Paper short abstract:

This article is concerned with cursed personhood and spirits. It illuminates how bodily transformations reflect dynamics of human and non-human interactions, exemplified through the instances of curse infliction.

Paper long abstract:

This article is about cursed bodies and cursing practices in post-Soviet Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva. While showing how human bodies bring together humans and spirits, I concentrate on how cursing induces 'bodily' changes which engage physical, emotional, and cognitive processes, whilst shifting humans from a fragile condition of homeostasis to turbulence. I put a specific stress on the images of cursed bodies and physical deformations that spirits produce while inflicting curses. These images are revealed by shamans during divination practices and curse deflection rituals. In my analysis of the materiality of curses, I draw on Latour's argument concerning bodily existence as 'learning to be affected' (2004: 205). In this way, while discussing the shamans' visions, I approach a (cursed) body not as a 'provisional residence of something superior - an immortal soul, the universal, or thought - but (…) a dynamic trajectory by which we learn to register and become sensitive to what the world is made of' (ibid.: 206). Along these lines, I seek to illuminate how curses transform people into a particular stage upon which complex interactions between humans and non-humans are being instantiated and played out. Thus, I suggest that cursed personhood in Tuva, rather than utilizing the perspective of spirit possession or anything resembling it, represents a form of living with and around spirits.