The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

Feminist theory and postcolonial theory share an interest in developing theoretical frameworks for describing and evaluating subjectivity comparatively, especially with regard to non-autonomous models of agency. As a historian of religions, Mary Keller uses the figure of the "possessed woman" to analyze a subject that is spoken-through rather than speaking and whose will is the will of the ancestor, deity or spirit that wields her to engage the question of agency in a culturally and historically comparative study that recognizes the prominent role possessed women play in their respective traditions.

Drawing from the fields of anthropology and comparative psychology, Keller brings the figure of the possessed woman into the heart of contemporary argument as an exemplary model that challenges many Western and feminist assumptions regarding agency. Proposing a new theoretical framework that re-orients scholarship, Keller argues that the subject who is wielded or played, the hammer or the flute, exercises a paradoxical authority―"instrumental agency"―born of their radical receptivity: their power derives from the communities' assessment that they no longer exist as autonomous agents.

For Keller, the possessed woman is at once "hammer" and "flute," paradoxically powerful because she has become an instrument of the overpowering will of an ancestor, deity, or spirit. Keller applies the concept of instrumental agency to case studies, providing a new interpretation of each. She begins with contemporary possessions in Malaysia, where women in manufacturing plants were seized by spirits seeking to resacralize the territory. She next looks to wartime Zimbabwe, where female spirit mediums, the Nehanda mhondoro, declared the ancestors' will to fight against colonialism. Finally she provides an imaginative rereading of the performative power of possession by interpreting two plays, Euripides' Bacchae and S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, which feature possessed women as central characters. This book can serve as an excellent introduction to postcolonial and feminist theory for graduate students, while grounding its theory in the analysis of regionally and historically specific moments of time that will be of interest to specialists. It also provides an argument for the evaluation of religious lives and their struggles for meaning and power in the contemporary landscape of critical theory.

The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession by Mary Keller

From reader reviews:

Mike Hendrix:

The book The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession can give more knowledge and information about everything you want. So why must we leave a good thing like a book The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession? Some of you have a different opinion about reserve. But one aim this book can give many information for us. It is absolutely proper. Right now, try to closer using your book. Knowledge or info that you take for that, you can give for each other; you can share all of these. Book The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession has simple shape however, you know: it has great and big function for you. You can appearance the enormous world by open and read a publication. So it is very wonderful.

Bradley Loy:

Here thing why this kind of The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession are different and dependable to be yours. First of all reading through a book is good but it really depends in the content of the usb ports which is the content is as delicious as food or not. The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession giving you information deeper including different ways, you can find any e-book out there but there is no guide that similar with The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession. It gives you thrill examining journey, its open up your eyes about the thing that will happened in the world which is might be can be happened around you. It is possible to bring everywhere like in park, café, or even in your method home by train. Should you be having difficulties in bringing the branded book maybe the form of The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession in e-book can be your choice.

Jerry Lyon:

People live in this new day time of lifestyle always try to and must have the time or they will get great deal of stress from both way of life and work. So , when we ask do people have free time, we will say absolutely sure. People is human not only a robot. Then we ask again, what kind of activity have you got when the spare time coming to you actually of course your answer may unlimited right. Then do you try this one, reading guides. It can be your alternative throughout spending your spare time, often the book you have read will be The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession.

Louise O\'Neill:

The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession can be one of your basic books that are good idea. We recommend that straight away because this publication has good vocabulary that will increase your knowledge in language, easy to understand, bit entertaining but delivering the information. The article writer giving his/her effort to put every word into joy arrangement in writing The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession but doesn't forget the main point, giving the reader the hottest and also based confirm resource facts that maybe you can be certainly one of it. This great information can drawn you into new stage of crucial considering.