Eco-intimacy and spirit exorcism in the Nigerian Sahel
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5115995 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Conerly Casey (Rochester Institute of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 132-150 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Senses and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1745-8927 • E-ISSN: 1745-8935 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17458927.2020.1858651 |
| OpenAlex | W3139194193 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 31 |
A fervent politics of the senses sparked off in northern Nigeria, when, in 1995, more than 600 Muslim secondary school girls became possessed by spirits, with the new sign of “dancing like they do in Indian film.” Spirit possession in this Bollywood form spread across northern states, co-evolving with a meningitis epidemic as it swept through the desert to kill thousands. This article traces emergent eco-intimacies and the resonant politics of the senses as Bori and Qur’anic scholar-healers, or malams, linked these events, via assertions of ontological power, in the sensory geographic and affective-material movements of humans, spirits and pathogens. Malams reprimanded followers of Bori for calling spirits with music and dance, thus eroding the geographic and bodily boundaries between humans and spirits. They converted humans and spirits to their forms of orthodoxy before expelling spirits from their human hosts. The sensory politics of boundary monitoring and maintenance that emerged underpinned the 2000 implementation of sharia criminal codes across northern states. But, the affective senses of contamination and care did not align with any singular spiritual-political position, eliciting ongoing debates over appropriate spirit-human contact, and double binds in the sensory politics of medicine and state
Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Exorcism · Literature · Orthodoxy · Political science · Politics · Possession (linguistics · Power (physics · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
African Islam and Islam in Africa
Prayer Has Spoiled Everything
Signal and Noise
Black and Blur
The Weight of the Past
Acoustemology
In Sorcery's Shadow
Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria
Sensuous Scholarship
Mobile Sunna
Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra
Spirited Things
On the Postcolony
Culture and the SensesBodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community
Education and Islamic Trends in Northern Nigeria
Marginal Muslims
Conversion on Screen
Spirit Discipline Gender, Islam, and Hierarchies of Treatment in Postcolonial Northern Nigeria
Bandiri Music, Globalization, and Urban Experience in Nigeria
On Rocks, Walks, and Talks In West Africa
Embodying Colonial Memories
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |