Catching Power: Problems with Possession, Sovereignty, and African Religions in Trinidad

Crosson, J. Brent

doi:10.1080/00141844.2017.1412339

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Dusting their bodies with jarringly white kaolin clay, constrictor mediums join their hands in the shape of a snake's head and writhe rhythmically in serpentine dances that enact the merging of human and animal lives and deaths. Mediums themselves, like mourners consumed by grief, cannot speak of these experiences of irresistible animality except as pregnant voids of inchoate feeling (see also Lambek 1981; Crosson 2017). Human is not strictly rendered animal, nor animal human.…”

Section: Mutuality and The Limits Of Autonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Vengeful Animals, Involuntary Mourning, and the Ethics of Ndyuka Autonomy

Strange

2021

Cult. Anthropol.

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This article reflects on mourning and interspecies responsibility. Considering what Ndyuka Maroons in the Caribbean country of Suriname—historic fugitives from plantation capitalism—call kunu (avenging ghosts) I explore how Ndyukas attempt to secure personal and collective autonomy in an expansively relational reality where mourning is the quintessence of relatedness. Because grief impinges on Ndyuka autonomy, daily life is understood as a flawed struggle to maintain freedom from mourning. This can only be done by paying appropriate respect to others so that they do not return as vengeful spirits dedicated to the destruction of those who have harmed them and their entire families in perpetuity. This essay examines the ethics of such deeply relational notions of autonomy and ponders its implications for understanding accountability for anthropogenic extinction. On sa a sikiifi ya wani taki A sikiifi ya taki fu a fasi di Ndyuka sama e tyai fuka anga sowtu faantiwowtu de fu den meti di e kon toon libisama kunu. A e taki tu fu sani di sa pasa te libisama kii wan libi libi sani di o toon kunu, anga fa libi sama mu dini kunu fu den sa libi makandii a wan fii fasi. Te wan sama dede, da ala sama fu a famii e tyai a fuka de makandii. Te wan kunu kon a wan famii, da a sa meke a famii fu a sama di be kii en tyai a fuka de soseefi tu. Libisama ná e wani fu tyai a fuka, ma a kunu sa meke den tyai en namo namo, bika a so wan fasi a o meke den fii a seefi tyali di en famii be fii, di den kii en. Fu di kunu a wani sani di de tuu tuu, da libisama mu libi a wan lesipeki fasi fu den no mu meke kunu gi den famii di o tan fika gi den baka pikin fu pikin, paansu fu paansu. A sikiifi ya e taki tu fu a fasi di Ndyuka sama denki fu libi anga den busi sani, anga fa den mu meke mofu a makandii fu libi anga den sani di sa toon kunu, fu a no mu poti den a fuka. A sikiifi ya taki en so, bika somen sama ná e lesipeki den sowtu a sowtu meti ya, ofuso den bon, anga soseefi den peesi pe den e tan fu libi moo. A toli ya e soi taki Ndyuka sama abi fuu koni di sa leli den bakaasama fu soi den fa den mu libi a wan lesipeki fasi di o meke den ná o poli a goontapu, ma den o tan libi bun bun anga taawan.

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Section: Mutuality and The Limits Of Autonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Vengeful Animals, Involuntary Mourning, and the Ethics of Ndyuka Autonomy

Strange

2021

Cult. Anthropol.

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“…As is common in Pentecostalism, errant appetites taken to cause conditions like diabetes such as alcoholism and addiction come from demonic spirits, often from other religions. Overcoming these desires requires faith, allowing the Holy Spirit to banish these demons (see Crosson ). I first met Joseph at a Pentecostal church in southern Trinidad.…”

Section: The Spirit Of Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protestant Techniques of Care: The Hindu, the Pentecost, and the “Secular”

Whitmarsh

2019

Med Anthropol Q

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Modern techniques of caring for the self through staying healthy rely on an ethic of choice, often evoking critiques of the (neo)liberal subject. This sense of choice has carried frequently overlooked Protestant commitments from Luther to Kant and Locke to 19th‐century American health reformers, premised on a refusal of ritual, mysticism, and the priest as the source of truth. This article explores how these implicit commitments shape the relation to other religious traditions in countries like Trinidad. Campaigns against chronic disease in Trinidad carried out in public health venues and churches echo multinational health projects in pronouncing, “We all want a healthy life.” The article draws on a Caribbean ironic sense of secularity to analyze the way that the threat to this “want” found in other religious traditions such as Pentecostal healing and Hindu ecstatic practices reveals Protestant commitments masked within a modern global “secular” care of the self.

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“…Spirit was like stranger and kin, and spirit in this reckoning could encompass what social scientists might call power. As Beliso de Jesús shows, debates over tradition in Santería also involve problems of spiritual presences, in which not only spirits (as typically conceived) but race, gender, and sexual assemblages are felt “copresences.” Power is not simply a force that descends from on high (as many instantiations of “religions of the book” might insist); it flows through bodies and makes things happen (Crosson , Forthcoming; Foucault ). One of Beliso de Jesús’s central interventions is in locating spiritual power on a radically immanent plane, thus dismissing an obsession with transubstantiation and mediation in scholarly accounts of the relationship between human and divine .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%