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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on Charles Taylor’s distinction between buffered and porous selves, the paper looks at three ontologically distinct experiences in the life world of the Tijani Mbororo of Cameroon, each experience involving a different degree of permeability of the boundary between mind and world.

Paper long abstract:

Charles Taylor’s (2007) notion of buffered and porous selves refers to a distinction between two ways of understanding the boundary between what lies in one’s mind and outside it. While, in Taylor’s view, the self was earlier conceptualised as porous, that is, open and thus vulnerable to spirits, demons, and cosmic forces, the modern era has brought about a new sense of invulnerable, bounded self. Whereas Taylor’s classification was to capture the way selves are experienced in different social worlds (Luhrmann 2020), the ethnography of this paper illustrates how differing understandings of self can also determine the ways people conceptualise their different experiences within the same social universe. Drawing on Taylor’s notion of the buffered/porous self, and in line with the panel’s religio-ethical focus, I look at three ontologically distinct experiences in the life world of the Muslim Tijani Mbororo (Fulani) of Cameroon. These are 1) falling into jasbu, a divine trance state, often taking place during the Tijaniyya worship practice called zikiri (dhikr), 2) being possessed by evil spirits, and 3) the daily observing of pulaaku, the Fulani code of ideal public behaviour that focuses on self-mastering and aims at creating an autonomous self. The paper reflects on how the Tijani Mbororo conceptualise and deal with the challenges posed by the mentioned religio-culturally framed phenomena, each of which being shaped by distinct external forces and involving a different degree of permeability of the self/outside boundary.