Description
Book SynopsisSuspect Others explores how ideas of self-knowledge and identity arise from a unique set of rituals in Suriname, a postcolonial Caribbean nation rife with racial and religious suspicion. Amid competition for belonging, political power, and control over natural resources, Surinamese Ndyuka Maroons and Hindus look to spirit mediums to understand the causes of their successes and sufferings and to know the hidden minds of relatives and rivals alike. But although mediumship promises knowledge of others, interactions between mediums and their devotees also fundamentally challenge what devotees know about themselves, thereby turning interpersonal suspicion into doubts about the self.
Through a rich ethnographic comparison of the different ways in which Ndyuka and Hindu spirit mediums and their devotees navigate suspicion, Suspect Others shows how present-day Caribbean peoples come to experience selves that defy concepts of personhood inflicted by the colonial past.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction 1.Settlement and Self-Doubt 2.A Fragmented Unity: Hindu Selves, Doubt, and Shakti Ritual 3.Mediated Selves: Ndyuka Knowledge, Suspicion, and Revelation 4.Painful Interactions 5.Dreams at the Limits of Knowledge 6.Revealing Ironies of Racecraft Conclusion Bibliography
