ABSTRACT This paper explores why Hindu Surinamese continue to propitiate autochthonous Amerindian... more ABSTRACT This paper explores why Hindu Surinamese continue to propitiate autochthonous Amerindian spirit owners of the land despite the threat that these rituals pose to ideologies of Hindu exceptionalism and secular state sovereignty. Hindu rites to native spirits emerge from lingering diasporic doubts about whether Hindus possess or are in fact themselves possessed by the Surinamese land. Though Hindus feel compelled by uncertainties about familial safety to appease the land’s sovereign indigenous spirits, to do so risks undermining the three key justifications Hindus give for their presence and influence in Surinamese society: Hindu ethnic ethical distinction, the universality of Hindu tradition, and state-sanctioned legal title to the land. This impasse results in an aporia – the inability to achieve resolution – that expresses the contradictions that arise when the paradoxes of Hindu tradition encounter the coercive logics of secular state sovereignty in a pluralist, post-colonial nation state.
This article considers how to study the meanings of control in religious life and multispecies re... more This article considers how to study the meanings of control in religious life and multispecies relations. In it, I examine how contemporary Singaporean deity mediums, who describe themselves as subject to an absolute form of control while possessed, interpret what this control should be like. By treating mediums’ self-described subordination as analogous to that of domestic animals’ relations to humans, I explore common problems with control shared between religious and multispecies studies. In doing so, I examine core issues that point to how control can be more effectively conceptualized and analyzed by paying attention to the ways religious practices shape the interpretation of purpose. The article contends that any effective theory of control must explore how what it means to be controlled is embedded in the ways that different religious traditions perceive the purposes of the relations that make the subjects of control interpretable to themselves and others.
This article reflects on mourning and interspecies responsibility. Considering what Ndyuka Maroon... more 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...
This the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Berghahn via the DOI in ... more This the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Berghahn via the DOI in this record
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2016
This article explores how pain ritually assists in producing Afro-Surinamese Ndyuka Maroon unders... more This article explores how pain ritually assists in producing Afro-Surinamese Ndyuka Maroon understandings of subjectivity and the self. Ndyuka discourses conceive persons as composites of multiple human and spirit others. I describe how these discourses emerge dialogically during oracular interactions between possessed mediums and their patients. Beginning as inarticulate sensations, personal pain is ritually transformed into identifiable spirits who expose their hosts as embodiments of past and present social relations. Over the course of oracular interactions, the qualities of physical pain are made to communicate that the pain is both an identity and a vital part of the sufferers’ embodied self. In parallel to this process, spirit mediums perform pain in possession to establish the origins of their authority in relations with spirits. Ritually transforming pain into identities of relation, Ndyuka oracular mediumship persuades patients to re-evaluate their subjective experiences as innate evidence of Ndyuka social ideology. Le collectif dialogique : mediumnite, douleur et creation interactive de la subjectivite des Noirs marrons ndyuka Resume Le present article explore la maniere dont la douleur aide rituellement a produire les comprehensions de la subjectivite et du Moi chez les Ndyuka, un groupe de Noirs marrons afro-surinamais. Dans les discours des Ndyuka, la personne est concue comme un composite de plusieurs autres, humains et esprits. L'auteur decrit l'emergence dialogique de ces discours pendant les interactions oraculaires entre les mediums possedes et leurs patients. La douleur personnelle, commencant par des sensations informulees, est rituellement transformee en esprits identifiables par lesquels leurs hotes se revelent incarner des relations sociales passees et presentes. Au cours des interactions oraculaires, les qualites de la douleur physique servent a faire passer la notion que la douleur est a la fois une identite et une part vitale du Moi incarne de celui qui souffre. Parallelement, les mediums spirites mettent en scene la douleur pendant la possession afin d'etablir la source de leur autorite dans les relations avec les esprits. Par la transformation rituelle de la douleur en identites relationnelles, la mediumnite oraculaire des Ndyuka persuade les patients de reevaluer leur experience subjective comme une preuve innee de l'ideologie sociale ndyuka.
