1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910985654603321

Autore

Johnson Paul Christopher

Titolo

Spirited Things : The Work of Possession in Afro-Atlantic Religions

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2014

ISBN

9780226122939

022612293X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (351 p.)

Disciplina

299.6/898

Soggetti

Afro-Caribbean cults

Black people -- Latin America -- Religion

Spirit possession -- Latin America

Afro-Caribbean religions - Religion - Latin America

Spirit possession - Latin America

Black people

Religion

Philosophy & Religion

North & South American Religions

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

""Contents""; ""Paul Christopher Johnson: Introduction / Spirits and Things in the Making of the Afro-Atlantic World""; ""Paul Christopher Johnson: One / Toward an Atlantic Genealogy of ""Spirit Possession""""; ""Stephan Palmie: 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""; ""Patrick A. Polk: Three / “Who�s Dat Knocking at the Door?� A Tragicomic Ethiopian Spirit Delineation in Three Parts""; ""Kristina Wirtz: Four / Spiritual Agency, Materiality, and Knowledge in Cuba""

""Brian Brazeal: Five / The Fetish and the Stone: A Moral Economy of Charlatans and Thieves""""Stephan Selka: Six / Demons and Money: Possessions in Brazilian Pentecostalism""; ""Elizabeth McAlister: Seven / Possessing the Land for Jesus""; ""Karen Richman: Eight / Possession and Attachment: Notes on Moral Ritual Communication among Haitian



Descent Groups""; ""Raquel Romberg: Nine / Mimetic Corporeality, Discourse, and Indeterminacy in Spirit Possession""; ""Michael Lambek: Ten / Afterword: Recognizing and Misrecognizing Spirit Possession""; ""Notes""; ""Bibliography""; ""Contributors""

""Index""

Sommario/riassunto

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.