Dancing for the Snake: Possession, Gender, and Identity in the Worship of Manas@ in Assam (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Dreadful Dance of the Goddess: Creativity and Mimesis in a Possession Cult of Assam
Cracow Indological Studies, 2018
Every year in August devotees flock to the Kāmākhyā temple (Guwahati, Assam), to attend and observe the Deodhāni-nāc, (the dance [nāc] of the sound [dhāni] of god [deo]). The main feature of this three-day festival is the dance of the deodhās. The deodhās, Assamese males, become possessed by the goddess Kāmākhyā (and the other deities connected to her) and dance to the beat of drums. The dance of deodhās reproduces to some extent the character and iconography of the possessing deities, but is not limited to that. Through the use of his body, each deodhā actively interprets this shared image of the deity, dancing in a singular way. The paper focuses on the creative, yet unconscious process through which each deodhā shapes his peculiar dancing style.
Snakes, Goddesses, and Anthills: Modern Challenges and Women's Ritual Responses in Contemporary South India, 2009
This dissertation is an ethnographic study of contemporary Hindu snake (naga) traditions and the worship of snake goddesses (nagattamman) in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Specifically, it analyzes the repertoire of vernacular practices connected with naga dosam (snake blemish), a malignant condition that is believed to result from inauspicious planetary configurations in an individual's horoscope. This astrological flaw is most often linked to having killed or harmed a snake, and is faulted for delaying marriage and causing infertility. Indigenously, these afflictions are identified as distinctly "modern" problems and understood to be increasingly prevalent. Because South Indian nagas have long been associated with fertility in belief, custom, and local mythology, naga traditions offer a religious framework to respond to these modern dilemmas, and the worship of snake goddesses has dramatically expanded as a result. New media, such as devotional magazines, have also played an important role in the popularization of naga dosam traditions, its ritual remedies, and particular snake goddess temples. I propose that these innovating naga traditions represent a distinctively local, culturally inflected "modernity" and reflect some of the gendered tensions of contemporary Tamil social life. This dissertation, then, analyzes how traditional religious practice can serve as a flexible, modern means through which to negotiate a range of shifting social and economic contexts. It charts naga ritual traditions (which include recontextualized as well as more explicitly "invented" rites) as they are being self-consciously adapted to meet a spectrum of new ritual and social needs that these challenging contexts inspire. These rituals are primarily performed at local, neighborhood snake goddess and anthill temples, which form an urban network of sites well-known for their power to counter dosam. These local goddesses, some of whom were previously known for curing pox-related illnesses, enjoy a dynamic and expanding ritual repertoire, a growing annual festival tradition, and the patronage of devotees from an increasingly broad array of caste backgrounds.
Promising Rituals: Gender and Performativity in Eastern India
Promising Rituals: Gender and Performativity in Eastern India, 2012
This book shows how the performance of rituals influences the understanding that Hindu women form of their own selves, their sense of femininity, identity as well as their role and position in the lived-in world, and vice versa. Drawn from an intensive ethnographic fieldwork in southern Orissa, each section of the book takes a close look at a specific ritual practice, in exploring concepts such as purity/pollution, religious observances (such as fasting), deity possession, associated beliefs and attitudes, as also celebrated traditions such as Thākurāṇī Yātrā, the local processions, and the role of female ritual specialists. The study uses the premise that religious practices in themselves are neither restricting nor liberating; rather rituals provide a perceptual context with the ability to affect the self-understanding of participants, and their conception of agency, in a way that spills across non-ritual spheres. Conceptualizing gender identity as resulting from seen, but mostly unnoticed, everyday activities and approaching cultural performances as sites of collectively defining the self, the author offers a telling and vivid account of how women perceive, realize and reflect on religious ideas, while engaging in rituals and, by doing so, negotiate complex gender norms. The book also examines the assumptions of recent theories on the social construction of identities, often-debated impact of religion on women, performativity and ritual agency in the ‘doing’ of gender in a traditional, non-Western context. This book will serve as essential reading for scholars of sociology, anthropology, gender studies, cultural studies, history, religion, performance, and folklore studies.
Dancing Bhagvathi: A Study of Ritual Female Performance and the Feminine Exclusion
Virginia Review of Asian Studies, 2013
Rita Gross observes that the “strong willed” female figure in Hindu iconography makes strong willed women an acceptable figure in Indian society. This paper refutes this claim by demonstrating that the figure of the strong mother goddess is a male construct and serves as a patriarchal tool to impose social and cultural restrictions on women. I look at the representation of the Bhagvathi figure in the Mutiyettu performance tradition from Kerala and the relation that her female devotees share with her as a specific example of this patriarchal imposition. I will demonstrate how the image of the powerful female religious icon works against women in this specific instance and by extension in the rest of India. In order to disprove Gross’s argument, I use the notion of Judith Butler’s gender performativity as well as Peggy Phelan’s idea of marking and unmarking. Butler's idea of gender as a social construction finds strong echoes in the way the role of the female is determined in both families and performance in Kerala. And drag, which Butler proposes as a way to subvert gender identities, fails to achieve its goal within this different cultural context and works to further consolidate the set notions of masculinity and femininity. Breaking out of these gender roles is not only socially unacceptable but also virtually impossible. The argument of Phelan is employed to propose a notion of how the female is marked by the male in the figure of the Bhagvathi and in Kerala society.
2010
Brief of my PhD Thesis (cover page, intro abstract & table of content) submitted in French in 2010 - Keywords: mudiyettu, mutiyettu, mudhiyettu, Hindu worship, goddess Kali, Bhadrakali, darikavadham, ritual performing art, ritual theatre, possession, smallpox, Kerala, South India