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

Review
"Michael Lambek's inspired analysis draws on classic conceptions from authors such as Aristotle and Mauss to illuminate the making of a social world. This is not an antiquarian study: the cult of Sakalava royalty may contradict the conditions of modern life in theory, but co-exists with them in practice. This major work will reshape the debates between anthropology and history."
--Wendy James, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University

"Lambek's tour de force needs to be read by every Africanist. Guiding us through a maze of royal wonders, great centers and their peripheries, controversial relics and their devotions, modes of homage, care and respect, Lambek offers the crowning accomplishment in his path-finding studies of mediums and spirit possession."
--Richard Werbner, Professor of African Anthropology, University of Manchester

"In this theoretically innovative, moving and evocative book, Michael Lambek introduces us to the world of Sakalava historicity. This brilliant account of the embodied conscience of history addresses questions of power and practice, ethics and agency, while keeping the reader consistently engaged with the lived reality of contemporary Madagascar."
--Megan Vaughan, Professor of Commonwealth Studies, University of Oxford



Review
"Michael Lambek's inspired analysis draws on classic conceptions from authors such as Aristotle and Mauss to illuminate the making of a social world. This is not an antiquarian study: the cult of Sakalava royalty may contradict the conditions of modern life in theory, but co-exists with them in practice. This major work will reshape the debates between anthropology and history."
--Wendy James, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University

"Lambek's tour de force needs to be read by every Africanist. Guiding us through a maze of royal wonders, great centers and their peripheries, controversial relics and their devotions, modes of homage, care and respect, Lambek offers the crowning accomplishment in his path-finding studies of mediums and spirit possession."
--Richard Werbner, Professor of African Anthropology, University of Manchester

"In this theoretically innovative, moving and evocative book, Michael Lambek introduces us to the world of Sakalava historicity. This brilliant account of the embodied conscience of history addresses questions of power and practice, ethics and agency, while keeping the reader consistently engaged with the lived reality of contemporary Madagascar."
--Megan Vaughan, Professor of Commonwealth Studies, University of Oxford



Book Description
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 labor, 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.



About the Author
Michael J. Lambek is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is author of Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte, Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession, and editor of A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion.



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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 labor, 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.


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