The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar / Edition 1

by M. Lambek

Overview

In The Weight of the Past , Michael Lambek explores the complex ways that history shapes, constrains, and enables daily life. Focusing on ritual performances of spirit mediumship in a multifaceted religious landscape, Lambek's analysis reveals the multiple ways that Sakalava 'bear' history. In Mahajanga, Madagascar, to bear history is at once a weighty obligation, a creative re-birthing, a scrupulous cultivation, and an exuberant performance of the past. To bear history is to serve and to suffer it, but also to be informed, enlightened, and sanctified. Royal ancestors emerge in spirit mediums to comment on the present from multiple voices and generate a refracted, ironic historical consciousness. This book describes the division of labour, creative production (poiesis), and ethical practice (phronesis) entailed in imagining, embodying, and serving the past. It is at once a vivid ethnography of Sakalava life and a significant intervention in anthropological debates on culture and history, structure and practice, advocating a theoretical approach informed by Aristotelian categories of understanding. Ethnographically rich and engagingly written, this book will be essential reading for courses in the anthropology of religion, ritual, or historical consciousness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403960689
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	03/07/2003
Series:	Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
Edition description:	2003
Pages:	319
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL LAMBEK is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte.

Table of Contents

PART I: A POIESIS OF HISTORY Bearing Sakalava History: A Glossary of Some Key Terms Into the Maze: Surface and Centre, Place, Person, and Potency The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past through Spirit Possession PART II: STRUCTURAL REMAINS: CONTEMPORARY DIVISIONS OF HISTORICAL LABOR Mechanical Division: Structure and History in the Northwest The Legacy of Lord Diviner, Ndramisara: Organic Division, Kindedness, and Sakalava Subjects Personal Particularism, Mediumship, and Distributive Memory PART III: SERVING THE ANCESTORS Popular Performances: Paying Homage and Gaining Respect The Great Service (Fanompoa Be) PART IV: PRACTICING HISTORY Kassim's Burden: The Practice of an Exemplary Spirit Medium Answering to History: Conflict, Conscience, and Change The Play of the Past: Historicity in Daily Life Conclusion: Imagined Continuities