Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the movement of human pilgrims and tromba spirits to and from shrines in northwestern Madagascar. Sarimbavy (same-sex desiring and gender non-conforming male-bodied) spirit mediums meaningfully converge at urban and rural and shrines during annual pilgrimages.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the movement of human pilgrims and tromba spirits to and from shrines in the Betsiboka Valley of northwestern Madagascar during fanompoa (ritual events hosted at tromba spirit shrines). I specifically consider how sarimbavy (same-sex desiring and gender non-conforming male-bodied) spirit mediums socialize at rural fanompoa in the interior of the Betsiboka Valley and at the largest regional ritual gathering, the fanompoambe, in the city of Mahajanga. Based on 24 months of fieldwork, the ethnography presented here follows the lives of sarimbavy who are actively engaged in the reproduction of and re-interpretation of the Sakalava historical record through their roles as spirit mediums. These interlocutors were representative of the diversity of Malagasy lived experience: from cosmopolitan Merina aristocracy to poor, struggling Sakalava day laborers. Nevertheless, sarimbavy spirit mediums were unlikely to consider themselves to be part of a bounded "community" simply based on their shared sexual desires/practice and/or gendered non-conformity. This paper proposes that mediumship, in the lives of sarimbavy in the northwest, provides a space for networking and mutual belonging, however tenuous. Concomitantly, tromba spirit possession in Madagascar is by no means relegated to or defined by a concrete association with same-sex desire or gender non-conformity. The nuanced forms in which "queerness" attaches itself to spirit mediumship in Madagascar provides a productive counterexample against common associations between "homosexuality" and "transvestism" in the anthropological literature.