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- Convenor:
-
Daniel Lende
(Univ of South Florida)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 April, -
Time zone: America/Chicago
Accepted papers
Session 1 Tuesday 6 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract
We study the psychological and cultural aspects of the belief in reincarnation among the Druze - a religious minority living mainly in the Middle East, by focusing on a phenomenon called Notq - the remembering and talking about a previous incarnation.
Paper long abstract
This study examines the self-concept of the person who experienced Notq -the Druze phenomenon of remembering and talking about previous life. We focus on 'solved stories'- ones in which the person identifies his/her previous incarnation. The central question of this study is: What is the phenomenological experience of a person who has had Notq? In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-three Israeli Druze adults. The findings expose the Notq's experience and its manifestations throughout 'Notq's life career'. The findings also show that Notq provides psychological resources which create a symbolic type who represents the central ethos of the Druze. In the discussion we argue that Notq can be perceived as a cultural idiom providing unique psychological and cultural resources. This study contributes to the research of psychology and culture by examining the Druze belief in reincarnation, the interpretation of cultural idioms and cautions against treating them as idioms of distress.
Paper short abstract
I draw on Jamilā’s recurring dream to examine her mode of being-in-the-world vis-à-vis the dead other. This talk centers on the Islamic theories on “vision” and “dream”; what Ibn ‘Arabī considered as khayāl (imagination), an occurrence between the real and the phenomenal worlds.
Paper long abstract
This talk draws on Jamilā’s recurring dream to examine her mode of being-in-the-world vis-à-vis the dead other. Jamilā imagines Safiyya (an elderly neighbor in Aleppo who was killed during an air bombing) through her dreams. Jamilā had just turned eight years old when she and her family fled Aleppo and resettled in Brooklyn. Jamilā, now a 13-year-old girl, dreams of Safiyya centers on an image of an old women in a white burial cloth prominent in Islamic ritual. Jamilā’s dream became a “selfscape” (Hollan 2004) of her moral experiences and emotions towards the dead other, Safiyya. The discussion of dreams centers on the Islamic theories on “vision” and “dream” and also the symbolic meanings of her dreams, partially Sūfī beliefs relevant in Syria. This mode of relationality highlights the idea that ethics entails infinite responsibility to the other. The world of dream becomes a place where Jamilā described herself as someone who has “committed a sin” by “abandoning Safiyya.” This imaginal space can be analyzed through what Islamic philosopher, Ibn ‘Arabī (1165-1240) considered as khayāl (imagination or a mental image), an occurrence that represents something “between the real and the phenomenal worlds, as do our imaginings” (Landau 1957:60). Khayāl provides both a symbol for reality and also for hidden meanings for Jamilā’s dream. Ibn ‘Arabī believed that during dreams imagination is at its most active stage, where khayāl “gets hold of the experiences of daily life, and presents them to the ‘inward eye’ (of the heart)” (Landau 1957:60).
Paper short abstract
We propose a Hmong Intellectual History Project that analyzes Hmong ways of knowing and the history of ideas in Hmong society. We develop the concept of ancestral personhood through an analysis of Hmong oral ritual texts as an example of new insights that emerge from such a mode of inquiry.
Paper long abstract
Decolonization, radical indigenism, and ontological turning each similarly call for alternative modes of scholarship that escape narrowly Western ways of producing knowledge about human experience. To this end, we propose a “Hmong Intellectual History Project” that seeks to illuminate Hmong ways of knowing and critically consider the history of ideas and concepts in Hmong society. Framing inquiry in this way enables several critical possibilities. First, it elevates Hmong ritual knowledge—transmitted orally through master-student apprenticeships—to the same level as written texts, the customary data of intellectual history. Second, it flattens the conceptual playing field by putting theories of human being inherent in these texts (including interpretations of practitioner-theorists) on the same level as social theory, considering both as mutual sources of understanding about human experience. As an example of what Hmong Intellectual History as a mode of inquiry can produce, this paper provides a preliminary analysis of the theory of human being developed by Master Shong Ger Thao, whose analysis of Hmong oral ritual revealed a particularly nuanced model of personhood that goes beyond that articulated by most theorists and laypersons. We sketch out the implications of this understanding, which we call “ancestral personhood,” and which is rooted in an analysis of Hmong oral ritual texts and Hmong understandings of the three souls that constitute a human being. We conclude by commenting how approaching this Hmong model of personhood as an intellectual history project enables new insights that would be more difficult to arrive at through traditional ethnographic engagement.