Questions of responsibility are central to the politics and metaphysics of history. This paper ex... more Questions of responsibility are central to the politics and metaphysics of history. This paper examines the creation of different histories from alternative formulations of personal and collective responsibility among urban Ndyuka Maroons in present-day Suriname. Tracing conflicting attempts to assign accountability for a senior…
Ugly emotions like envy and greed tend to emerge ethnographically through accusations (as opposed... more Ugly emotions like envy and greed tend to emerge ethnographically through accusations (as opposed to self-attribution), de-centring the individual psyche and drawing attention to how emotions are deployed in broader projects of moral policing. Tracking the moral, social dimension of emotions through accusations helps to account concretely for the political, economic and ideological factors that shape people's ethical worldviews-their defences, judgements and anxieties. Developing an anthropological understanding of these politics of accusation leads us to connect classical anthropological themes of witchcraft, scapegoating, and inter-and intra-communal conflict with ethnographic interventions into contemporary debates around speculative bubbles, inequality, migration, climate change and gender. We argue that a focus on the politics of accusation that surrounds envy and greed has the potential to allow for a more analytically subtle and grounded understanding of both ethics and e...
ABSTRACT This paper explores why Hindu Surinamese continue to propitiate autochthonous Amerindian... more ABSTRACT This paper explores why Hindu Surinamese continue to propitiate autochthonous Amerindian spirit owners of the land despite the threat that these rituals pose to ideologies of Hindu exceptionalism and secular state sovereignty. Hindu rites to native spirits emerge from lingering diasporic doubts about whether Hindus possess or are in fact themselves possessed by the Surinamese land. Though Hindus feel compelled by uncertainties about familial safety to appease the land’s sovereign indigenous spirits, to do so risks undermining the three key justifications Hindus give for their presence and influence in Surinamese society: Hindu ethnic ethical distinction, the universality of Hindu tradition, and state-sanctioned legal title to the land. This impasse results in an aporia – the inability to achieve resolution – that expresses the contradictions that arise when the paradoxes of Hindu tradition encounter the coercive logics of secular state sovereignty in a pluralist, post-colonial nation state.
This article considers how to study the meanings of control in religious life and multispecies re... more This article considers how to study the meanings of control in religious life and multispecies relations. In it, I examine how contemporary Singaporean deity mediums, who describe themselves as subject to an absolute form of control while possessed, interpret what this control should be like. By treating mediums’ self-described subordination as analogous to that of domestic animals’ relations to humans, I explore common problems with control shared between religious and multispecies studies. In doing so, I examine core issues that point to how control can be more effectively conceptualized and analyzed by paying attention to the ways religious practices shape the interpretation of purpose. The article contends that any effective theory of control must explore how what it means to be controlled is embedded in the ways that different religious traditions perceive the purposes of the relations that make the subjects of control interpretable to themselves and others.
This article reflects on mourning and interspecies responsibility. Considering what Ndyuka Maroon... more 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...
This the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Berghahn via the DOI in ... more This the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Berghahn via the DOI in this record
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2016
This article explores how pain ritually assists in producing Afro-Surinamese Ndyuka Maroon unders... more This article explores how pain ritually assists in producing Afro-Surinamese Ndyuka Maroon understandings of subjectivity and the self. Ndyuka discourses conceive persons as composites of multiple human and spirit others. I describe how these discourses emerge dialogically during oracular interactions between possessed mediums and their patients. Beginning as inarticulate sensations, personal pain is ritually transformed into identifiable spirits who expose their hosts as embodiments of past and present social relations. Over the course of oracular interactions, the qualities of physical pain are made to communicate that the pain is both an identity and a vital part of the sufferers’ embodied self. In parallel to this process, spirit mediums perform pain in possession to establish the origins of their authority in relations with spirits. Ritually transforming pain into identities of relation, Ndyuka oracular mediumship persuades patients to re-evaluate their subjective experiences as innate evidence of Ndyuka social ideology. Le collectif dialogique : mediumnite, douleur et creation interactive de la subjectivite des Noirs marrons ndyuka Resume Le present article explore la maniere dont la douleur aide rituellement a produire les comprehensions de la subjectivite et du Moi chez les Ndyuka, un groupe de Noirs marrons afro-surinamais. Dans les discours des Ndyuka, la personne est concue comme un composite de plusieurs autres, humains et esprits. L'auteur decrit l'emergence dialogique de ces discours pendant les interactions oraculaires entre les mediums possedes et leurs patients. La douleur personnelle, commencant par des sensations informulees, est rituellement transformee en esprits identifiables par lesquels leurs hotes se revelent incarner des relations sociales passees et presentes. Au cours des interactions oraculaires, les qualites de la douleur physique servent a faire passer la notion que la douleur est a la fois une identite et une part vitale du Moi incarne de celui qui souffre. Parallelement, les mediums spirites mettent en scene la douleur pendant la possession afin d'etablir la source de leur autorite dans les relations avec les esprits. Par la transformation rituelle de la douleur en identites relationnelles, la mediumnite oraculaire des Ndyuka persuade les patients de reevaluer leur experience subjective comme une preuve innee de l'ideologie sociale ndyuka.
Questions of responsibility are central to the politics and metaphysics of history. This paper ex... more Questions of responsibility are central to the politics and metaphysics of history. This paper examines the creation of different histories from alternative formulations of personal and collective responsibility among urban Ndyuka Maroons in present-day Suriname. Tracing conflicting attempts to assign accountability for a senior…
Ugly emotions like envy and greed tend to emerge ethnographically through accusations (as opposed... more Ugly emotions like envy and greed tend to emerge ethnographically through accusations (as opposed to self-attribution), de-centring the individual psyche and drawing attention to how emotions are deployed in broader projects of moral policing. Tracking the moral, social dimension of emotions through accusations helps to account concretely for the political, economic and ideological factors that shape people's ethical worldviews-their defences, judgements and anxieties. Developing an anthropological understanding of these politics of accusation leads us to connect classical anthropological themes of witchcraft, scapegoating, and inter-and intra-communal conflict with ethnographic interventions into contemporary debates around speculative bubbles, inequality, migration, climate change and gender. We argue that a focus on the politics of accusation that surrounds envy and greed has the potential to allow for a more analytically subtle and grounded understanding of both ethics and e...
This article describes Maroon anti-necropolitics and its implications for multispecies justice to... more This article describes Maroon anti-necropolitics and its implications for multispecies justice to aid in creating a genuinely decolonial Caribbean ecological theory. Ndyuka Maroons, the descendants of one nation of self-liberated formerly enslaved Black Surinamese peoples, have created a cosmopolitical order based on the refusal of necropolitics (which is the assumption that politics must be predicated on the sovereign human appropriation of the right to kill or let die). In its place, Ndyukas practice an ethics of sociality premised on the shared collective vulnerability of present and future generations to the consequences of acts of killing. This Maroon anti-necropolitics has three primary principles: (1) death always relates specific deaths to future collective harm; (2) humans do not have a sovereign right to death over the lives of others; and (3) death does not rupture relations between the living and the dead, or the community and its enemies, but intensifies them by imposing ineradicable connections of tragic loss between perpetrators and victims. Ndyukas accordingly articulate a theory of relational justice that rejects human sovereignty while emphasizing human responsibility. This article illustrates how Maroons have imagined a world beyond necropolitics and why this helps confront the ways in which necropolitical assumptions inflect how multispecies justice is imagined.
Throughout the Guianas, people of all ethnicities fear one particular kind of demonic spirit. Cal... more Throughout the Guianas, people of all ethnicities fear one particular kind of demonic spirit. Called baccoo in Guyana, bakru in coastal Suriname, and bakulu or bakuu among Saamaka and Ndyuka Maroons in the interior, these demons offer personal wealth in exchange for human life. Based on multisited ethnography in Guyana and Suriname, this paper analyzes converging and diverging conceptions of the " same " spirit among several Afro- and Indo-Guianese populations. We argue that transformations in how people conceptualize bakulu reveal how supposedly radical moral differences are constructed within and between populations in the multi-ethnic Caribbean. More than figurative projections of monetized inequality or racial and ethnic prejudices, baccoo actively mediate how people throughout the Guianas think about and experience the everyday conduct of economic and racial relations.
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Papers by Stuart Strange