In the Place of Origins: Modernity and Its Mediums in Northern ThailandIn the Place of Origins tells the tale of modernity in Northern Thailand, discerning its oblique signs in the performances of contemporary spirit mediums. In a world driven by the twin fantasies of pastness and newness, Rosalind C. Morris reveals that spirit mediumship is not simply a theater of atavistic tendency but an arena in which it is possible to read the relationships between new forms of representation and subjectivity, as well as new modes of magic and political power. Through her careful examination of the transformations of spirit mediumship wrought by the mass media, Morris takes readers into the world of the northern Thai past to discover the anticipations of future histories. In this process, she finds new objects for anthropological inquiry, including romantic love and epistolary poetry. She then turns her eye toward the relationships between commodification and prosaic form and photography and the discourses of gendered and national identity. Attending to these issues as they manifest themselves in the practices of mediums, Morris describes both the mundane activities of spirit mediums and the grand ambitions to political authority that are embodied in the increasingly spectacular forms of possession that are becoming so popular with both tourists and local culture brokers. In the Place of Origins traverses this ground with accounts of right-wing militarism and ritual revival during the 70s, and of the democracy movement of 1992, when a global mass media was galvanized by images of military repression and the spectacle of traditional ritual power in cursing. Finally, considering the claims that mediums make to magical power in the face of both AIDS and the Asian economic crisis, Morris reveals the potency of extrajudicial forms of power and violence in the late modern era. This provocative study will interest anthropologists, historians, Asianists, and those involved in gender, performance, media, and literary studies. |
Contents
A Poetics of the Modern | 13 |
Ruin or What the New City Remembers | 55 |
First Forgetting | 80 |
The Appearance of Order | 107 |
The Secret of the Dish | 147 |
Transmissions or the Appearance of Culture | 181 |
Locality and the Spirit of Democracy | 240 |
The Apotheosis of Representation | 287 |
The End of Mediumship? | 332 |
Other editions - View all
In the Place of Origins: Modernity and Its Mediums in Northern Thailand Rosalind C. Morris No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
appearance Asian Bangkok become body Buddhist camera Caopuu caos capital Central Thai century Chiang Mai's Chom Chom's Chuchad claim constitute context culture death debt demand Derrida discourse displacement dominant economy emergence ethnic ethnographic fact fetishism Four Songs gesture Ibid imagined kathoey Khun Daeng King King Ramkhamhaeng language Lanna Lannathai logic Luang magic mediation mediumship Mengrai military modern monks müang Naang Khao narrative Nonetheless northern Thai northern Thailand origin performance Phayaphrom phii phithii photograph Phra Ping River Poem in Four political possibility Praise Ceremony produced Rama Rama IV relationship representation rite ritual Saeng Suang seems sexual shrine Siam Siamese signify Siwa Siwa's Social Southeast Asian space speech spirits stories Suchinda Taksin Thainess Thapae Gate theatrical Theravada Buddhism tion tradition trans transformation translation University Press Village Scout Walter Benjamin Wan Waithayakon Wichit women writing York
References to this book
The Politics of Locality: Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan Hsin-yi Lu No preview available - 2002 |