Experiential anthropology, and the reality and world history of spirit: Questions for Edith Turner

by Wim van Binsbergen

African Studies Centre, Leiden / Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University, Rotterdam

binsbergen@ascleiden.nl ; http://www.shikanda.net

paper proposed for Panel 66 (convenors Dr. Jessica Erdtsieck and Mrs Nomfundo Mlisa

Traditional religion and healing in Africa and the role of the inner senses

AEGIS European Conference on African Studies

11 - 14 July 2007

African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands

Abstract. A vocal presence in the current anthropological scene around spirituality and healing has been Edith Turner. The present paper seeks to elucidate and assess her sustained quest for an experiential anthropology and for the vindication, within anthropology and the North Atlantic region at large, of peripheral spirit traditions, such as (from her own fieldwork) those of N. Alaskan Inuit and the Ndembu of Zambia. I will seek to situate her work in context, including the work of her late husband Victor Turner. In addition to my qualified sympathy for experiential anthropology and my own long-standing practice as an African spirit medium, I will draw on intercultural philosophy and long-range comparative research into symbolism and mythology in order to critically adduce perspectives that may elucidate, complement or correct Edith Turner’s. Topics covered include: the reliability of eye witness accounts of the paranormal; the relation between experiential and mainstream anthropology; the critique of ‘going native’ as a research strategy; the critique of experiental anthropology’s claims of producing valid knowledge through vicarious experience; the positioning of anthropology as mediating between peripheral traditions and the North Atlantic region; can we claim that peripheral spirit traditions constitute both useful and valid knowledge?; an elaborate attempt to situate peripheral spirit traditions (and especially the details of the Ndembu Chihamba cult) within an emerging world history of shamanism, spirit and transcendence, and to define the flow of indebtedness between periphery and centre; and (in the light of the author’s own professed spirituality) a critique of spirit-matter dualism and of claims of spirit as ontologically independent from human consciousness, in lieu of which the author proposes a model of universal (also extrasensory) informability and occasional material effectiveness of the body-mind.

date: 8/2/2007

The author is Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and Professor of Intercultural Philosophy at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam