Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Minimal Ontology

Belief and Disbelief of Mystical Forces, Perilous Conditions, and the Opacity of Being

in Religion and Society
Author:
Theodoros Kyriakides University of Manchester theodoros.kyriakides@manchester.ac.uk

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/arrs.2016.070105
Keywords:
belief; death; disbelief; mystical forces; ontological turn; ontology; structural functionalism; violence
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ABSTRACT

This article explores mystical belief and disbelief in Jeanne Favret-Saada’s ethnography of Bocage witchcraft in relation to the ontological turn in anthropology. The ethnographic archive provides numerous examples in which natives display seemingly contradictory practices of belief and disbelief when it comes to mystical forces. A common way by which anthropologists deal with such contradictions is to attempt to explicate their social function and cultural significance. In doing so, they perceive belief and disbelief to be cognitive states of clarity. Favret-Saada differs in her approach since she apprehends mystical belief and disbelief to be ambivalent and connected and, as I argue, portrays it as being caught in a perilous arrangement of death. In order to convey these points, I compare her ethnographic work to that of E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Rane Willerslev. The article goes on to analyze Favret-Saada’s minimal ontology of the opaque subject and how it can inform ontological anthropology.

Contributor Notes

THEODOROS KYRIAKIDES recently received his PhD from the Social Anthropology Department, University of Manchester. For his thesis, he conducted fieldwork on patient activism and the politics involved in treating the blood disorder thalassemia in Cyprus. His thesis explores ethnographically and conceptually the political tactics used by thalassemia patients. Kyriakides is also interested in the affective dimensions of mystical belief and the violence permeating ontological orders; theodoros.kyriakides@manchester.ac.uk.

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Religion and Society

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Cover Religion and Society
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
15
Keywords:
belief; death; disbelief; mystical forces; ontological turn; ontology; structural functionalism; violence
Print Publication Date:
01 Sep 2016
Online Publication Date:
01 Sep 2016
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2016

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