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.

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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.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The Weight of the Past
Book Subtitle: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar
Authors: Michael Lambek
Series Title: Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73080-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2002
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6068-9Published: 07 March 2003
eBook ISBN: 978-1-349-73080-3Published: 30 April 2016
Series ISSN: 2946-3475
Series E-ISSN: 2946-3483
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXI, 319
Topics: Regional and Cultural Studies, Geology, Social Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology, Anthropology

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The Weight of the Past

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

Front Matter

A Poiesis of History

Front Matter

Bearing Sakalava History: A Glossary of Key Terms

Into the Maze: Surface and Center, Place, Person, and Potency

The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past through Spirit Possession

Structural Remains: Contemporary Divisions of Historical Labor

Front Matter

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

Serving the Ancestors

Front Matter

Popular Performances: Paying Homage and Gaining Respect

The Great Service (Fanompoa Be)

Practicing History

Front Matter

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

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

Front Matter

A Poiesis of History

Front Matter

Structural Remains: Contemporary Divisions of Historical Labor

Front Matter

Serving the Ancestors

Front Matter

Practicing History

Front Matter

Back Matter

About this book

Keywords

About the author

Bibliographic Information

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Buy it now

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