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Author Ram, Kalpana.

Title Fertile disorder : spirit possession and its provocation of the modern / Kalpana Ram
Published Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, ©2013

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Visible and invisible bodies : rural women and state intellectuals -- Minor practices -- Possession and the bride : emotions, the elusive phantom of social theory -- The abject body of infertility -- Learning possession, becoming healer -- Performativity in the court of the goddess -- The nature of the complaint -- Possession and social theory -- Possession and emancipatory politics
Summary In her innovative new book, Kalpana Ram reflects on the way spirit possession unsettles some of the foundational assumptions of modernity. What is a human subject under the varied conditions commonly associated with possession? What kind of subjectivity must already be in place to allow such a transformation to occur? How does it alter our understanding of memory and emotion if these assail us in the form of ghosts rather than as attributes of subjective experience? What does it mean to worship deities who are afflictive and capricious, yet bear an intimate relationship to justice? What is a "human" body if it can be taken over by a whole array of entities? What is agency if people can be "claimed" in this manner? What is gender if, while possessed, a woman is a woman no longer?Drawing on spirit possession among women and the rich traditions of subaltern religion in Tamil Nadu, South India, Ram concludes that the basis for constructing an alternative understanding of human agency need not rest on the usual requirements of a fully present consciousness or on the exercise of choice and planning. Instead of relegating possession, ghosts, and demons to the domain of the exotic, Ram uses spirit possession to illuminate ordinary experiences and relationships. In doing so, she uncovers fundamental instabilities that continue to haunt modern formulations of gender, human agency, and political emancipation. Fertile Disorder interrogates the modern assumptions about gender, agency, and subjectivity that underlie the social improvement projects circulating in Tamil Nadu, assumptions that directly shape people's lives. The book pays particular attention to projects of family planning, development, reform, and emancipation.Combining ethnography with philosophical argument, Ram fashions alternatives to standard post-modernist and post-structuralist formulations. Grounded in decades of fieldwork, ambitious and wide ranging, her work is conceived as a journey that makes incursions into the unfamiliar, then returns us to the familiar. She argues that magic is not a monopoly of any one culture, historical period, or social formation but inhabits modernity--not only in the places, such as cinema and sound recording, where it is commonly looked for, but in "habit" and in aspects of everyday life that have been largely overlooked and shunned. Fertile Disorder will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in anthropology, religion, gender studies, subaltern studies, and post colonial theory
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
In English
digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Family planning -- Government policy -- India -- Tamil Nadu
Folk religion -- India -- Tamil Nadu
Rural women -- Religious life -- India -- Tamil Nadu -- Case studies
Spirit possession -- India -- Tamil Nadu -- Case studies
RELIGION -- Comparative Religion.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
Folk religion
Spirit possession
Besessenheit
Volksglaube
Familienplanung
Bezetenheid.
India -- Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu (Inde)
Genre/Form Case studies
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780824837785
0824837789
0824871308
9780824871307