[Reader-list] shaman in the city -- independent fellowship postings

[Rob van Kranenburg]

Hello Gyaltsen,

Very interesting. I've just been reading a book

Thinking Through Things. Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically.  
Edited by Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell. Routledge,  
2007

to think of our bricolabs network as a network of people and things:

http://www.bricolabs.net/
http://lab.dyne.org/BricolabsCambridge2007
http://lab.dyne.org/BricolabsParis2007

and am delving into Alfred Gell's theory of Art and Agency.

Having tried to steer away from it, I've come to a point where  
spirituality and the motile qualities of the shaman become essential  
to the kind of change to overall generic infrastructures we are  
planning,

Greetings! Rob

Introduction: thinking through things. Amaria Henare, Martin Holbraad  
and Sari Wastell. ( p. 1- 32)

Argument: from ethnographic revelations to political revelations

"Even scholars dedicated to re-integrating materiality and culture in  
response to the Riversian (and earlier Cartesian) segregation  
continue to  struggle with theoretical lanhuages that presume an a  
priori dinstinction between persons and things, matter and meaning,  
representation and reality. Like the modish notion of ' hybridity'  
the impetus towards reconnection turns on the presumption of initial  
separation."

"The distinction between concepts and things ( which broadly  
compasses other familiar dichotomies such as sense versus reference,  
signified vs signifier, etc.) may be unhelpful, obnscuring  
theoretical possibilities that might arise were the pre-emption of  
such contrasts by the artefacts we study taken seriously."

"With purposeful naïveté, the aim of this method is to take 'things'  
encountered in the field as they present themselves, rather than  
immeiately assuming that they signify, represent, or stand for  
something else."

"Rather than accepting that meanings are fundamentally seperate from  
their material manifestations ( signifier v. signified, word v.  
referent, etc.), the aim is to explore the consequences of an  
apparently counter-intuitive possibility: that things might be  
treated as sui generis meanings."

"So the starting-point instead is to treat meaning and thing as an  
identity - and if the Aristotelian notion of essence was meant to  
allow things to carry their definitive properties on their sleeve,  
then the essentialism entertained here is indeed radical. For in the  
image put forward, meanings are not 'carried' by things but just are  
identical to them. Such a starting-point neutralises the question of  
'knowledge' at the outset, because meanings - be they native  
( relativism) or supra-cultural (universalism) - no longer need to be  
excavated, illuminated, decoded and interpreted. What is proposed, in  
effect, is an anthropology that holds issues of interpretation at bay."

"So in summary, behind the hope that an etnography of things may lead  
to a revision of our analytical assumptions about what counts as 'a  
thing' lie the possibility that those assumptions may be  
inappropriate, and that other people's understandings on this score  
( including not just their ideas about things but also their  
assumptions) might be different from what we take to be our own when  
writing anthropologically. The heuristic approach advocated here  
seeks to animate these possibilities."

"A heuristic use of the term 'thing' has aalso been adopted by Bruno  
Latour, who, after Heidegger, has worked to transform the semantic  
emphasis of 'things' from 'matters of concern' (2004a). Drawing on  
older etymologies in which 'thing' denoted a gathering place, a space  
for discussion and negotiation, Latour has rehabilitated this sense  
of the term as a way out of the twin culs-de-sac of constructivism  
and objectivity."

"The way of anthropology's epistemological bind turns on a denial of  
the key axiom of dualist ontology, namely that difference has to be  
similarity what representation is to the world. For if one refuses to  
attribute difference to culture and similarity to nature, the  
circular coercion of dualism is rendered limp. In the scheme advanced  
here, therefore, the presumption of natural unity and cultural  
difference - epitomised in the anthropos - is no longer tenable ( cf  
Argyrou 2002). If we are to take others seriously, instead of  
reducing their articulations to mere ' cultural perspectives' or  
'beliefs' (i.e. worldviews), we can conceive them as enunciations of  
different 'worlds' or 'natures' without having to concede that this  
is just shorthand for 'worldviews'. 10

"It is for this reason, for example, that the claim that when Cuban  
diviners say that powder is power they are speaking of a different  
powder ( and a different power also) is not a 'constructivist' claim  
( cf. Latour 1999:21-3) To put it in Foucauldian ters, the point is  
not that the discursive claims ( e.g. 'powder is power') order  
reality in different ways - according to different 'regimes of truth'  
- but rather that they create new objects ( e.g. powerful powder) in  
the very act of enunciating new concepts (e.g. powerful powder)."

"...what is advanced here is a radical constructivism not dissimilar  
to that envisaged by Deleuze ( Deleuze and Guattari 1994:7, 35-6)  
Discourse can have effects not because it 'over-determines reality',  
but because no ontological distinction between 'discourse' and  
'reality' pertains in the first place. In other words, concepts can  
bring about things becuase concepts and things just are one and the  
same ( one and the same 'thing', we could say - using the term  
heuristically)."

Separating and containing people and things in Mongolia. Rebecca  
Empson. (113-135)

"The concept of 'fortune' (xishig) permeates many aspects of  
Mongolian social life. It motivates practices that involve separating  
(avax, salgax), a piece from a person, animal, or thing at moments of  
departure or transition, and then containing (xadgalax) it in a  
different form.

... the doing involved in making things visible or invisible makes  
relations. In this sense 'vision' becomes the tool by which relations  
are created." 113

"...objects, like  humans, contain another dimension another  
dimension of the visible world and something of the essence of the  
person is thought to adhere to their belongings." 114


The Power of Powder. Multiplicity and motion in the divinatory  
cosmology of Cuban Ifa ( or mana, again). Martin Holbraad (189-219)

"If the motility of powder dissolves the  problem of transcendence  
versus immanence for babalawos, then motility also dissolves the  
problem of concept versus thing for us. And this because the latter  
problem is just an instance of the former. After all, the notion of  
transcendence is just a way of expressing the very idea of  
ontological separation. And ontological separation is what a non- 
motile logic posits at the hiatus that is supposed to divide concepts  
from things. Motility, on the other hand, turns on the idea that  
ontological differences do not amount to separations at all, but  
rather to intensive and 'self-scaling' transformations. Thus, just  
like in a motile logical universe powder can be power, deities can be  
marks on the divining board, and so forth, so concepts and things can  
also be each other. All it takes is to stop thinking of concepts and  
things as self-identical entities, and start imagining them as self- 
differential motions."

Motility is a biological term which refers to the ability to move  
spontaneously and independently. It can apply to either single-celled  
or multicellular organisms. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motility)

On 09 Sep 2007, at 06:46, e lama wrote:

> Shamanism has been practised among communities all over the world for
> millennia, and continues to survive today in both modern and
> traditional forms. During its long evolution, it has migrated from
> Siberia, Aboriginal Australia, Northern Europe and South America to
> become a core part of western New Age and rave culture as well as
> popular mythology. Its place within modernity is at once familiar and
> alien, exemplary and uneasy ---- Graham Harvey
>
> hi all
>
> this is my second posting. i know its kinda late and i do apologise. i
> have put up the research material and a few pages of the graphic novel
> on my site. you can visit it here
>
> www.etattoo7.com/sarai/home.html
>
> my research is about the shamans that live in gangtok city. a study of
> the shaman status with the changing cultures and modernisation. i
> follow four shamans, interview them at various stages and video the
> interview, some transcriptions of the interviews can be found on the
> above link. the final product is intended to be a graphic novel and
> some layouts can also be viewed at the above link.
>
> so please visit. comments, suggestions welcome.
>
> again sorry for delay
>
> cheers
>
> gyaltsen
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