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

"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."-- Provided by publisher Pt. I. A Poiesis Of History. Ch. 1. Bearing Sakalava History: A Glossary Of Key Terms. Ch. 2. Into The Maze: Surface And Center, Place, Person, And Potency. Ch. 3. The Sakalava Poiesis Of History: Realizing The Past Through Spirit Possession -- Pt. Ii. Structural Remains: Contemporary Divisions Of Historical Labor. Ch. 4. Mechanical Division: Structure And History In The Northwest. Ch. 5. The Legacy Of Lord Diviner, Ndramisara: Organic Division, Kindedness, And Sakalava Subjects. Ch. 6. Personal Particularism, Mediumship, And Distributive Memory -- Pt. Iii. Serving The Ancestors. Ch. 7. Popular Performances: Paying Homage And Gaining Respect. Ch. 8. The Great Service (fanompoa Be) -- Pt. Iv. Practicing History. Ch. 9. Kassim's Burden: The Practice Of An Exemplary Spirit Medium. Appendix: The Plan Of Bezavo. Ch. 10. Answering To History: Conflict, Conscience, And Change. Ch. 11. The Play Of The Past: Historicity In Daily Life. Ch. 12. Conclusion: Imagined Continuities. Michael Lambek. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [297]-311) And Index. The Sakalava are one of the Malagasy ethnic groups of Madagascar. Michael Lambek starts from the basis of the mediumship and ritual which is the basis of an ancestral religious cult in Sakalava - a cult that survives alongside Christianity and Islam. At the climax of the "Great Service," the annual ritual of political and cosmic renewal in Mahajanga, a procession emerges from the inner sanctum and circumambulates the temple.