul Christopher Johnson in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & African History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Copyright
  3. Title Page
  4. Contents
  5. Introduction. Spirits and Things in the Making of the Afro-Atlantic World
  6. One. Toward an Atlantic Genealogy of “Spirit Possession”
  7. Two. The Ejamba of North Fairmount Avenue, the Wizard of Menlo Park, and the Dialectics of Ensoniment: An Episode in the History of an Acoustic Mask
  8. Three. “Who’s Dat Knocking at the Door?” A Tragicomic Ethiopian Spirit Delineation in Three Parts
  9. Four. Spiritual Agency, Materiality, and Knowledge in Cuba
  10. Five. The Fetish and the Stone: A Moral Economy of Charlatans and Thieves
  11. Six. Demons and Money: Possessions in Brazilian Pentecostalism
  12. Seven. Possessing the Land for Jesus
  13. Eight. Possession and Attachment: Notes on Moral Ritual Communication among Haitian Descent Groups
  14. Nine. Mimetic Corporeality, Discourse, and Indeterminacy in Spirit Possession
  15. Ten. Afterword: Recognizing and Misrecognizing Spirit Possession
  16. Notes
  17. Bibliography
  18. Contributors
  19. Index