![]() ![]() 35): "any complete but temporary domination of a person's body, and the blotting of that person's consciousness, by a distinct alien power of known or unknown origin." This definition highlights the problem of subjectivity and agency the possessed person is not a conscious individual but rather has a blotted consciousness and has become an instrument for the will of an alien power. Ann Grodzins Gold provides a useful definition and discussion of the term spirit possession in her study of possession in rural Rajasthan (1988, p. Spirit possession can refer to a spectrum of experiences in which the person involved negotiates with or is overcome by a force such as an ancestor, deity, or spirit that employs the human body to be its vehicle for communicating to human communities. A survey of the thematics of power found in possession studies concludes the entry. ![]() These three revaluations are examined below after attending to the translational issues involved in employing spirit possession as a category of comparative study. From a feminist perspective, deprivation theories are suspect, and a revaluation of spirit possession suggests that: (1) the cross-cultural and transhistorical prevalence of accounts of spirit possession present a familiar rather than an exotic model of religious subjectivity to most human communities across the broadest spectrum of history (2) the capacity to be possessed by an ancestor, deity, or spirit is best approached, as Sered and Janice Boddy (1989) argue, as an ability, like musical or athletic ability, although in the case of spirit possession it is likely that the person being possessed does not choose to develop the ability to receive the spirit but rather cannot choose otherwise in the face of the spirit's demands and (3) possession is the formal root of religious experience in general, in that spirit possession is exemplary of the situation in which humans negotiate with a will that is not of human origin. 190 –191) that begin with the assumption that possessions are abnormal behaviors and result from social, physical, and mental deprivations. The conjunction of spirit possession with oppressed or vulnerable persons has produced theories that Susan Starr Sered has called "deprivation theories" (1994, pp. ![]() ![]() Spirit possession has largely been interpreted by scholars as a phenomenon that impacts "traditional people," the poor, the uneducated, and women. ![]()
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