The hammer and the flute : women, power, and spirit possession
"The possession of the body - particularly the body of a woman - by spirits, deities, and ancestors is a phenomenon common to a number of religions. Ethnographers have often studied cases of spirit possession to decode a society's cultural values and belief systems. In The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession, however, Mary Keller approaches the spirit possession of women as a historian of religion informed by postcolonial theory and feminist philosophy, challenging the prevalent interpretation that possessed women are victims of psychological disturbance or are actively manipulating their audiences. Proposing a new theoretical framework, "instrumental agency," Keller offers a far more nuanced portrait of spirit possession as a negotiation with multiple kinds of power which requires a radical receptivity on the part of the possessed persons and as a reorientation of scholarship."--Jacket
1 online resource (x, 289 pages) : illustrations
9780801876288, 9780801867873, 0801876281, 0801867878
51504413
Signifying possession
Re-orienting possession
Flutes, hammers, and mounted women
Work
War
Play(s)
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011
English