Cohabiting with Spirits
The Biography of a Marriage in Mayotte
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Initial publish date
- Jan 2025
- Category
- Cultural, Spirituality, African Studies
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781487559618
- Publish Date
- Jan 2025
- List Price
- $85.00
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781487559625
- Publish Date
- Jan 2025
- List Price
- $36.95
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Description
Possession aptly describes the explicit manifestations of spirits when they temporarily displace individuals by assuming control of their bodies and minds, but the word does not account for what it means to cohabit with them. Cohabiting with Spirits offers an intimate portrait of the intertwined lives of a married couple together with the various spirits who came to possess each of them. Set against the backdrop of the island of Mayotte during the twentieth century, the book paints a vivid picture of the couple’s lives, navigating the demands of their respective spirits while practising an art of cohabitation, both with the spirits and with each other.
While studies of spirit possession often focus on ceremonial practices and dramatic performances of spirit mediums in trance, Michael Lambek shifts the focus to explore what it can be like to cohabit with spirits. The book examines the ways in which various spirits entered the lives of this married couple and how their presence shaped the hosts’ careers as healers, leaving lasting impacts on their domestic and personal lives. Based on rich ethnographic research conducted over the course of several decades, Cohabiting with Spirits presents a rare biography of “ordinary” Africans in the twentieth century and celebrates the resilience of a strong marriage.
About the author
Michael Lambek holds a Canada Research Chair in Anthropology of Ethical Life at the University of Toronto and is the author of Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action (Fordham University Press, 2010) and The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person, and Value (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
Other titles by
Behind the Glass
The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family
Gestures
The Study of Religion as Practice
Concepts and Persons
Living with Concepts
Anthropology in the Grip of Reality
Island in the Stream
An Ethnographic History of Mayotte
Island in the Stream
An Ethnographic History of Mayotte
Ordinary Ethics
Anthropology, Language, and Action
Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte
Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery and Spirit Possession