This paper discusses the recent emergence of ontological approaches in science and technology studies (STS), anthropology and philosophy. Although it is common to hear of a turn, or the turn, to ontology, more than one line of intellectual development is at stake. In reality, we are witness to a plural set of partly overlapping, partly divergent, turns.
The aim of this study is to investigate how divine worlds can be created, vitalized, and lived by people. Focusing not on cognition and operating through things but on bodily action with things, this paper examines the actuality of these actions, which occur prior to the cognitive articulation of the event and create novel experiences of the world. It reconsiders Alfred Gell's theory of idolatry through the ideas of Bin Kimura and Hideo Kawamoto. Exploring the making of spirits in Ghana and spirit possession rituals in South India, this paper presents a fresh view of the formation of divine worlds as the actualization of virtual, vital relations between persons and things that emerge only through their contingent coactions.
The aim of this study is to investigate spirit possession through the lenses of mimesis, permeability, and perspectivity. Recent studies have explored the significance of perspective exchange as reciprocal subjectification. At the same time, the importance of reflexive self‐awareness amid perspective exchange has been noted. Linking studies on perspective exchange with those on spirit possession, this article tries to show an alternative understanding of perspective exchange as the de‐subjectification and generative transformation of self and other. Focusing on the buuta ritual in South India, I examine perspective exchange as the capability for freeing oneself from one's subjectivity enough to let various perspectives come and go through the permeable self. Being permeable and reflexive, the buuta impersonator plays with multiple perspectives to transform both his and others' perspectives to enable all to become ‘real’ humans in relation to the deity.
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