The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit PossessionJHU Press, 2003年5月1日 - 304 頁 Award for the Best First Book in the History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion Feminist theory and postcolonial theory share an interest in developing theoretical frameworks for describing and evaluating subjectivity comparatively, especially with regard to non-autonomous models of agency. As a historian of religions, Mary Keller uses the figure of the "possessed woman" to analyze a subject that is spoken-through rather than speaking and whose will is the will of the ancestor, deity or spirit that wields her to engage the question of agency in a culturally and historically comparative study that recognizes the prominent role possessed women play in their respective traditions. Drawing from the fields of anthropology and comparative psychology, Keller brings the figure of the possessed woman into the heart of contemporary argument as an exemplary model that challenges many Western and feminist assumptions regarding agency. Proposing a new theoretical framework that re-orients scholarship, Keller argues that the subject who is wielded or played, the hammer or the flute, exercises a paradoxical authority—"instrumental agency"—born of their radical receptivity: their power derives from the communities' assessment that they no longer exist as autonomous agents. For Keller, the possessed woman is at once "hammer" and "flute," paradoxically powerful because she has become an instrument of the overpowering will of an ancestor, deity, or spirit. Keller applies the concept of instrumental agency to case studies, providing a new interpretation of each. She begins with contemporary possessions in Malaysia, where women in manufacturing plants were seized by spirits seeking to resacralize the territory. She next looks to wartime Zimbabwe, where female spirit mediums, the Nehanda mhondoro, declared the ancestors' will to fight against colonialism. Finally she provides an imaginative rereading of the performative power of possession by interpreting two plays, Euripides' Bacchae and S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, which feature possessed women as central characters. This book can serve as an excellent introduction to postcolonial and feminist theory for graduate students, while grounding its theory in the analysis of regionally and historically specific moments of time that will be of interest to specialists. It also provides an argument for the evaluation of religious lives and their struggles for meaning and power in the contemporary landscape of critical theory. |
搜尋書籍內容
第 1 到 5 筆結果,共 72 筆
... examples of possession are found where indigenous traditions are still strong, either in rural areas or among immigrant communities in urban areas. Possessed bodies are extremely different from the contemporary Western model of proper ...
... examples I focus on in this book to argue for an approach to the representation and critical evaluation of the power of possessed bodies, that is, human bodies that are overcome by ancestors, deities, or spirits. The underlying ...
... example, the coincidence of possessed bodies with struggles against oppression therefore raises a conundrum for scholars who hope their scholarship might contribute to the alleviation of oppression. Possession is an important area of ...
... example of the kind of behavior the Western scholar is likely to view as inhabiting an anachronistic space to which he or she can bring progressive models of interpretation (sociological, psychological, medical, performative, or ...
... examples as anachronistic models of religious subjectivity that the contemporary Western subject has surpassed. What will also become clear as we look more closely at examples of possession is that while it may seem exotic or ...
內容
1 | |
21 | |
Part 2 The Work War and Play of Possession | 103 |
Conclusion | 223 |
Notes | 231 |
Bibliography | 271 |
Index | 281 |