Possession, Ecstasy, and Law in Ewe Voodoo

Rating:
Summary: The story of slave spirit possession in Togolese voodoo
Review: Judy Rosenthal explains the Ewes' (pronounced Ev'he) cultural mobility as simultaneously a spiritual expression of African individuality and personhood. She argues that we must begin "with the knowledge that Ewe culture travels and is traveling... Ewe personhood is a travel narrative." The Ewe people lifestyle, material production and familial reproduction are all contingent on regular mobility but irregular movement; from town to town, village to village, and from colonial anathema (a.k.a. Ghana & Togo) to post-colonial anathema. Spiritual production is no exception to this; not only do Ewes move around Ewe-land from gorovodu ceremony to Afa divination ritual, but the spirits they celebrate are those of the mobile: of northern slaves and of rural migrants. Moreover, her compelling analysis of Ewe slave-spirit possession guides the reader to the very un-Western possibility that, upon this cultural continuity in the form of celebrating slave ancestors, is dependent Ewe "individuation and individuality". Drawing on de Surgy , she claims Ewe individuation is more personal and unique than Western individualism, "yet never whole or completely separated from other persons, spirits and times" - pulling constantly on the spirits and community memories of those whose lives were framed by mobility and migration. This book has significantly influenced my own research and methodology and is Highly Recommended to academics and novices/fetichists. Benjamin Nicholas LAWRANCE Stanford University