Contribution short abstract:

In dīwān, an Algerian ritual, music cultivates a wide spectrum of trance dancing. Local formulations of "affect" mean that the human body in these states is energetically porous and subjects “tied” to those bodies may be affectively recalibrated towards improved mental-emotional health.

Contribution long abstract:

In dīwān, an Algerian Sufi ritual, music cultivates a wide spectrum of trance. All of these various trance registers are understood as intensities of presence: ways of being present, being away, or disappearing into other personages. Crucially, the human body in these states is energetically porous to other human and nonhuman agents. It is sometimes the “site” within which other agents impose their own immaterial bodies or it can be left behind as a site when some trancers are said to be “absent.” Thus, trance provides a kind of pluralistic body-ness and fluctuating agency where subjects “tied” to those bodies may be recalibrated. What exactly makes musically-cultivated trance dancing therapeutic is that both sound/music and “psychological states” are constituted by the same element —vibration—which can be helpfully theorized through culturally particular iterations of “affect.” Through these musically precipitated and flexible affective reconfigurations of bodies, selves, and relationships, trance provides a space for the shifting of power and powerlessness, therefore attending to personal suffering and social pain in the dīwān community and serving, quite practically, as mental-emotional healthcare This paper builds on eighteen months of fieldwork in Algeria, broad scholarship on affect (Ahmed 2004; Brennan 2004; Massumi 1995), the anthropology of pain, suffering, and embodiment (Blackman 2012; Throop 2010; Desjarlais1997; Csordas 1993; Scarry 1985), and pivotal scholarship on music and trance (Rouget 1985; Becker 2004; Jankowsky 2010), ultimately showing how dīwān ritual dynamics offer ways of understanding the nexus of music, trance, and ritual as an affective epistemology.

E-paper: this Contribution will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

Contribution short abstract:

This paper describes the use of art and dance therapy in Armenia for women and child survivors of domestic violence, veterans of war, and LGBTQ. We will talk about how the arts facilitate self-acceptance, heal relationships, and activate social change in the Armenian community as a whole.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper describes the use of art and dance/movement therapy by psychologists from Armenia in the treatment of trauma for individuals and families (e.g., women and children who endure domestic violence, veterans of the war with Azerbaijan, and members of the LGBTQ community). We will show how techniques of creative arts therapy are integrated seamlessly into the therapeutic process, without a self-consciousness sometimes evident in medical systems where the borders between art and medicine are monitored and differentiated. The comfort and trust in the arts therapies seems to arise from two main sources: the keen awareness among psychologists that their patients experience emotional pain as an embodied drama, at the individual and social levels; and, art and dance are part of the everyday life of Armenians.

A relatively new area of healthcare for a very under-served population, the mental health system in Armenia has not firmly established a governing body that oversees the development of professional and ethical standards, criteria for evidence-based treatment, payment procedures, and documentation of continuing education. Yet, mental health specialists in Armenia actively and independently seek training and education opportunities, offered by international NGOs and professionals, and see their degrees and certificates as valid measures of their competency and authority. In addition to discussing the influences from Russian, European, and American approaches, we will also emphasize how psychologists use creative arts experiences as forms of resistance to discourses that stigmatize patients, and in this way promote social change for the community as a whole.

E-paper: this Contribution will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation stresses the challenge of framing psychosis narratives within an expressive ethnographic medium such as comics. The expansive interplay between madness and ontological poetics becomes a way participants can co-author social worlds together through art-making.

Contribution long abstract:

Ethnographic practices which involve art-making, comics (Atalay et al. 2019; Dix et al. 2019), and hybrid forms of expression (Collins et al. 2017) with participating communities and one's interlocutors bring forth several dynamics in their manifestation. These may involve 'imaginative ethnography' (Elliot and Culhane 2016) and 'future worlds' intermeshed within sets of 'living mythologies' (Salazar et al 2017; Young 1983). Specifically, this presentation proposes how to methodologically balance the poetic blasting of the self in creating new boundary spaces for voicing Mad-inclusive identities in anthropology. The work of social scientists (Vannini 2015; Tarr et al. 2018; Kernan 2020) has also shown particularly that arts-based workshops can be effective sites to explore the shifting forms, vitalities, and relational dynamics of the self—which, in effect, can (re)construct the flow of its socio-cultural enactment (Jenkins 2015). That said, this presentation argues for a collaborative model of how to co-author an ethnographic comic based in sensory descriptions of psychosis. In turn, these ontological struggles (Kohn 2015) may re-envision how communication and interior psychology become reconceptualized in anthropology. This research-creation talk aims to briefly situate how the validity of these forms of communal storytelling can strategically disrupt normative thought (Snyder et al. 2019) in carving out new ethical paradigms (Ettinger 2018). As anthropology learns to embrace these underrepresented narratives as legitimate knowledge-making endeavours, this newfound empathy and tact imagination positions anthropologists to better track how human beings can relate to one another through collective world-making efforts.

E-paper: this Contribution will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the importance of music for an individual who also suffers from chronic mental illness. Although the individual frequently belted out songs relevant to her community throughout the day, she did not make progress in music therapy. This paper explores why this may be.

Contribution long abstract:

Taking up the case of a Bhutanese Nepali refugee living in Columbus Ohio, this paper examines the importance of music for an individual who also suffers from chronic mental illness. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and exhibiting signs of autism, the individual did not converse, or engage in meaningful interactions; rather she paced, babbled and, when the mood struck, broke out in song. Having established music as a preferred expressive form, the researcher expected the individual to be responsive to music therapy, and linked her with a professional. After several weeks, however, the music therapist declined to continue treatment, reporting a lack of engagement and a lack of progress. In this paper the researcher seeks to understand what conditions enable a person so musically oriented to remain unresponsive to music-based treatment. In doing so, the researcher also theorizes how exactly might one examine the relationship between an individual and music without the use of language. The researcher also theorizes how one might use the imagination to explore the role music plays, for that individual, both as a passive medium, something to be watched or listened to, and as an active medium, something to be engaged with and used as a means of communication.

E-paper: this Contribution will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

Contribution short abstract:

An embodied sense of community at and connected to a Parisian Tenrikyo center was promoted via the “Monthly Service” ritual of sacred songs and dances. This ritual encouraged particular social dynamics that contributed to an interconnectedness often perceived as beneficial to well-being.

Contribution long abstract:

A sense of “community” can be an important contributor to well-being. In my research conducted primarily at a center of the new Japanese religion of Tenrikyo located in a Parisian suburb, the “Monthly Service” ritual composed of choreographed dances accompanied by instrumental performers was a sensorially rich performative act that promoted a sense of community at and connected to this center. In circulated Tenrikyo discourse, it is not a performance focused on the musical or dance skills of the performers, but rather an exercise in and display of people occupying different roles which come together to create a greater whole. In my findings, there was a strong relationship between the social model embodied through this ritual and its enactment in other contexts.

Traditionally in Japan and elsewhere, newcomers became Tenrikyo followers after having been alleviated of physical afflictions through faith healing. In modern Europe, however, it is often psychological rather than physical “healing” that draws newcomers to the faith. This performative ritual plays an important role in the promotion of particular social dynamics, understandings of the self, dispositional modalities, and cosmological conceptualizations that promote a sense of community. In this analytic exploration, particular emphasis will be accorded to the tangibly felt, embodied component of the ritual which is transported to moments and spaces beyond this monthly ritual and includes social actors who categorically choose to abstain from taking part in, or being present for, this ritual, but nonetheless are part of the center’s broader community.

E-paper: this Contribution will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed