Changing Masters Spirit Possession and Identity Construction Among Slave Descendants and Other Subordinates in the Sudan
- List Price: $89.95
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr
- Publish date: 06/01/2000
Makris engages the tumbura devotees of the area of Greater Khartoum in an animated discussion of their understanding of themselves and their world. Using oral histories, songs associated with the various spirits, and accounts of ceremonies he witnessed, he shows tumbura to be a response to victimization first in slavery and later by subordination. It functions as a counterdiscourse challenging the dominant discourse of the ex-slaveholding classes and enables its practitioners to assert a separate, alternative identity. This assertion, embodied in the idiom of possession, is achieved through a continuous reworking of meaning as it is imparted by religion, descent, and historical consciousness.