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