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The Weight of the Past

Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar

  • Book
  • © 2002

Overview

Authors:
  1. Michael Lambek
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Part of the book series: Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (CAR)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxi
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  3. Structural Remains: Contemporary Divisions of Historical Labor

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-71
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    2. Mechanical Division: Structure and History in the Northwest

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 73-95

    3. The Legacy of Lord Diviner, Ndramisara: Organic Division, “Kindedness,” and Sakalava Subjects

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 97-123

    4. Personal Particularism, Mediumship, and Distributive Memory

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 125-140

  4. Serving the Ancestors

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 141-141
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    2. Popular Performances: Paying Homage and Gaining Respect

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 143-166

    3. The Great Service (Fanompoa Be)

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 167-188

  5. Practicing History

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 189-189
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    2. Kassim’s Burden: The Practice of an Exemplary Spirit Medium

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 191-216

    3. Answering to History: Conflict, Conscience, and Change

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 217-236

    4. The Play of the Past: Historicity in Daily life

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 237-260

    5. Conclusion: Imagined Continuities

      • Michael Lambek
      Pages 261-274

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 275-319
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Keywords

About this book

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.

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.

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